“Hal’s put on an undemanding visualization-type cartridge, as he usually does for a Big Buddy group-interface when they’re all tired. He’s killed the volume, so you can’t hear the reinforcing mantra, but the picture is bright and bell-clear. It’s like the picture almost leaps out at you. A grain and somewhat ravaged-looking Stan Smith in anachronistic white is at a court’s baseline hitting textbook forehands, over and over again, the same stroke, his back sort of osteoporotically hunched but his form immaculate, his footwork textbook and effortless—the frictionless pivot and back-set of weight, the anachronistic Wilson wood stick back and pointing straight to the fence behind him, the fluid transfer of weight to the front foot as the ball comes in, the contact at waist-level and just out front, the front leg’s muscles bunching up as the back leg’s settle, eyes glued to the yellow ball in the center of his strings’ stencilled W—E.T.A. kids are conditioned to watch not just the ball but the ball’s rotating seams, to read the spin coming in—the front knee dipping slightly down under bulging quads as the weight flows more forward, the back foot up almost en-pointe on the gleaming sneaker’s unscuffed toe, the no-nonsense flourishless follow-through so the stick ends up just in front of his gaunt face—Smith’s cheeks have hollowed as he’s aged, his face has collapsed at the sides, his eyes seem to bulge from the cheekbones that protrude as he inhales after impact, he looks desiccated, aged in hot light, performing the same motions over and over, for decades, his other hand floating up gently to grasp the stick’s throat out in front of the face so he’s flowed back into the Ready Stance all over again. No wasted motion, egoless strokes, no flourishes or tics or excesses of wrist. Over and over, each forehand melting into the next, a loop, it’s hypnotizing, it’s supposed to be. The soundtrack says ‘Don’t Think  Just See Don’t Know Just Flow’ over and over, if you turn it up. You’re supposed to pretend it’s just you on the bell-clear screen with the fluid and egoless strokes. You’re supposed to play.”

—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest