"Fiction's about what it is to be a human being"
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Wallace’s line sounds almost earnest until you remember who’s saying it: a writer allergic to the cheap consolations of sincerity, but even more allergic to irony-as-a-lifestyle. “Fiction’s about what it is to be a human being” is a deliberately unfashionable claim, pitched against the late-20th-century pose that novels are mostly language games, cultural diagnostics, or clever mirrors for clever readers. Wallace isn’t denying craft or form; he’s insisting they’re not the point. Technique is a delivery system for consciousness.
The subtext is moral, almost pastoral. Wallace spent a career circling the problem that modern life trains us to outsource attention: to entertainment, to brands, to self-protective cynicism. In that context, “human being” isn’t a Hallmark noun. It means the messy interior facts we’d rather not admit: loneliness, craving, shame, the need to be seen without being exposed. Fiction matters because it can stage those interiorities without turning them into content. It lets readers practice the hardest cultural skill Wallace thought was evaporating: sustained empathy that doesn’t require agreement or reward.
There’s also a quiet provocation in the word “about.” He’s pushing back on the workshop-era idea that fiction is chiefly “about” plot, or “about” style, or “about” the author’s persona. For Wallace, the writer’s job is to use whatever formal weirdness is necessary to get past the reader’s defenses and into recognition: not “I relate,” but “I’m implicated.” That’s why the sentence lands like a manifesto disguised as a truism.
The subtext is moral, almost pastoral. Wallace spent a career circling the problem that modern life trains us to outsource attention: to entertainment, to brands, to self-protective cynicism. In that context, “human being” isn’t a Hallmark noun. It means the messy interior facts we’d rather not admit: loneliness, craving, shame, the need to be seen without being exposed. Fiction matters because it can stage those interiorities without turning them into content. It lets readers practice the hardest cultural skill Wallace thought was evaporating: sustained empathy that doesn’t require agreement or reward.
There’s also a quiet provocation in the word “about.” He’s pushing back on the workshop-era idea that fiction is chiefly “about” plot, or “about” style, or “about” the author’s persona. For Wallace, the writer’s job is to use whatever formal weirdness is necessary to get past the reader’s defenses and into recognition: not “I relate,” but “I’m implicated.” That’s why the sentence lands like a manifesto disguised as a truism.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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