For many years since reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, I’ve wondered irritably: was David Foster Wallace mocking real people in his essay on the cruise-ship experience? Specifically, this passage stayed with me: “My favorite tablemate is Trudy, whose husband…has given his ticket to Alice, their heavy and extremely well-dressed daughter… every time Alice mentions [her boyfriend Patrick, Trudy] suffers some sort of weird facial tic or grimace where the canine tooth ...
