Suchergebnisse

Foster Wallace's words are so critical today because he makes a centrally important point about human nature that many on campus often forget: We have choices about how we choose to react to the world around us.
The post Let's Remember David Foster Wallace appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

"David Foster Wallace is invariably seen as an emphatically American figure. Lucas Thompson challenges this consensus, arguing that Wallace's investments in various international literary traditions are central to both his artistic practice and his critique of US culture. Thompson shows how, time and again, Wallace's fiction draws on a diverse range of global texts, appropriating various forms of world literature in the attempt to craft fiction that critiques US culture from oblique and unexpected vantage points. Using a wide range of comparative case studies, and drawing on extensive archival research, Global Wallace reveals David Foster Wallace's substantial debts to such unexpected figures as Jamaica Kincaid, Julio Cortázar, Jean Rhys, Octavio Paz, Leo Tolstoy, Zbigniew Herbert, and Albert Camus, among many others. It also offers a more comprehensive account of the key influences that Wallace scholars have already perceived, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Manuel Puig. By reassessing Wallace's body of work in relation to five broadly construed geographic territories -- Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe, France, and Africa -- the book reveals the mechanisms with which Wallace played particular literary traditions off one another, showing how he appropriated vastly different global texts within his own fiction. By expanding the geographic coordinates of Wallace's work in this way, Global Wallace reconceptualizes contemporary American fiction, as being embedded within a global exchange of texts and ideas"--

David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram" is an account of the prevalence of destructive irony at the end of the twentieth century. Trying to break free from the solipsism brought about by postmodern relativism, Wallace embraced sincerity as the cornerstone of the zeitgeist of the new millennium. This article offers an analysis of two salient sources of influence that could be considered as inspiration for Wallace's alternative to postmodern irony: American transcendentalism and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. It does so with the intention of furthering the understanding of the cultural significance of the work of the author for the generation of writers that followed in his wake, and to demonstrate how the recovery of Romantic ideals may be the key to map out the nature of the paradigm shift to post-postmodernism. ; "E Unibus Pluram" de David Foster Wallace es un relato del predominio de la ironía destructiva a fines del siglo XX. Tratando de liberarse del solipsismo provocado por el relativismo posmoderno, Wallace abrazó la sinceridad como la piedra angular del zeitgeist del nuevo milenio. Este artículo ofrece un análisis de dos fuentes de influencia destacadas que podrían considerarse como inspiración para la alternativa de Wallace a la ironía posmoderna: el trascendentalismo estadounidense y las investigaciones filosóficas de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Se hace con la intención de promover la comprensión del significado cultural de la obra del autor para la generación de escritores que siguieron su estela, y demostrar cómo la recuperación de los ideales románticos puede ser la clave para trazar la naturaleza del cambio de paradigma hacia el posmodernismo.

This dissertation reads David Foster Wallace's literary output against the complicated history of identity politics and multiculturalism in America. Wallace's career coincides with the institutionalisation of second-wave feminism in the 1980s (including at his own university, Amherst College), the turn towards multicultural education and alternative literary canons in the 1990s, and the rising tide of nationalism and right-wing patriotism after 9/11. I depart from the universalist, ahistorical, post-racial framework of traditional Wallace scholarship to consider the literary and rhetorical strategies that Wallace employs as he tries to make a name for himself and remain relevant in a time of rapid social change, shifting reader demand, and growing hostility towards the elite postmodernist style in which he was trained. I argue that Wallace's fiction is marked not so much by an effort to adapt the writing to be more multicultural, race-conscious, feminist, and so on, but rather by an effort to signal that the author is aware of multiculturalism, feminism, and race matters, and that he is on the winning side of the ongoing culture war. Looking at The Broom of the System, I highlight the negotiation that takes place in the book between Wallace's desire to appear as the erudite and masterful postmodernist, versed in the tenets of metafiction and poststructuralism, and his desire to appear as the sensitive white male, attuned to an increasingly politicised female readership. In Infinite Jest, I examine Wallace's attempt to almost "out-traumatise" black women's writing of the 1990s by delivering a sprawling anthology of white hardship and anguish (grounded mainly in upper-middle-class experience). In The Pale King and Wallace's other post-9/11 writing, I show how the author wraps his unmistakably conservative vision of America and American masculinity in socially liberal, progressive-sounding discourse. The postscript offers a brief reflection on the significance of Wallace's work in the age of a Donald Trump presidency, and suggests that Wallace, had he lived to witness the 2016 election, might not have been as unequivocal in his rejection of Trump as his admirers might assume.

'Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will', published in 2010, presented David Foster Wallace's challenge to Richard Taylor's argument for fatalism. In this anthology, notable philosophers engage directly with that work and assess Wallace's reply to Taylor as well as other aspects of Wallace's thought. The thinkers in this book explore Wallace's philosophical and literary work, illustrating remarkable ways in which his philosophical views influenced and were influenced by themes developed in his other writings, both fictional and non-fictional

David Foster Wallace's use of disenfranchised voices in Infinite Jest (1996) receives little critical attention. Clenette Henderson and yrstruly's narratives raise issues of taboo subjects: child sexual abuse, drug-addiction, and prostitution. A close reading of their voices aims to break over twenty years of critical silence by exposing such taboos.

This article explores the use of clothes and other accessories as markers of masculine authorial identity. Fashion and literature are contentious partners, with literature attempting to keep a firm distance from the popular trappings of the fashion world. However, writers have historically used fashion to create their identities beyond the printed word. This can be seen in examples such as Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain and the ways clothing items have become associated with their personae as men of letters. Contemporary writers are no different, yet many continue to exude ambivalence towards clothing having any effect on their images in the literary sphere. Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace are two examples of writers who downplay fashion's role in their public images. Franzen and Wallace establish their positions at the forefront of American literature not only with their fiction and non-fiction works but also in the ways they adorn their bodies and present them within visual media. Nevertheless, both Franzen and Wallace perform as specific types of masculine authors through their fashion choices. Ultimately, they use fashion to brand their authorial identities in accordance with their literary output. Franzen's and Wallace's willing participation in the stylization of their images to meet the masculine standards of authorial identity reveals the prevalence of gendered stereotypes regarding how authors should be represented within popular culture.

David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram" is an account of the prevalence of destructive irony at the end of the twentieth century. Trying to break free from the solipsism brought about by postmodern relativism, Wallace embraced sincerity as the cornerstone of the zeitgeist of the new millennium. This article offers an analysis of two salient sources of influence that inspired Wallace's alternative to postmodern irony: American transcendentalism and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. It does so with the intention of furthering the understanding of the cultural significance of the work of the author for the generation of writers that followed in his wake, and to demonstrate how the recovery of Romantic ideals may be the key to map out the nature of the paradigm shift to post-postmodernism. ; "E Unibus Pluram" de David Foster Wallace es un relato del predominio de la ironía destructiva a fines del siglo XX. Tratando de liberarse del solipsismo provocado por el relativismo posmoderno, Wallace abrazó la sinceridad como la piedra angular del zeitgeist del nuevo milenio. Este artículo ofrece un análisis de dos fuentes de influencia destacadas que podrían considerarse como inspiración para la alternativa de Wallace a la ironía posmoderna: el trascendentalismo estadounidense y las investigaciones filosóficas de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Se hace con la intención de promover la comprensión del significado cultural de la obra del autor para la generación de escritores que siguieron su estela, y demostrar cómo la recuperación de los ideales románticos puede ser la clave para trazar la naturaleza del cambio de paradigma hacia el posmodernismo. Abstract David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram" is an account of the prevalence of destructive irony at the end of the twentieth century. Trying to break free from the solipsism brought about by postmodern relativism, Wallace embraced sincerity as the cornerstone of the zeitgeist of the new millennium. This article offers an analysis of two salient sources of influence that could be considered as inspiration for Wallace's alternative to postmodern irony: American transcendentalism and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. It does so with the intention of furthering the understanding of the cultural significance of the work of the author for the generation of writers that followed in his wake, and to demonstrate how the recovery of Romantic ideals may be the key to map out the nature of the paradigm shift to post-postmodernism.