Some quick IJ errata

The Salon.com interview with Wallace, circa just right after IJ was released, has some great stuff in it.

And really, what I want to toss out is something that seems just as true now, in 2006, as it was in 1997:

"DFW: I wanted to do something real American, about what it's
like to live in America around the millennium.

Salon: And what is that like?

DFW: There's something particularly sad about it, something that
doesn't have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the
economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news.
It's more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my
friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of
lostness. Whether it's unique to our generation I really don't
know."

Or maybe it's a particular low-grade, sometimes temporary anhedonic feeling that aflicts only myself and many people I know...

And this makes for a great closing quote:

" It seems to me that the intellectualization and aestheticizing of
principles and values in this country is one of the things that's
gutted our generation. All the things that my parents said to me,
like "It's really important not to lie." Okay, check, got it. I
nod at that but I really don't feel it. Until I get to be about
thirty and I realize that if I lie to you, I also can't trust you.
I feel that I'm in pain, I'm nervous, I'm lonely and I can't
figure out why. Then I realize, "Oh, perhaps the way to deal with
this is really not to lie." The idea that something so simple and,
really, so aesthetically uninteresting -- which for me meant you
pass over it for the interesting, complex stuff -- can actually be
nourishing in a way that arch, meta, ironic, pomo stuff can't,
that seems to me to be important. That seems to me like something
our generation needs to feel."