I'm readingBrief Interviews with Hideous Men. I'm not sure if these were written before he wrote Infinite Jest, after or during. But some of these scenes, sketches, observations - whatever you like to call them - reappear in different guise, and often truncated in the long novel. They are so intense I cannot read straight through, but by god this man had an eye and an ear. And the longish piece about a clinically depressed girl who works in a call centre, from where she phones what is referred to as her "support system" - those unfortunate girl friends her therapist has recommended she contact in moments of greatest need.

The language of the therapist, the level of the girl's despair, her ability to see herself as her support system might see her while being unable to do anything about it...all this is written without mercy, by someone who clearly knew about it better than he can have wished. Some of this book is of course very funny. But you can only take it in short bursts. Amazing, astonishing bursts!