Russell Patrick Arts Undergraduate Research Award

Russell Patrick Arts Undergraduate Research Award - Reading David Foster Wallace’s Nervous Systems

Angus L. Reid

AURA Supervisor: Dr. Jeffrey Severs Project done in collaboration with Maddie Gorman Department of English, UBC January – August, 2013

Introduction:

Since its 1996 publication, Infinite Jest has been considered one of the most significant American novels of the twentieth century. Comparisons have been made between Wallace’s work, and that of authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and William Gaddis. Emphasis is often placed on his critique of American popular culture, as exemplified by Infinite Jest and the essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” However, while the work of the aforementioned authors may be seen as corresponding with Fredric Jameson’s diagnosis of the “waning of affect” in Postmodern culture (10-11), Wallace’s work has instead been noted for what Paul Giles refers to as “affective posthumanism” (330). As such, his critique of popular culture—particularly television—has a definitively emotional thrust, relying on honesty rather than irony. Five years after the death of Wallace, and the posthumous publication of the uncompleted novel, The Pale King, scholars have begun to position his work within the contexts of post-war American and World Literature.

Research Questions:

Following recent scholarship on Wallace, as well as broader work in Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Media Studies, the main goal of our project was to address the role of a film referred to in the novel as “the samizdat” or “the Entertainment.” Acting as an “infinite jest,” this film is so enthralling that those who view it immediately fall into a near-catatonic state. Unable to do anything other than repeatedly view the film, they inevitably starve to death. Working with “the Entertainment” as a central problematic, I followed Dr. Severs’ lead in addressing two broad questions:

1) How does “the Entertainment” circulate throughout the text? How may we see it in relation to a physical commodity, as well as a digital text? How have critics described the manner in which the film moves throughout the body of the novel?

1 2) How does the movement of “the Entertainment” function in relation to other issues raised by the novel, such as drug addiction, depression, capitalism and popular entertainment, and political and individual sovereignty?

Methodology: a) Initial Research

Beginning with the UBC Library holdings, I conducted a comprehensive literature review, pulling all books and articles on the work of David Foster Wallace. Alongside work on Infinite Jest, this also involved texts discussing his considerable body of short and non-fiction, as well as his other two novels, The Broom of the System and The Pale King. This material was organized in a folder system for ease of reference, providing a database for further research. After creating this database, I worked through the literature, focusing particularly on discussions of the movement and exchange of “the Entertainment,” as discussed earlier in the section on Research Questions. After identifying relevant material, I wrote up a number of critical précis, summarizing the presented arguments, and relating them to our research questions. Alongside the articles, I uploaded these into our database, allowing me, Dr. Severs, and Maddie Gorman easy access to the material. b) Archival Work

Aside from providing a working database of material, the initial research provided a base from which to move forward to archival research. Conducted primarily at the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Austin Texas, this work involved the use of various primary documents, including the correspondence and former library of David Foster Wallace. While I was not able to accompany Dr. Severs to Austin, I helped him prepare for the research by working through the online inventory of the David Foster Wallace Archive. By identifying various texts held in the archive prior to his trip, I was able to help Dr. Severs streamline his research, optimizing his time in Austin. Maddie Gorman and I also worked to transcribe text from archival photographs sent by Dr. Severs, helping to organize the presentation of much of the archival material in a single, workable document. At the same time, I was also fortunate enough to be able to conduct my own archival research. Looking for the original publication of Wallace’s short-story, “Church Not Made with Hands”, which was original published in the Canadian avant-garde journal Rampike Magazine, I was led to the Special Collections of the Simon Fraser University Library. It was through this work that I found that the story—later published in Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men —was originally intended to be part of Infinite Jest. Furthermore, in both cases, the information provided by archival research proved to be vital in the formulation of subsequent work.

Research Findings:

As we worked through the central issues of the text—in relation to the idea of “the Entertainment”—Dr. Severs suggested that Maddie and I look into the role of Electroconvulsive Therapy in the text. Working on the premise that ECT (which Wallace had undergone as

2 treatment for his depression) had a presence in the text, we began to look for ways to read this presence in relation to the role of “the Entertainment.” Drawing from a motif established in the work of Marshall McLuhan, we began to look at genealogies of thought in which the human nervous system is understood in relation to electrical grids and the distribution of media. Whereas this concept is seen in a utopian light in the work of McLuhan, who is famous for his theorization of the “global village,” it takes on a more menacing light in the work of Wallace.

Image 1. Pgs. 40-41 from Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage

As argued by Bradley Fest, the distribution of “the Entertainment” may be seen in relation to the system of the “distributed network,” through which electronic media moves (140). Like the concept of “the grid”—a system through which characters in Infinite Jest view films— the distributed network acts to bring entertainment, such as the internet, to the homes of individual customers.

3 Seeking to utilize this metaphor on a larger scale, we began to wonder how the concept of the distributed network or grid could be related to the application of electricity to the human body, as manifested in the form of ECT. Moreover, we began to look for manners in which Wallace’s critiques of popular entertainment and capitalism could bee seen in parallel with the presence of electrical shock within the novel. Referring to what Dr. Severs has termed “the electrified subject,” we argue that the catatonic victims of “the Entertainment”, as they represent Wallace’s critique of popular entertainment, may be viewed alongside the concept of ECT. While Infinite Jest does not directly represent the effects of electro convulsive therapy, it does contain the character of Kate Gompert, who has undergone ECT and wants more “shock.” Similarly, it contains what may be seen as more coded references to ECT, including a character who commits suicide by placing his head in a microwave—as if to simulate the therapy—as well as another character who repeatedly hears the German word “zuckung” (meaning “spasm”) during a seizure induced by drug withdrawal. Based on the work done over the period of my AURA grant, Dr. Severs, Maddie Gorman, and I are working on a collaborative article on the subject of ECT in Infinite Jest. We hope to publish this article, which will expand on the topic discussed above and open up the discussion on Wallace to new areas of study. We will draw on theoretical work from Katherine Hayles, Michael Taussig, and Marshall McLuhan, as well as critical accounts by Paul Giles, Stephen Burn, and Bradley Fest.

Learning Outcomes:

Unlike work produced in fields such as Psychology and Linguistics, the study of Literature is, more often than not, a solitary activity. It rarely involves work in labs, and in some aspects, is less collaborative than other fields in the Faculty of Arts. For this reason, I would argue, students in English, as well as other humanities departments, are not regularly exposed to the process of research at a publishable level. This issue is further compacted by the role played by primary documents, which are not always available for undergraduate students. In this light, I was extraordinarily privileged to be able to help Dr. Jeffrey Severs with his current research. Having taken two previous courses with him, and having seen him present his work at two Department of English Faculty Research Seminars, I was thrilled to be asked to participate in the AURA program. In working with Dr. Severs, I was not only able to help facilitate his work on an academic manuscript, but to become an active participant in this research. This process involved working on the article I have already mentioned, which has been the result of collaboration between me, Dr. Severs, and Madddie Gorman. Whereas work in the average English course is generally completed under strict time limits, and must be juggled with the competing interests of other courses, working as an AURA grant recipient has given me the ability to work in depth on a single topic. In utilizing both published, secondary sources, and unpublished, primary documentation, the process has been more akin to that of work done at a graduate or professional level. Particularly helpful has been the knowledge I have acquired of archival processes. At the moment, I am working on my undergraduate Honours thesis under the supervision of Dr. Severs. My work as an AURA research assistant has been invaluable in this regard, as it has given me the opportunity to pursue a line of thought beyond what is commonly expected of undergraduate students. As someone who intends to pursue graduate work in the area of

4 American literature, it has helped me to further define my field of study, and to identify ongoing debates within that field.

5 Bibliography:

Fest, Bradley. "The Inverted Nuke in the Garden: Archival Emergence and Anti-Eschatology in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest." boundary 2. 39.3 (2012): 125-149. Web. Giles, Paul. "Sentimental Posthumanism: David Foster Wallace." Twentieth Century Literature. 53.3 (2007): 327-344. Web. 29 Sep. 2013. Hayles, N. Katherine. "The Illusion of Autonomy and the Fact of Recursivity: Virtual Ecologies, Entertainment, and "Infinite Jest"." New Literary History. 30.3 (1999): 675-697. Web. ---. How We Became Posthuman Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. Print. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Print. McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. London: Penguin Books, 1962. Print. Taussig, Michael. The Nervous System. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print. Wallace, David Foster. "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." Review of Contemporary Fiction. 13.2 (1993): 151-194. Web. --, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Book, 1996. Print.