The level of his imperfection was a surprise to me, but I also came to understand that the identification with him isn’t that he’s perfect. It’s that he teaches something about life.
He had this deep concern for people in his writing and in his [famous] speech at Kenyon College.
He cares whether the reader has a full life or not, whether they go through life awake or not. He had this stance of being unironic but not simple minded, curious without being intrusive, empathetic without being sloppy.
David Foster Wallace biographer D. T. Max on getting inside Wallace’s head
