'Fiction-writing is lonely in a way most people misunderstand. It's yourself you have to be estranged from, really, to work.'
One of the presiding literary lights of his generation, Wallace anatomized the problems of 21st century existence in intelligent, achingly funny novels, stories and essays. His great subject was the existential distance that separates people from one another — a distance he spent his life trying to bridge with words.
—Lev Grossman