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THE ESCHATOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: MEDIATING DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S INFINITE JEST PDF free Download. Think more deeply and widely.

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

THE

ESCHATOLOG

CAL

IMAGINATION

: MEDIATING DAVID FOSTER

WALLACE

INFINITE JEST

JOHN

TIMOTHY

JACOBS, B.A., B.A. (Hons), M.A.

Submitted to

e School of Graduate Studi

in Partial Fulfillme

e Requireme

for

e Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

McM

ter University

Timo

y Jacob

July 2003

Doctor of Philosophy (2003)

(English)

TITLE:

AUTHOR:

ADVISOR:

NUMBER

PAGES:

McM

ter University

Hamilton,

Ont

ario

The

Eschatol

ical Im

inatio

Mediating Dav

ter

Wallace's Infinite J

Tim

y Jacobs, B.A. (University of Calgary), B.A.

(Hons) (McMaster University), M.A. (McMaster

University)

Professor H. Jo

Ferns

vii, 241

ABSTRACT

ere is an inhere

risk in studying co

empora

fiction. Serious qu

tions form

around i

of an a

uth

or's lon

vity and legacy, a work's merit and its endurance for

later s

olarship, and

e varieti

of curre

critical reception and me

odology against

e shifts

come.

The

enda

difficulty of assessing and anal

ing a work before an

industry of critical reception h

formed al

prese

enges. David Foster Wa

ace's

Infinite J

t ( 1996) represe

ese cha

enges, and

much

more; it is at once an

clopedic novel of 1079 pages, full of bo

lib

eral a

s and

ientific eruditio

and an

encomium

an apocalyptic e

of late millennial

erican cultur

e novel is highly

allegorical and operat

with

thr

ee crucial subtext

in addition

e standard diegetic

narra

. In this study, I prese

thr

ee differe

ough not mutua

y exclus

interpretations of this nove

a novel

at h

prese

ed interpretive difficulti

to s

olars

of co

emporary

ction. In Part

e, I surv

compare W a

ace's aes

etic with

radica

lf-

ained, aes

etic of

e poet, G.

Hopkin

o examin

int

ral concept of mediation and explor

e subtext of

e re

turn

e dead

uth

r-th

e novel operat

es,

in part,

a rejoinder to

e death-of-the-a

uth

or critical

impasse; Pa

Thr

ee is primarily comparative a

anal

yzes

dor D

toevs

Brothers Karamazov

880). Wa

ace h

rewritten (or reimagine

Dostoevsky's novel

and translated it into a co

emporary co

ext a

idiom

a remedy for p

tmode

erican solipsis

111

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to ext

anks to my

is committee: Dr. Alan

shop (First

Reader), Dr. J

fery Dona

n (Second Reader), and Dr. Johu Fe

s (Doctoral Adviso

All have made significa

contributions to my graduate education. Especial

anks,

however, are reserved for Dr. Ferns for his patience, receptivity to my seemingly

incongrue

studies, guidance, and, m

t importantl

r exhorting me to "be happy in

rk" during

e dark season.

For

Nikki,

e Only L

ove

of My Only

Lif

-'A

in & A lways'

Contents

Introduction

In Pare

nth

is:

Reading David Foster Wallace

Part

One

American Touchstone:

The

ea of Order

Part Two

Infinite Geist: Lexical Investigation, Mediatio

and th" Ghost of the Author

Part

Three

The

Eschatological Im

ination: Translations

113

Conclusion

The

Art of Moral Fiction: A Coda

219

Bibliography

232

"Beware when

e great God lets loose a thinker on this plane

en a

thin

are at

sk"

-R

alph Wa

Circl

es"

172).

].T. Jaco

bs,

PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Introduction

Parenthesis: Reading David Foster Wallace

"In a

the

art

adhering to a sch

l and i

uing group manifestoes 1

sta

tement

common

aims is a sign of youthfulness, a

to some degree

immaturity;

a pa

int

er or writer or

her

creative person grows o

er a

acquires more a

uth

ity,

tend

s to withdraw from a

such

nizations and become simply him

lf'-N

orthrop Frye (qtd. in

Weber

vii).

'"Sch

ls'

fiction are for cra

nk-turn

ers.

e founder

a move

ment

never

part

the

movem

ent"-

David Foster Wa

ace (McCaffery 144).

"Irony is an im

portant

nre for us because so

much

contemporary liter

ure

ironic in its tone.

irony appeals

is a sense

normality

...

that

sense

normality in

the

audience

enables irony

make its

point

iron

With

that

sense

the

norma

irony would

cease

become ir

ic and become simply a descrip

tion"-Northrop

Frye ("Liter

erapy"

29).

In his essay "Contemporary American Fiction

Throu

gh University Pr

ess

Filters,"

Sanford Pinsker recently reviewed three critical studies of contemporary American

fiction. 1 In this review article Pinsker laments the

path

taken in rece

schola

y literary

studies, particularly within the context

current American fiction

his title s

ges

ts,

noting

that

university presses now tend

produce "sausage-grinder stuff'

that

"contextualiz[

] with a vengeance" (375). All three works treated

Pinsker tend

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

esi

Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

organi

a random and ostensibly disparate

lection of post-Second World War novels

around

e now-common literary

-th

eoretical template o

in Pinsker's words, "

ntit

politic

(375

at is to say, race, class,

nder, and queer

eor

Alth

ough he makes

many

nsible po

int

-p

int

at a

, pe

more applicable to

e curre

state of

academic publis

hin

-Pin

skcr ra

er amusingly grinds his axe on

ese specific critical

works, just

he supposes

ese critics' a

erence to and application of curre

litera

theories to

erican fiction functions

"axes to grind with regard

eir

distinguished predecessors"

79). It is not my

int

nti

e debate over

'culture wars,' or the merits of certain me

ods of literary anal

is of curre

erican

fiction, nor

engage

e pere

nni

al debate abo

just

what

cons

titut

es significa

emporary

ction, which works merit academic

spection, or of questions of popular-

high-culture litera

tur

I have instead

ed one co

emporary

erican novel for critical

examination, Dav

ter Wa

ace's Infinite Jest (1996).

stead of privileging a

eoretical discour

in this study of

erican

ction, I have priv

eged

e litera

artifa

fir

st and

en made

lective u

of literary-philosophical

eories and

perspectives,

rra

ed and appropriate. It should be noted,

en,

employme

of secondar

eoretical te

s in this study o

en emerges from Wa

ace's

own references

ese texts and not

om a preconceived

eoretical model to apply to

ace's fiction.

Thi

s is particula

y significa

ese po

int

s of embarkation lead

Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Depa

rtm

glish,

McM

ter University

more fertile a

significa

und

erstanding of one of

erica's

most

disturbing, erudite,

imaginative literary voices.

density a

encyclopedic co

ent, Infinite Jest

sta

s o

aga

e broad re

ef-map of

erican

ction a

s alr

dy been

compared with similar

-s

tyled, notable pre

cur

sor

William Gaddis's

e Recognitions

(1955) a

omas Pyncho

s Gravity's Rainbow (1973), bo

which

hav

e received

substa

nti

al critical

in bo

article a

book-leng

studies. Becau

Wall

ace

actively publishes essays

popular fo

rum

s (

ough an 'academic') , a

int

erviews on

e a

ction, I

ve, na

tur

ize

s ideas a

eories

with

his seco

nove

Becau

ther

e is still no full-leng

critical study

Infinite Jes

and

becau

of its core complexity a

e failure of s

olars

and

general readers

come to

even a general con

nsus on how

e novel's plot resolves

sel

the

primary aim of

study is explicative. Fragme

chr

onology is a major f

tur

e of

thi

s novel, as

Burn

has meticulously

aborated

recent

der's guide

Infinite Jest (2003), a

r of narrative eve

s is mi

etic narrative ("Year of Glad,"

narrative prese

which

e novel o

pen

s). Many reviewer

most notably

e New

York

Tim

es's

chiko Ka

kut

ani, have claimed

e novel to be poorly edited and,

borrowing

Henr

y James, have ca

ed it a "'loose baggy monster"'

kut

n.p.) ;

ace has co

unter

ed by asse

rtin

at "it may be a mess,

but

it's a ve

careful me

. A

lot of work we

int

o making it l

k like

at.

at mig

und

like a pa

etic lie,

but

it's not" (Dona

e n.p

, some

thin

Burn

suppo

s in his deta

ed r

din

g of Infinite

J.T. Jacob

PhD

esis, Departme

Eng

sh, McM

ter

iversity

Jest's chronological sequence. Becau

thi

s chronological lac

a, however,

ere can

be no d

initive

nsus on

e resolution

nite Jest's pLot. S

ace h

car

ully composed a novel

at is bo

a reader-respon

eorist

worst nig

htm

are or

textual cornucopi

each individual reader e

e diegetic narrative after

e reading

and extrapolat

from

e few slender

t crucial clues how

e narrative concludes.

result is a powerful textual resonance, like none

her in rece

can fiction, a

one

which such a scrupulous artist

ace must surely have been aware

of.

In what

ows, I provide t

ee distinct,

ough not

mutu

y exclusive,

int

erpretations or

readin

Infinite Jest.

Part

merican Touchstone:

e Idea of

Ord

er," outlines Wa

ace's

aes

eti

linking it

one

his greatest

ough seemingly ur· l:kely influences,

Victorian poet Gerard Manl

Hopkin

this

cha

er, I f

urth

er comme

on Wa

ace's views toward co

emporary art, particula

y co

emporary

erican fiction,

and highlig

the ways in which Wa

ace h

appropriated Hopkins's aes

etic and

transformed it

int

o a co

emporary visionary model of his own. In this ope

nin

g cha

e w

ays

in which Infinite Jest is multi-layered with various levels of s

ubt

ext.

of its more significa

subtexts is

at it operates

an aes

ic a

egory in which

narrator obliquely

mme

s on

emporary a

and

e curre

proclivi

of curre

artists, particula

y fiction writers,

make

works primarily ironic witho

gro

undin

their irony in what Fr

s "a

of normalit

Litera

tur

e" 29). In an

int

ervie

5 J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Depa

rtment

of Eng

McM

ter University

ace ca

s this

ironic ground -clearin

irony and

nicism were just what

S. hypocri

e fifti

and

sixti

ed fo

what made

e early postmodernists great artist

e great thing abo

irony is

at it splits

thin

apart,

ts us up above

we can

aws and hypocrisi

, a

dupliciti

....

Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great w

ays

to strip o

stuff's

k and show

e unpleasa

reality behind it.

e problem is

at once

e rul

for a

are debunked, and once

e unpleasa

liti

e irony

diagnoses are revealed and di

nosed, then what do we do? Irony's useful

for debunking illusion

but

t of

illu

debunking in

S. h

now been done and redon

(McCa

ery 14 7, interviewer

emph

e ends of irony concern Wa

ace. In his aes

etic formulation, irony is now

unm

oored

fro

m any aes

etic constra

int

s (Frye's "normality"), a

it is instructi

to note

para

els he defin

between

e a

ected forms

cultural e

nnui

and "p

tmodern iron

a "hatred that winks and nudges

u a

pretends it

just kidding" (14 7), a

e artistic

production and consumption of this cultural attitude.

at is to say, for Wa

ace,

ere is

no division between artis

c production/consumption and co

emporary

ving;

mille

nni

a! a

s have, becau

of commercial art

co-opting of

rious

ction's strategi

increasingly become "our guide to inclusion. A how-to"

t 694). Wa

ace works to

remedy what he diagnoses

an extreme mille

nni

erican "Romantic glorification of

Welt

with i

affected "world-weariness" a

"hip e

nnui

" (694). In this

se,

ace proclaims G.

Hopkins a co

emporary

erican aes

etic "touchston

" and

uses him

a star to steer b

In do

g so, Wa

ace inevitably commences

e very thing

he s

hun

a literary

hool or moveme

, by providing a radica

lf-co

ained and

ntr

ed aes

etic

her co

emporary writers to observ

].T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

e next real litera

'rebels' in this country mig

emer

some

ird

bunch

of anti-rebel

born oglers who dare somehow

back aw

from ironic watchin

who have

e childish ga

actua

y to endor

and

insta

nti

ate single-e

ndr

e princ

ipl

es.

o treat of

ain o

untr

endy

hum

an troubl

and emotions in U.S. life with reverence a

conviction.

lf-consciousness a

hip

tigue.

ese anti-rebels would

be outdated, of cour

se,

before

even sta

ed Dead on

e page. Too

sincere. Clea

rly

repressed. Backward, quaint, na·ive,

achronistic.

at'll be

e point. M

at's why

ey'

e next real

rebels. Real rebels,

far

I can see, risk disapprova

e o

postmode

sur

s risked

e gasp and squea

shock, di

ust, outrage,

censorship, accu

tions of socia

anarchism, nihilis

Today's risks are

different.

e new rebels mig

be artists willing to risk

wn,

e cool smil

e nud

d ribs,

e paro

of gifted ironists.

E Unibus Pluram" 8

Thi

apter operates

an esse

nti

al grounding in Wa

ace's aesthetic view

and

an introductory b

is to embark upon a more deta

ed comme

ary on a

understa

ndin

of Infinite J

t in

e anal

yses

to com

e succee

din

apters.

Part Two, "Infinite Geist: Lexical Inv

tigation, Mediation, and

t of

Auth

" reads Wa

ace's novel in terms o

exical anal

is and narrative mediation, bo

of which are fo

und

ational to

e work cons

ered and to Wa

ace's conception of

e a

fiction. Becau

it seems more

an any o

er co

empora

erican

nove

appropriat

aes

etic me

ods and styl

om a legion of

urces,

e study is

also inevitably comparative at tim

es.

I have employed a tripartite me

odol

ogy

for this

apter

at includ

hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadame

enomenol

ogy

aurice

Merleau-Po

y), a

reader-r

pon

eory (Wolfgang l

r). I further explore

relationship between i

lated words

at operate

dense

coded leitmotifs in

e novel

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

and demonstrate,

in Part

at Infinite J

t is

elaborate critica

aesthetic

egor

and

at it is structured

a subtle rejoinder to

e 'de

ath

e author' imp

ass

in critical

eory.

Onl

y one o

er critic h

noted

e p

oss

ibility of such a readin

and

at is to be found in Burn's reader's guide. Becau

Burn's

nin

ety-six-page guide is

prima

ril

y intended for an undergraduate audience,

part of Co

ntinuum

ess

'Continuum Co

empora

of uniform precis guid

to rece

fiction, he does

not, however, explore this cha

enging and exciting area of critical inquiry into Infinite

t in any deta

but

instead suggests it for a possible essay and/or discu

ion qu

tio

ace is clearly aware of developme

s in p

tstructura

st criticism over

e l

t few decad

. Can

e s

etch

e novel

at deta

an a

uth

returning

e grave to explain how his 'radical rea

sm' (836) h

been misunderstoo

be read

an oblique comme

ary on Roland

rth

'Th

e Dea

Auth

or'? (79)

Part

Thr

ee,

"Th

e Es

atol

al Im

ination," argu

that

Infinite Jest is a subtle

and elaborate rewriting (re-im

ining or re-visioning) of Feodor D

toe

ky's l

t and

great

t nove

e Bro

ers Karam

azo

879-1880); in this chapte

I co

end

ace h

figurati

ly translated D

toevsky's novel

int

o bo

a co

emporary

can idiom and co

ext, while preserving

e prima

philosophical-thematic

of Dostoevsky's o

ginal nove

e i

ues of reason versus faith

r be

and

significance

eol

ical engageme

rough

ction. Becau

Infinite J

t operat

several aes

etic level

this chapter argu

at Wa

ace subtly prob

e qu

tion of

whe

er mille

nni

can art h

as,

at long l

viewed

e ends of p

tmodernist

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

literature; I co

not only

at Wallace's novel is esc

hat

ological-instead of

'apocalyptic'

-but

at his own aes

etic is al

chly informed with

atol

ical

nsibility partly inherited from D

toevsky. As a 'critic' I have

ass

umed

e role of

mediato

and hope

at my discu

ion of Infinite J

rves three purp

es: to encourage

further critical discour

on it;

ers,

lik

e me, who have worked or continue to

work on Wa

ace's fiction and

ays

; and

ass

ist new

aders of the novel

arrive at a

full

er appreciation of Wa

ace's extraordinary achievement. As with a

works o

flit

erature

ere can never be a single and terminal definitive interpretation of a litera

artifact, and

ese three chapters are intended

be anything

but

definitive

-they

represe

only

outcome of several years of

ose study of Wa

ace's work

Find

lly,

e study is partly a

cultural study of

erican art and its con

quences on contemporary life and the i

lated

ubj

ect;

e social rol

of communication and

e significance and active influence of

ction on

erican culture are

tan

ntia

lly

sse

d through the lens of Wa

ace's

ction.

* * *

ace's entry o

e American scene of co

emporary-fiction writing began in

87 with

e publication of his

fir

st nove

e Broom of

e 0yste

gina

y written

nior undergraduate

is at

Amh

erst Co

ege, M

ass

achusetts. Two years later

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

the publication of his first co

ection of s

hort

ction,

e Girl with Curious Hair (

89),

e product of academic work, this time from

e University

Ari

na's creative-

writing program where he took his M.F.A.

eris

referred to by Wa

ace

his

ter of

atule

Art

ree) (Bruni n.

