One of the more interesting things I remember reading by David Foster Wallace was an essay where he noted that his generation of writers was the first to be as influenced by theories of writing as by writing itself. Specifically, French structuralist and post-structuralist, but I don’t think that specific is as important nor as revelatory as the notion of the influence of theory on ostensibly non-theoretical work, i.e., not works of philosophy or literary criticism.

Anyway… read this cool essay from the pages of the always enjoyable N+1.