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The Ethical Excess in the Selected Works of William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace

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The Ethical Excess in the Selected Works of William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace Ineluctable Modality of the Other: The Ethical Excess in the Selected Works of William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace William Shane Tucker Royal Holloway, University of London Ph.D. English Tucker 2 Tucker 3 Abstract In his seminal study of postmodern literature, Brian McHale contends that the primary concerns of postmodern fiction tend to be ontologically, rather than epistemologically, dominant. This thesis will challenge McHale’s claim by analyzing how three American post- war novelists self-reflexively adopt and subvert various epistemological approaches to understanding the world in order to reveal the pitfalls associated with the reductive impulse to categorize disparate data and make it present-at-hand within epistemic frameworks. The ultimate aim of these efforts is to highlight an ineffable alterity—the ethical excess of the Other—that eludes codification. In doing so these authors indicate how ontological questions and their implications are predicated on the question of the Other, which is not primarily an ontological query but equally—or even more so—an epistemological one. The first chapter will explore how William Gaddis was one of the earliest post-war American authors to negotiate epistemic closure in favor of an alterity that cannot be totalized within his proto-postmodern novel, The Recognitions (1955). Through his aesthetic vision espousing a return to the primordial first idea as well as an ethics of indeterminacy in order to foster an agape with the unthematizable Other, Gaddis promotes the ethical imperative of the “self-who-can-do-more” who consequently attempts to “make negative things do the work of positive ones” by maintaining a responsibility to the ineffable Other in a modern world devoid of absolutes. Gaddis’s quixotic attempt to redeem a culturally-vacuous post-war society that is ultimately more ignorant than malicious will then transition to the second chapter exploring Thomas Pynchon’s more cynical view in Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) of a world dominated by malicious epistemic systems of control where active resistance against these systems can become totalizing acts themselves. Pynchon therefore attempts to combat determinate modes of thought through his notion of “illogical negativism” designed to maintain a non-committal, liminal position in order to remain truly open to an “Other Order of Being” by avoiding rationalizing the problem of alterity altogether. The final chapter will analyze how David Foster Wallace’s exploration of a “cohesion-renewing Other” in Infinite Jest (1996) attempts to renew cohesion between the different positions previously adopted by Gaddis and Pynchon. Conscious of both the need to adopt an ethical imperative for the Other while also being mindful of the necessity of having to engage with totalizing epistemic frameworks at the expense of alterity in order to convey meaning, Wallace adopts a neopragmatic approach that maintains a faith in language but nevertheless repudiates epistemic foundationalism and acknowledges the radical contingency of language and selfhood as communal constructs dependent on the Other. Tucker 4 Acknowledgements I would like to begin by thanking Professor Finn Fordham for serving as my supervisor during my research at Royal Holloway. Our mutual interest in the maximalist novels of the twentieth century initially brought us together, which led to a tremendously fruitful partnership of shared academic inquiry over the past couple of years. I also appreciate the opportunity to have been able to serve as a seminar leader for your modernist literature module. Your unwavering support and timely feedback were paramount to the completion of this project, and I am truly grateful and humbled by your unflagging dedication to my work. Next I want to thank Professor Robert Eaglestone for serving as my advisor at Royal Holloway. Your advice was extremely helpful, and I am greatly indebted to your work, Ethical Criticism: Reading After Levinas, for shaping the line of reasoning adopted within my thesis. Furthermore, I am grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to serve as a seminar leader for your literary criticism module, which afforded me the opportunity to continue my development as an educator. I also want to thank the University of London and Senate House for their resources that were readily available to me. The Crossland Research Scholarship was a huge support financially, and the myriad research opportunities were of great help academically. More specifically, the critical theory reading group at Senate House provided me with the occasion to read and discuss Simon Critchley’s seminal work, Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, which awakened me to the potential convergence between ethics, literature, and post-structuralism. This study served as the impetus for the direction taken in my thesis. A huge thank you to my father for the emotional support throughout my post- secondary education. It was a difficult decision to move away to England for four years in order to pursue my MA and PhD degrees, but it was made easier by your unyielding love and encouragement. You are without a doubt the person who initially sparked my love for literature, and for that I am—and will always be—eternally grateful. Finally, I am immensely grateful to my beautiful wife, Maia. Your companionship and support were invaluable during my years in England, and I cannot wait to see where life takes us next. Tucker 5 Table of Contents Declaration of Authorship…………………………………......…………………………………………………..….2 Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...3 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………...................4 Chapter One: Introduction ..................................................................................................... 6 1.1 Order and the Other ......................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Epistemic Frameworks and Menippeanism ................................................................... 29 1.3 The Ethical Excess in the Novels of Excess .................................................................. 44 Chapter Two: The Re-Cognition of the Other: Agapistic Ethics and the “Self-Who-Can- Do-More” in William Gaddis’s The Recognitions ............................................................... 55 2.1 Ordering the Chaosmos.................................................................................................. 56 2.2 Forging Faiths and Fakes ............................................................................................... 75 2.3 Re-Cognizing the Devil-Inspired Absurdity of Indetermination ................................... 94 2.4 Agape A-Gape .............................................................................................................. 106 2.5 Alterity and the Diaspora of Words ............................................................................. 114 2.6 Concluding Thoughts on Gaddis’s Self-Who-Can-Do-More ...................................... 121 Chapter Three: The Gravity of Illogical Negativism: Paranoia and the “Other Order of Being” in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow .............................................................. 130 3.1 The Paranoia of Pynchon’s Preterite............................................................................ 130 3.2 Illogical Negativism and the Other Order .................................................................... 155 3.3 Jewish Mysticism and the Magical Other .................................................................... 164 3.4 The Black and White Fires of Signification ................................................................ 170 3.5 The Zone of the Excluded Middle ............................................................................... 186 3.6 Concluding Thoughts on Pynchon’s Other Order of Being......................................... 199 Chapter Four: The Jest of the Infinite: Neopragmatism and the “Cohesion-Renewing Other” in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest ................................................................. 207 4.1 David Foster Wallace’s Affinity for Infinity ............................................................... 208 4.2 The Porousness of Epistemic Closure.......................................................................... 224 4.3 Cataloging and the Contingency of Selfhood .............................................................. 239 4.4 Neopragmatism and the Hermeneutic Circle ............................................................... 251 4.5 Alterity and the Supreme Fiction ................................................................................. 260 4.6 Concluding Thoughts on Wallace’s Cohesion-Renewing Other ................................. 273 Chapter Five: Conclusion.................................................................................................... 277 5.1 Closure and Open-Endedness ...................................................................................... 278 5.2 Epistemic Frameworks and the Information Age ........................................................ 282 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 288 Tucker 6 Introduction Tucker 7 “The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.” –Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists “We
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