I actually find his non-fiction in general to be much more satisfying than his fiction. He was such a gifted guy, and so funny, but when writing fiction I just

I actually find his non-fiction in general to be much more satisfying than his fiction. He was such a gifted guy, and so funny, but when writing fiction I just feel like he was un-grounded to anything relevant to me, just wandering in the depths of his pyrotechnic writing-for-its-own-sake. For example in _The Pale King_, as an English major with lots of experience deconstructing and analyzing texts, I can see how subtle and clever his portraits of the characters are, but after a while I find I just don't care, because the story isn't interesting me as a story. Reading his non-fiction, I feel like he's always getting somewhere, and it's usually much more interesting to me.