Nice discussion. Actually the Flatland reference is quite interesting. In other parts of the book there are other references to 2-dimensional characters, like here:
and here:
More generally, even if maybe the origin of the Flatland reference was just the essentially 2dimensional nature of Tennis (see "Derivative sport in Tornado Alley"), I also see a deeper reference to the nature of people.
Coming back to the ST (whose dimension is actually log(3)/log(2), so a bit more than 1.5), I wonder if really it was the way, for DFW, to organize his various sub-plots, after a first production of raw material, or instead he started, like Perec or Calvino or also people doing real fractals, from a simple scheme to expand to a larger and much more complex construction. r
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