by Zoë Pollock
Maud Newton argues Wallace's style of intellectual hedging prefigured the dominant style of the internet:
Wallace’s nonfiction abounds with qualifiers like “sort of” and “pretty much” and sincerity-infusers like “really.” … I suppose it made sense, when blogging was new, that there was some confusion about voice. Was a blog more like writing or more like speech? Soon it became a contrived and shambling hybrid of the two. The “sort ofs” and “reallys” and “ums” and “you knows” that we use in conversation were codified as the central connectors in the blogger lexicon.
Bob Wright has his doubts:
Was DFW’s style “adopted” by Internet writers? Or did his style emerge alongside other, similar styles, puncturing an equilibrium at a moment that demanded more distance, more irony and more hedging.
In a follow up, Newton elaborates on her thesis that Wallace, and the rest of us, use qualifiers because we want to be liked.
The Dish 