We cracked open this mammoth tome in March and are now on page 430, having just finished reading David Foster Wallace’s allegory about the allocation of scarce resources, which also happens to be one of the most fundamental questions in a wide variety of scholarly disciplines, including economics, political philosophy, and law. DFW’s haunting allegory is set on a ledge in the Sonora Desert, where a pair of the most memorable characters in North American literature, Hugh (Helen) Steeply and Remy Marathe, discuss a hypothetical scenario involving a single-serving portion of pea soup. (My colleague Linda Essig provides a good summary of the substance of Steeply and Marathe’s ruminations here.) We shall press on and provide additional updates next month.

Source: Jon Beasley-Murray