“It was above all Wittgenstein’s technique that was of interest [to Wallace] — particularly his style in the Philosophical Investigations, in which he revived, through the figure of an imaginary interlocutor, the ancient conception of philosophy as dialogue. For Wittgenstein, the point of the philosophical “conversation” was to address confusions intrinsic to his reader’s language and way of life. Rather than one “philosophical method,” he advanced in the Investigations a variety of techniques for addressing various confusions, “like different therapies.”

“Wallace attempted to enact such a conversation in his art. He would borrow from the Investigations not only themes—solipsism, language, meaning—but also the theoretical bulwark for a literature that was simultaneously challenging and therapeutic in the Wittgensteinian sense.”

– Jon Baskin, in “Death is Not the End“