Summ

er 1993, with Infinite Jest still,

in Wa

ace's own words, a "quite a bit lon

thin

g in progress" ("Progress" 223),

Review of Co

empora

cti

on featured Wa

ace (with fe

ow emerging fiction writers,

William T. Vollma

and Susan Daitch) in its inaugural

ounger

Writ

ers I

ue for

ose writers who, wrote editor Larry

McC

ery, "desnite a lifetime of literary

achieve

ment

, have received little critical a

ention,"

t are "promising enough to suggest

will eve

ntu

y achieve historical importance" (7). McCa

ery's words have proved

prophetic, a

lth

ough, at

e time, Wa

ace's litera

output

could have been sa

to be

with only one novel a

one co

ection

sho

ction publishe

is fair to say,

then,

at Wa

ace's work remained lar

unkn

own until

e publication of his massive

cond novel,

e 1079-pa

Infinite Jest, which immediately broug

him a notewo

rth

if not peculia

blend of prai

from

erican book critics in publications ranging

Atl

antic Monthly

e New York

Tim

es and an immediate 'cult fo

owing' on

the

Int

et and comparisons

simila

style nove

sts like

nch

on, William G

ass

William Burrough

and William Gaddi

among o

4 Wa

ace h

since published a

ection of "essays and argume

" A Supposedly

Fun

Thing

I'll Never Do Again

(1997), which consists of his contributions

various mainstream publications like

10 ].T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

is,

Departme

of Eng

McM

ter University

Harper's; a second co

ection of short fiction, Brief

Int

erviews with Hideous Men ( 1999);

with a third co

ection, Oblivion, fo

rth

coming (2004) , and h

aborated with Mark

Coste

o on a critical work,

e some

what

dated Signifying Rappe

: Rap a

Race in

Urban Prese

( 1990). T

ing to his di

int

ts and brea

dth

holarly abilit

ace h

written a critical bi

raphy of the ma

ematician, Georg Ca

or (1845-

191

8), entitled Everything and Mor

Cantor & Zeno & Ma

& Abs

action & oo

(Oct

ober 2003).

ere i a curious dichotomy between

mewhat

odding critical a

popular inter

t in David Foster Wa

ace,

en his work (including his jo

urn

stic

contributions to publications like Harper's and Rolling

one Mag

ine) is mediated by

his academic sta

ndin

Prior to writing Infinite 1

t, Wa

ace spe

time pursuing a

doctorate in Philosophy- or more prec

"aes

etic

(Coste

235)-

at Harvard

Uni

rsity before

aving

e program., pr

uma

y (although Wa

ace me

nti

ons this

nowhere), to devote him

lffull-time to writing

ction.5

1992, he accepted a position

with

e Departme

of Eng

sh at Illinois

ate University (Norma

and, as of this year,

commenced

e position

Disn

air

eati

Writin

g at Pomona Co

ege

(Claremo

, California), a cha

endowed

rough a $1.7 5 million gift by R

Edwa

Disn

airman of

e Disn

Corporation a

ew of

e late Walt Disn

which endowme

sparked a

of media a

nti

on becau

of Wa

ace's

tirical

examination of corporation

rtising, and marketing in his fictio

t notably

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Infinite Jest and

e short story "Mr Squishy. "6 In terms of Wa

ace's fiction-writing

ability and g

eral erudition

ere is little doubt

at he is of

fir

st ra

. He is

recipie

of an

Henry Award

(19

89),

e Pa

s Review Pri

(1988

Whitin

Writ

ers' Award (198

, a La

an Foundation award (1996) and, m

t recently, the

tigious Jo

and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fe

owship, popula

known

a 'genius gra

' (1997). Pe

aps one of the reasons for Wa

ace's a

eal

compelling literary

gure for study in

e ea

y t

y-first ce

ntu

is his active

engageme

a public inte

ectual, literary artist, and acade

For Wa

ace's

rks

tend to ce

er upon a sma

ran

of recurring

es,

at are continua

y re

fin

ed by

him, and

at he vi

rously works at in

e b

t inter

ts of his readership. As I argue in

Part Two, Wa

ace is a hig

y skilled manipulator of textual form

ously using capital

foo

and e

ndn

es,

interpolated edito

al pare

nth

eses- "[,]" (Brief 150)- a

punctuation-"'

(Je

st 782 )- for strat

ect

e text and underscor

e fa

of a mediating presence within

e text at a

tim

for the

ade

It can be

id,

en,

at this unique a

uth

or continua

liv

in parenthesis within his work, a

ays

endeavoring to conver

with his reader

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

Eng

sh, McMaster University

Notes

1 See Sa

ord Pinsker, "Co

empora

can Fiction

Throu

gh Uni

rsity

ess

Filters,"

The

Geo

rgi

a Review 55.2 (2001): 374-38

Thi

s passage is excerpted from Wa

ace's revi

d version of this

say reprinted

in his co

ection of e

ays, A Supp

edly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

ton: Little,

1997): 21-82. For

e o

ginal version see "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S.

Fiction."

e Review of Co

emporary Fiction 13.2 (1993): 151-194.

3 See

e Review of Co

empora

ction 13.2 (

93) : 127ff.

4 Academic-critical reception to Wa

ace w

initia

y cool or distance

McCa

ery ob

r back

1993, until

e publication o

om LeCla

"Th

Prodigious Fiction of

cha

Power

William Vollma

and David F

ter Wa

ace,"

Critique 3

1 (1996

12-37.

e popular reception to Infinite J

howeve

creation of many 'fan'

-b

ased, Inte

et web sit

a chat-group and

st-serv

devoted to Wa

ace and his work

online indices and readers' guides al

appeared. For

me of

e more promine

web p

es, see: Tim Ware, "Infinite J

Onlin

e Index,"

<http://wwvi.ironhorsc.com/

-thamer

/dfw.html>; Bob Wak

"Infinite J

t: Re

ews,

Articles, and Misce

y,"

<http://www.smallbytcs.net/

-hohkat!icstcrlist.html>;

Nick

Manti

"Th

e Howling Fa

ods,"

<htw://www.gcocitics.com/Athcns/Acropolis/8175/

dfw.htm>;

Auth

or, "

And

But So

at's

Thi

s: A

ara

er Guide to Infinite J

<http://www.ilsm.edu/

-tffeene

/ij/characterguidc.html> .

It should al

be noted

at Wa

ace's

ction,

pecia

y Infinite J

t, h

nerated

num

erous undergraduate

eses devoted to Wa

ace,

me of which arc p

ted

e Inte

et e

ith

er in installme

s or entirel

see, for exampl

T oon

euwi

t for Infinite J

Enqui

into

e En

clopedic and P

odernist Nature of

David F

ter Wa

ace's Infinite J

t." More recently,

o unpublished doctoral

dis

rtations have a

eared in which a

apter of each explo

'' Infinite J

William

Str

ecke

"Ecologi

of Kno

: Narrative Ecol

ogy

in Co

empora

erican

Fiction

ss.,

ate U, 2000

and

Gregory Ruberto, "Tec

ologies of

Self:

chard Power

Neal

ephen

n, D

ter Wa

ace," di

ss.,

Harvard U, 2000.

5 See Mark C

tello, "

ghting to

Writ

ort Reminiscence of D.F. Wa

ace

e Review of Co

empora

Fiction 13.2 (1993

235-236. Mark C

a nove

him

lf, w

ace's roommate during Wa

ace's time at Harvard, and it w

at this

time

e two co

aborated on

eir study of rap musi

Jacobs,

PhD

The

is,

Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

In an ema

er to Ha

's noted philoso

er of langua

aes

eti

cs,

Stanl

Cave

, I inquired if in fact Cave

had supervi

d W a

ace during

e nove

st's

time at Harvard. Professor Cave

promptly r

ponded (26 January 2002), writin

ough I am impressed by what I know of Dav

Foster Wa

ace's work . . . I'm sorry to

say

that he did not work with me while he w

at Harvard." Cave

goes on to convey a

peculiar anecdote, however: "I w

told several years ago by one of my close

fri

end

former stude

of mine,

at Wa

ace came to a

minar of mine once and w

ended

some

thin

g I said or

e way I

it, and never returned. Since I don't regard

lf as

careless of o

er peo

e's feelin

, I w

pained to lea

bad

beh

avio

can only

at it was an aberration on my part. I do not reca

e incident."

6 For more on

e Disn

endowme

see Eli

Franck, "Disn

ter

ace,"

e New York Observer 3 December 2001: 3, or

The

New York

rver

Onlin

e, 24 Ja

ary 2002,

p://www.obscrver.com/pag

/story.asp?ID = 3938#to

p>.

Eli

emm (p

udony

David Foster Wa

ace), "Mr Squishy

Tim

othy

McSweene

arte

rly

Concern 5 (2000): 199-248.

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Part

One

American Touchstone:

The

Idea

Order

"Nothing

bad in itself except disorder"-T.E. Hulme ("A Tory Philosophy,"

The

Collected

Writings ofT.E. Hulme 235).

"Is

there no order here?"-Bertolt Brecht (The Trial

Lucullus,

"Custom

hath

made it in him a property of I Easiness"-William Shakespeare (Hamlet, 5

.1.67

-68).

In the first critical article

David Foster Wallace's second novel, Infinite Jest

(1996),

Tom

LeClair calls the work

"allegory of aesthetic orphanhood" (33).

Wallace's novel

at once a dense compendium of American neuroses and addictions,

astute examination

the insatiable American proclivity

the pursuit

happiness-"happification" (Jest

42)-in

age

infinite stimulative choice, and a l

atent

aesthet

allegory. For Wallace, the typically American rush toward attaining (and

sustaining) pleasure

lf-destructive habit of mind

that

has its root in the arts,

particularly the literary arts of millennia! America.

The

postmodern bequest of heavily

ironic and self-conscious fiction has corrupted literature, according to Wallace,

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

diminishing it from its previous status

a "living transaction between humans," leaving

literary orphans in its wake (McCaffery 142, 150).

The

consequence, for Wallace,

that

current fiction regresses into a game

that

celebrates the author and privileges the artifact

over the reader, terminating any potential transcendent communicative power. Wallace

attributes the aporia between writer and reader

a state

aesthetic rulelessness in

which writers are no longer "using formal innovation in the service of

original vision"

(145). In Infinite Jest, Wallace revives the mimetic tradition of realism-"little-r" for

Wallace

he negotiates "canonical distinctions" ( 140)-by defamiliarizing current literary

perceptions and expectations within his artifact. Infinite Jest creates a new space for

American fiction

recalling past practitioners

mimesis and through adherence to

aesthetic rules

that

recall Gerard Manley Hopkins's exacting yet prescient aesthetic. In

doing

so,

Wallace establishes

aesthetic

that

combines order with originality, and one

that

conveys a singular message in

unself-conscious manner.

The

correspondence

between these two artists surpasses their artistic production; their art symbolically

transforms the mythos of their literature into what Northrop Frye has called a "myth to

live

by"

(17), in which literature bridges existential loneliness and, in Wallace's case,

American "lostness" (Miller 2).

Wallace attributes current fiction's malaise to a culture of irony founded

American postmodernists like Nabokov, Pynchon, Coover, Barth, and other innovative

writers who "weathered real shock" (McCaffery 135) and inventively exercised irony to

T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

destabilize their docile society.

Their

fictions defamiliarized the familiar by making

standard things strange. In the aftermath there has followed a series of "crank turners"

(135) weaned

the same ironic formulae,

but

operating

when

the strange

now

normal, the defamiliar all-too familiar: "we need fiction writers to restore strange things'

ineluctable strangeness' (McCaffery 140, interviewer's emphasis). Fiction's function is

now "reversed" ( 140). Irony

a cultur

currency has sent

retreating further into the

mind; authorial posturing replaces conviction

"all U.S. irony

based

implicit 'I

don't

really mean what I say"' premise

that

"serves

exclusiH

:ly

negative function"

(Wallace, "E Unibus" 183). Wallace contends

that

purposeless

ony (for irony's sake)

paralyzes when it "becomes in and of itself just a mode of social discourse.

That

is,

it's

not

really about causing any sort

change anymore, it's just sort

a hip, cool way to do

it-to

speak and act, to sort

make fun

everything and yourself and being really afraid

being made fun

of'

(Wiley 1). In her somewhat prophetic essay, "Spoofing and Schtik

[sic]

"(1965),

Pauline Kael cautions

that

"unlike satire, spoofing has

serious objectives

it has no cleansing power. It's just a technique of ingratiation: the spoof apologizes

for

its existence, assures

that

...

it isn't aiming

for

beauty or expressiveness or meaning or

relevance" (85).

The

result

a fiction

that

aims

ly for the 'wow' factor, a relentless

reminder

that

the "author

smart and funny" ("E Unibus" 191).

The

author becomes

the novel's ostensible subject, and readers are forced to read such works

flattering their

"erudite postmodern Weltschmerz"

for

'getting'

author's references and tricks (191).

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

e muddling con

quence of this irony vogue is twofold. 1 First, fiction is

creasingly

concerned abo

communicating (not didactica

but

penetrating

ano

er's consciousness) with

e reader; a

, seco

, becau

"irony's singula

unu

ful

when it comes to constructing anything to re

ace

e hypocrisi

it de

bunk

83), a va

cuum

remains

at fiction writers u

a forum of expression of

e "loo

at-

me-please

-l

ove-me-l-hate-

u" type

at s

purn

e reader and celebrates

e artifact

instead of a

ndin

g to its recipie

(McCa

. Fiction slips

int

o a state of rule less

lip

sism. In Infinite J

t, ha

lfw

hou

Gunth

er "amus

her

lf'

wearing her gl

ass

eye "so

e pupil and

e iris face in and

e dead white and tiny

nuf

acturer's spec

ifi

cations on

e back .

face o

" (363).

Gunth

er's gl

ass

eye

(solipsis

e nove

s primary meta

or for involuted a

at terminat

with

artificer.

Art

in her time fails to engage her a

leaves her, like the novel

chara

rs,

"ch

ained in a cage of

lf'

(777).

example of literary p

turing

ace uses in his essay, "E Unibus Plura

Television a

U.S. Fiction," is image-

ction writer Mark Leyner's

Cousin,

troe

erolo

st (1990). Leyner's work is

a novel

an it is a co

age of familiar popular culture image

warmed-up in ironic

hion:

I'm stirring a pitcher o

anquer

martinis with one ha

and sliding a

froze

n clams oreganata into

e oven with my foo

I've

t a dozen

cigare

going simultaneously in

htr

ays

over

e apartment. God,

ese Me

edrine supp

itori

at Yogi

Vith

aldas gave me are good! As

I iron a pa

of tennis sho

s I dictate a haiku

int

o a tape recorder a

h o

to snake a clogged drain in

e bathroom sink and

en do

thr

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

minutes

the speedbag before making

origami praying mantis and

then

reading

article in High Fidelity magazine

I stir the coq au vin.

(Leyner 49, "E Unibus" 191)

Leyner's fiction mimes American materialist culture in a world-weary fashion-something

that

television now does, Wallace notes

("E

Unibus" 174ff)-but offers nothing in the

intervening gap, and provides readers nothing with which they are not already familiar.

Wallace calls this affliction "cleveritis" (McCaffery 134), and insists

that

a constant

for

artistic cleverness ultimately ends in

aesthetic stalemate

which the reader

inundated with the familiar.

Wallace contends

that

serious fiction needs

counter television's implicit denial

"that

we're lonely" and

that

its images (and the Internet's

well) contribute to loneliness

providing only the "facsimile

a relationship without the work of a relationship"

(136). Fiction's job, then,

to "aggravate"-even antagonize-a "sense

entrapment and

loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible

human redemption requires

first

face what's dreadful, what

want

deny" (136).

In its fullest realization, the novel

than

a verbal joust, and should be a "deep,

significant conversation with another consciousness" in which a "relationship"

forged

that

enables the reader to feel "unalone-intellectually, emotionally, [and] spiritually"

(Miller 5).

Without

confronting our own sense

mortality

cannot begin to live

abundantly,

but

will instead slip into further solipsism and what Wallace calls

"anhedonia" (Jest 695), an alienating form

analgesia that numbs

from a meaningful

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department ofEngli h, McMaster University

knowledge of ourselves. For the driven kids

Infinite Jest's Enfield Tennis Academy, the

"idea

that

achievement doesn't automatically confer interior worth

is,

to them, still,

this age, an abstraction, rather like the prospect

their own

death-'Caius

Mortal' and

on" (693).2 Wallace here echoes the syllogism from Tolstoy's "The

Death

Ilych": "Caius

a man,

men

are morta

therefore Caius

mortal" (Tolstoy 1723). For

Ilych, Caius

a pure abstracti

on-the

'other' faceless persons

the world

that

die,

not

him.

ych lives a status quo existence, and his

goal

the thoughtless acquisition of

material goods and a decorous

life.

When

sudden disease and his impending

death

overtake him, he

shocked into a recognition of his own mortality, one

that

comes too

late. His

wife

and daughters dishonestly console him and

fail

themselves to acknowledge

his deathbed situation. Tolstoy's novella does precisely what Wallace calls

for

American fiction: it forces readers to face their own mortality. In Infinite Jest, the "

liv

ely

arts

the millennia! U.S.A."

fail

to awaken its characters from their withdrawn state.

Instead, they treat

anhedonia and internal emptiness

hip and cool. It's maybe the vestiges

the Romantic glorification

ofWe

ltschmerz, which means world-

weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it's the fact

that

most of the arts here are

produced

world-weary and sophisticated older people and

then

consumed

younger people who

not

only consume art

but

study it for

clues

how to be cool,

hip-and

keep in mind that, for kids and younger

people, to be hip and cool

the same

to be admired and accepted and

included and

Unalone

....

The

U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A

how-to.

are shown how to fashion masks

ennui and jaded irony at a

young age

...

