from Wallace's own life into Infinite Jest . Twisted, of course, through the unique Yorick-lens of that book, but, still, real. To the extent that Wallace's closest relative in the American literary pantheon would seem to be John Berryman, a man so similarly prone to fictionalising his own life that he prefaced his own American epic with the disclaimer that its central character was "not the poet, not me." What critics will do with this is up to them. But it makes interesting reading for the casual fan -- if anyone willing to plough through Infinite Jest could ever be called casual. If Max is good at picking out the life in Wallace's writing, he's less good at lending the life any life in his own. Every Love Story suffers from a curious lack of perspective on its own subject. The lack of any photographs of the book's subject on their usual glossy central pages is a handy metaphor for the way Max treats DFW: we never quite get to see him as others did. Max is so concentrated on worming his way into DFW's mind that he forgets to let us know how everyone else perceived him. For all that we are told, repeatedly, how intelligent and thrilling he was as a student, teacher, writer and man, it never becomes clear why so many people lavished so much time, money and emotional energy on a guy so prone, despite his best efforts, to drinking it all down and pissing