A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Every essay here runs on past its material, readers say, and the read turns exhausting rather than just demanding by the end. One reviewer calls him a “long-winded pretentious sack” outright, and Wallace's tone toward state-fair attendees and cruise passengers strikes a chunk of reviewers as condescending, an educated writer eyeing 'lesser' Midwestern and working-class people from a distance. 'Greatly Exaggerated,' the literary-theory essay on authorship, gets named the weakest and most academic piece, the one readers say is safe to skip. The footnote habit that wins fans also loses readers, turning into a digression machine that swallows the point and forces constant page-flipping. Even sympathizers concede he over-explains, restating a landed point until, as one reviewer puts it, “he's determined to impart every last atom of it.”