The Unspeakable Failures Of David Foster Wallace

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The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace

Clare Hayes-Brady
The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace Book PDF

Author : Clare Hayes-Brady
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781501313530

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The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace by Clare Hayes-Brady Pdf

This book examines the writing of David Foster Wallace, hailed as the voice of a generation on his death. Critics have identified horror of solipsism, obsession with sincerity and a corresponding ambivalence regarding postmodern irony, and detailed attention to contemporary culture as the central elements of Wallace's writing. Clare Hayes-Brady draws on the evolving discourses of Wallace studies, focusing on the unifying anti-teleology of his writing, arguing that that position is a fundamentally political response to the condition of neo-liberal America. She argues that Wallace's work is most unified by its resistance to closure, which pervades the structural, narrative and stylistic elements of his writing. Taking a broadly thematic approach to the numerous types of 'failure', or lack of completion, visible throughout his work, the book offers a framework within which to read Wallace's work as a coherent whole, rather than split along the lines of fiction versus non-fiction, or pre- and post-Infinite Jest, two critical positions that have become dominant over the last five years. While demonstrating the centrality of 'failure', the book also explores Wallace's approach to sincere communication as a recurring response to what he saw as the inane, self-absorbed commodification of language and society, along with less explored themes such as gender, naming and heroism. Situating Wallace as both a product of his time and an artist sui generis, Hayes-Brady details his abiding interest in philosophy, language and the struggle for an authentic self in late-twentieth-century America.

The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace

Ralph Clare
The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace Book PDF

Author : Ralph Clare
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2018-09-20
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781107195950

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The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace by Ralph Clare Pdf

A compelling, comprehensive, and substantive introduction to the work of David Foster Wallace.

David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form

David Hering
David Foster Wallace Fiction and Form Book PDF

Author : David Hering
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2016-09-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781628920581

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David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form by David Hering Pdf

In David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form, David Hering analyses the structures of David Foster Wallace's fiction, from his debut The Broom of the System to his final unfinished novel The Pale King. Incorporating extensive analysis of Wallace's drafts, notes and letters, and taking account of the rapidly expanding field of Wallace scholarship, this book argues that the form of Wallace's fiction is always inextricably bound up within an ongoing conflict between the monologic and the dialogic, one strongly connected with Wallace's sense of his own authorial presence and identity in the work. Hering suggests that this conflict occurs at the level of both subject and composition, analysing the importance of a number of provocative structural and critical contexts – ghostliness, institutionality, reflection – to the fiction while describing how this argument is also visible within the development of Wallace's manuscripts, comparing early drafts with published material to offer a career-long framework of the construction of Wallace's fiction. The final chapter offers an unprecedentedly detailed analysis of the troubled, decade-long construction of the work that became The Pale King.

Depression and Dysphoria in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace

Rob Mayo
Depression and Dysphoria in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace Book PDF

Author : Rob Mayo
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2021-01-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000300451

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Depression and Dysphoria in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace by Rob Mayo Pdf

Depression and Dysphoria in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace is the first full-length study of this critically overlooked theme, addressing a major gap in Wallace studies. Wallace has long been recognised as a ‘depression laureate’ inheriting a mantle previously held by Sylvia Plath due to the frequent and remarkable depictions of depressed characters in his fiction. However, this book resists taking Wallace’s fiction at face value and instead situates close reading of his complex fictions in theoretical dialogue both with philosophical and theoretical texts and with contemporary authors and infl uences. This book explores Wallace’s complex engagement with philosophical and medical ideas of emotional suffering and demonstrates how this evolves over his career. The shifts in Wallace’s thematic focus on various forms of dysphoria, including heartache, loneliness, boredom, and anxiety, as well as depression, correspond to an increasingly pessimistic philosophy underlying his fiction.

Wallace’s Dialects

Mary Shapiro
Wallace s Dialects Book PDF

Author : Mary Shapiro
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2020-05-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781501348488

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Wallace’s Dialects by Mary Shapiro Pdf

Mary Shapiro explores the use of regional and ethnic dialects in the works of David Foster Wallace, not just as a device used to add realism to dialogue, but as a vehicle for important social commentary about the role language plays in our daily lives, how we express personal identity, and how we navigate social relationships. Wallace's Dialects straddles the fields of linguistic criticism and folk linguistics, considering which linguistic variables of Jewish-American English, African-American English, Midwestern, Southern, and Boston regional dialects were salient enough for Wallace to represent, and how he showed the intersectionality of these with gender and social class. Wallace's own use of language is examined with respect to how it encodes his identity as a white, male, economically privileged Midwesterner, while also foregrounding characteristic and distinctive idiolect features that allowed him to connect to readers across implied social boundaries.

