Faith & Spirit Quote by David Foster Wallace

Wallace can’t resist giving you the keys to the kingdom and then immediately snatching them back to check if you’re still awake. “The reader becomes God” is a grand, almost pompous elevation of audience power: once a text exists, its meaning isn’t owned by the author but activated, judged, even rewritten by whoever reads it. He’s nodding to lit theory (death of the author, reader-response), but he phrases it like a dare, not a seminar.

Then comes the twist: “for all textual purposes.” That qualifier is doing quiet damage. You’re omnipotent only inside the small, airless terrarium of the page. Outside it, the author is still a person with motives, blind spots, and control over what gets included, excluded, and staged. Wallace is both conceding authority and reminding you that the concession is part of the performance.

“I see your eyes glazing over, so I’ll hush” is the real Wallace signature: self-aware, slightly bullying, oddly tender. He anticipates boredom, mocks himself for sounding like a pedant, and courts intimacy by acting like he can see you in real time. It’s also a control tactic. By narrating your attention, he tries to manage it. If you were drifting, now you’re caught - either laughing, bristling, or re-engaging.

The context is Wallace’s career-long anxiety about irony and distance: he wants earnest connection but distrusts any rhetoric that feels manipulative. This line dramatizes that conflict. He flatters the reader’s power, then confesses the trick, hoping that honesty itself will keep you with him.