Something happens to a novel as it ages, but what? It doesn’t ripen or deepen in the manner of cheese and wine, and it doesn’t fall apart, at least not figuratively. Fiction has no half-life. We age alongside the novels we’ve read, and only one of us is actively deteriorating. Which is to say that a novel is perishable only by virtue of being stored in such a leaky cask: our heads.
[…]
David Foster Wallace understood the paradox of attempting to write fiction that spoke to posterity and a contemporary audience simultaneously, with equal force.
Tom Bissell’s beautiful introductory essay to the 20th anniversary edition of Infinite Jest.
Complement with David Foster Wallace on writing, death, and redemption and how to write a great opener.
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