SOURCE: A review of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, in New Republic, Vol. 216, No. 26, June 30, 1997, pp. 27-34.

In the following review, Star discusses the often contradictory nature of Wallace's writing.

Most novelists strive to extinguish the traces of juvenile self-consciousness from their work. Selfconsciousness is an adolescent twitch, a mannered style, a way of holding back from the potency of one's materials. It's an obstacle to communication, and a low form of candor, David Foster Wallace is not such a writer. He can't escape from self-consciousness; or he doesn't want to. Instead, he makes the sheer awkwardness of carrying a self through the world the central theme of his madly exfoliating compositions. The unpleasant sensation of being looked at and the corresponding urge to hide are the torments that drive his work into labyrinths of ever greater complexity. At any moment, his prose seems about...