Approaches to Teaching the Works of David Foster Wallace

Stephen J. Burn,Mary K. Holland
Approaches to Teaching the Works of David Foster Wallace Book PDF

Author : Stephen J. Burn,Mary K. Holland
Publisher : Modern Language Association
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2019-08-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781603293921

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Approaches to Teaching the Works of David Foster Wallace by Stephen J. Burn,Mary K. Holland Pdf

David Foster Wallace's works engage with his literary moment--roughly summarized as postmodernism--and with the author's historical context. From his famously complex fiction to essays critical of American culture, Wallace's works have at their core essential human concerns such as self-understanding, connecting with others, ethical behavior, and finding meaning. The essays in this volume suggest ways to elucidate Wallace's philosophical and literary preoccupations for today's students, who continue to contend with urgent issues, both personal and political, through reading literature. Part 1, "Materials," offers guidance on biographical, contextual, and archival sources and critical responses to Wallace's writing. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," discuss teaching key works and genres in high school settings, first-year undergraduate writing classes, American literature surveys, seminars on Wallace, and world literature courses. They examine Wallace's social and philosophical contexts and contributions, treating topics such as gender, literary ethics, and the culture of writing programs.

David Foster Wallace in Context

Clare Hayes-Brady
David Foster Wallace in Context Book PDF

Author : Clare Hayes-Brady
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 763 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2022-12-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781009081085

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David Foster Wallace in Context by Clare Hayes-Brady Pdf

David Foster Wallace is regarded as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book introduces readers to the literary, philosophical and political contexts of Wallace's work. An accessible and useable resource, this volume conceptualizes his work within long-standing critical traditions and with a new awareness of his importance for American literary studies. It shows the range of issues and contexts that inform the work and reading of David Foster Wallace, connecting his writing to diverse ideas, periods and themes. Essays cover topics on gender, sex, violence, race, philosophy, poetry and geography, among many others, guiding new and long-standing readers in understanding the work and influence of this important writer.

David Foster Wallace and the Body

Peter Sloane
David Foster Wallace and the Body Book PDF

Author : Peter Sloane
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2019-05-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000008692

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David Foster Wallace and the Body by Peter Sloane Pdf

David Foster Wallace and the Body is the first full-length study to focus on Wallace’s career-long fascination with the human body and the textual representation of the body. The book provides engaging, accessible close readings that highlight the importance of the overlooked, and yet central theme of all of this major American author’s works: having a body. Wallace repeatedly made clear that good fiction is about what it means to be a ‘human being’. A large part of what that means is having a body, and being conscious of the conflicts that arise, morally and physically, as a result; a fact with which, as Wallace forcefully and convincingly argues, we all desire ‘to be reconciled’. Given the ubiquity of the themes of embodiment in Wallace’s work, this study is an important addition to an expanding field. The book also opens up the themes addressed to interrogate aspects of contemporary literature, culture, and society more generally, placing Wallace’s works in the history of literary and philosophical engagements with the brute fact of embodiment.

David Foster Wallace's Balancing Books

Jeffrey Severs
David Foster Wallace s Balancing Books Book PDF

Author : Jeffrey Severs
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2017-01-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780231543118

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David Foster Wallace's Balancing Books by Jeffrey Severs Pdf

What do we value? Why do we value it? And in a neoliberal age, can morality ever displace money as the primary means of defining value? These are the questions that drove David Foster Wallace, a writer widely credited with changing the face of contemporary fiction and moving it beyond an emotionless postmodern irony. Jeffrey Severs argues in David Foster Wallace's Balancing Books that Wallace was also deeply engaged with the social, political, and economic issues of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A rebellious economic thinker, Wallace satirized the deforming effects of money, questioned the logic of the monetary system, and saw the world through the lens of value's many hidden and untapped meanings. In original readings of all of Wallace's fiction, from The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest to his story collections and The Pale King, Severs reveals Wallace to be a thoroughly political writer whose works provide an often surreal history of financial crises and economic policies. As Severs demonstrates, the concept of value occupied the intersection of Wallace's major interests: economics, work, metaphysics, mathematics, and morality. Severs ranges from the Great Depression and the New Deal to the realms of finance, insurance, and taxation to detail Wallace's quest for balance and grace in a world of excess and entropy. Wallace showed characters struggling to place two feet on the ground and restlessly sought to "balance the books" of a chaotic culture. Explaining why Wallace's work has galvanized a new phase in contemporary global literature, Severs draws connections to key Wallace forerunners Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and William Gaddis, as well as his successors—including Dave Eggers, Teddy Wayne, Jonathan Lethem, and Zadie Smith—interpreting Wallace's legacy in terms of finance, the gift, and office life.

