Ordinary unhappiness : the therapeutic fiction of David Foster Wallace / Jon Baskin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baskin, Jon, 1980- author.

Contributor:

Kottman, Paul A., Contributor.

Series:

Square One

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature.

Philosophy in literature.

Wallace, David Foster--Criticism and interpretation.

Wallace, David Foster.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (197 pages).

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2019]

Summary:

In recent years, the American fiction writer David Foster Wallace has been treated as a symbol, as an icon, and even a film character. Ordinary Unhappiness returns us to the reason we all know about him in the first place: his fiction. By closely examining Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and The Pale King, Jon Baskin points readers to the work at the center of Wallace's oeuvre and places that writing in conversation with a philosophical tradition that includes Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, and Cavell, among others. What emerges is a Wallace who not only speaks to our postmodern addictions in the age of mass entertainment and McDonald's but who seeks to address a quiet desperation at the heart of our modern lives. Freud said that the job of the therapeutic process was to turn "hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness." This book makes a case for how Wallace achieved this in his fiction.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Abbreviations

Introduction. Habits of Mind

1. Narrative Morality

2. Playing Games

3. So Decide

4. Untrendy Problems

Conclusion. In Heaven and Earth

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-5036-0931-6

OCLC:

1198929770