UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA TESIS DOCTORAL El posposmodernismo: la narrativa de David Foster Wallace MEMORIA PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE DOCTOR PRESENTADA POR Carlos Cerdeña de la Rosa Directora Esther Sánchez-Pardo Madrid, 2018 © Carlos Cerdeña de la Rosa, 2017 UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA DOCTORADO EN ESTUDIOS LITERARIOS EL POSPOSMODERNISMO: LA NARRATIVA DE DAVID FOSTER WALLACE MEMORIA PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE DOCTOR PRESENTADA POR Carlos Cerdeña de la Rosa Bajo la dirección de la profesora Dra. Esther Sánchez-Pardo Madrid, 2017 Imagen de portada propuesta para la primera edición de Infinite Jest. A toda la gente que ha creído en mí y me ha apoyado a lo largo de este proceso. A los cuatro pisos por los que ha pasado esta pantalla iluminada en la madrugada. A los cuatro trabajos que me han permitido hacerlo. A quienes están y quienes han decidido no estar. A mis padres. A Marta. A Esther. Por supuesto, a David Foster Wallace, sin quien nada de esto tendría sentido. Si te has sentido aludido por alguna de las líneas anteriores, esta dedicatoria también va dirigida a ti. Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he’s devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It’s hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency. (Infinite Jest, 54) You know, why are we—and by “we” I mean people like you and me: mostly white, upper middle class or upper class, obscenely well educated, doing really interesting jobs, sitting in really expensive chairs, watching the best, you know, watching the most sophisticated electronic equipment money can buy —why do we feel empty and unhappy? (Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, 82) ÍNDICE 1. ABSTRACT ..........................................................................................................8 1.1. RESUMEN ................................................................................................................12 1.2. INTRODUCCIÓN .......................................................................................................15 1.3. SO THEN YO MAN, WHAT’S YOUR STORY: BIOGRAFÍA DEL AUTOR ........................18 1.4. EL PROBLEMA DE INCLUIR A DAVID FOSTER WALLACE DENTRO DEL POSMODERNISMO NORTEAMERICANO ...........................................................................22 2. MODERNISMO, POSMODERNISMO Y POSPOSMODERNISMO ..................................26 2.1. TIEMPOS MODERNOS: EL MODERNISMO LITERARIO ................................................26 2.2. AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: POSMODERNISMO ..............37 2.3. POSPOSMODERNISMO ..............................................................................................59 2.3.1. THE QUESTION CONCERNING TECHNOLOGY: HEIDEGGER ...............................80 2.3.2. LA SOCIEDAD DEL ESPECTÁCULO: AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH .......................100 3. INFINITE JEST ..................................................................................................117 3.1. UN ESCRITOR DEL SIGLO XXI: EL ENTRETENIMIENTO Y SUS PELIGROS ...............123 3.1.1. THE TSUNAMI OF AVAILABLE FACT, CONTEXT AND PERSPECTIVE: HUXLEY MÁS QUE ORWELL .................................................................................................127 3.1.2. TOO MUCH FUN FOR ANYONE MORTAL TO HOPE TO ENDURE: LA ADICCIÓN .........................................................................................................132 3.2. THE MODERN MALAISE O LO QUE SIGNIFICA SER HUMANO: LA SOLEDAD ............141 3.2.1. LA TRISTEZA, LA DEPRESIÓN Y EL SUICIDIO ................................................147 3.2.2. EL ARTE COMO SALVACIÓN O RESPUESTA O CONSUELO ...............................157 3.3. LA INTERTEXTUALIDAD EN LA OBRA: DOS CASOS ...............................................161 3.3.1. HAMLET, LA DEPRESIÓN Y EL SUICIDIO .......................................................161 3.3.2. EL ¿POSMODERNISMO? NORTEAMERICANO: DELILLO ................................165 4. THE PALE KING ..................................................................................................176 4.1. TO BREATHE, SO TO SPEAK, WITHOUT AIR: EL ABURRIMIENTO .............................180 4.2. FEELING TOTALLY DESOLATE AND LOST: LA IMPOSIBILIDAD DE CONECTAR ........194 5. NOT ANOTHER WORD: A MODO DE CONCLUSIÓN ..............................................208 6. BIBLIOGRAFÍA ...................................................................................................227 !6 El posposmodernismo: la narrativa de David Foster Wallace 1. ABSTRACT Postpostmodernism: the narrative of David Foster Wallace The dissertation you are