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Lonely for Somebody He’s Never Even Met

I like to read footnotes (even though these are really endnotes; and I’m not as fond of endnotes). Footnote 281 of Infinite Jest:

This had been one of Hal’s deepest and most pregnant abstractions, one he’d come up with once while getting secretly high in the Pump Room. That we’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that he goes around feeling like he misses somebody he’s never even met? Without the universalizing abstraction, the feeling would make no sense.

DFW’s footnotes are interesting to say the least. He’s generally profound to say the least.

Who could we all be lonely for?

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