That Rhetorical Thing Where You Set Up a Misunderstanding that Nobody Actually Has and Then You Disabuse Them of It.

"...that rhetorical thing where you set up a misunderstanding that nobody actually has and then you disabuse them of it", as you called it, is such a powerful tool, K. It's really a very savvy use of desire, which, of course, is usually totally from the blue and left field, as in: there you are, thinking your chirping little thoughts, fiddling with pocket stuff, when a waft of bacon blows out the door of Trayf's Pizza and causes you to reconsider your plans, about-face, and grab a slice. Perfume, of course is designed to do this, just like bacon. As are ads. All these things set up a tension that must have been in you but dormant, like they're drawing a bowstring. So, what Nicholson Baker calls "...the primitive clawing pressure of wanting to know how things turned out" is the perfume of fiction, leading us on, making the conclusion available, etc etc etc... which is as good an explanation as I've ever dreamed up for David F. Wallace ending Infinite Jest the way he did: a mature reader is happy in the continuance of Don Gately's life beyond the end of the written-down part of it the same way that a mature lover is never really done...in other words: the need for a neat and tidy ending, preferably involving tension building to surprise and concussive denouement is the literary equivalent of the frat boy's one-minute stand. So why does raising a misunderstanding that nobody actually has and then resolving it count as low rhetorical form? Seems like flirting with the reader, giving her options, setting the table, making desire.