Excerpt from the novel “Infinite Jest.” “Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they’d been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony. They’d never noticed it before, the delusion — it’s like it was so emotionally complex that it could be countenanced only in the context of its loss. Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying com­plete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her.”

Read The Story