A Most Excellent Fancy: Infinite Jest and America's Addictions
David Foster Wallace's Gen X magnum opus was an inflection point for my own writing and a lesson in why you never skip the footnotes
And so but then I was coming out of my neighborhood 7-Eleven a while back, carrying a six-pack of Bud Light bottles, when the guy sitting in the beat up Honda Civic next to my car called out, “Hey man!” I gave him a mild “What’s up?” and he held up his own six-pack of Bud Lights, in the cans that each hold about four ounces more than a bottle.
“You should get these, get more for your money,” he told me.
“Nah, I’m good with these,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” he laughed. Then he blew into the breathalyzer ignition lock to start his Civic and drove off.
It’s the type of story about addiction and how it permeates our country and culture that’s so on the damn nose that I need to stress: I am not making it up.1
Addictions of all kinds are everywhere you turn. The opioid epidemic. The fentanyl crisis. The rapidly expanding universe of gambling that’s been unleashed by legalized online sports betting. Political junkies. Conspiracy theorists, because what is more addict-coded than obsessing over a the…
