martinimade

"Look, man," [David Foster Wallace] said in a 1991 interview, "we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?" Quite the contrary, he believed that fiction should help people "become less alone inside." It's a tall order, but it's also the best and, oddly for Wallace, the simplest explanation of what art can do that I've ever heard.