Notes on David Foster Wallace’s “All That” (The New Yorker, December 14, 2009):

From what little I know about The Pale King, I am already wondering if and how this story fits into it.

The early mention of the narrator’s “biological parents” recalls similar qualifications made by the narrator of the 2004 story “Good Old Neon” from Oblivion.

On the surface this story is about faith v. skepticism. I wonder whether it is meant to function as DFW’s rejoinder to the New Atheists, knowing as we do from his writing that he attended church and made substantial room in his work for faith, magic, the supernatural, and the afterlife. He was always good at putting the lie to the idea that smart people cannot be believers, or that believers must be simple-minded and irrational.

“The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me a compelling argument for religious reverence rather than skeptical empiricism as a response to life’s meaning.”

Has it taken me this long to get around to reading this story because I was reading other things, because I had much catching up to do in my NYer reading, or because I was avoiding this story with a kind of vague dread I’m worried will accompany all my consumption of whatever future writing by DFW ever emerges?

“I’m not putting any of this well. I am not and never have been an intellectual. I am not articulate, and the subjects that I am trying to describe and discuss are beyond my abilities.”