THE INQUIRY PRACTICES of NONFICTION WRITERS by Suzanne Webb a DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in Partial
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Understanding David Foster Wallace, Marshall Boswell LEG the Legacy of David Foster Wallace, Ed
The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies is published by the International David Foster Wallace Society. Copyright © 2019 International David Foster Wallace Society The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies (Print) ISSN 2576-9995 The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies (Online) ISSN 2577-0039 Interior designed by David Jensen Cover art copyright © 2019 Chris Ayers STAFF Editor Clare Hayes-Brady, University College Dublin Managing Editor Matt Bucher Editorial Board Grace Chipperfield Alexander Moran Ándrea Laurencell Sheridan Rob Short Matthew Luter Advisory Board David Hering Jonathan Laskovsky Adam Kelly Mike Miley Nick Maniatis Lucas Thompson Linda Daley Subscriptions To subscribe to the Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies, simply join the International David Foster Wallace Society (http://dfwsociety.org). Membership includes a subscription to our journal as well as access to electronic editions of the journal. Submissions All submissions are welcome. Send directly to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter @dfwsociety Volume 1, Number 2 Fall 2019 Special Issue Guest Editors: Alice Bennett and Peter Sloane Volume 1, Number 2 • Fall 2019 Preface by Clare Hayes-Brady ...................................................... 7 Wallace Short Things by Alice Bennett and Peter Sloane .......... 11 Footnotes, Footsteps, Ghostprints by David Punter .................... 25 Wallace’s Ambivalence toward Insight: The Epiphany in “Octet” and “Adult World” (I) and (II) by Jacob Hovind ......................... 45 “The lie is that it’s one or the other”: Extracting “Forever Overhead” and “Church Not Made with Hands” from the Short Story Cycle by Rob Mayo ........................................................... 71 The Case of “Think” in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: Is Dialogism Possible? by Pia Masiero ............................................ 95 “The Fragment”: “Cede,” Ancient Rome, and The Pale King by Tim Groenland ................................................................... -
Book Reviews
135 Book reviews . Nancy L. Roberts, Book Review Editor ––––––––––––––––– Medium-Type Friends A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi by Aman Sethi Reviewed by Jeff harletS 136 Exploring the Intersection of Literature and Journalism Literature and Journalism: Inspirations, Intersections, and Inventions from Ben Franklin to Stephen Colbert by Mark Canada Reviewed by Thomas B. Connery 140 What the Receptionist Knew about Joe Mitchell The Receptionist: An Education at The NewYorker by Janet Groth Reviewed by Miles Maguire 143 How to: Learning the Craft You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Nonfiction from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between By Lee Gutkind Reviewed by Nancy L. Roberts 146 The Fine Print: Uncovering the True Story of David Foster Wallace and the “Reality Boundary” Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace Reviewed by Josh Roiland 147 Literary Journalism Studies Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 2013 136 Literary Journalism Studies Medium-Type Friends A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi by Aman Sethi. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Hardcover, 240 pp., $24.95. Reviewed by Jeff Sharlet, Dartmouth College, United States alfway through this subtle heartbreak of a book, HMuhammad Ashraf, the “free man” of the title, phones Aman Sethi—author and co-protagonist, at- tentive ego to Ashraf’s titanic id—to tell Sethi that Satish is sick. Who is Satish? The one who is sick, of course. Why must you ask so many questions, Aman bhai (brother). And just like that, Sethi’s profile of Ashraf changes direction for thirty pages, becoming an account of sick Satish, whom Ashraf expects Sethi to look after. -
Editing David Foster Wallace
‘NEUROTIC AND OBSESSIVE’ BUT ‘NOT TOO INTRANSIGENT OR DEFENSIVE’: Editing David Foster Wallace By Zac Farber 1 In December of 1993, David Foster Wallace printed three copies of a manuscript he had taken to calling the “longer thing” and gave one to his editor, Michael Pietsch, one to a woman he was trying to impress, and one to Steven Moore, a friend and the managing editor of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, whose edits and cuts Wallace wished to compare with Pietsch’s. The manuscript, which Little, Brown and Company would publish as Infinite Jest in 1996, was heavy (it required both of Moore’s hands to carry) and, Moore recalled, unruly: It’s a mess—a patchwork of different fonts and point sizes, with numerous handwritten corrections/additions on most pages, and paginated in a nesting pattern (e.g., p. 22 is followed by 22A-J before resuming with p. 23, which is followed by 23A-D, etc). Much of it is single-spaced, and what footnotes existed at this stage appear at the bottom of pages. (Most of those in