[JonathanMerklin]

I want to note for the HN crowd that the book is in the "just technical enough to inform yet not scare off the layman, but not technical enough for the practitioner" nonfiction subgenre. Critically, there are a number of finer details that DFW gets wrong; if you're mathematically inclined and intend to read this, I suggest pairing it with a printed copy of Prabhakar Ragde's errata document hosted by the DFW fansite The Howling Fantods ([1]).

[1] https://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/images/enmerrata.pdf

[citizen_friend]

This. He tries to do a few epsilon delta proofs and completely gets the concept wrong. I’m surprised an editor did not stop this.

If he can’t understand a limit it really puts a question mark on whether it’s worth reading his insight into the subject.

[whatshisface]

Why would his editor know any more about it than he did?

[citizen_friend]

I would expect them to have someone with at least an undergrad in math look over the math. Editor would help identify that

[kylebenzle]

Maybe everyone that worked with DFW found him to be as insufferable and arrogant as I did and simply refused to help even when the need was clear.

[copypasterepeat]

Would you care to elaborate on this? Sounds like there is an interesting story here...