Books: The Horror Of Sameness

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Even the stories that meander in their own cleverness until they are bogged down in Wallace's detail-obsessive word marsh are still breathtakingly smart, like a middling Stoppard play. Strange, then, is the self-doubt that creeps into most of the tales, often in the form of acknowledging potential criticisms before the reader even thinks of them. And Wallace frequently seems to wonder whether his or any art is just a foolish attempt at uniqueness in a world where we're all fundamentally the same. His final story in the collection, The Suffering Channel, is the slightly drawn-out tale of an artist whose work is his incredibly well-crafted feces. The artist is eventually forced by his fame-seeking wife to create his works on live television. While it may seem whiny and self-flagellating of Wallace to depict art as carny detritus, it's still comforting to know that the guy is suffering.

--By Joel Stein