the published book were added later.) Several states of revision are present: some pages are early versions, heavily overwritten with changes, while others are clean final drafts. Throughout there are notes in the margins, reminders to fix something or other, adjustments to chronology (which seems to have given Wallace quite a bit of trouble), even a few drawings and doodles.1 Wallace followed some of Pietsch and Moore’s suggestions and cut about 40 pages from the first draft of the manuscript2, but before publication he added more than 200 pages of additional material, including an opening chapter that many critics have praised as the novel’s best and more than 100 pages of (often footnoted) endnotes.3 Editing Wallace could be demanding, and those who attempted it found themselves faced with the difficulty of correcting a man with a prodigious understanding of the byzantine syntactical and grammatical rules of the English language. -
E 349S David Foster Wallace—Honors
E 349S l David Foster Wallace—Honors Instructor: Houser, H Areas: I Unique #: 35465 Flags: Writing Semester: Fall 2012 Restrictions: English Honors Cross-lists: LAH 350 Computer Instruction: N Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English. Description: This course covers the truncateD career of DaviD Foster Wallace (1962-2008), one of the most examineD anD lauDeD authors of his generation. We will read all of Infinite Jest (fasten your seat belts!) along with essays, short stories, anD selections from his other two novels, Broom of the System anD The Pale King. The following questions will motivate the course: ⋅ What is Wallace's place in US literary history? What is his project for a new fiction? ⋅ What are his positions on 20th-century US culture, meDia, anD technology? Can particular ways of reaDing anD writing intervene in these domains? ⋅ How can the inDiviDual navigate the onslaught of information in the 20th-21st centuries through the novel? By the end of the semester, you will be able to: ⋅ Read analytically across an author's body of work, and craft probing questions that participate in debates about this work. ⋅ Create compelling written responses to these questions by close reading, conducting careful research (if you choose), and integrating textual evidence. ⋅ Articulate opinions about the state and direction of contemporary fiction based on DFW's contributions to it. ⋅ Assess and revise your own and classmates' writing through peer review. Texts: Books at the University Co-Op. Packet at Jenn's Copies (2200 GuaDalupe St., 473.8669) Course Packet (also on BlackboarD anD blog) All by David Foster Wallace Brief Interviews with Hideous Men Consider the Lobster and Other Essays Girl with Curious Hair Infinite Jest The Pale King A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again Requirements & Grading: Participation (15%), 10 blog posts anD comments (10%), 2 short essays + revisions (15% each), final paper prospectus (5%), final presentation (10%), final essay + revision (30%). -
"One Never Knew": David Foster Wallace and the Aesthetics of Consumption
Bowdoin College Bowdoin Digital Commons Honors Projects Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2016 "One Never Knew": David Foster Wallace and the Aesthetics of Consumption Jesse Ortiz Bowdoin College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Ortiz, Jesse, ""One Never Knew": David Foster Wallace and the Aesthetics of Consumption" (2016). Honors Projects. 44. https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects/44 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship and Creative Work at Bowdoin Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of Bowdoin Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “One Never Knew”: David Foster Wallace and the Aesthetics of Consumption An Honors Paper for the Department of English By Jesse Ortiz Bowdoin College, 2016 ©2016 Jesse Ortiz Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii 0: Isn’t it Ironic? 1 1: Guilty Pleasure: Consumption in the Essays 4 2: Who’s There? 28 0. The Belly of the Beast: Entering Infinite Jest 28 1. De-formed: Undoing Aesthetic Pleasure 33 2. Avril is the Cruellest Moms 49 3. “Epiphanyish”: Against the Aesthetics of the Buzz 65 ∞: “I Do Have a Thesis” 79 Works Cited 81 ii Acknowledgements This project, of course, could not exist without the guidance of Professor Marilyn Reizbaum, who gave me no higher compliment than when she claimed I have a “modernist mind.” Thank you. I’d also like to thank my other readers, Morten Hansen, Brock Clarke and Hilary Thompson, for their insightful feedback. -
The Work of David Foster Wallace and Post-Postmodernism Charles Reginald Nixon Submitted in Accordance with the Requirements
