Description
Book SynopsisMarshall Boswell is Professor and Chair of English at Rhodes College, USA. He is the author of four books, including
Understanding David Foster Wallace (2004) and
John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion (2001), and the editor of three books, including
David Foster Wallace and 'The Long Thing' (Bloomsbury, 2014) and
A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies (co-editor, 2013). He served as Guest Editor for a two-part special issue of
Studies in the Novel devoted to David Foster Wallace's novels.
Trade ReviewBoswell’s collection of essays plays a significant role in Wallace scholarship. With his intertextual examinations of the novels and stories against the work of his peers, Boswell zeroes in on the depth and breadth of Wallace’s vision. * Orbit: A Journal of American Literature *
One measure of literary accomplishment is the resistance and resentment that a writer provokes in other writers, and by that measure David Foster Wallace’s accomplishment was undeniably major. It takes a scholar of Marshall Boswell’s resourcefulness and perspicacity to show us exactly how this is so, as he does in this eye-opening book. * Brian McHale, Distinguished Professor of English, The Ohio State University, USA, and author of Postmodernist Fiction (1987) *
The Wallace Effect is the most extended and fruitful exploration of David Foster Wallace’s influence on his literary contemporaries to date. Noting the sea change in American literature that Wallace’s writing heralded, Boswell charts the novelistic courses of a number of writers who anxiously beat back against the resulting new current in compelling ways. Boswell demonstrates that whether these writers’ works question, negotiate with, or condemn Wallace, what remains undeniable is Wallace’s deep and lasting effect on contemporary literature. In
The Wallace Effect, Wallace emerges as a formidable author who inspires writers and readers alike both to embrace and resist his legacy. * Ralph Clare, Associate Professor of English, Boise State University, USA, and editor of the Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace (2018). *
Marshall Boswell, a pioneer in the study of Wallace, writes with dexterity and lucidity here about some of the author’s favorite subjects: influence, autobiography, self-consciousness, and the need for literature to respond to what came before. Catching allusions and subtle critiques at every turn, Boswell weaves together predecessors, successors, and the man himself in a way that readers will find both instructive and fascinating. * Jeffrey Severs, Associate Professor of English, University of British Columbia, Canada, author of David Foster Wallace’s Balancing Books: Fictions of Value (2017) *
Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Foreword Introduction
Toward Wallace 1. Something Both and Neither: Marshes, Marriage and the Fertile Invention of John Barth's
The Tidewater Tales 2. The Awful Way Back to We: Crackpot Realism and Ironic Realism in Richard Powers'
Prisoner's Dilemma The Wallace Effect 3. The Rival Lover: David Foster Wallace and the Anxiety of Influence in Jeffrey Eugenides;
The Marriage Plot 4. The Varieties of Irony: Claire Messud's
The Emperor's Children and the Comedy of Redemption 5. Competitive Friendship: Love and Reckoning in Jonathan Franzen's
Freedom 6. Against Wallace: Amy Hungerford, Lauren Groff, and the Resistance to Genius Conclusion: Love & Cruelty Acknowledgements Bibliography Index
