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A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies“Webs of Nerves Pulsing and Firing”: Infinite Jest and the Science of Mind

A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies: “Webs of Nerves Pulsing and Firing”: Infinite Jest... [David Foster Wallace’s second novel, Infinite Jest, had a long gestation. As Wallace explained to Marshall Boswell, he began the book, “or something like it, several times. ’86, ’88, ’89. None of it worked or was alive. And then in ’91–’92 all of a sudden it did” (letter). The finished book “worked” and “was alive” to the extent that Infinite Jest now stands, by common critical consent, at the heart of Wallace’s oeuvre. As his longest book, the novel deliberately overloads generic conventions, flaunting stylistic display and demonstrating an encyclopedic range of knowledge that courses through sport, national identity, addiction, media theory, linguistics, and mathematics.1 Yet for all the book’s intellectual plenitude and exuberant humor, it is also an anatomy of melancholy, and as the millennial self inventories its increasingly empty estate, the book becomes a harvest of souls, chronicling different ways to suffer.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies“Webs of Nerves Pulsing and Firing”: Infinite Jest and the Science of Mind

Part of the American Literature Readings in the 21st Century Book Series
Editors: Boswell, Marshall; Burn, Stephen J.
Burn, Stephen J.
Springer Journals — Nov 7, 2015
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26 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
59 –85
DOI
10.1057/9781137078346_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[David Foster Wallace’s second novel, Infinite Jest, had a long gestation. As Wallace explained to Marshall Boswell, he began the book, “or something like it, several times. ’86, ’88, ’89. None of it worked or was alive. And then in ’91–’92 all of a sudden it did” (letter). The finished book “worked” and “was alive” to the extent that Infinite Jest now stands, by common critical consent, at the heart of Wallace’s oeuvre. As his longest book, the novel deliberately overloads generic conventions, flaunting stylistic display and demonstrating an encyclopedic range of knowledge that courses through sport, national identity, addiction, media theory, linguistics, and mathematics.1 Yet for all the book’s intellectual plenitude and exuberant humor, it is also an anatomy of melancholy, and as the millennial self inventories its increasingly empty estate, the book becomes a harvest of souls, chronicling different ways to suffer.]

Published: Nov 7, 2015

Keywords: Micro Model; Ontological Security; Fiction Writer; Nerve Pulse; Final Clause

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