I just finished this...

>exegesistically

I don't hate it but its worth has been overstated here many times and while it is one of the best pieces of contemporary fiction you can find, it's far from a masterpiece in many senses. I think aspects of the book are very smart and other parts DFW misses the mark by a large margin. I also felt a lot of it was diarrhea of consciousness.

They were made about the same time, and honestly I would put them in the same movement. ITAOTS is sincere even if the hipster movements that later lionized it were the antithesis of new sincerity. It's a bit like what we did with Infinite Jest, taking something good and sincere, and liking it ironically for irony's sake, which I think is very sad.