There's a reason we're seeing more and more DFW clips on Instagram lately, his mood is becoming much more relevant to the now than it was the 90's.

In this book there's the cruise-ship essay, yes — but also tennis as metaphysics, television as national narcotic, state fairs as anthropological theatre. 

DFW takes ordinary American spectacle and worries it until the seams show. Footnotes sprawl, sentences loop, sincerity and irony wrestle in public. What makes it hold up isn’t the cultural references, it’s the moral anxiety underneath.  Wallace isn’t just observing excess; he’s implicated in it. That tension is the engine.

If you’re allergic to maximalist prose without meaning, you already know. If you like your essays formally alive and faintly panicked, this is peak. If you're a Mark Fisher nerd, you'll love a dip into this.