{"product_id":"david-foster-wallaces-balancing-books-9780231179447","title":"David Foster Wallaces Balancing Books","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince its inception, David Foster Wallace studies has focused on a relatively small set of themes-irony, sincerity, addiction, and the mass media-often centered on Wallace's own descriptions of his literary project in interviews and essays. Severs's insightful new study builds on and challenges this critical orthodoxy, revealing how Wallace was a careful economic, political, and historical thinker. Wallace's writing, as Severs shows in a series of original and bracing chapters that cover the author's whole career, engaged provocatively with the New Deal, the social-welfare state, the monetary system, and the history of neoliberalism. Severs uncovers a new domain of questions that will dominate debates about Wallace's legacy and the meaning of his important art for decades to come. -- Lee Konstantinou, author of Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction From this study, David Foster Wallace emerges as a 'rebellious economic thinker,' as well as a literary innovator and cultural critic. Severs has mastered Wallace's fiction and examines it through neoliberal policies to show seams of value-moral and economic-running throughout. Attentive to history and language, Severs demonstrates how Wallace represents work as a form of grace, weight as a means of uplift, and balance as an elusive aim. -- Heather Houser, author of Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect Jeffrey Severs has an archivist's nose for the 'good stuff' from David Foster Wallace's papers at the Ransom Center; he has an eagle eye for motifs that circulate from one Wallace book to another; and he is uncannily skillful in making apposite connections between Wallace and his precursors, contemporaries, and successors. Only someone as widely and deeply read in late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century literature as Severs could have pulled this off. -- Brian McHale, Distinguished Arts and Humanities Professor, Ohio State University\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNote on the Texts Acknowledgments Introduction: A Living Transaction: Value, Ground, and Balancing Books 1. Come to Work: Capitalist Fantasies and the Quest for Balance in The Broom of the System 2. New Deals: (The) Depression and Devaluation in the Early Stories 3. Dei Gratia: Work Ethic, Grace, and Giving in Infinite Jest 4. Other Math: Human Costs, Fractional Selves, and Neoliberal Crisis in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men 5. His Capital Flush: Despairing Over Work and Value in Oblivion 6. E Pluribus Unum: Ritual, Currency, and the Embodied Values of The Pale King Conclusion: In Line for the Cash Register with Wallace Notes Bibliography Index","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400311546199,"sku":"9780231179447","price":27.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231179447.jpg?v=1730470355","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/david-foster-wallaces-balancing-books-9780231179447","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}