about to read revolves around two topics, which, of course, converge into just one, and it is my intention to prove that they are both intermingled to the bone: postpostmodernism and David Foster Wallace. On the one hand, postpostmodernism is our proposal as the successor to postmodernism, and the natural response which contemporary authors adopt to try to find answers to the prevailing late capitalism; on the other hand, we try to prove that the complete works of David Foster Wallace make him a champion, a key author to move in the current fog and look for a helpful answer to what it means to be alive in the 21st century. It’s our initial goal to analyze in great depth the plots, concerns and themes that lie within the narrative of the North American author. The present thesis will try to prove that Wallace, throughout his entire career, was moved by the same topics and concerns, that the corpus of his writings can be understood as a whole, a long battle against the same foes, namely solipsism, loneliness, entertainment and boredom. His motives form an indivisible whole, a pattern of topics that appear since his very first published book until the last piece he was working on when he died, and we will try to assess how his answers shifted and matured thorough time. All in all, we will try to assess what it means, according to the author to be «a fucking human being». We will focus on two of his novels, because his most mature oeuvres let us see with greater clarity his intentions: Infinite Jest and The Pale King, but we will support our affirmation through reading his other writings as well: his third novel (The Broom of the System), his short stories compilations (Girl With Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion), as well as his collections of essays (Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Both Flesh and Not). Also, with the intention of gaining profound knowledge of the author’s impressions, points of view and goals for his texts, the reader will often find interviews quoted, mainly the one published in 2010 as a book and entitled Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. !8 El posposmodernismo: la narrativa de David Foster Wallace We will start with a brief biographical sketch, as well as the problems of cataloguing Foster Wallace as a postmodern author, to then go into great detail on the topics of this thesis. The second chapter will try to establish our idea of postpostmodernism: we have analyzed in detail the concepts of both modernism and postmodernism in order to build our concept from solid grounds, and to have a clear, powerful idea of what it is our post- refers to. Our definition of postpostmodernism is based on literature and the works of the author, but we have also explored two of the main topics which conform the very social structure of the current century: mankind’s relationship with technology and the empire of imagery, the spectacularization of the real. Given the philosophical pursuits of Wallace —he majored in English and philosophy, and his father was a Moral Philosophy professor at the University of Illinois—, we’ve believed it convenient to tackle the issue with a deeply philosophical perspective, hence our involvement with authors such as Heidegger, Foucault, Deleuze, Agamben or Debord to establish our concepts. The third chapter is focused on Infinite Jest. Originally published in 1996, it’s now, more than 20 years later, acclaimed by critics and readers as one of the most important creations of the English language in the past few decades. Such creations conform a necessary intertextual relationship with its contemporaries and with canonical referents, and we’ve chosen one of each category, the ones we’ve considered to be the richest and most lengthy in references: Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the works of Don DeLillo — who, likewise, has been often accused of postmodernism, maybe without enough evidence to support that claim— with whom Wallace shared topics, obsessions and correspondence. We will also explore other allusions more or less present in the novel: dystopian novels like 1984 or Brave New World and hallucinated novels like Naked Lunch. The fourth segment of this work is targeted at a deeper understanding of The Pale King, the last and unfinished novel of Foster Wallace, published posthumously in 2011 and which depicts the very last fight against the demons that assaulted his entire adulthood, the very last attempt to come out on top against such a contemporary foe like the !9 El posposmodernismo: la narrativa de David Foster Wallace reigning loneliness, isolation and alienation. To tackle such ambitious undertaking we have carefully read the works of such important thinkers as Adorno, Kierkegaard or Kant, because we