SOURCE: Rother, James. “Reading the Riding the Post-Scientific Wave: The Shorter Fiction of David Foster Wallace.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, no. 2 (summer 1993): 216-34.

In the following essay, Rother discusses Wallace's short fiction as a prime example of “post-scientific writing.”

Philosophy is a noble and arduous discipline. Fiction is equally severe. But literary philosophy is shit. Literary Sociology is shit. Literary Psychology is shit. What would a literary physics be?

—William H. Gass, a letter

The difference between what I write and poetry and literature is that, in principle, what I write is not fiction. But I do wonder more and more: is there a real difference between theory and a fiction? After all, don't we have the right to present theoretical statements under the form of fictions? Not under the form, but in the form.

—Jean-François Lyotard, Just Gaming

It is not certain that there can...