"I don't think that is the case," she says, though she gets the emails from readers who want to believe this stubborn myth of the tormented genius, want the pain to be a prerequisite for the creativity, want to turn Wallace into some literary James Dean. "People don't understand how ill he was. It was a monster that just ate him up. And at that point everything was secondary to the illness. Not just writing. Everything else: food, love, shelter…"