Description
Book SynopsisThis book breaks new ground by showing that the work of David Foster Wallace originates from and functions in the space between philosophy and literature. Philosophy is not a mere supplement to or decoration of his writing, nor does he use literature to illustrate pre-established philosophical truths. Rather, for Wallace, philosophy and literature are intertwined ways of experiencing and expressing the world that emerge from and amplify each other. The book does not advance a fixed or homogenous interpretation of Wallace’s oeuvre but instead offers an investigative approach that allows for a variety of readings. The volume features fourteen new essays by prominent and promising Wallace scholars, divided into three parts: one on general aspects of Wallace’s oeuvre – such as his aesthetics, form, and engagement with performance – and two parts with thematic focuses, namely ‘Consciousness, Self, and Others’ and ‘Embodiment, Gender, and Sexuality’.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: David Foster Wallace between philosophy and literature – Allard den Dulk, Pia Masiero and Adriano Ardovino
Part I: General perspectives
1 Absorbing art: the Hegelian project of Infinite Jest – Adam Kelly
2 Stages, Socrates, and the performer stripped bare: David Foster Wallace as philosopher-dramatist – Jeffrey Severs
3 ‘A matter of perspective’: ‘Good Old Neon’ between literature and philosophy – Adriano Ardovino and Pia Masiero
4 The influence of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism on David Foster Wallace – Paolo Pitari
Part II: Consciousness, self and others
5 ‘What all she’d so painfully learned said about her’: a comparative reading of David Foster Wallace’s ‘The Depressed Person’ and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground – Allard den Dulk
6 Infinite Jest’s ‘trinity of you and I into we’: Wallace’s ‘click’ between Joyce’s literary consubstantiality and Wittgenstein’s family resemblance – Dominik Steinhilber
7 Solipsism, loneliness, alienation: David Foster Wallace as interpreter of Wittgenstein – Guido Baggio
8 ‘This is just my opinion’: modelling a public sphere in The Pale King – Daniel South
9 Pioneers of consciousness: hypothesis for a diptych – Lorenzo Marchese
10 The problem of other minds in ‘Good Old Neon’ – Matt Prout
Part III: Embodiment, gender and sexuality
11 ‘I am in here’: David Foster Wallace and the body as object – Clare Hayes-Brady
12 ‘The interstices of her sense of something’: David Foster Wallace, the quest for affect, and the future of gendered interactions – Mara Mattoscio
13 ‘You are loved’: race, love, and language in early Wallace – Lola Boorman
14 ‘They remain just bodies’: on pornography in David Foster Wallace (1989–2006) – Chiara Scarlato
15 ‘Something staring back at you’: an anamorphic reading of Infinite Jest – Angelo Maria Grossi
Index
