"Everything I write ends up being about loneliness," said the late writer David Foster Wallace, trying to get at the core of his Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. In a dizzying whirl of language, Wallace's fictional men explain how they feel about the women they've loved or, more often than not, have failed to love.

It's easy to see why actors would be drawn to Wallace's Hideous Men monologues: They're funny, profane, often scarily intense, and, at all times, deeply emotional. Yet, Wallace was not writing a play. He was writing fiction. Wallace used language – often ornately academic – as a kind of protective padding for his interviewees, and the reader, at his own pace, must dig deep to find the essential truths.

The stilted storytelling that results [in the film] often rings false, and in the end, the monologues – delivered by some very good actors (Timothy Hutton, Bobby Cannavale, Josh Charles), who come across as first-year theater students acting out scenes from their favorite novels – don't add up to much. If Krasinski had an overarching theme in mind – be it the loneliness that Wallace spoke of, or something else – we're not getting it.

Reading Infinite Jest was the most extraordinary reading experience of my life.

Since finishing Infinite Jest, I have read just about everything Wallace has ever written and have also been motivated to read Barth and Pynchon and an author I'd never heard of, William Gaddis. It is a crime that Gaddis is not as revered an American author as Faulkner or Hemingway or anybody you want to name. I have been motivated to read a 600-page anthology of Modern and Postmodern philosophy (although it took me 14 months). I ordered a Vollmann anthology after reading a Wallace interview. As my wife reminded me when I read this to her, I don't get nauseous anymore, only nauseated. I own and frequently consult Garner's Modern American Usage, a treasured gift from my mother-in-law. I tell my students (and everyone else, too) that not using that final serial comma before the conjunction is just insane and irresponsible. I think This Is Water is one of the most amazing, beautiful things I've ever read and am considering just taking entire class periods at the end of the semester to read it to students. When I want to be a jerk in public, the phrase "this is water" runs through my head and I get calm. Reading Infinite Jest changed my life, and now it's going to change yours. I promise you.