As Wallace matured—he was thirty-three when Infinite Jest came out in 1996—he began to formulate a calmer life, staying in at night and avoiding substances, teaching at various universities to keep himself grounded. It was around this time he began to notice that in the midst of all that excess, humans maintain a crystalline capacity for boredom. Boredom as a concept for Wallace was interesting to think about precisely because it was so tedious to experience, and because it thrived amid the availability of more entertainment than the human race had ever known.
