In David Foster Wallace’s novel “Infinite Jest,” numbers do not mark the years. Instead corporations have bought the rights to the calendar; thus, we get “The Year of the Whopper,” “The Year of Glad” and “The Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.” The novel is set in the near future and, let me tell you, Wallace might not be far off the mark.
All right, so the years aren’t subsidized yet. But corporate money is everywhere. We’ve come to expect it in professional sports, television and movies — mass entertainment has long been a corporate domain.
But more disturbing is the fairly recent intrusion of the corporate world into the academic sphere. It seems that we can’t even go a month at Northwestern without a day devoted to some company, such as last Thursday’s “Amsted Industries Partner Day,” which is surely the reason Prairie Moon had $2 drinks. Or not.
