>>7292732He sent a list of his favorite mass-market books to whomever that was who solicited that list way back when. He liked those books, it wasn't a complete joke, but it wasn't totally sincere either. He attested countless times to a strong connection and belief in literary fiction, and only occasionally mentioned that he enjoyed genre lit too. He probably in fact didn't see much of a hard line, but in any case his favorite living authors were DeLillo, Ozick, and McCarthy. And the annotated their books heavily. (He also annotated Thomas Harris's books because he taught them in a class, but despite reading a ton of King, I don't think he owned any marked-up copies when he died. Otherwise, it would be in the archive.)
When people asked him what he liked, he actually alternated between not giving a fuck and just being a snob ("commercial avant-garde"), on the one hand, and on the other being evasive and cute by promoting low-brow pop fiction. For example, he gave a whole list of literary stuff to Salon that included John Donne and Socrates' funeral oration. Then later (this is in the bio) he was at a social gathering for Pomona faculty where everybody talked about a good book they'd read recently, and while everybody talked about something literary, Wallace talked about something mass-market. I personally interpret this as a calculated move. He was the new faculty member, a famous author who everybody knows writes these long, difficult books. I think he wanted to subvert their expectations and charm them with his democratic taste or whatever. I would've done the same. Again, I don't dispute that he liked mass-market fiction. I just think he sometimes used it in a deliberately cute way, like with the famous Top 10, which is a mix of sincerity (he really did like them) and irony (he knows that's not what they're looking for).
