It took years after I’d graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all. (查看原文)
Most of the modern writing I like the best is both sophisticated and colloquial—that is, high-level and complicated but at the same time intimate, sort of like a smart person is sitting right there talking to you—and I think I do little more than try to achieve this same high-low blend. (查看原文)
It kind of puzzles me that people seem so keen on asking fiction writers straightforward interview-type questions, since if the fiction writers really thought interesting stuff could be talked about straightforwardly they probably wouldn’t have become fiction writers. (查看原文)
I just got interested in the reality of boredom, which is something that I think is a hugely important problem and yet none of us talk about it because we all act like it’s just sort of something that we have to get through, which I suppose we do. (查看原文)
your public image as a writer: you’re typically described as one of the leading figures of the postmodern hip ironic generation of writers in their thirties and early forties, but I read somewhere that you really think of yourself as a realist.
WALLACE: Well, except, you know…These various classifications are important for critics, right? You have to form different things into groups or else you have to talk about a trillion different particulars. (查看原文)
