This is possibly my favorite passage in Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System:
"Now, Weight Watchers perceives the problem as one involving the need to have as much Other around as possible, so that the relation is one of minimum Self to maximum Other. This is a valid though, as I've seen this afternoon, by no means exclusive way to attack the problem. Are you getting my drift, Vigorous?"
"Well, a drift is such a--"
"It occurs to me that I couldn't care less. A full universe, Vigorous, Ms. Beadsman. We each need a full universe. Weight Watchers and their allies would have us systematically decrease the Self-component of the universe, so that the great Other-set will be physically attracted to the now more physically attractive Self, and rush in to fill the void created by that diminution of the Self. Certainly not incorrect, but just as certainly only half of the range of valid solutions to the full-universe problem. Is my drift getting palpable? Just as in genetic engineering, Vigorous. There is always more than one solution."
. . .
"Of course one other advantage of my approach to the Yin/Yang problem is that dieting becomes the worst possible thing to do. I find dieting makes me extremely angry at everything. Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me."
"Instead of merely appropriating their space."
"You are not un-sharp, are you? Rather like your father. Your father whips a mean carrot. I could, of course, leave selected small corners of the universe unfilled for those who might arouse in me feelings of affection and attachment."
"I'll get back to you, probably, if things begin to crowd."
"Well, a drift is such a--"
"It occurs to me that I couldn't care less. A full universe, Vigorous, Ms. Beadsman. We each need a full universe. Weight Watchers and their allies would have us systematically decrease the Self-component of the universe, so that the great Other-set will be physically attracted to the now more physically attractive Self, and rush in to fill the void created by that diminution of the Self. Certainly not incorrect, but just as certainly only half of the range of valid solutions to the full-universe problem. Is my drift getting palpable? Just as in genetic engineering, Vigorous. There is always more than one solution."
. . .
"Of course one other advantage of my approach to the Yin/Yang problem is that dieting becomes the worst possible thing to do. I find dieting makes me extremely angry at everything. Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me."
"Instead of merely appropriating their space."
"You are not un-sharp, are you? Rather like your father. Your father whips a mean carrot. I could, of course, leave selected small corners of the universe unfilled for those who might arouse in me feelings of affection and attachment."
"I'll get back to you, probably, if things begin to crowd."
This is not, of course, a light-hearded view of the universe. Corporate CEO Norman Bombardini has rethought the idea of universal complements as an idea of aggression: taking a gentle theory and importing an entirely different idea into it, making it something very dark. He appears not to have considered the possibility of a middle ground between total equivalence and total domination--or, at best, if he did consider such middle ground, it seems he had not been able to discover any appropriate stopping point between these two extremes. But it is a fascinating personalization of what I personally feel to be a problem in philosophy or in logic.
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