And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they’re not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true...

I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

When David Markson wrote in June to complain about an author’s getting an award he though should have been his, Wallace gently warned him away from the pitfall of envy: “Mostly I try to remember...