From EVERY LOVE STORY IS A GHOST STORY: A LIFE OF DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, by D.T. Max

bluesigloo:

Around this time [Mary] Karr was working on an essay on poetry called “Against Decoration,” published in Parnassus in 1991, where she took as the twin poles of authorial error “absence of emotion” and “lack of clarity.” She urged poets to move their readers, writing that emotional response was the main goal of art, and was not shy in passing on the same message to [David Foster] Wallace. When he told her he had put certain scenes into Infinite Jest because they were “cool,” she r...