“Thoughts on ‘The Suffering Channel,’ Reality, and Shit”

An essay by Andrew Altschul, the Books editor here at The Rumpus, examines the David Foster Wallace story “The Suffering Channel,” ruminating on art versus shit, shit as art, the effects of reality television on personal insignificance and authenticity, and the great American need to be significant, regardless of the sacrifice of authenticity required to do so.

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Jessie Wood is a writer, reader, and journalist based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from Westminster College with a degree in Creative Writing in 2010. She writes for SLUG Magazine, a free local Salt Lake City magazine, about the many faces of electronic music.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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