^ Yes, indeed. I am so enamored with Mario Incandenza for some reason.
This book has me smoking illicit substances, obsessively watching the tennis channel, and religiously playing Wii tennis with more self-awareness than usual; I do this anyway, but the book is blurring the line between fiction and the workaday.
I am nearly 400 pages in and I wish I knew someone else that was reading it.
I read up on Microwave ovens in the meantime---okay, I only read the wiki. Still very compelling; hard to imagine that the little box that is so commonplace is related to the first commercial microwave which stood over 6 feet tall, weighing more than your average football lineman (and costing $5K US back in 1947).
I get the sense that DFW was writing this book while propping open both Gravity's Rainbow and The Recognitions. I am okay with this.