He was appalled at how much time it took to yield such vignettes. The exception were two stories that came out of his own experience more directly. The first was “The Depressed Person.” The story, published by Harper’s in 1998, was a genre Wallace hadn’t tried since “Westward,” revenge fiction. It was his way of getting even with Wurtzel for treating him as a statue (or, she would say, refusing to have sex with him). Freed from desire, he now saw that her love of the spotlight was just ordinary self-absorption. “The Depressed Person” of the title is a spoiled young woman, who repulses the
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