And

then

it's stuck there, the weary cynicism

that

saves

from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. Sentiment equals

naivete

this continent. (Jest 694)

T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Tele

sion,

Int

ernet, and Passaro's renai

ssa

nce in

erican fiction have produced an

"anaes

ia of

nn''

at dulls

ses

a temporary and unfulfilling "an

etic

against loneliness"

failing

engage peo

e (McCa

ery

6, interviewer's emph

is).

ace not

at "our dread of being trapped inside a

chic self, not just a

lf)

to do with an

t about dea

e recognition

at I'm

ing to di

and

die very much alon

and

e r

t of

e world is going

merrily on without me"

36). Successful fiction

rces a recognition of our morta

communicating with

reade

Onl

en can we begin

ve, not

rough

e simulacra of television and

Internet which purport

take us o

of our

es,

but

only

v id

e image of realit

not

e experience, whe

er an exotic locale or a relationship. Wa

ace's aes

etic

requir

ction disturb our sta

existence and propel us into

e common

ences of human life.

Like Wa

ace, Ke

Burke argu

in his

e Philosophy of Litera

Form

(1941)

at enriched

hum

an expe

ence

-th

e "ultimate philosophic vision"

-i

s o

ained

only

thr

ough

e '"dialectical' a

roach"

"dram

of conflict" (157), in which we

per

y grapple with

e troubling

pects of being human and transmit

at heritage.

ving, Burke str

es,

ot be accomplished by "going aro

und

drama,"

but

only by

"going th

ugh dram

(157, a

uth

or's emph

is). Burke argue

e best of human

oug

is distilled

ere ari

ses

sk of "a

enuation" (157).

Art

is succ

ess

ively

diminished when

r artists, impressed with aes

etic innovation

empt to

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

'begin"' where the innovator left

off,

"as though there could

handed to them,

platter, the imaginative grasp

this ultimate period" which the founding artist "earned

that

had gone before it" (158). Wallace's conception

the 'crank turner' echoes

Burke

today's literary artists attempt to "'project"' the "last styl

of the innovator

"with efficiency into a mannerism" (158).

The

difference between

e two types of artist

that

today's writers no longer participate in

aesthetic conflict

their own and,

instead, convey an inherited and diminished aesthetic

that

fits neither writer nor

reader: "the only stuff a writer can get from

artistic ancestor

a certain set of aesthetic

values and beliefs, and maybe a set of formal techniques

that

might-just might-help the

writer chase his own click" (McCaffery

7).

The

innovator attains a mode

aesthetic

representation forged in the foundry of conflict, of testing thought with (symbo

lic

) action:

"there

a crucial difference between the peace

a warrior who

lays

down his arms

...

and the peace

those who are innocent

war (innocence untried being like snow fallen

in the night; let

not praise it

for

not

melting until the sun has been full upon it)"

(Burke 158). Wallace and Burke both contend

that

emerging artists must make their

own art out of the fragments

the inherited past, adapting it to the conflicts of their

cultur

Visionary artists,

out

conflict, evo

e projects

for

atonement, Versohnung, assuagement.

They hand these

to others.

And

the heirs must either make these

structures

atonement the basis

a new conflict, or be emptied. Much

the best in thought

evolved to teach

how to die well; whereupon it

studied and built upon

those who have never lived well. Either

anesthesia

earned

aesthesia, or it

empty. (158)

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

McM

ter University

Untried image-con

ious

ction becom

a game witho

rul

becau

it lacks a guiding

os; it remains perpetua

y static

it repeatedly depicts

e same cultural

enomen

It "depict[s]

e w

a culture's bound and defined by mediated gratification a

image"

(McCa

ery 136)

but

ers no

thin

an antidote to redeem cultural deadening. Form is

privileged over function as works are made "involuted in

e rig

way

" with

"appropriate

int

extual referenc

at make

em "look smart" at

e expen

of any

mea

nin

ful

exchan

(142). For Wa

ace,

e impasse arises from a disregard of aes

etic

traints

ince everybody can do pretty much whatever

ey wa

, witho

bounda

to define

em or constraints to stru

le against,

t this continual avant-ga

e rush

witho

ne bo

ering to spec

ate on

e d

tination,

e goal of

e fo

ard

rush" (132). Literature

at seeks only to shock ceases after a time

be "progr

ess

and

becom

an end in it elf' (132).

this aes

etic aimlessness, Wa

ace remarks:

We've seen

u can break any or a

e rul

witho

getting

laughed o

of town,

but

we've also seen

e toxicity

at anarchy for its

own sake can yield. It's often u

ful

dispen

with sta

ard formul

, of

course,

but

it's just

often valuable and brave :o see what can be done

within a

t of rul

-which

is why formal poe

y's so much more inter

ting

ee ver

se.

Maybe our touchstone now should be

Hopkins, who made up his

t of formal constraints and

everyone's footwear o

om ins

ere's some

thin

g abo

thin an ordered and disciplined structure

at resonat

for readers.

And

ere's something abo

complete caprice a

flux

at's deade

nin

(149-50,

fir

st emph

is adde

ace's reference

Hopkins is significa

he looks back to

e Victorian poet's

en-radical aes

eti

for his own rai

n d'etre;

e directionless aes

etic of

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

contemporary fiction invites a look

past aesthetic precedents.

The

primary moment of conjunction between the two aesthetics

Wallace's

admiration for Hopkins's self-imposed aesthetic boundaries

that

result in vibrant poetry. 3

Hopkins attains his own version

Burke's "ultimate philosophic vision"

effacing

himself and adhering to rules, thereby writing himself

out

of depression and

alienation-from

God-through

the rigors of aesthetic conflict. Hopkins demonstrates the

conflict through his artifact, instead of using it

a method of involution and psychic

withdrawal. In a letter to Robert Bridges

August 1877, Hopkins writes

that

his

aesthetic-perceived

chaotic in his time-was steeped in moderation to achieve specific

ends:

Only remark,

you say

that

there

conceivable licence I should

not

be able to justify,

that

with all

licences, or rather laws, I am stricter

than

you and I might say

than

anybody I know . . . . I may say

apparent

licences are counterbalanced, and more,

strictness. In fact all

English verse, except Milton's, almost, offends me

'licentious.'

Remember this. (Letters to

44-45)

Wallace similarly imposes

himself

aesthetic restraint in Infinite Jest

that

diminishes

his presence

author

and concomitantly 'speaks' to the reader's consciousness.

Wallace's artifact demonstrates his artistic ideal even

it comments

its own aesthetic

limits. Enfield Tennis Academy's kids play

annual game of"Eschaton" (Jest 321), a

nuclear-war type of game, played

a netless

court-a

"rectangular projection of the

planet earth" (333

)-with

tennis balls and distributed athletic gear for missiles and

nations; players' parabolic lobs simulate nuclear assault, and damage ratios are tabulated

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

a "gamem

ter" (322).4

ow fa

s during

a dis

put

e arises over

wheth

er it

affe

e missiles' (te

nni

s ba

trajectories (334).

e game master explains

snow is "only real-world snow if it's already in

e scena1io

but

the

children ca

distinguish between

mediating a

cti

ons a

eir

lf-

conscious prese

e within

game (334,

auth

or's e

mph

is). Ultimately,

me reverts into a "worst-case-&-

utt

y-deco

ed-Armageddo

n-t

ype situation" (340)

unch

at ea

instead of

ctional territories. Eschaton is a meta

or for art's

"Arma

geddon"

(

McC

ery 134),

e inevitable end of co

ntinu

y involuted

lf-

conscious a

Within

Infinite Jest, Wa

ace co

s on his perception of curre

fiction through

the

ego

of Eschaton a

e gamem

ter's reasoning:

aye

es can't be valid tar

::;

aren't

side the

god da

gam

ayers are pa

e a

ara

s of

e game.

're

e map.

snowing on

ayers

but

not on

e territo

ry.

ey're pa

e m ap, not

e cluster-fucking terri

You can only

ch aga

e territ

OJy.

Not aga

e m ap. It's like

the

one

ground-rule bo

und

ary

at keeps Es

chat

om degenerating

int

o chaos.

aton

ntl

emen is abo

logic and axiom and ma

ematical probity

ipline a

verity and o

er. You do not g

int

s for

hittin

anybody re

al.

Onl

e gear

at m aps

at's rea

(lest 338, a

uth

or's

mph

is)

Players (fiction writer

ot be tar

ts because

have no place

e game it

lf;

ey are its mediators (conversationalists) and ca

ot be

e game's (or novel'

subject.

e not-too-dista

erican society

at Infinite Jest envisions is one in which

its age

s are paralytica

lf-

rbed primarily becau

failure. Wa

ace's m

telling critique of American a

occurs

y Notkin's graduation pa

-h

eld by herself

T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster Uruversity

for herself-at which the participants are inhibited

self-consciousness and the involuted

artistic expression

that

surrounds them. A group dances the latest "East Coast anticraze,"

the "Minimal Mambo" (229). Like minimalist fiction

that

tends to "substitute lists

external environmental details for the creation

character from within" (Aldridge 145),

the "better dancers" make their "movements"

exaggeratedly

tiny they are evocat

e and compel watching, their near-static mass

curdled and

bent

somehow subtly around one beautiful young woman,

quite beautiful, her back undulating minimally in a thin tight blue-and-

white-striped sailorish top

she alludes to a cha-cha with maracas empty

anything to rattle, watching herself almost dance in the full-length

mirror. (Jest 229)

The

dance represents minimalism's premise

that

"pretend[s] [that] there Is no narrative

consciousness in [the] text"; the dancers movements are vainly affected

if to imply

that

there

no self-conscious impetus to their overstated-understated dancing (McCaffery,

author's emphasis). Their quest to avoid the

lf-conscious apparatus

motion only calls

attent

to themselves

juxtaposed to the animated party

that

surrounds them.

The

central young woman becomes transfixed

her own near-static mirror image which

hangs "between two emptyornate gilt frames [that] otkin thinks she's been retroironic

having the frames themselves framed, in rather less ornate frames" (Jest 229, emphasis

added).

The

image

an apt one

it describes the terminal destination of self-conscious

art, the self (or writer) framed within frames, "making art

out

uf the accessories

artistic

presentation" (229). She watches herself with

unselfconscious fascination in the

ly serviceable mirror

...

This absence

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

of shame at

e self-o

ssi

....

But now, whispered to by a nea

motionl

ess

man in an equ

trian helme

she

turn

s abruptly falling aw

from her own re

ection to explain, not to

e man so much as no one in

partic

ar,

e whole dancing m

ass:

I w

just looking at my

tit

s she

says

looking down at her

lf aren't

beautiful, and it

moving,

ere's

something

heartbreaking

sincere in what she sa

...

e girl raising

her striped arms in triumph or artl

ess

s for being constructed this

ay,

ese 'tits

built by whom and for whom never occurring, artl

ess

ecstatic. (230, a

uth

or's emph

is)

at is disturbing is that

e woman operat

in an insular univer

of on

and is

incapable of perceiving anything outside her

ubj

ect, r

ulting in vapid

lf-w

orship.

She

trammeled in a cage of

lf,

and

e a

of her time only reinforces her

detachme

as she reverts into

omb of

lip

sis

edonia, dea

in life"

839) .

the

me cockta

party, a medl

of vo

snippets of conversation are

interpolated into

e narrati

's ce

ntr

al action. In a

ries of

attributed dial

es,

one

unn

amed chara

mewhat pretentiously remark

"de

stibus non

t dis

put

andum"

t 232), meanin

'there is no disputing about t

; every per

n to their taste'

-or

simply, there's no accounting for t

e context

Wallace's a

etic

ego

ry,

this o

erwi

innocuous phrase is pivotal to

e nov

eme

that

literature

produced without boundari

ults in

aotic and

lip

sistic expr

ess

ion.

Alth

ough

phrase h

since been adopted into co

oquial Eng

sh a

predates Hopkins, it is

inte

sting to ob

rve

at it is al

located in his

"On

the

Ori

gin of Beauty: A Platonic

Dialogue"

ournals and Pape

. It is of little importance whe

er or not Wa

ace here

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

quot

Hopkins's dial

ue- a

lth

ough

a former do

oral candidate in philosophy (in

aes

eti

cs)

and Hopkins's admirer, it is likely

at he would be familiar with it.

at is

esse

nti

al, however, is

at bo

artists articulate

me aes

etic

eal:

ere must

be a rationale or crite

a for

e eva

ation of beau

ty,

and witho

such, art slips into a

rulel

ess

and purposel

ess

stat

ace's co

ention througho

Infinite J

t is

at t

and artistic jud

are no lon

r disputable becau

of a rejection of aes

etic

guidelin

eal which leads to an overindul

nce in

lf-

conscious expression in

arts for

ke only.

y form of artistic expr

ess

ion i

e ironist, immune

criticis

creating an aes

etic vo

of unprincipled and alienating a

rt-th

ere

no lon

r a

cohere

t of premi

ses

for

e production, eva

ation, and e

of art. In his

"On

e Signs of Health and Decay in

Art

s," Hopkins explicitly stat

at art must have a

standard of eva

ation or it becom

a futile e

erpri

it is impossible

apply

ience

exact

e arts of painting and still l

ess

of poet

we do to

ose of music and architectur

but

ientific

basis

aes

etical criticism is absolutely needed; criticism ca

ot advance

r witho

it; and at

e beginning of any science of aes

etics must stand

e anal

is of

e nature of Beau

ournals and Papers 7 5)

For Hopkins and Wa

ace, art transforms and re-orders a

at is det

table and grot

que

e human conditio

Hopkins further writ

at in "

inqL

ting what are

e signs of a

healthy and a decade

Art

we must

fir

st know what

Art

oug

to be doing and pursuing"

(75).

With

knowing how or why we partic

ate and r

pond

rt-

or witho

having

any princ

ipl

for doing

so-a

rt ceases

be art and becom

ulto

expr

ess

ion.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Wallace

both

diagnoses fiction's current malady and prescribes

alternative

course. James lncandenza's last film ("Infinite Jest")

a "magically entertaining" work

that

seeks to overcome solipsistic death.

The

work

intended to be a form of

communication, a conversation, between the director and his youngest son, Hal,

stop

the teen from becoming a "steadily more and more hidden boy," and

"bring him 'out of

himself'" (Infinite 838, 839, author's emphasis).

The

film

a metaphor for the potentially

meaningful conversation

that

takes place between

(unself-conscious) author and the

reader that forces

examination

mortality. Toward the end of the novel, lncandenza

(as

a wraith) appears

the hospitalized

Don

Gately and explains his films' aesthetic

rationale:

I goddamn bloody well made sure

that

either the whole entertainment

was

silent or else if it wasn't silent

that

you could bloody well hear every single

performer's voice, no matter how far

out

the cinematographic or

narrative periphery they were; and it wasn't just the self-conscious

overlapping dialogue

a poseur like Schwulst or Altman, i.e. it wasn't just

the crafted imitation of aural chaos: it

was

real life's real egalitarian babble

of figurantless crowds,

the animate world's real agora, the babble of

crowds every member

which

was

the central and articulate protagonist

his own entertainment. (835-36)

lncandenza's filmic innovation

ahead of his time

that

his critics cannot fathom why

the "babble(/babel)" interferes with the supposedly "really meaningful central narrative

conversations," and they assume

that

"some self-conscious viewer-hostile heavy-art

directorial pose, instead of radical

realism"

(836, emphasis added). Wallace's "radical

realism"

a call for a return to mimetic representation (or the "neo-real") (832) in

-----

- -

---------

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

American fiction

that

"renders real aspects

real experiences

that

have previously been

excluded from art" (McCaffery 140), which recalls Hopkins's emphasis

mimesis:

"[beauty]lies in a (not sensuous

but

purely intellectual) comparison of the representation

Art

with the memory

the true thing (Journals and

Paper

75).5

That

is,

effective

(and affective) art must render things

they are,

not

in the Realist school

literary

representation,

but

in the real experiences of daily

human

existence.

Wallace expects the reader to become engaged with his work-as opposed to the

"passive spectation"

that

television prescribes-by sharing the burden of the writer/reader

relationship: "this process

a relationship between the writer's consciousness and her

own, and

that

in order for it to be anything like a real full

human

relationship, she's going

to have to put in her share

the linguistic work" (McCaffery 137, 138). Wallace puts a

premium

readerly exertion, which accounts for Infinite Jest's heft (1079 pages) and

sheer difficulty (388 six-point-font endnotes).

The

reader

responsible for ordering the

work's jumbled chronological sequence, often overwhelming array of information and

detail, numerous narratorial perspectives, and unsettling (or defamiliarizing) juxtaposition

of the comic and grotesque. Most significantly, the reader has to fight through the often-

chatty mediating voice to penetrate Infinite Jest's insight into the thought and

peculiarities of the culture-the reader's own culture, re-presented.

Many of the notes are purposely unnecessary, and are at times simply

gags,

number 216's "No clue" (1036) and 192's "She didn't literally say shitstorm" (1033,

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

author's emphasis),

that

force the reader to

flip

physically to the back

Dunciad fashion.

Whereas some notes are playful, others, like the eight-page nt!Jnber 24 (with its own series

of footnotes), yield

much

indispensable information

that

it must be periodically

returned to.

The

notes are also staggered according

length, with some running several

pages in length; and the difficulty

compounded in simply locating the shorter notes

they are buried between longer ones. Wallace's participatory aesthetic

evinced

readers adopt the narrative and physically reconstitute it

their own.

The

difference,

however, between Wallace's readers' frustration

and

image-fiction's !-subject type

that

Infinite

Test

provides

"accessible payoff' for the reader's efforts (McCaffery 137).

Readers take valuable information from the notes and come away with the sense

that

they

have actually participated jointly in the game, instead

being

the receiving end of a

barrage of authorial poses.

