Infinite Jest Lesson Plan

Returning to "E. Unibus Pluram," Wallace writes that irony and detachment are often insufficient methods for writers to utilize to diagnose society's ills. How can we expand this view into the way he describes Alcoholics Anonymous?

A major argument of Wallace's essay "E. Unibus Pluram" is that irony is an insufficient tactic for contemporary writers to diagnose and treat society's ills. Wallace proposes that in the television and internet age, where commercial advertisements have co-opted irony and self-reference to their own capitalistic ends, sincerity or sentimentalism is, at times, exactly what is needed in order to communicate the human experience, to connect...