- i - The work of David Foster Wallace and post-postmodernism Charles Reginald Nixon Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English September 2013 - ii - - iii - The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Charles Reginald Nixon The right of Charles Reginald Nixon to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. - iv - - v - Acknowledgements (With apologies to anyone I have failed to name): Many thanks to Hamilton Carroll for guiding this thesis from its earliest stages. Anything good here has been encouraged into existence by him, anything bad is the result of my stubborn refusal to listen to his advice. Thanks, too, to Andrew Warnes for additional guidance and help along the way, and to the many friends and colleagues at the University of Leeds and beyond who have provided assistance, advice and encouragement. Stephen Burn, in particular, and the large and growing number of fellow Wallace scholars I have met around the world have contributed much to this work's intellectual value; our conversations have been amongst my most treasured, from a scholarly perspective and just because they have been so enjoyable. -
Vol 1., Issue 1 2018 2018
Vol 1., Issue 1 2018 2018 T HE J OURNAL OF D AVI D F OS T ER W ALLACE The International David Foster Wallace Society S T was founded to promote and sustain the long-term U D scholarly and independent study of David Foster IES Wallace’s writing. To these ends, the Society wel- comes diverse, peer-reviewed scholarship and seeks to expand the critical boundaries of Wallace studies. We recognize and champion the visual, the alternative, and the literary: the presence of minds at work. The Society showcases a variety V of projects—at conferences, on panels, in our print OL publication, The Journal of David Foster Wallace 1., Studies, and through other non-traditional modes I of scholarly expression. SSUE 1 www.dfwsociety.org cover design by david jensen The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies is published by the International David Foster Wallace Society. Copyright © 2018 International David Foster Wallace Society The Journal of David Foster Wallace studies (Print) ISSN 2576-9995 The Journal of David Foster Wallace studies (Online) ISSN 2577-0039 Designed by David Jensen Cover art copyright © 2018 David Jensen STAFF Editor Clare Hayes-Brady, University College Dublin Managing Editor Tony McMahon Advisory Board Matt Bucher Grace Chipperfeld Linda Daley David Hering Adam Kelly Jonathan Laskovsky Matthew Luter Nick Maniatis Mike Miley Alexander Moran Rob Short Lucas Thompson Subscriptions To subscribe to the Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies, visit the International David Foster Wallace Society on the web at https://dfwsociety.org. Membership in IDFWS includes a reduced sub- scription price for the journal as well as access to electronic editions. -
Attending to Objects in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
“On the Porousness of Certain Borders”: Attending to Objects in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Brian Douglas Jansen University of Calgary oughly halfway through David Foster Wallace’s mammoth and Rlabyrinthine 1996 novel Infinite Jest, the character Don Gately—a recov- ering drug addict and live-in employee of a halfway house in Boston, Massachusetts—encounters a biker named Bob Death at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. In an exchange between the two, Bob tells Gately a joke whose punchline becomes crucial in ferreting out the novel’s thematic crux and indeed the ethical perspective of its author. Having asked Gately whether he has “by any chance … heard the one about the fish” (445), Bob Death recites a joke that was later reused by the novel’s author in a com- mencement speech delivered at Kenyon College in 2005 (collected post- humously in a 2009 volume titled This Is Water): “This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water’ and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, ‘What the fuck is water?’ ” (445). The immedi- ate point of the joke, as Wallace explains in his speech, “is merely that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about” (Water 8), and to repeat the mantra of “this is water” is to remind oneself to be “conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from ESC 40.4 (December 2014): 55–77 experience” (54). -
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center Descriptive Summary Creator: Wallace, David Foster (1962-2008) Title: David Foster Wallace Papers Dates: 1971-2008 Extent: 44 document boxes, 8 oversize folders (18.48 linear feet) Abstract: The David Foster Wallace Papers document all but one of Wallace's major works, and many of his shorter works. Call Number: Manuscript Collection MS-5155 Language: English Access: Open for research Administrative Information Acquisition: Purchase, 2009 (09-11-011-P, 12-03-010-P, 12-10-005-P) Processed by: Stephen Cooper, 2010; Jenn Shapland, 2012 Repository: The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center Wallace, David Foster (1962-2008) Manuscript Collection MS-5155 Biographical Sketch David Foster Wallace was born February 21, 1962, in Ithaca, New York. His father, James Wallace, is a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois, and his mother, Sally Foster Wallace, is an instructor in English at Parkland College, a community college in Champaign, Illinois. Amy Wallace Havens, Wallace's younger sister, practices law in Tucson, Arizona. Wallace married artist Karen Green in 2004. As an adolescent, Wallace played football and was a regionally ranked tennis player, but his interest in writing and language was influenced by his parents, who read Ulysses out loud to each other. His father read Moby-Dick to Wallace and his sister when they were only eight and six years old, and his mother would playfully pretend to have a coughing fit if one of the children made a usage error during supper conversation. Wallace graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1985 with a double major in Philosophy and English. -