The

reading pattern

moving from text to endnotes mimes

conversational intercourse itself and the back-and-forth shuttling

a tennis

match-surely intentional in a book

that

has conversation and tennis

for

its primary

subjects.6

Wallace's insistence

engaging the reader stems from self-abnegation-much like

Hopkins-in which he realizes

that

once the work

written it

longer serves a purpose

for its creator: "this

the way Barthian and Derridean poststructuralism's helped me the

most

a fiction writer: once I'm done with the thing, I'm basically dead, and probably

the text's dead; it becomes simply language, and language lives

not

just

but

through the

T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster U" iversity

reader" (McCaffery 141, interviewer's emphasis). This

precisely why Wallace contends

that

writers have no place inhabiting their artifacts: they are no longer its possessors:

"once the first-person creeps into your agenda you're dead art-wise" (135). Recalling

Burke's symbolic action, an artifact lives when it

adopted

active readers who

transform it into their own, mythos: "the reader's own

life

'outside' the story changes the

story" ( 141), making it personally and uniquely her/his own

re-inscribed, re-

enacted, or re-lived in the mind.

In their study of Hopkins and T.S. Eliot, Kinereth Meyer and Rachel Salmon

determine

that

the language of these poets

both

constitutes experience and reports it

(235) .

That

is,

the poet's experience

re-created in the consciousness of readers who

"choose to read" poetry "not only

describing

but

also

enacting conversion" (235).

Wallace, who effaces himself in the production of his art and releases it to his readers

thereafter, Hopkins, too, employed a similar self-negation, suppressing his works, although

he did allow

for

the future possibility

that

they "may be published after [his] death"

(Letters to

66). And although he closely held

to his works it

clear

that

Hopkins

was

nonetheless driven to share them with others

twice offering

The

Wreck of the

'Deutschland' and "The

Loss

of the 'Eurydice"' to the Jesuit journal,

The

Month

(66) .

Works like

The

Wreck of the 'Deutschland' and

"That

Nature

a Heraclitean Fire and

of the Comfort of the Resurrection" begged

the nature of their topics-a memorial to

Franciscan nuns in

The

Wreck and a declaration on the human condition in

"That

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Nature

...

"-to

be released to others. In a letter to Alexander Baillie

September

1864, Hopkins indirectly distills his conception

the purpose of writing when he writes

that

the "letter-writer

principle does

not

make his letter only

answel' (Further

Letters 215, author's emphasis), which

why he avoided responding to letters

immediately. Instead, he allowed a letter's

contents-another

's mscape-to resonate in his

mind, merging with his own. A work answers questions, "but

that

not

its main motive"

(215); rather, it

a powerful communicative connection

"two minds jump together

even if it be a leap into the dark" (215) . All writing, then,

than

a simple response,

also the significant merger of a self with another self's response to the common

anxieties of

human

existence, and

human

"ins tress," to use Hopkins's neologism.

Hopkins further writes

that

inspired poetry must engage readers

piercing their minds,

filling the "broken sentence" (217)

the existential gap

things are upheld

instress and are meaningless without it" (Journals and Papers

7). Hopkins maintains

that

language perpetually breaks down in transmission, and th;\t it

the reader's

responsibility to read and reread, wrestle with difficult material, and finally stamp it

one's personal inscape, thereby finishing the work (or act) in

ever-changing inscape,

making it new, vibrant, and distinctive.

The

process

one

"great, abnormal

...

mental acuteness," involving a "stress and action of the brain"

it "strike[s] into [the

reader or writer] unasked" (Further 216).

Hopkins's chosen rhythm upholds his principle of the reader's active participation

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

in the poetry. Sprung rhythm, with its capacity for "boundless variety" (Further 360)

within defined fields, evinces Hopkins's concern for the reader's apprehension; individual

readers necessarily read poetry differently (in placing stresses

uld deciphering poetic

meaning) and, therefore, make it their own.

The

reader must fight through the difficult

rhythm, alliteration, assonance, neologisms, and dense, skipping imagery to appreciate

fully a poem.

the head of the manuscript broadsheet for

"The

Leaden Echo and the

Golden Echo," Hopkins wrote an editorial note to Bridges in which he questioned

continuing with marking a poem's stresses for the reader:

have marked the stronger

stresses,

but

with a degree of stress

perpetually varying no marking

satisfactory. Do

you think

that

all had best be left to the reader?" (Manuscripts 232). For Hopkins,

readers must make the poem their own.

"On

the Signs

Health

and Decay in the

Arts," Hopkins writes

that

aesthetic "recovery must be a breaking up, a violence"

(Journals and Papers

79)

in which readers must first destroy the poem, breaking it open to

apprehend its buried insight, to attain the poet's instress, (re)making the

poem-reconstructing it in the mind. Hopkins's poetry

once operates in a series of

creative tensions

conservatism and radicalism, the terrible and beautiful (Further 217),

violence and peace, and flux and order. Hopkins's demands

readers are never

excessive, however. In his quest for realistic expression, he chose (and invented) Sprung

rhythm because it

the "rhythm of natural speech, the least forced, the most rhetorical

and emphatic of all possible rhythms, combining

...

opposite and

...

incompatible

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

excellences, markedness of rhythm

...

and naturalness

exr

ssion" (Letters to

46,

emphasis added) . Hopkins understood

that

poetry

can

only engage a reader when it

inclines toward common speech and emphatic expression in a self-effacing manner. For

Hopkins, poetry

that

does not have these elements

goals

cannot

effectively (and

affectively) "touch" the reader (Further 218); otherwise, it regresses into a hollow form of

authorial expression: "want

earnest I take to be the deepest fault a work

art

can

have. It does

not

stiike

first,

but

it withers them in the end" (360,

emphasis).

Hopkins discounts authorial preening and a self-involved style with "archaic diction"

"Parnassian" (360, 216).

Hopkins disparaged the withering mannerism

the poetry

his time

"Parnassian":

"that

language which genius speaks

fitted to its exaltation, and place

among other genius,

but

does not sing' (360, emphasis added). Sprung rhythm enabled

Hopkins to fashion poetry

that

avoided the conformist poetics

his time

for,

he writes

in "Health and Decay," "the old conventionalisms had been abolished,

but

conventionalism

not abolished" (Journals and Papers 78).

That

is,

Hopkins recognized

the ever-present and latent danger of resting in conventional literary practice (Wallace's

'crank turning'); each poetic attempt must be a sustained effort to keep conventionalism

at bay, to keep it

out

of one's art. Many poets

Hopkins's time were accomplished and

could "see things in

[a]

Parnassian

way

and describe them in this Parnassian tongue,

without further effort of inspiration," falling into the rut

"mannerism" (Further 216).

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Hopkins concedes

that

the Parnassian poets are gifted,

but

asserts that they are only

rarely inspired and, thus, remain in a creative stasis. They

fell

into a pattern

poetic

familiarity and, therefore, only wrote the familiar. Although Hopkins lauded Tennyson's

genius, he also uses him

example of a Parnassian

poet-an

afflicti

to which a

poets are vulnerable.

Wallace echoes Hopkins's indictment

the Parnassian styl

"there's something

kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn't have

that

much

to do with talent, even glittering talent

...

Talent's just

instrument. It's like having a

pen

that

works instead

one

that

doesn't" (McCaffery 148). For both Hopkins and

Wallace, talent

undermined when it

expended

'withering' (for Hopkin

or image-

conscious (for Wallace) artistic endeavors.

What

essential to literature's "sacred"

potential

"art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's

got something to do with love.

With

having the discipline to talk

out

of the part

yourself

that

can

love instead of the part

that

just wants to be loved" (148). Fulfilling art,

for

Wallace, requires "a willingness to disclose yourself, open yourself up in spiritual and

emotional

ways

....

be willing to sort

die in order to move the reader, somehow"

(149). Hopkins attains this unself-conscious authorial sacrifice in a poetics

that

yearns

for

both

annihilation and assimilation with God-resulting in a potential redemption for his

readers. His poems are a simultaneous declaration

vulnerability and devotion

that

continues to resonate for readers, despite his religious orthodoxy.

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

The

inspired artist's effusion "takes you

it were

surprise," and involves a

genius

meaningful articulation

that

makes the poet's "greatness stare into your eyes and

din

into yourear5' (Further 217, emphasis added). Most ofWallace's and Hopkins's

aesthetic relies

intuition

there

no specific formula for creating a "redeeming [and]

remedy~ing"

literature (McCaffery

7),

but

both

stress the importance

flux with

constraints, and discipline fused with creative variety. Hopkins calls this intuition

"inspiration," and Wallace calls it "chasing the click," a "special sort of buzz, a special

moment

that

comes sometimes" in creating and consuming literature ( 138). 7 Although

removed from Wallace in literary period, genre, nation, and, perhaps, beliefs, Hopkins

continues to be a compelling aesthetic "touchstone" for Wallace

the novelist recognizes

the importance

Hopkins's aesthetic achievements and imperative to stay in continual

motion

moving constantly toward the "trumpet crash" (Hopkins,

"That

Nature" 112)

the literary "din."

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Notes

*This

chapter originally appeared in different form

"American Touchstone:

The

Idea of Order in Gerard Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace," Comparative

Literature Studies 38.3 (2001): 215-231. Copyright (2001)

The

Pennsylvania State

University Press. Reproduced

permission of the publisher.

1 In a review article, Vince Passaro enthusiastically praises current short

American fiction

"more various, more successfully experimental, more urbane, funnier,

and more

tingly ironic

than

that

written in the Hemingway tradition" (81, emphasis

added). Instead of discussing fiction's contemporary function or what specifically

undermined, Passaro concentrates his attention solely

the "reckless irony" (84), "ironic

play" (84), "hills of irony" (87), and (more) "irony" (88). Significantly, the other attribute

he yokes with this ironic "renaissance"

its "experimental" nature, a manifestation of

what Wallace refers to

the unchecked rush toward the avant-garde (McCaffery 132).

See Vince Passaro, "Unlikely Stories:

The

Quiet

Renaissance of American Short Fiction,"

Harper's Aug. 1999: 80-89.

2 Even Wallace's style

somewhat reminiscent

Hopkins's. Like Hopkins,

Wallace uses punctuation to control his prose's

'pace'-

Wallace's term borrowed from his

junior tennis career. Here Wallace uses a steady

flow

commas to stunt this sentence's

pace, forcing the reader to pause at each brief clause. This sentence also happens to be

the novel's thesis in short. Otherwise, Wallace uses commas sparingly in his text

attempts to mime the speed and ferocity of common speech.

Other

stylistic similarities

between Hopkins and Wallace include neologisms ("glittershit

(Jest 134), hyphenated

words and alliteration (the sky's "spilled-fuel shimmer") (136), and repetition ("one

beautiful woman, quite beautiful

...

(229), among others.

The

author recently requested an interview with Wallace to discuss (primarily)

Hopkins's work and its relation to the novelist's creative ideals. Wallace declined the

interview in a letter (David Foster Wallace, letter to author, 28 Mar. 2000), citing his

reason to be

that

he "like[s] Hopkins too much to talk about him in

interview." He

then

suggested consulting "the scene near the end

Saving Private Ryan where Matt

Damon asks

Tom

Hanks to tell him about his memory of his [Hanks's]

wife

in the garden,

and Hanks declines and

says,

'That

one I keep just

for

me."' Wallace's reluctance to

speak formally about Hopkins implies

that

the poet

particularly significant to his work

and creative enterprise.

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster U

•'

iversity

4 Eschaton recalls the card game,

-E-G-W-A-R" ("The Exciting Game

Without

Any Rules"),

that

"stands for the l

ess

cruelty

that

claims

...

Bruce Pearson's life" in

Mark Harris's Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), where the only object of the game appears

to be the ability to keep a straight face (Harris

19,

Limon 164) .

5 Infinite Jest also specifically recalls Stendhal's

The

Red and

e Black in many

ways

. Its most significant similarity, however,

its sharing Stendhal's emph

asis

realism-the "founder" of "serious realism" for Erich Auerbach (Mimesis 463). Stendhal's

aesthetic axiom (itself borrowed from Hamlet)

that

a "novel

a mirror going along a

main road" (80, 371)

echoed

Infinite Jest's Quebecois terrorists who "stretch mirrors

across U.S. highways" (1015). See

"David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest,"

The

Explicator 58.3 (2000): 172-175.

6 It should be noted

that

Wallace was a top-ranked junior tennis player in his

youth and has written several essays

the subject. See his collection of "essays and

arguments," A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (Boston: Littl

1997).

7 Wallace borrows the term "click" from Yeats and cou1pares this intuitive,

aesthetic feeling to the "click

a well-made box" (McCaffery 138).

worth noting,

well,

that

Wallace's 'click' echoes Tennesse Williams's

Cat

a H

Tin

Roof (1955),

where the alcoholic Brick chases his own 'click' through alcohol:

click

that

I get in

head

that

makes me peaceful" (81). For Wallace, the click represents a 'high,' or

says,

a "buzz," obtained through the creation and enjoyment of literature. For a

perceptive discussion of alcohol and the creative spirit, see Lewis Hyde, "Alcohol and

Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking," American Poetry Review 4.4 (1975):

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Departme

of English, McMaster University

Part

Two

Infinite Geist: Lexical Investigation, Mediation, and the Ghost

the

Author

"In art man enco

unt

ers himself, spirit meets spirit"-Hans-Georg Gadamer

(Truth

and

59).

"Let

therefore consider ourselves insta

ed among the multitude

things, living beings,

mbol

instruments, and men, and l

try

form notions

that

would enable

comprehend what happens

us there. Our first

truth-which

prejudges nothing and

cannot

contested-w

ill be

that

there is presence,

that

'something' is there, and

that

'someone'

there"-Maurice Me

ty (The Visible and the Invisible 160) .

e "Sichation"

(Je

st 619)

In a recent article on David F

ter Wa

ace's Infinite Jest,

"'An

Anguish Become

Thin

: Narrative

Performance in Dav

ter Wa

ace's Infinite Jest" (2000), Frank

Louis Cioffi bravely attempts to articulate the peculiar experience of

ading Wallace's

second novel while simultaneously accounting

for

its stunning

fect

on him

reade

"I did not abandon it,

ough I confess I

was

tempted to. As I read o

I rea

zed

that

this novel

was

ing a curious impact on m

was

penetrating my consciousness in a

way

at struck me

unusual" (162). It is perhaps at once singular and refreshing

that

litera

scholar can now

feel

liberated enough in a journal article both to comment

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

critically

a literary artifact andmuse

its effects

him

reader. This

means intended

disparaging, for Wallace's novel, indeed all

his fiction, does provoke

a myriad of shifting emotions and reader responses. Even the process of providing a basic

plot summary

Infinite Jest

a daunting exercise. Cioffi rightly asserts

that

it "resists

formal description" (163),

but

then

takes two pages to

mmar

ize

the plot.

e st

ill

embryonic critical work

this unique novel

inevitably variegated.

her article

Infinite Jest, N. Katherine Hayles feels compelled to develop a complex eco-critical

position for

ten

pages before actually tackling the novel itself, and

then

proceeds to insert

sporadic synopses

necessary. Erik

Mortenson, in his comparison of WilliamS.

Burroughs and Wallace, works in the opposite direction, narrowly defining his parameters

analysis to eight pages (128-135)

this 1079-page novel.

Tom

LeClair, who wrote the

first critical article

Infinite Jest in 1996, still seems

provide the most cogent account

the work when he suggests (in comparing it

the "prodigious" works of Wallace's

fellow novelists, Richard Powers and William T. Vollman)

that

it "can be most

economically described

synthesizing and extending characte

stics of its predecessors"

(31) thereby eluding the plot-summary quagmire. ' In discussing the reader's

entanglement in a text, Wolfgang Iser, in his

The

Act

Reading: A Theory

Aesthetic

Response, asserts

that

upon finishing a work

"do

not

first know what

happening

us.

This

why

often feel the need to talk about books

have read

...

Even

literary crit

s frequently do no more

than

seek

translate their entangl

ement

into

].T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Department

English, McMaster University

referential language" (131). It

precisely this

at critics like Cioffi and

e o

have

empted

do in

work on Infinite

st, to di

ges

t what Cioffi h

"performative"

pect of Wa

ace's work into a concreti

d understanding of

temporarily

liv

ed expe

ence with

that

boo

k-f

e a

of reading is, according

certainly an experience of living with and in

e text. In what follows I o

er a lexical

exempli

atia of how Wa

ace's interactive writer-reader linguistic aesthetic operat

, and

demonstrate

byp

s Wallace's lexical strategies, or meta-text,

much

of his te

elemental meaning. Wa

ace's writing is highly symbolic and empl

oys

much

mbolic iconography to underscore his conception of 'presence' or mediation

within

e te

amining Infinite Jest's lexical and

mbolic properties also yie

s a

subtle rejoinder

e 'dea

e a

uth

or' sta

in co

emporary literary criticism

e point of view of

e ghost of the

auth

All of which returns

ace's

engageme

with a literary

lip

sis

he sees it,

at is wasting

e millennial

erican

art

ass

ivity a

Activity

"She h

this w

Hal of

e chocolate

yog

urt

with

e spoon and then

inverting

e spoon, turning the spoon ove

at it a

ays e

nter

her

uth

ups

e-down a

her tongue

ts to co

act the co

ection immediately, witho

the :·,1edia

on of co

spoon, a

for some reason this h

ays

en under Hal

skin"

est 702) .

In his review

David Mark

n's

88 novel, Wittgenstein's Mistress, Wa

ace

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

argues

that

"certain novels not only cry

out

for

critical interpretations

but

actually try to

direct them," calling this the "INTERPRET-ME phenomenon" ("Empty" 217, 218). I

take Wallace's statement

vitally relevant to Infinite Jest, which calls for interpretation

while it directs readers toward prestructured interpretations. There

operating in

Wallace's fiction a participatory ethos demanded

the reader and, consequently, a

particular

way

to read and decode his work.

