Like any other subculture / virtue signal which gains in popularity, there's a strong group for DFW and a strong backlash against from both sides. One side rejects the signal due to its popularity ("only dilettante freshman losers love DFW, REAL enthusiasts love REAL lit") and the other rejects the signal due to its accessibility ("these hipsters think they're cool just because they've read something, anyone could buy the book and do that!").

We see it in programming, too - "only newbie idiots love Ruby, Rust 4ever" plus "this damn hipster Rust brigade is ruining programming, Java is still just fine!"

Don't forget the hate from the positivist-minded STEM crowd and right-wingers, who both have a reflexive dislike of anything with a whiff of postmodernism about it.

Apparently it's too soon for criticism? I'm not sure what fads have to do with it, other than fads being convenient to minimize or dismiss; this piece of elegant sandpaper is for example six years old:

http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-...

Well, before my latest attempt to quit Twitter, it seemed like a widespread opinion among kool kids from both the left & right that liking DFW was middlebrow posing. Just my definitely skewed impression.

Well, there was the movie about him that came out a year or two ago. I'm sure that contibuted to the spike, but honestly 95% of the people I've seen reading Infinite Jest in public are somewhere in the first 20 pages, and that's been the case since the mid 2000s. I don't think reading literary fiction to look cool is anything new.

“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”

I've heard a few people say that everyone has this on their bookshelf but hasn't read it. It always sounds like people think it's on the bookshelf to look impressive. I read it and it was probably the funniest book I've ever read.

He was like essential hip college freshman reading, which often comes with being hated for being popular, weird, abstract, etc. I havn't actually read the book, but I've certainly heard about it.