The unspeakable failures of David Foster Wallace : language, identity, and resistance / / Clare Hayes-Brady

• Autore: Hayes-Brady Clare
• Pubblicazione: New York : , : Bloomsbury Academic, , 2016
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (233 pages)
• Disciplina: 813/.54
• Classificazione: LIT000000LIT004020
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 1. Introduction Section A: Wallace and his World -- 2. "I'm a man of my --" Sketching the Incomplete -- 3. "It's just the texture of the world I live in": The Writer and the World Section B: The Foundational Ideas -- 4. The Book, the Broom and the Ladder: Grounding Philosophy -- 5. "An act of communication between one human being and another": Writing and the Process of Communication -- 6. Narcissism, Alienation and Commun(al)ity Section C: Fail Again: Failure as Structure and Theme -- 7. Vocal Instability and Narrative Structure -- 8. "Personally I'm neutral on the menstruation point": Gender, Difference and the Body -- 9. Freedom, Failure and the Heroic Citizen -- 10. Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.
• Sommario/riassunto: "This book examines the writing of David Foster Wallace, hailed as the voice of a generation on his death. Critics have identified horror of solipsism, obsession with sincerity and a corresponding ambivalence regarding postmodern irony, and detailed attention to contemporary culture as the central elements of Wallace's writing. Clare Hayes-Brady draws on the evolving discourses of Wallace studies, focusing on the unifying anti-teleology of his writing, arguing that that position is a fundamentally political response to the condition of neo-liberal America. She argues that Wallace's work is most unified by its resistance to closure, which pervades the structural, narrative and stylistic elements of his writing. Taking a broadly thematic approach to the numerous types of 'failure', or lack of completion, visible throughout his work, the book offers a framework within which to read Wallace's work as a coherent whole, rather than split along the lines of fiction versus non-fiction, or pre- and post-Infinite Jest, two critical positions that have become dominant over the last five years. While demonstrating the centrality of 'failure', the book also explores Wallace's approach to sincere communication as a recurring response to what he saw as the inane, self-absorbed commodification of language and society, along with less explored themes such as gender, naming and heroism. Situating Wallace as both a product of his time and an artist sui generis, Hayes-Brady details his abiding interest in philosophy, language and the struggle for an authentic self in late-twentieth-century America."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Titolo autorizzato: The unspeakable failures of David Foster Wallace
• ISBN: 1-5013-1355-X; 1-5013-1354-1
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910798087603321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II