That

not

say

that

there

only one,

definitive critical approach, just that Wallace codes his

ficti011

in a particular fashion, and

that

examining the lexical properties and structure leads to specific and significant

meanings. Naturally, there are many other critical alternatives,

but

will

focus

the

textual apparatus

that

compels Cioffi to call Wallace a "virtuoso vocabulist

...

aggressively demonstrating his skill" (168). In his expansive and striking interview with

Larry McCaffery (conducted in 1993 while Infinite Jest

was

still a work in progress),

Wallace comments that a

his fiction emphasizes the fact of mediated presence in

narratives and

that

television (and the commercial arts, in general) ease recipients into

"easy cerebral rhythms. It [TV] admits

passive spectation. Encourages it.

-type

art's biggest hook

that

it's figured out

ways

to reward passive spectation" (137,

interviewer's emphasis).2

That

is,

in the interest of commercial gain and promoting

North

American hyperconsumption, television has stunted mediation, the "complete

suppression

narrative consciousness, with its own agenda" (137). Thus, much of

Wallace's fiction

comprised of a chatty and sometimes hostile mediator and "uneasy"

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

(

ttling narration with an abundance

film-like

h-cut

spar

and

pro

punctuation; den

long

ences; grand interruption

interpolation

and

digr

ess

ions; multiple-frame narratio

and a preponderance of fo

otn

typica

y seen

in mode

or co

emporary fiction (Infinite J

t co

ains 388 six-point fo

ndn

otes).

ace a

ows

at his me

are

othing terribly

phist

ted" (137) ,

t it is his

underlying strat

egy

of forcing readers to penetrate

e mediator's pre

nce and to ma

e requisite co

ections and narrative linking and textual

e)arranging

at a

ows for

linguistic participation. Wallace remarks

that

his fiction works

count

er to what

does,

"it's trying to prohibit

e reader

om for

tting

at she's receiving heav

y mediated

data,

at this process is a relationship between

e writer

consciousn

ess

and her own,

and

at in order for it to be anything like a real full

hum

an relationship, she's

ing to

have to

put

in her share of

e ling

stic work" (

8). Wa

ace's literary aes

etic is

heavily

Witt

nsteinian with his interest in

at philoso

work on language

primarily "a function of relationships between per

(143

);

eriou

ction, for

ace, is a ling

stic exerci

in bridging

e existential

p between peo

a tonic

for lonelin

ess

. Wa

ace is ever mindful

e reader is,

says,

"marooned in her

own skull" and

at part of what draws us to litera

s is an enactme

of suffering to

overcome

e fa

e reader "suffer[s] alone in

e world" (127).

Thi

s expe

ence,

vicarious

it m

Wallace remarks, can only be "nourishing, redemptiv

become l

ess

alone inside" (127).

ea of a litera

'conversation

or what Roland

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Barthes calls "entering a dialogue" between writer and reader (148),

central to

Wallace's aesthetic. In a limited and perhaps reductive sense, however, all narratives can

be said to have

inherent participatory ethos to them; reading

always

active

exercise contrasted with television's pure, visual passivity. Perhaps, then, readerly

participation or exertion

merely a question of degree and, if

so,

then

Wallace's fiction

requires the highest degree of active, narrative construction.

A Theory

Our

Discontent

"It'll help your attitude

look for evidence of design" (Jest 113).

From all appearances, Wallace suffers little from Harold Bloom's "anxiety

influence," although his fiction

full

shrewd intertextual references and allusions to

authors ranging from Shakespeare to Stendhal, and Julio Cortazar to Don DeLillo.3 But,

beyond aesthetic influence, Wallace

also well informed about current literary-

theoretical practices and their implications

for

his fiction. In his essay "Tense Present:

Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage," Wallace displays

acute understanding

the culture wars and

critical theory, and the politics of language.4 Moreover, during

his time at Harvard

a doctoral candidate in philosophy (aesthetics), Wallace wrote a

review article

H.L. Hix's Morte D'Author:

Autopsy entitled, "Greatly

Exaggerated," in which he demonstrates a strong familiarity with the long debate between

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

textual critics (or "auteurist criticism," in Sean Burke's words) (52) and poststructuralists

regarding the

death

the author.5 Incidentally, Wallace overtly favors neither

theoretical position in this piece, although he leans toward a "pro-lif

stance

("Exaggerated" 143), when he asserts, "for those

civi

ans who know in our gut

that

writing

act

communication between one

human

being and another, the whole

question seems sort of arcane" (144).

What

most sign

ific

ant about Wallace's familiarity

with poststructuralism, however,

his adoption (or reconstitution)

it for his own

fiction. In "Feodor's Guide," a review article

the fourth volume of]oseph Frank's

Dostoevsky biography, Wallace remarks

that

poststructuralism

simply "fascinating in its

own right" (25), and in his discussion with Larry McCaffery he indicates the importance

deconstructive erasure for him

a writer: the writer

"dead, and probably the text's

dead; it becomes simply language, and language lives

not

just in

but

through the reader"

(141, interviewer's emphasis). Wallace's interest

ays

the writer/reader paradigm, of

"one gut talking to another gut" ("1458 Words" 41). In the production

his works he

effaces himself (but not the mediator), and thus in the reception of his fiction he

dead,

erased; the literary work

reduced to fixed and inert language, requiring readers to

animate it in their minds

they live it while reading. Intended or not, Wallace's

aesthetic

most closely aligned with reader-response criticism, particularly the early and

prototypical work

Wolfgang Iser, whose theory occupies the middle ground between

the quarrels

auteurists and poststructuralists.

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Wallace employs,

use Stanley Fish's phrase,

"affective stylistics"

rhetorical strategy in his fiction.6 Wallace has remarked

that

he once had a teacher who

said

that

"good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and

LllSturb

the comfortable"

(McCaffery

7), and it

precisely this aphorism

that

informs Wallace's aesthetic.

Wallace's motives

a fiction writer tend to focus

two

the primary conditions of

being human: cultural familiarity and existential despair.

for these reasons

that

Wallace makes it part of his mission also

appeal

other fiction writers. For Wallace,

American culture

already familiar with a sense

that

inhabit a banal and hedonistic

era:

We'd

probably most

agree

that

these are dark times, and stupid ones,

but

need fiction

that

does nothing

but

dramatize how dark and

stupid everything

is?

dark times, the definition of good art would seem

to be art

that

locates and applies

CPR

to those elements of what's

human

and magical

that

still live and glow despite the time's darkness. Really

good fiction could have

dark a worldview

it wished,

but

it'd find a

way

both

depict this dark world and

illuminate the possibilities for

being alive and

human

in it. (131, interviewer's emphasis)

He further remarks that, "if you operate, which most

do, from the premise

that

there

are things about the contemporary U.S.

that

make it distinctively hard

be a real

human

being,

then

maybe half of fiction's job

to dramatize what it

that

makes it tough.

The

other half

to dramatize the fact

still are

human

beings, now" (131, interviewer's

emphasis).

And

in regard to American consumerism, Wallace asserts

that

already know U.S. culture

materialistic. This diagnosis can be done

in about two lines.

doesn't engage anybody.

What's

engaging and

artistically real

is,

taking it

axiomatic

that

the present

grotesquely

].T. Jacob

PhD

esis, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

materia

stic, how is it

at we

hum

an being

;;

till have

e capacity for

arity,

nuin

e co

ections, for stuff

at doesn't have a pric

(132,

interviewer's e

mph

amatizing

hum

an condition,

en, with an e

mph

is on

human

suffering,

arity,

hum

an relationships, is esse

nti

al to Wa

ace's fictio

Rea

zing

ese

s of

erican culture are rarely, if at a

ll,

addressed

'serious'

erican fiction h

compe

ed Wa

ace to an aes

etic

at te

s aw

om casual represe

ations of familiar

cultural aspect

Instead, he works to,

r's words, "defamiliari

e familiar" (87):

ction

job is opposite [to] what it used to be

-n

o lon

r making

e s

tran

familiar

but

making

e familiar s

again. It seems impo

to find wa

of reminding our

at most 'familiarit

is mediated a

delus

e" (

McC

141,

int

erviewer's e

mph

is).

ercing

e Ve

"Th

e reader must first discover

r himself

e code unde

ying the text, and this is tantamo

unt

bringing o

the meanin

e process of

scovery is itself a ling

stic ac

on in so far

constitut

the means

which the reader m

communicate with the text

Wolf

ng lser

(Th

of Reading: A

of A

the

c R

pon

60).

e Act of Reading,

er's b

nti

on is

e litera

text a

reader

constitute two pol

"literary communication," and, appe

ndin

g a note to his u

word 'r

pon

se,

' notes

e German word for 'response'

irkung)

a more

rsatile meaning

an its Eng

sh co

unt

erpart,

at of bo

ect' a

ponse' (ix n.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

1). Thus, the act

reading inherently implies a "dialectical relationship"

(x)

between the

literary artifact and its readers. This

is,

perhaps, rudimentary,

Iser himself notes in his

introduction,

but

interest in Iser's

reader~response

criticism lies in his extension

what critics have themselves become familiar

with-that

is,

his theory of aesthetic response

goes beyond communication with readers and also invo

a transformation within

readers who actively participate in

re~creating

the text in the imagination

"dynamic

happening") (22), and thereby inhabit the work, temporarily living within the text: "the

aesthetic experience leads to a nonaesthetic experience" (23); "it has the character of

event" ( 6 7). Iser argues

that

each literary text

coded or "prestructured" with a

"repertoire" of "accepted procedures" (its "organizational structure") (85) for readers to

follow; these are the text's strategies and readers' guide (69).

The

text

"prestructured,"

with its own conditions

"conception and perception," and thus "constitute

[s]

organization

signifiers which do not serve to designate a signified object,

but

instead

designate instructions for the production

the signified" (65, author's emphasis). This

acts

"a kind

self~regu

ating

system" (67), and readers continually participate

absorbing new and unpredictable events, incorporating them into a dynamic and shifting

whole, modifying them through active progression; the act of reading, then,

a "dynamic

process

lf~c

orrection"

(67). Readers constantly feed back reactions

they absorb

new data; reading becomes a "continual process

realization

...

and 'happens' like

event

...

open~ended

situation, at one time concrete and yet fluid" (68). In the act

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

reading there

a constant "mutual bombardment,"

Rudolf Arnheim has observed,

that

results in a "tension

that

sets off a series

different actions and interactions" (qtd. in Iser

95). Iser calls this the snow-ball effect (67),

for

the Argentinian novelist Julio Cortazar it

an "attack

accumulation" (534), and for Wallace it

"sudden and percussive,"

causing "a kind

explosion

associative connections within the recipient"

that

compares with the "venting of a long-stuck valve" ("Laughing" 23).

all times, then,

readers are provoked into what Iser calls a "synthetizing activity" (119) through image-

building and formulating the text through "gestalt groupings" (120). Iser argues

that

readers are suspended between a "total entanglement" in and "latent detachment" from

the text which results in a "dialectic" between "illusion-forming and illusion-breaking":

"through gestalt-forming,

actually participate in the text, and this means

that

are

caught up in the very thing

are producing. This

why

often have the impression,

read, that

are living another life" (127). In image-building, gestalt-forming, and

through the various imaginative suspensions,

"leave behind who

are"

(12

7). Iser

rightly argues

that

textual meaning does

not

lie

in the various expectations and

frustrations: these are "simply the reactions

that

take place

n the gestalten are

disturbed" (128). Instead,

"react to what

ourselves have produced, and it

this

mode

reaction that, in fact, enables

to experience the text

actual event

...

these

that

make

animate the meaning of the text

a reality" (128-129). Further,

because the entire process takes place within the imagination,

"cannot escape from it";

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

our participation in and absorption

the text transforms the work into a "presence"

(131). Reading, for lser, has the "same structure

experience" because it contains

familiar experiences

that

are transcended through defamiliarization (131).

The

aesthetic transaction between text and reader goes further, however, and

achieves its zenith

affect, paradoxically, when readers

beco

·:.~

fully cognizant of the

illusory situation they are bound in, for this

the highest level

textual communication:

the perception

another's consciousness immanent with the reader's. Although lser's

theory

reading

invaluable-and all the more because he offers it

"a" theory, one

potentially many-he does

not

take his analysis beyond the interaction between text and

reader. It

in the final step of the reader's conscious awareness moving from the aspect

of the text-(re)animated language-to the aspect of a consciou ness behind or within the

apparatus of the text

that

the fullest ramifications

the reader's transcendence

achieved and realized. lser writes

that

apprehension

a literary work comes about through the interaction

between the reader's presence in the text and his habitual experiences,

which are now a past orientation. As such it

not

a passive process

acceptance,

but

a productive response. This reaction generally transcends

the reader's previous range of orientation, and

the question arises

what actually controls his reaction. It cannot be any prevailing code and it

cannot

be his past experience,

for

both are transcended

the aesthetic

experience. It

at this point

that

the discrepancies produced

the

reader during the gestalt-forming process take

their true significance.

They have the effect

enabling the reader actually to become aware

the gestalten he has produced,

that

he may detach himself from his own

participation in the text and see himself being guided from without. (133-

134)

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

The

reader occupies a "strange, halfway position: he

involved, and he watches himself

being involved" (134). Iser raises a crucial point here: that readers attain a near-timeless,

near-ecstatic moment, where they remain in the actual event that

the world of the

textual moment

that

they temporarily inhabit.

What

Iser here articulates

the readers'

ultimate penetration of the illusion of the textual apparatus and achievement of an

epiphany-while still engaged in the act of reading, decoding, and reformulating and, most

significantly, they become self-conscious about this process-a sudden realization of

another's presence-that

say,

the presence of another, similar consciousness. Call it

Wayne Booth's implied author, the author, speaker, persona, or mediating presence, the

semantic name

for

this presence

immaterial;

all

that

matters

the reader's sudden

recognition of another's (pre-coded) consciousness during the linguistic moment.

The

triangulation of reader, text, and writer

broken and, therefore, admits a two-

way

relationship between reader and pre-structured authorial consciousness (however

understand and contest 'author'). Iser does not take the final leap here and only

acknowledges this transaction

one of the "transfer of the text into the reader's

consciousness" ( 135), however, it clearly seems

a much stronger perceptive state

extending beyond the present accumulation of language. Sean Burke, in his Death and

Return of the Author, argues

that

this textual presence need

not

necessarily be reduced

to any monologic "author-God" (49) but instead, quoting Bakhtin, insists

that

authorial

consciousness

a "voice amongst the many which holds together the polyphonic strands

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

the text's composition, an author who 'resides within the controlling center constituted

the intersection of the surfaces"' (48). For Burke, the "renunciation

the author-God

does not do away with the idea

authorship, nor impede the creativity

the author and

the intensity

his engagement with and within his text" ( 49).

The

imputation of

writerly consciousness within a text does not compromise the "anti-representational ethos

of a writerly writing" ( 49).

Readers transcend the

text-a

complementary shattering of illusion while

paradoxically remaining in the text's imaginative space-and are doubled (vitally caught

and living in the textual moment and yet

lf-consciously observing themselves operating

such) and finding

then

a pure transaction with, a penetration

of,

or merging with,

another's consciousness. A textual transcendence

achieved although

not

metaphysical one. In Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida's discourse

ghosts and

Marx(ism)-a self-termed "hauntology" (51)-he comments that,

transcendence, the movement of super-, the step beyond (tiber, epekeina),

made sensuous in

that

very excess. It renders the non-sensuous

sensuous.

One

touches there

what one does not touch, one feels there

where one does

not

feel, one even suffers there where suffering does

not

take place, when at least it does

not

take place where one suffers (which

also, let

not forget, what

said about phantom limb

that

phenomenon

marked with

X for any phenomenology of perception). ( 151)

have, then, at this vital moment pierced the veil

narrato

implied author, and

mediator-pierced the "veil

print" (Bowers

81)-and

attained

not

any literal author-God

but

another

hum

an being's consciousness, or

that

consciousnc:::.s's original ideation,

that

T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

which

was

born in ano

er subject's mind prior to its infusion-"prestructur[ing]" (Iser 85)

rather

than

post-structuring-into the text,

but

that

remains dormant, awaiting re-birth,

(re)animation in the reader's consciousness. Illusion and the bounda

of the text and

imagination fall away

ropes of sand from the mind; readers attain what Paul Ricoeur

s the text's "universal power of unveiling" (193).

stead

offu

lly

committing him

this peculiar and nearly indescribable phenomenon, Iser quotes Jean Starobinski: "what

see arising here

a complex reality, in which the difference between subject and

object disappears" (qtd. in Iser 135, author's emphasis).

And

because

readers have

produced an image from the imaginary object, the object

that

transformed text,

hich

otherwise has no existence

its own,"

are, then, "actua

y in its presence and it

ours" (139) .

may be

to contend

that

are in the author's (revivified)

presence.

Ghost/Geist

"In a

text

which purports to be written neither

a subject, nor about subjects, who or what

ivates its narrative, stands

autho

rity for its claims?"-Sean Burke (

The

Death

and Return of

the

Auth

or 78).

"The

ghost,

re-venant,

the

survivor, appears only

means of figure or ficti on,

but

its

appearance

not

nothing, nor

it a mere semblance"-Jacques Derrida ("The

Art

of Memoires"

64).

After discussing various philosophical texts in search

a rational response

the

problem of the reader

participant in Infinite Jest, Cioffi concludes

that

his "somewhat

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

counterintuitive solution to the paradox

that

when reading certain works, such

this case Infinite Jest,

are

not

under the impression or illusion

that

what

happening

in the text

rea

rather, for

real, it has become actual" (172).

And

although I

have argued now

length for the possibility of the reader actually indwelling a literary

text, and believe

that

this potential exists

all times when reading Wallace's fiction, I

finally, however, do

not

believe this to be the ultimate reason for the profound and urgent

readerly engagement

that

this text inspires. I would contend almost the opposite,

that

although Infinite Jest

captivating like

few

other novels, it nevertheless succeeds in this

respect because of its sincere presentation

its status

illusory aesthetic object. It does

not

revel in the self-conscious play of its own artificiality for its own sake

many

postmodern works do; rather, it presents itself

extremely improbable while it remains

encyclopedically and vibrantly plausible, immediate, and overwhelming.

