Wed
Jan
28
“People read fiction the way relatives of the kidnapped listen to the captive’s voice on the captor-held phone: paying attention, natch, to what the victim says, but absolutely hanging on the pitch, quaver, and hue of what’s said, reading a code born of intimacy for interlinear clues about condition, location, and the likelihood of safe return…”
—David Foster Wallace in “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” which appears in Girl with Curious Hair, 1989.
