So I’m in love. The pathetic kind of love where you pounce on every opportunity to spout about your lover. It’s the kind of love where even if talking about him doesn’t quite fit into the conversation I will wedge his name and what he thinks about something right in there.

I know it’s annoying. Even when I see a slight tension creep into the eye muscles of the person I’m talking with, that tell-tale sign that they’re trying to contain an eye-roll, I can’t stop. I won’t stop. I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it. You might think I’m kidding, but I’m not. If you spend more than five minutes talking with me I will bring him up.

What makes all this even more annoying? The guy died nearly two years ago. Oh yes, I’m in love with David Foster Wallace. Right now I think it’s love, but it’s bordering on the kind of myopic veneration that goes beyond love and is found in those beatific Jesus Christ followers who make us all a little uncomfortable.

My affection is more than a little creepy, and not just because I will spout off David Foster Wallacisms at inappropriate times. What makes this nearly disturbing is the means by which my love is growing. I’m listening to Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky. It’s my new bathtub read.

Kinda gross, right? (for those who don’t know, David Foster Wallace hanged himself in the shower, and the main character in ?The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation to The Bad Thing? has a bathtub incident)

What’s not gross? This is the cleanest I’ve been since I first started listening to The Feminine Mystique back in March.

Why do I suddenly love David Foster Wallace? Let me count the ways:

1. He said that “experimental” fiction is written for other writers and the reason that people often don’t read it is that it’s a lot of work for not a lot of reward.
2. He talked repeatedly about how he was hoping to get laid on his Infinite Jest book tour and he didn’t.
3. He doesn’t like Updike.
4. “I had no idea that 90% of what I was getting out of books I really loved was a sense of a conversation around loneliness.”
6. He worried about being “a pretentious fuckwad.”
7. He annoyingly corrects people’s grammar.

Of course I’m only halfway through the book. I expect the love to grow as I near the end.