That

is,

its

content

only too believable and 'real,' often disturbingly

so,

but

it calls

attention

to the

possibility

its being nothing more

than

a 'told' story within

i.Ls

larger status

a novel.

This

paradoxically no metafictional play

Wallace's part, which brand of fiction's

inward and terminal regression he calls a "permanent migraine" (McCaffery 142),

but

rather a return to more essential narrative construction, what Infinite Jest's wraith calls

"radical realism" (Jest 836). Metafiction,

for

Wallace,

only "valuable" in

that

it "helps

reveal fiction

a mediated experience" and in

that

it emphasizes the "recursive

component to utterance" (McCaffery 142). Its latent danger, for Wallace,

its potential

55 J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

to become "empty and solipsistic" (142).

The

significant difference between 'standard'

metafiction and Wallace's metafiction-like strategies

that

the inevitable inward spiral to

the mediator's consciousness does

not

remain fixed

an end; tt rather spirals outward to

the reader

a vibrant linguistic phenomenon: "recursive metafiction worships the

narrative consciousness, makes

the subject of the text" (144, interviewer's emphasis).

Infinite lest's many (intended) mistakes draw attention to the presence

a very fallible

'presenter,' one

that

at times seeks effacement and

others wildly surges to the fore.

Infinite Jest

a ghost story told

a ghost; its most significant conceit

that, for all of its

density and 'realism,' the narrative events are meant to signify nothing beyond the fact of

its own telling.

In his reading oflnfinite Jest,

Tom

LeClair suggests

that

Wallace himself enters his

narrative

the wraith (32), whose appearance, however,

v·

ifiably limited to the

hospital-visitation episode (Jest 827-845)

but

subtly emerges throughout the text.

LeClair's assertion

founded

the fact

that

the wraith

"lexically gifted" and

"etymology conscious" (32), just

Wallace certainly

is.

LeClair further conflates

Wallace-as-wraith because the wraith-who

literally a ghost

one

the deceased

primary characters, the "apres-garde" (985 n. 24) film-maker, physics and optics genius,

former junior tennis star, and founder

Enfield Tennis Academy, Dr. James

Orin

lncandenza, Jr.-as a former artist himself, promulgates similar aesthetic ideals to which

Wallace himself

partial (LeClair 33). While there

can

be little doubt

that

the wraith

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

possesses many

Wallace's ideas of necessity the contention •:'tat the wraith equals

Wallace himself

untenable simply because of the obvious connection of the wraith to

Incandenza, Jr. (Jest 829). This

not to

say

that

I dismiss LeClair's claim outright;

rather, I agree

that

Wallace's 'presence' saturates the text. I do contend, however,

that

Wallace 'enters' his text through the wraith in a more rhetorically subtle manner

than

LeClair estimates, and

that

a simple equation of the wraith with Wallace

a reduction of

Wallace's aesthetic achievement.

The

wraith functions

the text's mediator, the

centering and orienting presence that organizes the entire narrative structure. While the

text

profoundly moving and absorbing there

never a moment when the reader

not

aware of the illusion of narrative although simultaneously immersed in Wallace's fictive

world.

The

reason for this

the mediating filter or presence within the text. This

mediating presence

none other

than

the wraith, and it

only in the hospital with the

gunshot-wounded Gately

that

he makes his presence acute and palpable, thereafter

receding

the narrative's inherent consciousness, its narrative periphery, yet always

present.

Sporadically scattered throughout Wallace's works are the words 'phantom,'

'ghost,' 'wraith,' 'specter,' 'apparition,' and 'revenant' encoded with all

their

etymological meanings and interpretive associations.

Often

these words are emblematic

they are specifically linked with certain characters (Incandenza,

Jr.

/wraith,

Hal/revenant, Mario/apparition, and

forth). Wallace's title alone, borrowed from

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Hamlet's graveyard scene (5.1.184ff),

every critic has observed,

itself mentioned in

Infinite Jest (1076 n. 337), itself implies the presence of a textual ghost, in signifying the

elder Hamlet. Early in Infinite Jest appears the significant note 38: "ghostly light- and

monster-shadow phenomenon particular to certain mountains; e.g. q.v. Part I

Goethe's

Faust, the Walpurgisnacht six-toed

danceathon

the Harz-Bracken, in which there's

described a classic 'Brockengespenstphanom.' (Gespenst means specter or wraith.)" (994).

And

note 24-lncandenza, Jr.'s filmography-contains the very significant word "mediated"

itself (986), calling attention to precisely who mediates the novel. Frequent emphasis

the concept

mediation occurs indirectly when attention

drawn to lncandenza, Jr.'s

still-hanging poster

Fritz Lang directing his 1927

film

Metropolis (Jest 48, 193, 951,

1078 n. 381), which film no longer exists

originally created and first shown in

Germany-Lang once said to novelist Robert Bloch, "why are you

interested in a film

which no longer exists?"7 Metropolis's essential disappearance recalls lncandenza, Jr.'s

own supposedly lost film "Infinite Jest"; and the presence

the Mediator, a messianic

figure, in Metropolis signifies the importance

mediation itself to Infinite Jest. Because

lncandenza himself was originally an optics genius, Infinite Jest contains numerous

references to light, lenses, reflections and refractions, mirrors, concave and convex forms,

holograms and holographs, optical doubling and illusions. Amplification

Wallace's

references

all

return to the idea

a ghost and ghostly mediation:

-show re-runs

haunt

the airwaves (600); a holograph

itself a ghostly image; duplicated

images are known

58 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

ghost-images/forms; in lenses and telescopes, secondary images, produced through

defects, acquire a ghostly definition or appearance (OED); Enfield Tennis Academy's

students suspect

that

a ghost haunts the campus; in addition

the obsessive use of the

words "ghastly" and "ghostly" throughout.

The

word 'figurant' also appears throughout

the text, and

used particularly

the wraith for mute, peripheral film and

characters (Jest 835-836). Even here

a tangential relationship to ghosts. Erich

Auerbach, in his etymological study

the history

the word 'figura'

remote ancestor

of our contemporary 'figurant') in ancient sources, observes

that

'figura' has

associative

meaning of "copy" and occurs in Lucretius's "doctrine of the structures

that

peel off things

like membranes and float round in the air," and

further related to his "Democritean

doctrine of the 'film images' (Diels), or eidola"; Auerbach further notes

that

Lucretius

was

the first to introduce 'figurae'

"employed in the sense

'dream image,' 'figment

fancy,' 'ghost"' (17). Enfield Tennis Academy's students use Lemon Pledge

phenomenal sunscreen" (Jest 99) which later peels off in "Pledge-husks" (101) and copies

their several limbs thereby contributing

the overall sensation

a ghost-inhabited

environment. I do

not

argue here

that

Wallace

aware of Au._rbach's essay,

but

that

the

accumulation

specific words

that

are all synonymous with 'ghost' necessarily creates

emphasis

the ghost/wraith metaphor in Infinite Jest and, thus, calls for interpretation.

What

significant about these many references

that

in order to perceive a ghost image,

there must, in most cases

(as

in optics and broadcast media, signally in this narrative), be

59 ].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

some inherent

flaw

or defect in the originating source. This

perhaps one

the more

signal aspects oflnfinite Jest's narrative construction:

that

the mediator himself, although

strangely erudite,

also incredibly defective and disturbing. This upholds Wallace's

redemptive aesthetic,

for

only through the apprehension of defects

that

any form

remedying action

can

occur, whether it pertains to aesthetic

J:.;lOduction

or cultural

malaise. Offiction's redemptive possibilities, Wallace remarks

that

you're at once allowing the reader to sort of escape self

achieving some

sort

identification with another

human

psyche-the writer's, or some

character's,

etc.-and

you're also trying to antagonize the reader's intuition

that

she

self,

that

she

alone and going to die alone. You're trying

somehow

both

to deny and affirm

that

the writer

over here with his

agenda while the reader's over there with her agenda, distinct. This

paradox

what makes good fiction sort of magical, I think.

The

paradox

can't

be resolved,

but

can

somehow be mediated-'remediated,' since this

probably where poststructuralism rears its head for me-by the fact

that

language and linguistic intercourse

is,

in and of itself, redeeming, remedy-

ing. (McCaffery

interviewer's emphasis)

In another interview Wallace remarks

that

he wanted Infinite Jest "to sound intimate and

conversational,

if somebody

was

talking right to you. So I think there

was

a kind

ghost reader

for

me all the

way

along" (OPBR n.p.). Ghost-reader implies ghost-writer.

What

I call the 'wraith-function' stands for the mediating presence

that

Wallace infuses

into his novel,

for

these ghostly clues direct readers to the inescapable fact

that

they are

the recipients of "heavily mediated data" (McCaffery

138)-in

life, the popular media, and

this

text-and

that

their responsibility in this communicative relationship between the

"writer's consciousness and her own" (138)-is linguistic and requires, if it

to be revived

and actualized, active readers and responses, the readers' doubles, their ghosts.

Infinite Jest's first page are the words,

am in here" (3). In the immediate context this

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

presumably Hal Incandenza's thought, although this

not explicitly clear

these words

occupy their own line and are positioned between two of Hal's interior monologue

accounts of his meeting with the University of Arizona's administration. They ar

fact, 'ghost-words,' thought

Hal

but

operating

a secondary, meta-level. As the

novel expands and Wallace's mediation principle

discovered, these words take on

additional, associative meaning:

that

the wraith

"in here," in the text, and

the

mediating presence

that

confabulates and distills the novel's contents. In fact, the entire

novel has, just like its latent aesthetic layers-as

allegory of "aesthetic orphanhood,"

for

LeClair

(33

)-a

latent contrapunta

y lin

ist

structure, a significant deep-narrative

below the welter of the surface-narrative. This, in part, accounts for the novel's

complexity and the mediator's playful, cozening yet hostile presence.

obsolete, variant

form of'wraith,' in fact,

rath

and variants of'ghost' are "fury," "anger," "to rage,"

"to terrify," and, signally, "to wound, tear, pull to pieces" (OED): a

which Infinite

Jest's wraith performs

he creates, manipulates, and mediates the text; the reader,

however, reconstructs the wounded text. In

aesthetic-a

egorical context, the

'wrath/rage' meaning extends to Wallace's own chagrin at the state

the American

millennial arts and

that

his novel moves through language to "re-medy" or "re-mediate"

(McCaffery 137) the situation; the mediator himself-it

no coincidence

that

lnc

andenza,

Jr.

referred to

his three sons

"Himself," indicating his abiding textual presence

both character and wraith/mediator-thus intervenes to produce reconciliation between

the two consciousnesses of writer/author and reader. Even Wallace's choice

e word

'wraith,' in the main,

opposed to the more familiar 'ghost'

itself telling in the context

authorship and textual presence. 'Ghost,' according to the Oxford English Dictionary,

defined

"the supposed apparition

a dead person," whereas 'wraith'

defined

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

"the spectral appearance of a living person supposed to portend

that

person's death";

Webster's Dictionary similarly terms a 'wraith' an apparition of "a living person in his

exact likeness seen usually just before his death" (emphases added). Infinite Jest

emphasi

zes

the lexical difference between the two words when the mediator interpolates

into Gately's free indirect discourse, "does wraith mean like a ghost,

in dead?" (833 ,

author's emphasis), emphasizing the wraith's quickened aspect in the text. In her article

Int

ertextual Madness in Hamlet:

The

Ghost's Fragmented Pcrformativity," Hilaire

Kallendorf builds

the well-known fact

that

Shakespeare's works were intertextually

informed

Daemonologie (1597)

King James I. According to King James, "these

kindes of

irites, when they appeare in the shaddow

a person newlie dead

...

are

called Wraithes" and serve to "discover

unto

them [the newly dead's friendes], the will

the defunct, or what was the way of his slauchter" (qtd. in Kallendorf 77), which further

extends Infinite Jest's considerable debt to Hamlet

but

also implies

that

candenza, Jr.

himself was

murdered-that

the auteur, the 'au

or,' was killed in

both

this novel and the

Novel's wider theoretical

context

. 'Revenant' too

a logical word choice, however,

that

the mediator specifica

y designates for Hal (Jest 260,

461)-one

the two protagonists,

second son of Incandenza, Jr., and a lexical prodigy himself who recalls entire entries

the

OED

from memory (950)-with its meanings

"one who

turns

from the dead" and

"one who returns to a place." Both definitions are appropriate for Hal

considered

to have fallen "into the womb

solipsism, anhedonia,

death

in life" (838)

his father,

but

presumably emerges from his "death in life" condition, ex-narrative.

That

is,

Hal

returns to his father's grave with Gately-scrupulously referred to in passing

both

characters,

but

must infer

that

this nevertheless occurs (Jest 17,

934)-to

dig up the

master copy of Incandenza, Jr.'s lethally entertaining

film

"Infinite J

t" (again recalling

].T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

et's graveyard scene) which is interred with

lnc

ande

a, Jr., in his microwave-

annihilated head (1030 n. 160).

e implication of '

aith,' however, is

at Infinite

t's textual presence, its mediator, is a

ve when resuscitated

e reader, and can a

be read

an intertextual nod

e dea

e a

uth

or imp

se, where neither acco

unt

rea

lly

matters

readers

er a text's

orld of intuiti,

" (l

r 64),

but

for

textual critics p

oss

ibly represe

e textual

t' or 'fetch' on deconstruction, where

eory of

e dea

e a

uth

or, according

impo

s an "ab

nce ra

an presence" and "involves not

e imp

ition

but

e er

ure of consciousn

ess

("Grea

tly"

140).

aith,

en,

as a transmission of

e a

uth

or's embedded

consciousn

ess

and a

ows Wa

ace to deconstruct deconstruction's own premi

ses

through

his nove

through written language, deconstruction

own priv

eged form (or

"graphocentric model" for M.H. Abrams) (429). Imbuing

aith with his own

write

y con

iousness and

tablishing it

ara

er and not-quite chara

er, Wa

ace

ains a textual presence

at transmits his 'message' through

e exa

program

deconstruction asse

e complete er

ure of a

uth

al presenc

As Marjo

e Garber

remarks, quoting Freud, in her wide-ranging

peare's Glr)st

Writ

et is a

not only informed with

e unca

but

informed abo

it.

t is only

e m

t explicit marker of uncannin

ess

e ultimate articulation of 'unce

ainty whe

mething is dead or a

liv

e"' (127, a

uth

or's emph

is).

assertion

at is just

applicable to Infinite J

t and

at provok

such a speculation in the embodime

aith. Just

peare, it is widely held, him

lf a

e role of

t in

(Bl

oom 387), it i

in a novel replete with Hamlet references, significa

ace himself would al

'pla

e significant roles of lncande

a, Jr. (King of

en state

at is Enfield Tennis Academy) and

aith, underscoring

e duality of

Jacobs, PhD

esis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

e a

uth

For Infinite lest's great

t j

t is

ere is no

auth

orial presence

while it is paradoxica

y steeped with a

uth

orial consciousn

ess

. It

stake

at,

according to Hal, "deconstruct" al

ens to be

"th

e one

rd"

at Incande

a, Jr.

"hated more

" any o

er word

eory), readers must infer

t 251). All

while Wallace

tablish

a co

ection and permits

e reader to penetrate

consciousn

ess

e textual apo

a is

fill

ed by

e reade

e presence not even

deconstruction would den

Burke ob

rves: "a

eory of

e a

uth

or of

e ab

nce

e a

uth

ot withstand

e practice of readin

for

ere is not an ab

lute cogito

of which individual a

uth

ors are

e subalte

mani-f

tation

but

uth

many

uth

ors, and

e differences

at e

st be

een a

uth

ors

-within

uth

ors

hip-d

efy

reduction to any uni

zing aes

etic" (191). Hence I

r's semi-acceptance

ere

s to

e tattered re

s of New Criticism and deconstruction. A further

etymol

ical derivative for 'gh

t' is al

e German geist, or

pirit, spiritualit

inte

ectuality" (OED

Geist it

lf h

many related forms

~-.:g

to Infinite l

t, such

geister, an ob

lete form of'j

ter.' In this

, Wa

ace's mediating gh

t/geist(e

e l

t 'laugh' or 'fetch' at deconstruction's expen

* * *

ace dedicated his

89 short story, "Girl

With

Curious Hair" (Girl 53) , to

Norman

Brown, a

uth

or of Life Against Death:

e Psycholanalytical Meaning of

Histo

and Love's Bo

ges

ture is significa

ace's works are informed by

own

unique philosophical-cl

ass

icis

mbo

c meditations. Brown's own inte

ectual

developme

took a radical be

om philol

ogy

to a spiritual understanding when he

embarked upon a re-reading of Freud's oeuvre,

he writ

in the introduction to Life

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

esi

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Against Death: "In 19

turn

ed to a deep study of Freud, feeting

e need

reapprai

e nature and d

of man"

While reappraising

e nature and d

tiny of

hum

ankind is certainly a remot

if not

sible ideal,

critical inqui

in today's academic

ttin

it clea

y was not

r Brown who developed a

mbo

cal and spiritual

hum

based epistemol

ogy

. I do not mention Brown

works here

end for any deta

corr

pondence between

own's and Wa

ace's

rldviews

but

merely intend to

demonstrate Wa

ace's emph

is on spiritual understandin

partia

y inherited from

Brown. Love's Body is a m

merizing p

tiche of a

orisms culled

om a broad ran

ass

al, biblical, and philosophical writin

spliced toge

er with Brown

interpretations

and formed into what he ca

s a

rldview

"sy

mbo

cal consciousness,"

is,

of what

it means to be a

hum

an being in a highly tec

ological age.

e gh

tly relationship

between writer and reader, Brown writ

es,

Spiritual understanding (geistig

Verstehen) becom

a gh

tly operation,

an operation with gh

ts (Geisteswi

sse

e docume

starts

speaking for itself;

e reader starts hearing voices.

e subjective

dimension in historical understanding is to animate

e dead le

er with

ving reader's bloo

his "experience"; and simultaneously let

e gh

e dead a

uth

or s

lid

e int

become one with,

e reader's

ul.

