Infinite Summer is a collaborative, distributed book club dedicated to sharing and discussing David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus — as I type that, I wonder if the term should perhaps be retired, given how magnum the opus in question is.

John Moe did not participate, but you should read why he didn’t.

With Wallace, it was reading some of those Harper’s essays and experiencing Shea Stadium Beatlemania and a kind of loving fear all at once. Oh, so that’s a writer, I thought, sweating, screaming on the inside. As someone who wanted to be a writer, it was incredibly inspiring and absolutely soul crushing. Being a writer in a world that features Wallace would be like playing basketball in a world that has Michael Jordan, only none of us even know how to play basketball and we’re all injured toddlers with broken lacrosse equipment.