Beyond “Infinite Jest”

What if an author put forth goals for his fiction so intelligent yet modest, so comprehensive yet dignified, that the reader would not—could not—forget them? Something like this happened to David Foster Wallace when he sat for an interview with Larry McCaffery, for the summer 1993 issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction. Wallace talked about rap and postmodernism, his idea of good fiction (William Vollmann) and bad (Mark Leyner), and the shape of the literary landscape. Most memorably, he explained why he was a writer.