It is

necroman

cy,

or shamanis

magical

entification with ancestors; instead

ving spirit,

be possessed by

e dead. (199)

ace's u

e wraith

roxy

inhabit his text is doubly significa

he achieves- or a

empts

achieve- a spiritual relationship with his readers

thr

ough his

text, and circumn

igat

deconstruction

eory of

e dea

e a

uth

or at once by

instantiating his narrating con

iousn

ess

rough

e spiritual agen

aith-

eoretical coeval

e re

turn

or r

urrection

e dead a

uth

or. For,

ends and

ace demonstrat

es,

e text h

e prim

ary

power to convey

presence of con

iousn

ess

ano

er con

iousness. M.H. Abram

in a re

y to

Hillis

Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

Miller, writ

at to experience a text witho

e presence of an a

uth

orial con

iousness

is to perce

e it

lf a

eady irremediably dea

His [Miller

] origin and ground are his gra

ocentric premises,

e closed

chamber of texts for which he invit

abandon our ordina

realm of

experience in speaking, hearin

readin

and understanding langu

age

And

om such a beginning we move to a foregone conclusion. For

Derrida's

amber of texts is a sealed e

o-chamber in which meanin

are

reduced

a ceasel

ess

olalia, a vertical and lateral reverberation

sign

sign of gh

tly non-presenc

emanating

om no voice, inte

no on

ferring

nothin

bombinating in a void. ( 4 31)

Abrams's remarks on deconstruction reca

Nik

Kaza

kis's in

e L

t Temptation,

where

e spiritual essence in and of language remains

apprehended

me: "

but

what

can

e le

ers

say?

are

ack bars of

e pri

n where

e spirit strangl

with screaming. Between

e le

ers and

e lines, and a

around the bla

margins,

spirit circulat

freely" (qtd. in Brown 196).

e 'wraith-functio

further undermin

deconstruction by acting it

a Derridean trace of

e a

uth

-a

tly non-

presence (

e Derridean

us ratur

"under er

ure")

reca

Abrams- al

ways

eady

prese

e te

, one whose annulled presence through in

ription ca

but

still ca

ention to it

lf neve

rth

ess

as presence- and thu

Derrida's construction, is

(Grammatolo

19),

ince

e word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since it is necessa

it remains legible" (Spivak

. G

aya

tri

akravorty Spivak writ

, in her preface to

Grammatolo

gy,

in discu

ing Derrida's concepts of er

ure and trace

at, in distinction to

Heidegger's Being, Derrida's "

trace

e mark of

e ab

nce of a presence, an a

ays

eady ab

present, of

e lack of origin

at is

e condition of

oug

and

experience" (xv

e trace

fac

lf even

it prese

s its legibili

viii).

And

she assert

in a

mewhat disin

nuous move

at antic

and stifles pote

nti

criticism,

at "we must remember this when we

ack Derrida

...

on certain

66 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

sorts

straightforward logical grounds" (xviii), which

imply

that

the entire

Derridean enterprise

itself founded

a fragile foundation-that

say,

that

one must

hold one's logical criticism in abeyance. Wallace has

occasion doffed the critical cap

to Derrida: "if Derrida and the infamous Deconstructionists have done nothing else,

they've debunked the idea

that

speech

language's primary instantiation" ("Tense

Present" 45).

And

it would seem

that

his 'attack'

Derridean deconstruction through

Infinite Jest tends to operate within the acknowledged confines

deconstruction itself,

appropriated deconstruction-or trace of deconstruction-one that, for example, asserts

the erasure

the author in deferring-even dying, a scapegoat (sparagmos) author (Frye,

Anatomy

193)-to

and

for

the reader: the author, for Wallace, has "to be willing

sort

die in order

move the reader" (McCaffery 149).

The

wraith, then, of necessity

'wraith' (the embodiment, the return,

a dead being), acts

a cozening device: the

Wallacean contention

that

while the author may be dead, his spirit nevertheless may

well return to

haunt

his former topology, the gaps between the inky bars of the text. As

wraith, then, it

not

the

author-but

the author.

strike

out

a word, however, to

put

under erasure, does not kill the word's spirit, its internal geist, but liberates it and allows it

to resonate within readers' minds. It

akin to the striking of court-testimony, where the

juridical action

cannot

strike the trace of the annulled commentary from the jurists'

minds where they

will,

possibly, continue to exert a Heisenbergian influence

the

proceedings. Garber relates Spivak's preface to the concept of the ghost: "it

this

specifically Derridean

[sic]

inflection of 'under erasure,' 'sous rature,'

that

uncannily

resembles a ghost-resembles, in fact, the Being of a ghost. 'There are more

things

heaven and earth, Horatio, I

Than

are dreamt

in your philosophy"' ( 180 n. 57). Spivak

notes

that

Derrida "uses the word 'metaphysics' very simply

shorthand for any science

J.T. Jacob

PhD

esis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

of presenc

xi, emph

is added),

but

reca

Sean Burke

-th

e "re

nun

ciation of

author-God does not do aw

with a

uth

orship, nor impede

e creativity of

e a

uth

and the intensity of his engageme

with and within his text" (

49)-w

e can see

at it is

lf to abu

traig

htf

ard l

ic"

at Spivak disparages in making

e Derridian

leap

om textual immanence

a "science of presence": to p

e brick of

e a

uth

or is

not necessarily to p

it, reductively, an edifice of Weste

metaph

s and

transcende

al signified. In his re

y to Derrid

"Destruktion and Deconstruction,"

Hans-Georg Gadamer writ

ere is

o 'language of meta

ere is only a

metaph

ica

ought-o

coinage of concepts

at have been lifted

om living speech"

(107). Such re

ance on a misleading con

nsus of a "coinage of conce

s" thus

tablish

"a f

ed conceptual tradition and con

quently lead[s]

an a

enation

e living language" (107), for Gadame

Thu

ace u

ses

e wraith-function to a

a trace, even

abse

presence,

at neve

rth

eless conv

eys

int

ral meanin

ace h

e concept of trace in mind in Infinite Jest is signified by

Orin

lnc

ande

a's

perspiration impressions in his bed, "white salty outline [s] just s

ghtly o

e week

other faint dried outlines"

Deconstruction becom

lf a meta

s of

language with its own

lectively re-appropriated "'u

ful

' word

(Spivak xx)

aced under

e stamp of er

ure, and

aces any problematic word (for

deconstructive metaph

ic) under er

"if he [Derrida]

re to a

empt a

rous

definition of metaph

, the

would no doubt go 'under er

ure"' (xx

at is

operating here is a

atonic excommunication of terms

at do not belong in

deconstruction

lexical-kingdo

which is,

Spivak re

e "j

ful

t labo

ous

strat

egy

of rewriting the o

language"

and, in an interview, "it seems

at '

histo

of metaph

ics' w

a bad name" (qtd. in Burke 150, interviewer

emph

is),

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

sanitizing o

anguage for Spivak. To this me

odol

ogy,

we must invoke Sean Burke's

"transcende

al lure," which is to

say

at "any determined discour

e dea

of man

will find it

lf ensnared in a similar labyrinth of transcende

al pr

upp

itions" (99) . To

put a metaph

ysi

c under er

ure is only to p

ition and pr

uppose ano

er in its

uch indeed is the ab

yss

awaiting any a

uth

e death of man.

e s

ubj

who

ces

e disappearance of s

ubj

ectivity does

only at the

sk of

becoming- i

erentia

y at leas

t-th

le s

ubj

ect,

e L

t and Ab

lute s

ubj

, le

to face

his s

ubj

cth

ood in

fac

e [o

an o

erwi

ubj

ectl

ess

terrain, ever captive to a mirror

lip

sis

(Burke 103). To confro

e "dea

of man" (interchangeable with 'dea

e a

uth

or' for Burk

"either nec

ess

itat

transcending its tenets or fa

s pr

to its own

anat

raphy" ( 103). To ca

for 'pr

ence' in a te

is, for

me, critica

y n

a·

and

ace anticipat

this by having

e a

uth

or-function r

e who

lly

within

aith-

function, a

gure

at is it

lf a trace (Derridian or o

erwi

), or a v

tig

e a

uth

In an interview with Imre Sa

sin

Derrida once remarked

at, "since

ve a

ays

been inter

ted in literature

-m

y deepest desire being to write literatur

to write

fictions

-I'v

e feeling

at philosophy h

been a detour for me to come back to

literatur

aps I'll never reach this point,

but

was

my desire even when I w

very

g" (qtd. in Burke 170). It is thus with a

mewhat

d irony

at Burke

conclud

his chapter on Derrida with

e words of

e lamenting a

uth

prosopopeia

e dea

Derrida addresses

e ab

uth

or of him

lf-

e P

t Card and

Memoir

: For Pa

deMan r

pective

have never had any

thin

g to write. You are the

only one to understand why it rea

y w

necessa

at I write exactly

e opp

concerns axiomatics, of what I know my d

ire to be, in o

er words

ving spee

presence it

and,

have never

own how to te

a stor

(qtd. in Burk

171).

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

irony is

at Derrida h

never been able to sl

his own (gh

tly)

uth

lf in e

ith

his philosophical litera

(it

lf creative) or

gurative and

lf-claime

lf-

imposed dea

of his

uthful, would-be

auth

e a

uth

or who w

still-bo

, who

int

ended to write

ction

instead 'spe

' his entire life in either repressing

erhaps

sublimatin

even) his a

uth

orial

lf,

or killing it;

but

it h

neve

rth

ess

turn

or w

never gon

e one a

uth

at he could never put under er

ure

him

lf.

this

, one m

come aw

with a differing

int

ed by Spivak when she

remarks in her preface

at,

acqu

Derrida is al

this co

ection of te

s" (ix). Spivak

conclud

her preface by simila

y putting her own words under er

ure when she

remarks, "and a

and don

at is

rt of reader I would hope fo

A reader who

would f

ten upon my mistranslations, a

with

at leverage deconstruct Derrida's te

beyond what Derrida

rolling s

ubj

dire

ed in it" (lxxxvii).

Thi

etorical

ourish impli

e preface's argume

be taken

part of a new meta

ic while it

simultaneously a

empts to distance it

e spe

er of

fir

st principl

. Spivak's

final comme

is crucial to her overa

argument, for not to release

e te

(Derrida's a

her own) is to claim an Ab

lute s

ubj

ectivity (thus,

lipsis

and fa

deconstruction's own tenets,

but

release it is

preserve a trace, a

owing it

e full

onomy of play.

And

ith

er w

ere is no escaping

e fact of inte

nti

onal inscription,

of a

uth

al direction. For Ga

er, "a gh

t is

e concreti

tion of a mi

ing presence,

e sign of what is

ere by not being

ere" (129).

this w

ay,

ace's wra

ith

signifies

e presence of

e re

turn

ed a

uth

or in spectral gui

Ultimately, deconstruction and its significance recede for Wa

ace, since

conver

tion between writer and reader is his primary aes

etic conce

write pro

at creat

e impr

ess

ion in

e reader of "a

human

being actua

y sitting rig

ere

70 ].T. jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

talking to him" (Wallace, "Indexical" 23). There

much in the philosophy

Gadamer

that

relevant

Wallace's purpose. For Gadamer, language

primarily "conversation,"

and to "overcome confusion"-the "strangeness

that

arises between one

human

being and

another"-one "must look for the word

that

can reach another person," the "language

the other person,"

"cross over into the language of the other in order

reach the

other" ("Destruktion" 106). For Gadamer and Frank Kermode, in his "Cornelius and

Voltemand: Doubles in Hamlet," 'conversation'

a "habit

:::

community"

that

much

"broader"

than

our contemporary usage currently suggests (Kermode 4 7): "the action of

consorting or having dealings with others; living together, commerce" ( 4

OED).

Paraphrasing Lacan, Gadamer contends

that

the "word

not

directed

another person

such an empty word"

06). Gadamer challenges the contemporary concept of the

"'language of metaphysics"' itself, which he claims "really has no meaning,"

for

"certainly

what it can mean

not the language in which metaphysics

was

first developed, namely,

the philosopher's language

the Greeks" but, rather, means

"that

certain conceptual

formulations, derived from the original language of metaphysics, have impressed

themselves into the living languages of present-day speech communities" (106) . He

further cites correlative examples of such in "scientific and philosophic discourse" and in

the "mathematics-based natural sciences" where the "introduction

terms

purely a

matter

convention, serving to designate states

affairs available

all, and which do

not

involve any genuine relation of meaning between these terms introduced into

international use and the peculiarities of national language," citing the "volt"

removed

from immediate thinking

the scientist, Alessandro Volta ( 106-1 07). Gadamer

considers his "dialectic"

referring

the "whole wide-ranging totality

the Western

tradition of metaphysics," and, thus, considers Derrida's deconstruction

reside within

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

at whole in a totality of philosophical dialecti

which is at once inclusive and

charitable, for a

lth

ough Gadamer departs

om Derridian deconstruction, he does,

howeve

acknowled

Derrida's work to be a significa

compone

and even concludes

his essay thu

"this conver

tion should seek its pa

rtn

er every

just becau

this

rtn

er is o

and

pecia

y if

e o

er is completely diff

er<

. m.

oever wa

s me to

take deconstruction to heart and insists on difference stands at

e beginning of a

conver

tion, not at its end" (113).

Thu

s, Gadamer

"path" is "

om dialectic back to

dialogue, back to con

tion" (109) , instead of deconstruction's impl

ion

"background network

mea

nin

g-relations l

ng at

e b

speech" ( 1 09).

Gadamer's word

"Derrida immer

ses

him

lf in

e m

ous multiplicity lod

d in a

word and in

e diversity of its meanin

, in

e indeterminate potential of its

differentiations of meanin

(11

Such

a program remains, of necessit

in a

lita

space, a verbal pri

at guards against

e penetration of meaning into

e i

lated

examination of individua

y i

lated words. In "Signature

ext," Derrida uses

e example of "green is or"

a construction

at does not constitute its co

ext in it

and further asserts

at "nothing prevents [its] functio

nin

<mo

er co

ext

signi

g marks,"

"'green is or' still signifi

an example of agrammaticality" and for

e "possibility of extraction and citational grafting which belon

e struc

tur

e of

every mark

writin

at i

as a p

oss

ibility of functioning

cut

, at a certain point,

from its 'o

gina

meaning and

om its belonging to a

turable and

cons

aining co

ery sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or

written

...

a sma

or lar

unit

can be cited, (put between quotation

marks);

ereby it can break with every g

en co

, and en

nder

infinitely new co

exts in an ab

lutely non

turable f

hion

...

ere are

only co

exts witho

any ce

er of ab

lute anchoring. (320, a

uth

or's

emph

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

However,

Sea

e argu

in his re

y to Derrid

"green is o

is not "

rammatica

Derrida insist

but

is simply incoherent, an i

lated phrase

at signifi

nothing: "

quence 'le vert

t ou' does not MEAN an example of

grammatica

ty,

it does not

mean anythin

er it

an example of

grammaticality . .

To mention it is not

e same

to u

it"

e 203, a

uth

or's emph

is). To enclo

within quotation marks

only to draw a

nti

on to or place emph

is on

e words (or "marks

and does not signi

, or if it does, it only signifi

incohere

e a

mpt

toward

production of meaning or a

lf-conscious e

ort toward non-meaning

e phrase h

ext whatsoever, excepting in

e addressor's mind where it can only be deemed e

ith

a linguistic error or an a

empt at a private language.

e e

erpri

lf can be

construed as

lip

sistic beca

e it is only comprehensible to the i

lated

lf,

choosing as it

does to remain i

lated and

incomprehensible

a private language witho

its co

nch

ored in a community's shared discour

. But, for Gadamer (and Wa

ace), a "word

exists only in conver

tion and never e

sts

ere

an i

lated word

but

e totality of

a w

of accounting by means of s

aking and answering" ("Destruktion" 112).

Thu

ace's lexical strat

egy

in Infinite Jest forc

an immediate investi

tion of

individual

rds and a determination of

eir lar

r significance in

e broad weave of

entire tex

e appearance,

en, of

e gh

t-word (and p

tstructura

st term)

"BRICOLAGE" in Gately's con

iousn

ess

(from

e wraith)

t 832) implies bo

th th

engineered whole of

e te

and

e readers' similar assemblage or reconstruction of

words in

eir own consciousnes

ses

as a linguistic exerci

which is

e analogue of

conver

tion.

e forced le

cal engageme

with Infinite J

in its essential demand on

e reader to anal

yze

individual words and apply

em in a lar

r co

ext, is

remedying action of being in conversation, and is what tak

lexical investigation beyond

J.T. Jacob

PhD

Departme

of English, McM

ter University

deconstruction

torpor and analytic paral

is over

e i

lated word and further

evacuation of lin

ring meta

ical impressions or vesti

ges.

And, for Gadame

"to be in

a conver

tion

...

means to be beyond onese

lf,

to think with

e o

er and to come back

to oneself

if to ano

er" ("D

truktion" 110). For bo

Gate

and

e reader this

becom

es,

in Gadamer

words,

e "fulfillme

of an intention of consciousn

ess

" which

"does mean 'presence.' It is

e de

arative vo

ix)

ass

igned to

e presence of what

oug

in thinking" (112, a

uth

or's emph

is).

ace's novel is an erudite compendium of etymological referenc

where,

again, geist can al

be read

'spirit' and, by e

ension,

~'~

Zeitgeis

"th

e spirit of

e a

ge"-

clea

y no mistake in a novel

at al

seeks to undermine

e co

emporary

erican

pirit' of iron

partic

arly, for Wa

ace,

manifested in curre

ction. It is

further no coinc

ence

cande

a, Jr.

