“ Wallace isn’t responsible for his imitators, much less for the stylized mess that is Gen-X-and-Y Internet syntax. The devices can be traced back to him, though, if indirectly; they were filtered through and popularized by Dave Eggers’s literary magazine and publishing empire, McSweeney’s, and Eggers’s own novels and memoirs, all of which borrowed not only Wallace’s tics but also his championing of post-ironic sincerity and his attempts to ward off criticism by embedding all possible criticisms within the writing itself.
”
That’s New York Times writer Maud Newton arguing that the late David Foster Wallace may have unwittingly inspired some of the blogosphere’s worst tendencies. And she didn’t even touch on the whole footnotes business. Like, I really kinda sorta can’t stand them, even though I kind of understand, like, why people might use them. You know?

-DM

[Vulture]

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