I recommend this guest column by Geoff Dyer in Salmagundi:

“I have always felt well disposed towards the widely acclaimed David Foster Wallace, whose latest novel, The Pale King, is published on 15th April, two and a half years after his suicide. But I am allergic to his writing. I liked the idea of someone swimming in big modernist and postmodern theory and still making room for human feeling, but a page—sometimes even a sentence, or an essay title—brings me out in hives. This is not a literary judgment; I have not been able to read enough of him to form one. I’ve only read the stories in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and two essay collections. Of these A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is my favourite. Yes, I actually like his writing. I chuckle. I mark bits with a pencil. I admire… I break out in a mental rash. “

(Read the complete article here.)

There is such a thing as a literary allergy. Sometimes you should give in to the allergy, other times you should see a doctor.