So, having acknowledged that I am less equipped to the task of writing critically (or reverentially) on Wallace than the contributors to the book I’ve just been disparaging, and also having effectively decried the very endeavor of writing about Wallace at all—who, let’s face it, said the most interesting and satisfying lit-crit. and lit-hist. type things about his own work, often within the text of his stories—I am 100% aware that the degree of quote-un-quote audience investment that this little introduction has accrued is somewhere between slim and none. But the problem is, honestly, I can’t help myself. Which I don’t mean in a swoony fan-fict.-type way, though Wallace does seem to elicit heaps of that kind of thing. In fact, writing this essay has been a consistently painful and frequently unrewarding process for me. But I’m also not trying to be holier-than-thou or my-cross-to-bear about it. Really. Because I sincerely hope, for your sake, this doesn’t wind up some preachy evangelistic entreaty to read David Foster Wallace because it will make you a better person—though it will.[3] Basically, all I can say by way of justification, is that like so many of Wallace’s appreciators, I feel almost frantically compelled to write about him (or maybe with him), to try to make sense of what he and his work have done for (and maybe to) us—as readers, writers, and, ahem, human-beings.