“Here’s a thing that is hard to imagine: being so inventive a writer that when you die, the language is impoverished.” It has been seven years since Wallace left us, and no one is refilling the coffers of the David Foster Wallace Federal Sentence Reserve. No one is writing anything that resembles this: “The second shift’s 1600h. siren down at Sundstrand Power & Light is creepily muffled by the no-sound of falling snow.” Or this: “But he was a gifted burglar, when he burgled—though the size of a young dinosaur, with a massive and almost perfectly square head he used to amuse his friends when drunk by letting them open and close elevator doors on.” We return to Wallace sentences now like medieval monks to scripture, tremblingly aware of their finite preciousness.
- Location 68
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Most great prose writers make the real world seem realer—it’s why we read great prose writers. But Wallace does something weirder, something more astounding: even when you’re not reading him, he trains you to study the real world through the lens of his prose.
- Location 111
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