Low Traffic, IJ, & Infinite Jest

[Adam Lou Stephanides]

On Mon, 18 Mar 1996, Andrew Dinn wrote:

> One other quirk I really fell for was his use of ellipsis in dialogue.
> Not as per Pynchon to denote a hiatus or trailing off in speech but
> rather indicating a non-verbal contribution to a dialogue e.g.

He does this in IJ too, I believe (I don't have the book at hand).
He also uses the ellipsis in dialogue for another purpose, whose moti-
vation I don't understand: one of the characters is being interviewed
by a government agent posing as a journalist.  DFW includes portions
of these interviews, but he always deletes the agent's questions and
leaves only the answers.  It's clear from these answers that the
questions were spoken; they just aren't printed.  Anybody have any
theories on this?  For that matter, any theories on why DFW relegates
some conversations to the footnotes while including others that seem
no more central to the plot in the main text?

--Adam