There were many instances and slices of life I saw myself observing while reading IJ. IJ is kind of biblical in that sense. I too caught myself watching the Wimbledon and got a little spooked while watching a match between Federer and another player that I don't recall the name of. What struck me was seeing Federer's opponent punch his racket's string until his knuckles bled. I saw Synechdoche, NY when I started reading IJ and I saw many similarities, which makes me guess that Kaufman is probably a Wallace fan. And when I read Kevin Kelly's article called about the failure of video phone technology, I thought for a second that Kelly plagiarized Hal's essay on "videophony".
