What did it Cost Wallace to Create Him

We return to Wallace sentences now like medieval monks to Scripture, tremblingly aware of their finite preciousness. While I have never been able to get a handle on Wallace’s notion of spirituality, I think it is a mistake to view him as anything other than a religious writer. His religion, like many, was a religion of language. Whereas most religions deify only certain words, Wallace exalted all of them.

Wallace may be the closest thing to a method actor in American literature, which I cannot imagine was without its subtle traumas. And Erdedy is merely one of the novel’s hundreds of differently damaged walk-on characters! Sometimes I wonder: What did it cost Wallace to create him?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/books/review/everything-about-everything-david-foster-wallaces-infinite-jest-at-20.html