Postirony : the nonfictional literature of David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers / Lukas Hoffmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoffmann, Lukáš, author.

Series:

Lettre.

Lettre

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (211 pages).

Place of Publication:

Bielefeld, [Germany] : transcript, 2016.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

What is 'postirony'? Foremost, it is a response to the ironic Zeitgeist. Moreover, it is the key to understanding a specific form of literature. The contemporary reader is familiar with and - unfortunately - used to postmodernism's ironic, self-reflexive metafiction. Authors like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers chose a different path: Despite the reign of contemporary irony, they strive to reach the reader on a level beyond, cognitively as well as emotionally - they claim to be sincere and true. Focusing largely on nonfiction by said authors, Lukas Hoffmann explores the means the texts use to achieve something new - namely, a new form of sincerity. Book jacket.

Contents:

Acknowledgements 8

Introduction 9

Post-Postmodernism, Postirony, and New Sincerity 10

Genre Mailers 11

Creative Nonfiction - Memoir and Autocriticism 18

New Voices in Contemporary Literature 21

Dave Eggers - Counter-Cultural Hero and Idealist 23

David Foster Wallace - Changing the Tone of Contemporary Literature 25

Jonathan Lethem and Nick Flynn - Postirony's 2nd Generation 33

Synopsis 34

Postirony - Conceptualizing an Idea 37

Richard Rorty - The Liberal Ironist 42

Linda Hutcheon - Irony's Edge 46

David Foster Wallace - How Irony Spread 47

Irony - An Ail-Embracing Attitude 51

Jedediah Purdy - A Return to Traditional Values 55

Alex Shakar - The Savage Girl 57

The Postironic - A Philosophical Stand 59

Reading the Postironic - Audience, Narrator, and Metalepsis 65

Audiences - Preliminary Thoughts 68

Metalepsis 69

Audience - Narratee and Narrative Audience 70

Dave Eggers - Living the Postironic 89

Meta-Autobiography 90

Trauma - True Feelings and the Plot 92

The Nonfictional Frame 95

Struggling With Postmodernism 100

"I Want to Be Doing Something Beautiful"-Narrating Dave and Narrated Dave 105

The Narrated Dave 110

The Narrating Dave and His Audience 117

Justifying the Narrative 120

Concluding AHWOSG 123

David Foster Wallace - Hope and Despair; The Postironic Condition 127

"Author's Foreword" - Faking Memoir, Talking Truth 131

The Audience and the Autobiographical 135

Subjectivity, Veracity, Sincerity 139

"Author's Foreword" Part II - Auto criticism, the Reader, and Postirony 142

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again 148

The Text Within the Text - Critique as Reassurance 152

The Wallace Style - Footnotes, Asides, and Metafiction 155

Free Choice vs. Pampered Into Despair 156

Desperation Cruise 161

Concluding "Fun Thing" 164

Consider the Lobster 166

The Audience of the Lobster 170

Concluding Wallace 171

A Second Generation Emerges 175

Nick Flynn - Reenacting Memoir 175

Jonathan Let hem - Postironic Ecstasy 185.

ISBN:

3839436613

9783839436615

OCLC:

970390344