"Heroically brave, formidably learned. This is a passionate demonstration of why some writers have triumphantly escaped the oblivion in which time buries almost all human effort. It inspires hope that what humanity has long cherished, posterity will also."
—Norman Fruman on Harold Bloom's The Western Canon
"It is saddening to contemplate that every day, 150,000 humans die without reading what is indisputably one of the greatest achievements of our species. Don't let it happen to you. Sure, if you're just an average person, you might not understand everything...but when you're done reading, you won't be an average person any more."
—Eliezer Yudowsky, UC Berkeley on Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach
"...raw, angry, sincere, unhappy, weeping and yelling at a complacent world."
—Leo Benedictus, The Guardian on Bill Hicks
"This skeleton of satire is fleshed out with several domestically scaled narratives and masses of hyperrealistic quotidian detail. The overall effect is something like a sleek Vonnegut chassis wrapped in layers of post-millennial Zola."
—Jay McInerney, The New York Times on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest