David Foster Wallace's Communal Middle Ground

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Daniel E. Randlemon for the degree of Master of Arts in English presented on May 25, 2012. Title: David Foster Wallace’s Communal Middle Ground Abstract approved: __________________________________________________________________ Raymond J. Malewitz Throughout the course of this thesis, I argue that the prose of David Foster Wallace, specifically his posthumously published novel The Pale King, inhabits a middle ground between universal sincerity and the particularized authenticity of postmodern irony. I examine Lionel Trilling’s definitions of sincerity and authenticity before moving toward an examination of the diverging critical response to Wallace’s work, which, I argue, suggests that because so many critics have read his work as either inherently sincere or inherently authentic, his work inhabits a communal middle ground somewhere in between. To explain, I analyze Wallace’s so-called manifesto of sincerity, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” as well as other instances in interviews and conversations to develop a clearer understanding of what this middle ground consists of. Further, I analyze two passages in The Pale King in which characters seek to communicate moments of profound revelation. Though these characters finally fail to truly communicate these revelations, I argue that it is the communication itself that allows both communicator and listener, and thus both reader and writer, to experience a moment of, as Wallace puts it in The Pale King, “value for both sides, both people in the relation” (227). ©Copyright by Daniel E. Randlemon May 25, 2012 All Rights Reserved David Foster Wallace’s Communal Middle Ground by Daniel E. Randlemon A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Presented May 25, 2012 Commencement June 2012 Master of Arts thesis of Daniel E. Randlemon presented on May 25, 2012 APPROVED: _____________________________________________________________________ Major Professor, representing English _____________________________________________________________________ Director of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film _____________________________________________________________________ Dean of the Graduate School I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University Libraries. My signature below authorizes the release of my thesis to any reader upon request. _____________________________________________________________________ Daniel E. Randlemon, Author ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the entire staff of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University for all of the generous help and support throughout this process. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to study in such a welcoming and warm program. I’d like to offer my deepest gratitude to Dr. Raymond Malewitz for his guidance throughout this process. I have enjoyed the chance to work so closely with such a talented, kind, and ridiculously intelligent man. Additionally, I am grateful to Dr. Kerry Ahearn for agreeing to help me despite his retirement from the program, as well as to Tracy Daugherty for agreeing to be a member of my committee during an incredibly busy term. Likewise, thanks to Dr. Trischa Goodnow for serving as my graduate school representative. Additionally, I’d like to Dr. Susan Meyers, Dr. Rebecca Olson, Dr. Tara Williams, Marjorie Sandor, Keith Scribner, Dr. Peter Betjemann, and Dr. Chris Anderson for their continued support and encouragement over the past two years. My family in Corvallis has been my fellow graduate students. I’d like to sincerely thank each of you, in particular Damien Bilka, Chris McDonald and Emily Schmuhl (who are the finest neighbors I will ever have, I’m sure), Nick Goman, Andrea Ardans, Jackie Luskey, Matt Hagan, Liz Delf, Jessica Travers, Brian Mosher, and Allen Sprague. I cannot imagine having survived the past two years without these people. Thanks also to friends from Las Cruces—Rory, Mikey, Andrew, Neil, and Larie for your continued friendship and love. Also, a loving thanks to my family. Mom, Dad, Shea, and Rye, I’m grateful for each of you. Lastly, this thesis is dedicated to my wife Julianne, who has been incredibly supportive of me for the past six years, and who is without a doubt the best person I’ve ever met. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction.....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: “We’re All at Least in Here Together”: David Foster Wallace’s Communication and Community....................................................................................5 Chapter 2: “Telling the Truth is, of Course, a Great Deal Trickier Than Most Regular People Understand”: David Foster Wallace’s Communal Middle Ground in The Pale King...............................................................................................................................36 Conclusion:...................................................................................................................69 Bibliography..................................................................................................................74 Introduction In his book The Human Use of Human Beings, Norbert Wiener explains that communication of information can be usefully measured via the concepts of organization and disorganization. “The more probable the message the less information it gives,” Wiener explains. “Clichés, for example, are less illuminating than great poems” (21). The same is true, however, for the opposite: if a message were to send the maximum amount of information, it would be impossible to comprehend through its randomness and unpredictability. Ideal communication, then, necessitates something in between these two poles—a middle ground between the universal of clichés and the utter arbitrariness of the opposite. Wiener’s discussion of information theory correlates usefully with this paper’s discussion of the work of David Foster Wallace, who is another figure concerned with communication in the age of technology. Discussions surrounding Wallace have often been concerned with the degree to which his stated intention of sincerity is successful. Pointing to his constant use of the tropes of postmodern irony—of the ironization of everything to such a degree that what is meant is never fully clear—he so outwardly criticized, one camp argues that Wallace could not possibly be considered an artist of sincerity. The other argues that because Wallace’s irony is pointed so directly at the methods of postmodern irony, that irony is itself undercut, thus rendering sincerity to be the work’s true function. However, the fact that the conversation is so disparate suggests that Wallace’s work contains instances of what Lionel Trilling has discussed 2 as sincerity and authenticity. An exploration of each of these terms in Wallace’s prose can illuminate a new understanding of his work. Universal sincerity, as we shall see, corresponds with Wiener’s discussion of cliché, with communication of universals of humanity that no longer convey meaning. Sincerity’s lack of originality renders it futile in terms of imparting information. Likewise, authenticity, here correlated with the opposite of cliché, suffers from a similar malady: the desire to communicate everything, to avoid the universalism of clichéd sincerity, is just as fruitless. Thus, what is necessary is a middle ground between the two: a sincerity that is not universal, an authenticity that is not over- particularized. Throughout this thesis, I argue that the prose of David Foster Wallace is neither sincere nor authentic; or rather that it is both. The fact the sincere and the authentic overlap suggests a non-universal sincerity, as well as an authenticity that is not over-particularized and exclusionary. This communal middle ground, as I describe it, communicates to a finite community of readers rather than a universal humanity, but, importantly, the aim is nonetheless an outward, public communication. In my first chapter, I examine Trilling’s definitions of these terms, analyzing his Sincerity and Authenticity, in which he argues that sincerity’s requirement of a public audience is inherently subordinate for artists to fully express themselves, and thus, he argues, authenticity is a more appropriate technique for the conveyance of the self. Although some critics have argued that sincerity has been replaced with a universal irony rather than Trilling’s authenticity, I posit that the two concepts are in 3 fact not all that disparate, as the emphasis for both universal irony and universal authenticity is on destruction of meaning—of the harmful nature of universalism and of imparting a skepticism toward grand narratives—rather than production of meaning. Next, I examine the critical conversation surrounding Wallace’s writing, and claim that these often contradictory points of view suggest that Wallace’s prose exists within the middle ground between the sincere and the authentic. Finally, I examine Wallace’s manifesto of sincerity, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” as well as excerpts from various interviews to explore the way in which Wallace’s writing communicates with a specific, non-universal audience who is aware of the necessity of irony and authenticity, but who seeks connection nonetheless. In the second chapter, I look more closely at representations of sincerity and authenticity

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