What does it mean to be a writer reading David Foster Wallace? It means you spend an inordinate amount of time in your dictionary, for one. It means that you not only look words up, but that you write them down and - if they're less than six syllables and not an obscure medical term - you consider using them in your own work. It means you begin again to trust in compound (and in extreme cases, run-on) sentences again.
It means that you truly begin to glean what they mean by 'detail,' not as a string of descriptors or an infinite list of character qualities or every scene captured down to the split second; but as small receipts of proof that the content on the page wasn't imagined as much as lived.
It means that you need to be a better writer, and it means that in the best possible way.
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