Access to other selves

I like this:

In an interview from the early nineties, [David Foster] Wallace discussed that challenge to fiction posed by "American reality" and his purpose in the face of it: "My world consists of 250 advertisements a day and any number of unbelievably entertaining options. I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction. It's just the texture of the world I live in. . . I guess a big part of fiction's purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. If a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside."

(Wallace is quoted by Rick Groen in Saturday's Globe and Mail.)