David Foster Wallace with friend by MARION ETTLINGER

“There existed today, the three sham-Stans sang, an untapped national market for myth. Linearity was a cul de sac. Novelty was old news. The national I was now about flux & eternal return. Difference in sameness. “Creativity” — see for instant Nar’s recombinant own — Now lay in the manipulation of received themes. & soon, the C# siren Foretold, this would itself be acknowledged, this apotheosis of static flux, & be itself put to the cynical use of just what it acknowledged, like a funnel that falls through itself. “Soon, myths about myths” was the sirens’ prophecy & long-range proposal. TV shows about TV shows. Polls about the reliability of surveys. Soon, perhaps, respected & glossy high-art organs might even start inviting smartass little ironists to contemporize & miscegenate BC mythos; & all this pop irony would put a happy-face mask on a nation’s terrible shamefaced hunger & need: translation, genuine information, would be allowed to lie, hidden & nourishing, inside the wooden belly of parodic camp.                                                       ‘I.e., the Medium would handle the Message’s P.R.”

David Foster Wallace — Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko — Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)

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