At a recent Federalist Society event, Justice Antonin Scalia gave a shout-out to a postmodernist writer favored by young, brooding intellectuals.
The odd literary reference to David Foster Wallace came when Scalia was promoting a book he wrote with Bryan A. Garner, the Federalist Society's blog reports.
Scalia told the right-leaning crowd that Garner was one of the foremost legal philologists – one with expertise in history, linguistics, and literary studies – in the nation.
"We're both snoots," Scalia reportedly said. "David Foster Wallace's term for the usage obsessed."
While Scalia's DFW reference was weird, it did not come out of nowhere.
It turns out that Scalia's co-author Garner knew DFW, who hanged himself in 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported in July.
Garner arranged a lunch between Scalia and the do-rag-sporting writer in 2006. DFW was something of a hippie who loved dogs and spoke often of the importance of empathy.
Scalia, a gruff traditionalist, seemed to enjoy the company of the postmodern author who was so different from himself.
"He was a very personable fellow," Scalia told the Journal. "As co-snoots, we got along very well."
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