Prestige Creates a Permission Structure for Experimentation

I absolutely loved the novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace when I read it back in the day. I devoured it, forcing myself to read all of those bloody footnotes to pick up every weird bread crumb, and reveling in how silly and yet cohesive the whole thing felt. It was one of the books that fueled my determination to try and write fiction myself, along with Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring.

But I often think that if you s...