as someone who's lived in allston and brighton for years
it's funny to see where Wallace sticks to facts and where his imagination leads him. It's something more than just a writer being a writer.
Like that area of Commonwealth Ave., for example, that passes both Ennet and ETA -- in reality it's way more boring and drab than anything else. But in DFW's hands, it becomes this kind of crime-ridden cesspit, which feels of a piece with him showing the enshittification of America in the near-future. "Enfield" would in reality be a few miles away from the river and the highway, but in the Ennet and ETA sections, it's a dramatic, expressionistic landscape, full of hills, a gaping ravine, the Charles, the Mass Pike. He'll mash together facets of actual neighborhoods in order to emphasize differences of class that are less obvious in person. Like for example when Gately's cruising through BU-land up over the river toward Inman Square. In the book, BU kids are almost uniformly soft and pampered to highlight Gately's difference. Whereas BU has a reputation for being scrappier compared to BC, Tufts, Harvard, Emerson, and other nearby colleges.
No complaints about any of this btw. it's just a window into his process.
And as someone who's spent time in Boston 12-step programs -- there is very, very little obvious fictionalization. He nails it.