Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Companion to David Foster Wallace StudiesMediated Immediacy in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies: Mediated Immediacy in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men [Comprising 23 separate pieces and 37 or so different voices, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men aggressively explores the warped workings of relationships—largely male-female and primarily their linguistic workings—by creating personae that shock and disgust us with admissions of bad behavior, then add offense by demanding our identification and understanding. Though it has only begun to receive serious critical attention,1 its brazen solicitation of empathy for all kinds of mental, physical, and emotional disfigurements through likewise discomforting generic disfigurements represents a powerful development of themes and goals for fiction that David Foster Wallace had been articulating for several years, not only in Infinite Jest but also in his 1993 interview with Larry McCaffery and essay on television (“E Unibus Pluram: Television and U. S. Fiction”). Most essentially, the book continues his rejection of postmodernism’s unproductive irony in favor of a return to sincerity through metafiction. But to this concern about irony, Brief Interviews adds an unflinching critique of narcissism as an impediment to empathy and sincerity, most often as wielded by men in solipsistic “relationship” with women. Indeed, the collection is Wallace’s only work to focus on the intersection between problems of language and male-female relationships, or, as Wallace himself has described the book, on sex.2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Companion to David Foster Wallace StudiesMediated Immediacy in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Part of the American Literature Readings in the 21st Century Book Series
Editors: Boswell, Marshall; Burn, Stephen J.
Holland, Mary K.
Springer Journals — Nov 7, 2015
Download PDF
23 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/a-companion-to-david-foster-wallace-studies-mediated-immediacy-in-32Ncp68vh0
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2013
ISBN
978-1-349-34112-2
Pages
107 –130
DOI
10.1057/9781137078346_6
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Comprising 23 separate pieces and 37 or so different voices, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men aggressively explores the warped workings of relationships—largely male-female and primarily their linguistic workings—by creating personae that shock and disgust us with admissions of bad behavior, then add offense by demanding our identification and understanding. Though it has only begun to receive serious critical attention,1 its brazen solicitation of empathy for all kinds of mental, physical, and emotional disfigurements through likewise discomforting generic disfigurements represents a powerful development of themes and goals for fiction that David Foster Wallace had been articulating for several years, not only in Infinite Jest but also in his 1993 interview with Larry McCaffery and essay on television (“E Unibus Pluram: Television and U. S. Fiction”). Most essentially, the book continues his rejection of postmodernism’s unproductive irony in favor of a return to sincerity through metafiction. But to this concern about irony, Brief Interviews adds an unflinching critique of narcissism as an impediment to empathy and sincerity, most often as wielded by men in solipsistic “relationship” with women. Indeed, the collection is Wallace’s only work to focus on the intersection between problems of language and male-female relationships, or, as Wallace himself has described the book, on sex.2]

Published: Nov 7, 2015

Keywords: Depressed Person; Moral Universe; Adult World; Incomplete Series; Final Story

There are no references for this article.