Some writers specialize in the 'away from home' experience. They have safaried, eaten across Italy, covered a war. Wallace offered his alive self, cutting through our sleepy aquarium, our standard TV, stores, political campaigns. Writers who can do this--like Salinger and Fitzgerald--forge an unbreakable bond with readers. You didn't slip into the books looking for a story, information, but for a particular experience--the sensation, for a certain number of pages, of being David Foster Wallace.
