David Foster Wallace and "The Long Thing" : new essays on the novels / edited by Marshall Boswell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boswell, Marshall, 1965- author.

Contributor:

Boswell, Marshall, 1965- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wallace, David Foster--Criticism and interpretation.

Wallace, David Foster.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Essays.

Physical Description:

xii, 252 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury, 2014.

Summary:

"Of the twelve books David Foster Wallace published both during his lifetime and posthumously, only three were novels. Nevertheless, Wallace always thought of himself primarily as a novelist. From his college years at Amherst, when he wrote his first novel as part of a creative honors thesis, to his final days, Wallace was buried in a novel project, which he often referred to as "the Long Thing." Meanwhile, the short stories and journalistic assignments he worked on during those years he characterized as "playing hooky from a certain Larger Thing." Wallace was also a specific kind of novelist, devoted to producing a specific kind of novel, namely the omnivorous, culture-consuming "encyclopedic" novel, as described in 1976 by Edward Mendelson in a ground-breaking essay on Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. David Foster Wallace and "The Long Thing" is a state-of-the art guide through Wallace's three major works, including the generation-defining Infinite Jest. These essays provide fresh new readings of each of Wallace's novels as well as thematic essays that trace out patterns and connections across the three works. Most importantly, the collection includes six chapters on Wallace's unfinished novel, The Pale King, that will prove to be foundational for future scholars of this important text"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

David Foster Wallace and the novel of ideas / Adam Kelly

Wallace and empathy : a narrative approach / Toon Staes

Boredom, irony, and anxiety : Wallace and the Kierkegaardian view of the self / Allard den Dulk

Modeling community and narrative in Infinite jest and The pale king / Andrew Warren

"Then out of the rubble" : David Foster Wallace's early fiction / Bradley J. Fest

Representing entertainment in Infinite jest / Philip Sayers

Encyclopedic novels and the cruft of fiction : Infinite jest's endnotes / David Letzler

"A paradigm for the life of consciousness" : The pale king / Stephen J. Burn

"What am i, a machine?" : humans and information in The pale king / Conley Wouters

The Politics of boredom and the boredom of politics in The pale king / Ralph Clare

Trickle-down citizenship : taxes and civic responsibility in The pale king / Marshall Boswell.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-240) and index.

ISBN:

9781628920635

1628920637

9781628924534

1628924535

OCLC:

877077424

Online:

Cover image