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A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies“The Chains of Not Choosing”: Free Will and Faith in William James and David Foster Wallace

A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies: “The Chains of Not Choosing”: Free Will and Faith in... [Infinite Jest is a book containing many secrets, and containing many individuals with secrets. Characters are drawn to mysterious spaces, like Hal Incandenza, who is “as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high” (IJ 490), to the ETA Pump Room, or poor Tony Krause to his narrow toilet stall in the Armenian Foundation Library men’s room (IJ 301). Some carry their secrets around with them, invisible even when in plain sight. Randy Lenz, for example, keeps his emergency stash of cocaine in a curiously deceptive container—a hollowed out copy of “Bill James’s gargantuan Large-Print Principles of Psychology and The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion” (IJ 543) better known as the Varieties of Religious Experience. The inappropriate contents of this tome should, no doubt, suggest to the wary reader that the book he holds in his hands must also be approached with some suspicion, perhaps a suspicion of the metaphor inherent in the idea of the “contents” of a work of art.1 But equally important is Wallace’s choice of the particular author whose work is honored in its deliberate misappropriation. Is there, one cannot help but wonder, any significance in this fact for our understanding of the relation of the two writers?] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies“The Chains of Not Choosing”: Free Will and Faith in William James and David Foster Wallace

Part of the American Literature Readings in the 21st Century Book Series
Editors: Boswell, Marshall; Burn, Stephen J.
Evans, David H.
Springer Journals — Nov 7, 2015
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18 pages

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2013
ISBN
978-1-349-34112-2
Pages
171 –189
DOI
10.1057/9781137078346_9
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Infinite Jest is a book containing many secrets, and containing many individuals with secrets. Characters are drawn to mysterious spaces, like Hal Incandenza, who is “as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high” (IJ 490), to the ETA Pump Room, or poor Tony Krause to his narrow toilet stall in the Armenian Foundation Library men’s room (IJ 301). Some carry their secrets around with them, invisible even when in plain sight. Randy Lenz, for example, keeps his emergency stash of cocaine in a curiously deceptive container—a hollowed out copy of “Bill James’s gargantuan Large-Print Principles of Psychology and The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion” (IJ 543) better known as the Varieties of Religious Experience. The inappropriate contents of this tome should, no doubt, suggest to the wary reader that the book he holds in his hands must also be approached with some suspicion, perhaps a suspicion of the metaphor inherent in the idea of the “contents” of a work of art.1 But equally important is Wallace’s choice of the particular author whose work is honored in its deliberate misappropriation. Is there, one cannot help but wonder, any significance in this fact for our understanding of the relation of the two writers?]

Published: Nov 7, 2015

Keywords: Religious Experience; Religious Faith; Soap Opera; Natural Religion; Plain Sight

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