The Role of Irony in Literature. A Joint Interpretation of Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and Flaubert's "Madame Bovary"

Céline Sun
The Role of Irony in Literature A Joint Interpretation of Wallace s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Flaubert s Madame Bovary Book PDF

Author : Céline Sun
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 19 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2018-12-18
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783668855724

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The Role of Irony in Literature. A Joint Interpretation of Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" by Céline Sun Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Cambridge (Faculty of Divinity), course: Religious Themes in Literature, language: English, abstract: By drawing on an existing study on existentialist engagement in David Foster Wallace’s œuvre to make a connection to "Madame Bovary", this essay will argue for and examine the similarity of the problems illuminated in the two works as they both deal with the relation between the sense of self and the acknowledgment of a transcendent reality. The focus will be on "Madame Bovary". At first sight, the ironic character of "Madame Bovary" appears to be susceptible to Wallace’s criticism of irony. I will show that, despite his use of irony, Flaubert is ultimately as committed to recognizing a transcendent reality through his writing. Gustave Flaubert’s "Madame Bovary" and David Foster Wallace’s "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" were written nearly 150 years apart. Flaubert, on the one hand, is often categorized within the tradition of realism – a label that he himself rejected – which followed a literary period of romanticism. On the other hand, Wallace, as a contemporary writer, enters a stage that is dominated by postmodern thinking. Both their writings are shaped by their critical engagement with the literary movement and social reality of their time and the protagonists of their writings are created as prototypes of the mind-set they seek to criticize through literary reflection. Due to the differences in their literary context, however, it seems natural to assume that the two writers have very different literary agendas. Flaubert appears to propose through his writings a radical dissociation in face of and opposition to both the escapist tendencies of romantic novels and the reality of bourgeois society of his time, whereas Wallace criticizes the exact tendency of ironic dissociation as they have become rife in post-modern literature.

JFK and the Unspeakable

James W. Douglass
JFK and the Unspeakable Book PDF

Author : James W. Douglass
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2010-10-19
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781439193884

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JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass Pdf

THE ACCLAIMED BOOK, NOW IN PAPERBACK, with a reading group guide and a new afterword by the author. At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up. Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.

Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction

James Baxter
Samuel Beckett s Legacies in American Fiction Book PDF

Author : James Baxter
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2021-11-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783030815721

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Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction by James Baxter Pdf

Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction provides an overdue investigation into Beckett’s rich influences over American writing. Through in-depth readings of postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, this book situates Beckett’s post-war writing of exhaustion and generation in relation to the emergence of an explosive American avant-garde. In turn, this study provides a valuable insight into the practical realities of Beckett’s dissemination in America, following the author’s long-standing relationship with the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review and its dramatic role in redrawing the possibilities of American culture in the 1960s. While Beckett would be largely removed from his American context, this book follows his vigorous, albeit sometimes awkward, reception alongside the authors and institutions central to shaping his legacies in 20th and 21st century America.

The Pale King

David Foster Wallace
The Pale King Book PDF

Author : David Foster Wallace
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 636 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2011-04-15
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780316175296

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The Pale King by David Foster Wallace Pdf

The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality

Edward Jackson
David Foster Wallace s Toxic Sexuality Book PDF

Author : Edward Jackson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2020-06-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781350117785

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David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality by Edward Jackson Pdf

David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality: Hideousness, Neoliberalism, Spermatics is the first full-length study of perhaps the most controversial aspect of Wallace's work – male sexuality. Departing from biographical accounts of Wallace's troubled relationship to sex, the book offers new and engaging close readings of this vexed topic in both his fiction and non-fiction. Wallace consistently returns to images of sexual toxicity across his career to argue that, when it comes to sex, men are immutably hideous. He makes this argument by drawing on a variety of neoliberal logics and spermatic metaphors, which in their appeal to apparently neutral economic processes and natural bodily facts, forestall the possibility that men can change. The book therefore provides a revisionist account of Wallace's attitudes towards capitalism, as well as a critical dissection of his approach to masculinity and sexuality. In doing so, David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality shows how Wallace can be considered a neoliberal writer, whose commitment to furthering male sexual toxicity is a disturbing but undeniable part of his literary project.

Atoms and Eden

Steve Paulson
Atoms and Eden Book PDF

Author : Steve Paulson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780199781508

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Atoms and Eden by Steve Paulson Pdf

Here is an unprecedented collection of twenty freewheeling and revealing interviews with major players in the ongoing--and increasingly heated--debate about the relationship between religion and science. These lively conversations cover the most important and interesting topics imaginable: the Big Bang, the origins of life, the nature of consciousness, the foundations of religion, the meaning of God, and much more. In Atoms and Eden, Peabody Award-winning journalist Steve Paulson explores these topics with some of the most prominent public intellectuals of our time, including Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, E. O. Wilson, Sam Harris, Elaine Pagels, Francis Collins, Daniel Dennett, Jane Goodall, Paul Davies, and Steven Weinberg. The interviewees include Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Muslims, as well as agnostics, atheists, and other scholars who hold perspectives that are hard to categorize. Paulson's interviews sweep across a broad range of scientific disciplines--evolutionary biology, quantum physics, cosmology, and neuroscience--and also explore key issues in theology, religious history, and what William James called ''the varieties of religious experience.'' Collectively, these engaging dialogues cover the major issues that have often pitted science against religion--from the origins of the universe to debates about God, Darwin, the nature of reality, and the limits of human reason. These are complex, intellectually rich discussions, presented in an accessible and engaging manner. Most of these interviews were originally published as individual cover stories for Salon.com, where they generated a huge reader response. Public Radio's "To the Best of Our Knowledge" will present a major companion series on related topics this fall. A feast of ideas and competing perspectives, this volume will appeal to scientists, spiritual seekers, and the intellectually curious.