Reality Bites as the Source for Infinite Jest?

Robert Harrison’s recent Entitled Opinions episode about David Foster Wallace reminded me of an interesting coincidence I discovered last year.1 In 1994, two years before the publication of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus Infinite Jest, the generation X cult classic Reality Bites appeared. (Spoiler Alert: I’ll ruin thematic and plot elements of both works in …

Allusion and Undertones in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I wrote in my introductory post that I am ambivalent about much of contemporary fiction. Well, it’s wonderful to come across as singular a counterexample as Mohsin Hamid’s beautiful novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This is the sort of work that reminds you why you read; I heartily recommend it to all. (A word of advice: …