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company: A Preliminary Inventory of Its David Foster Wallace Collection at the Harry Ransom Center Descriptive Summary Creator: Little, Brown and Company Title: Little, Brown and Company Collection of David Foster Wallace Dates: 1987-2008 Extent: 5 document boxes (2.1 linear feet) Abstract: The Little, Brown and Company Collection of David Foster Wallace contains the files of Michael Pietsch, David Foster Wallace's Little, Brown editor from Infinite Jest (1996) to The Pale King (2011). Call Number: Manuscript Collection MS-5274 Language: English Access: Open for research Administrative Information Acquisition: Gift, 2012 (2012-03-008-G) Processed by: Stephen Cooper, 2012 Repository: The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center Little, Brown and Company Manuscript Collection MS-5274 Scope and Contents The Little, Brown and Company Collection of David Foster Wallace contains the files of Michael Pietsch, David Foster Wallace's Little, Brown editor from Infinite Jest (1996) to The Pale King (2011). The collection contains only a single, unmarked excerpt from The Pale King however, with the majority of these materials residing in the David Foster Wallace Papers at the Ransom Center. Materials in the collection include personal and professional correspondence between Wallace and Pietsch as well as between Pietsch and publishing staff; copy editing files containing manuscript transmittal and design checklists, design proofs, publicity photographs, style sheets, and other items related to book production and promotion; many unmarked and slightly-marked drafts of Wallace pieces sent for Pietsch's review; Pietsch's handwritten reading notes; a Little, Brown author's questionnaire related to Infinite Jest; and editing stickies from drafts of various works. -
Narrative Infinity in the Encyclopedic Novel: Manipulations of Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia in David Foster Wallace's I
NARRATIVE INFINITY IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIC NOVEL: MANIPULATIONS OF DANTE ALIGHIERI’S DIVINA COMMEDIA IN DAVID FOSTER WALLACE’S INFINITE JEST Frances Higgins A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Curriculum of Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2006 Approved by Advisor: Jessica Wolfe Reader: Marsha Collins Reader: Inger Brodey © 2006 Frances Higgins ii ABSTRACT FRANCES HIGGINS: Narrative Infinity in the Encyclopedic Novel: Manipulations of Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (Under the direction of Jessica Wolfe) David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest includes an allusion to Dante’s Divina Commedia that points the reader back to Dante’s opening lines of Inferno. Dante’s Commedia provides a framework for Wallace’s own novel in that the allusion is not only an indication of Wallace’s attempt to place himself with Dante in the literary category of the encyclopedic novel, but also a reminder to the reader of Infinite Jest’s circular narrative structure. This structure, which Wallace borrows from Dante, relies on the resolution of the narrative embedded in the beginning sections. Wallace’s gestures toward the medieval text serve as an ironic reinterpretation of stable allegory and they introduce the promise of truth only to disprove it later. In place of Dante’s four-fold allegory, Wallace allows his characters to believe in the inherent stability of mathematics and the recovery methods of Alcoholics Anonymous but he ultimately undercut’s the reliability of these systems. -
THE ALL-IN-ONE AUDIOBOOK Combining an Easy-To-Use Player with an Entire Audiobook
A GARGANTUAN, MIND-ALTERING COMEDY ABOUT THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS IN AMERICA et in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring one of the Smost endearingly screwed-up families in contemporary fiction,Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to dominate our lives, about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people, and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human— and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do. “Uproarious....Infinite Jest shows off Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything.” —NEW YORK TIMES “The next step in fiction. Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty. Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think.” — SVEN BIRKERTS, Atlantic Monthly DAVID FOSTER WALLACE is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including the novels The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest; the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Oblivion; and the nonfiction collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and numerous other awards. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.