(fr

e Latin incand

cere- 'to hine

white

'-which

adds to his gh

tly

pect) is an a

eur film-make

adding emph

is to his

uth

al presenc

Moreove

canden

, Jr. is

equently referred to

"appropriation artist"

t 23) in terms of his intertextual film-making which explains

both his dire

or-h

tile commandeering of

e narrative and

e novel's own nea

infinite interte

xt-h

e conflat

and subsum

er vo

and aes

etic practic

in his

monolithic telling. Hal further comme

at his fa

er w

an "am

ingly shit

editor

of his own stuff' (94

which ca

s a

ention to

e enormity of Infinite J

and a

foo

ote to

cande

Jr.

film

ography cites

hum

orous pseudo

-j

ournal articl

James

lncanden

Onc

e Produced

e Genuinely

Ori

ginal or

ropriated or Nonde

vative

Thin

g?"' (990 n. 2

. It is u

ful

to reca

ace's stateme

at "certain novels not only c

out for critical interpretations

but

actua

y try to dire

("Empty" 217, emph

is adde

, which is certainly the case

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

with Infinite Jest.

their Performance, Culture, and Identity, Elizabeth Fine and Jean

Speer

chart

intertextuality

the power

narrators to create meaning and project cultural values

through different renditions

the same traditional ghost story

....

These

studies provide examples

the process

'entextualization' and

'recontextualization' in which a performance may be detached from one

social situation (entextualized, decentered) and performed in another

social situation (recontextualized, recentered). (qtd. in Kallendorf 71)

Kallendorf calls this the "echo of a shared discourse" (70), anrl tt

between Infinite Jest's

very

much

alive mediator/wraith and Shakespeare and a legion of other artists, literary

and visual, and between the auteur's consciousness and the reader's

that

a ghostly

discourse

shared.

The

(Sinistral) Machine in the (Sinister) Ghost

very good clue

afforded when a sinistral sign

disco

vered"-An

onymous ('Sinistral' qtd. in

the OED).

"0"

(Jest 3).

the suspenseful episode in which

Don

Gately,

fornK;.

cat-burglar, drug addict,

and current night staffer,

shot outside the

Ennet

House drug and alcohol rehabilitation

center, the narrative takes

the quality

reportage.

That

is,

the narrative

told

the

wraith in a conversational tone

that

personal and familiar

that

the illusion of

'hearing' this ghost-story (literally, a story told by a ghost)

is,

in-deed, arresting.

The

strategic use

the German word Brockengespen tphanom ("breaking into ghost") in

note 38,

noted above (Jest 994),

even more significant

observe

that

gespenst

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

resides in the middle

this phrase, just

the wraith

centrally located in the narrative

both

the character Incandenza, Jr. and

the text's mediator; the wraith ruptures the

text itself, literally breaking it into ghostliness.

The

wraith's textual presence itself

subtle throughout except for the overt hospital episode,

but

Wallace provides one subtle

clue besides the reader's recognition

that

what

received

is,

fact, told instead of merely

presented, or shown, in the Jamesian sense. Twenty-seven of the novel's many

unnumbered chapters and subsections are specifically marked with a circular symbol with

a narrow blackened crescent

(0);

each symbol, or meniscus, signifies the overt mediating

presence of the wraith in

that

episode; all other sections are either narrated in the first

person or are otherwise mediated without the denuded presence

the wraith;

that

is,

all

mediated, the polyphonic voices collated,

the wraith,

but

the meniscus-symbol

segments signify

immediately told narrative-and the immediacy of presence-rather

than

a presented narration.9

The

narrative

dialogic, yet also complexly monologic in

the sense

that

the wraith assembles the many voices through his own voice; and the

narrator

also

both

heterodiegetic and homodiegetic at once, being simultaneously a

(deceased) character and also its narrator. Sean Burke writes 1

hat

absolute authorial

erasure

impossible (echoing Wayne Booth's

contention

that

an "author

can

disguise

himself,"

but

"can never choose to disappear") (qtd. in Ricoeur 188), iffor nothing else,

because the "author operates

a principle

uncertainty in the text, like the

Heisenbergian scientist whose presence invariably disrupts the scientificity

the

observation" (Burke 190). "Himself"s narration thus directly influences characters and

manipulates events in such a Heisenbergian fashion-in a "Heisenbergian dimension" (Jest

831)-as

his perceptions, reporting/editorializing, and consequences of his actions

former character

cannot

'cut

out' of the narrative; they are vitally interlocked.

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Wallace thus creates a character/narrator who

inseparable from the raw events. This

vital to Wallace's aesthetic

conjoining writer and readerly consciousnesses. In "Tense

Present," he remarks

that

"even in the physical sciences,

ever

~hing

from

quantum

mechanics to Information Theory has shown

that

an act of observation

itself part

the

phenomenon observed and

analytically inseparable from it" (46). Both the writer's

consciousness alters the textual phenomenon (via the wraith) and the reader's

consciousness, the "reader's own

life

'outside' the story changes the story" (McCaffery

141). Wallace notes

that

"you could argue

at it affects

ly 'her [the reader's] reaction

to the story' or 'her take

the story.' But these things are the story" (141, interviewer's

emphasis). Wallace's title to his Harper's essay even, with the calculated inversion

'present tense' to "tense present," itself calls attention to the 'tense presence' of both

writer's and reader's consciousnesses-and Infinite Jest's mediator/wraith's peculiar abiding

presence

both (former) character and narrating (tense/hostile) presence, a "double-

voicing" presence (Phelan 60).

The

wraith

both

present

till

recedes throughout,

miming his sudden appearances and disappearances in the hospital episode.

The

signification of these sporadic meniscus symbols

is,

again, lexical. This clue appears

throughout

but

in no episode more significantly

than

the wraith's appearance to the

hospitalized Gately, where the wraith telepathically transmits one

many narratively

integral words into Gately's hallucinating mind in caps: "MENISCUS"

(kg

832). Much

Wallace's reader's participatory ethos

derived through lexical investigation-that

is,

simply keeping a dictionary nearby, for

Cioffi fittingly observes,

he novel sends even

the relatively well-educated to the dictionary dozens, if not scores

times" and even

then

"some words remain elusive" (167-168). Meniscus has seven definitions, two

which are

germane here: "1. a crescent-shaped body; crescent moon (rare);

a lens convex

one

----

---

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Departme

of English, McMaster University

side a

concave on

e o

prope

e convexo-concave form

...

but

en applied

e concavo-convex,

e two being

metim

distinguished

converging and

diverging meni

us r

pectivel

(OED). Infinite J

ays

e concave-convex motif

througho

, appearing m

t memorably in

Jr.'s experime

al film-making and

with his va

lf-inve

ed len

ses.

Moreover, No

rth

erica it

lf is reconfigured and

renamed

tion of No

rth

erican

(O.

N.A.N

.-a

int

ended pun) with

a portion of

e north-easte

Unit

for

cefully ceded to Canada;

ne, ca

th th

e "Great Concavity/Grand Convexite" (1032 n. 177) depending on one's

perspective, is a wa

ed-off dumping ground for

can w

te.10

Alth

ough

fir

definition of meni

y corr

ponds to

e text's sporadic cr

mbol

I am

particula

y co

ed with

cond definition

e wraith,

narrative presence a

'embodied' litera

meniscu

foca

zes

and prese

s a

textual mate

for it is his

presence

at brin

e submer

d, textual a

uth

orial-consciousn

ess

(concavity) and

merges it

e reader's exte

al con

iousn

ess

(convexity

e two meni

i diver

and conver

simultaneously througho

, enacting

e lexical equivale

of a

conver

tion: "and we converse"

t 131).

sk of di

ating

e g

shot epi

de's linguistic power, I will neve

rth

ess

summari

it: Gately is

rced to protect one of

e r

s of his ha

lf-w

hou

thr

ee Canadian terrorists. He succ

ess

fully

s o

two of

em and suffers a g

shot

wound from

e third; while

e shooter is rendered temporarily vulnerable

sustaining ejected cordite powder in his face,

e o

watc

hin

g r

ide

s subdue him.

at is crucial is

e ma

er in which

e epi

de is (re)prese

for it is not 'shown'

udo-o

ectively

e reader using conventional third-per

n narration,

but

is simply

stor

at is,

ere is an overwhelming

nsation of not being im

inati

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

present, or even 'seein

e eve

r co

ends

e reader can. As

e e

unf

e mediator/wraith car

ully describ

e entire scen

Gately's ph

ical action

and

e o

er r

rds and action

who are engaged in parking

eir cars on

opp

ite side

e street according to a municipal bylaw.

e wraith's reportage is it

filmic a

he mim

his own

t) film-making aes

etic of ensuring

at "e

ith

whole e

ertainme

or el

if it w

n't

u could bloody we

hear

eve

single performer's voice"

t 835)

at a

e res

s' actions and voices

are acco

unt

ed for and heard during

e telling

Gately's

g!:-_

He further editoria

zes

and interrupts

e scene with remarks like, "it's not

much

thin

slow

break

into

es"

(608), signifying his film-maker's perception of

e scene, and "a

this

appraisa

s taking only second

it only tak

time to

st it" (609), emph

izing

e telling

e eve

instead of

e illu

reade

y perception of immediac

of im

inatively

'seeing'

e event. As Gately me

y prepar

for

ght, he twice suffers

"Remembe

r-Wh

etming" (6

10)

, fears of

e o

come and memo

om his criminal p

at, if indul

d in, would poss

ibly

e him to

ee. After

ese

oug

e wraith

twice in

"this line of thinking is intolerable" (610, 611),

ereafter Gately steels his

resol

for

ght.

at is narratologica

y significa

e wraith's very

narration influences Gately's beh

ior and impli

ese words are in

rted into

Gately's own con

iousness just

are simultaneously for

··

he reader, and which al

rves to foreshadow

e later h

pital

ene where

mut

e and immobile Gately is

ubj

ed to

e wraith

"gh

t-words" (832, 922)

eard' in Gately's "inte

al brain-

voice" (831). It is perhaps worthwhile me

nti

oning Christine

ooke-Rose's assertion, in

her study of

Turn

e Screw,

ere is "nothing in gh

t-lore

at forbids

oug

ht-tr

ansference" (398 n.

10)

e mediator/wra

ith

rts further

eas and

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

thoughts into Gately and the other, surrounding characters,

that

influence the actual

narrative integrity and continuity. These moments are signally prefaced with the

leitmotif, "it occurs" (610ff), and are repeated later

when

the wraith manifests himself to

Gately directly in the hospital (82 7ff). This leitmotif explains why Gately rather suicidally

approaches the terrorists to begin with when he knows he will assuredly be shot and

killed: "it occurs to Gately if you

fire

with

Item right up to yvur sighting-eye like

that

won't you get a face full

cordite" ( 610, emphasis added). This passage demonstrates

the interlacing of doubled voices in Wallace's text: Gately's free indirect discourse, his

assumed thought ("won't you get a face full of cordite"),

conjoined with the wraith's

telling; it

both

his thinking and the wraith's suggestion, with the result

that

the wraith

both

narrates/tells and manipulates the narrative's circumstances ("divisions collapse,"

interpolates the wraith here) (612) by suggesting to Gately

that

can

only be shot once

the terrorist will be incapacitated by the cordite. Gately's heroism

implied in the fact

his willingness to, and knowledge

that

will,

sustain

least one shot in order to

rescue the abhorrent Randy Lenz ('lens'). Moreover, the wraith goes to great length to

construct Gately

sanguine before and during the fight; he

progressively described

as:

"of jolly calm" (

0), "almost jolly" ( 611), "of ferocious good

heer" ( 612), "of cheery

competence and sangfroid" ( 614),

he horrifically beats the Canadian terrorists. Yet

after this mediator-constructed cheerfulness,

are informed in a note

that

Gately once

killed a

man

after being sprayed with Mace, "but it was only

accident," reports the

mediator/wraith-yet Gately

said to have experienced a "red curtain of rage" and

have

turned the victim's head "180° around

his neck and had the little Mace

can

all the

way up one nostril" (1078 n. 369). This

but

one inconsistency

many, and suggests

that

the mediator

partial to Gately, and

bent

redeeming his

flaws.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Yet it

the mediator/wraith himself who bears the inherent

flaws,

and infuses the

text with them. His Dogberryesque solecisms are many and humorous: "Grand Mall

epilepsy"

78) and "Morris code"

(27

5).

other times, his linguistic solecisms translate

into behavioral

lecisms, and are sinister. Like many

Infinite Jest's characters, he

once charming and hideous.

appreciate his technical abilities and brilliance (in

optics, film-making, genera

st erudition, and, not least, sophisticated story-telling), yet

are repulsed

his alcoholism

(as

lncandenza, Jr.), sexism and xenophobia

(as

the

wraith): halfway-house resident Charlotte

Treat

referred to

the wraith

a "clueless"

"poor bitch" (271); Canadians are "fucking Nucksters" or simply, "Nucks" (215); "puke

white Irish are

every corner" (477); a tennis

ayer's face

depicted

having

"Eskimoid structure"

(26

7); African Americans are disparaged throughout: a character

"shakes his hand in the complex

way

Niggers" (

444);

Asian Americans are derisively

referred to

"Orientals" and "Chinese," their walking

"scuttling" (716); Asian

languages are ridiculed

"monkey-language[s]

,"with

regrettable commentary like,

"evoluti

proved your Orientoid tongues were closer to your primatallanguages

than

not" (716) and "it

was

universally well known

that

your basic Orientoid types carried

their earthly sum-total of personal wealth with them at all times. As in

their person

while they scuttled around" (718).

The

wraith, however, compensates for his darker

aspect

seeding his story with countless references to left-hand things, and constantly

mentions the words "SINISTRAL" and "sinister" (the former

another ghost-word)

(832).

The

sinistral/sinister connection works in Infinite Jest

several compatible leve

ls.

'Sinistral' means, among other things, "darkly suspicious," "illegitimate," and "pertaining

to the left hand or side" (OED) .

extension, 'sinister'

defined variously

"not

straightforward," "prejudicial, adverse, unfavorable";

information, it

"given with

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

intent to deceive or mislead"; it connotes both "erring" and "erroneous"; all in addition to

its more conventional meanings of "situated

the left side of the body" and "relating to

the use

the left hand" after its etymological cousin, 'sinistral' (OED). Both words'

definitions signify the nature

Infinite Jest's narration and its mediator: the

mediator/wraith

at times rankly prejudicial,

erroneous, and highly mischievous.

What

most striking, however,

'sinister"s most obscure definition, etymologically

drawn from heraldry: "forming, or situated on, the left half

a shield (regarded from the

bearer's point of view)" (OED). Infinite Jest

a mise

abyme narrative with the

rumored existence of

five

"Infinite Jest"

films,

all

them created

Incandenza,

Jr.

The

crucial one, "Infinite Jest (V),"

compelling to watch

that

it renders its viewers

catatonic, and

searched

for

two groups, a Quebecois terrorist organization which

plans to copy the film-copies

can

only be made from the master, however-and

disseminate it throughout the United States to avenge the "territorial reconfiguration"

(1032 n. 177), and a C.I.A.-analogue organization (the O.U.S.-"Office of Unspecified

Services") (88)

out

foil

the terrorists' plot.

The

film,

much like the novel itself,

singularly entertaining and incurably addictive.

Don

Gately's appearance and

circumstances place him within the heraldic tradition, albeit in a millennial American

context: he has a "Prince Valiantish haircut" (277, 477) (with perhaps

intertextual

nod to Prince Valiant's author, Hal Foster, after Wallace's middle name, his maternal

grandfather's surname-F.P. Foster-to whom the novel

dedicated);

a child Gately

plays under the name "Sir Osis ofThuliver" (cirrhosis

the liver-a condition from which

Gately's alcoholic mother dies) (449); his mother calls him her "good sir knight" (448);

and, in a 'heroic' context, note 254 informs the reader

that

"Gately's made it

iron

point never again ever to run, once he got straight" ( 104 5 n.

L.S4),

which refers to the

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

fight scene. Gately's own body

inscribed with the twentieth-century's equivalent

street-heraldic iconography. During a prison term, prior to the novel's narrated events,

Gately etches a "jailhouse tatt"

his right-hand wrist, a "plain ultraminimal blue squar

(210) which

"canted and has sloppy extra blobs

three of the corners" (211), and

the inside

ofhis

left forearm he has a

loppy cross" tattooed

his cellmate (210).

The

description

the tattoos

oddly sustained, with the blue-square tattoo mentioned three

times in a single par

raph and the cross mentioned

but

once. But Gately

"right

handed" (211), which raises the question

why he performs the square tattoo with his

left hand instead

rendering a more precise cross-instead of the cellmate's "sloppy"

version

(210)-on

his left forearm: attention

twice called to Gately's sinistral aspect.

Gately's inverted tattoos are furthermore symbolic of a heraldic "rebatement

honor,"

nine marks reserved

"deface the arms

one found guilty

offence against the

standards of chivalry" (Franklyn 2 74). Gately's offence

cowardice in abandoning his

mother, first, when she

physically abused

Gately's step-father and, later, when he

abandons her prior

her death. Two colors are specifically reserved for marks of

disgrace: sanguine and tenne ('stain'; tawny, orange-brown); the latter color al

happens

be the reverse spelling

Gately's rehabilitation center, 'Ennet' House. Gately

referred to synaesthetically throughout in relation to the color red, and his tattoos are

inverted

his 'arms':

"an

inscutcheon

[is]

reversed for a deserter" (Franklyn 276).

The

official symbol

abatement

honor for cowardice

the gore sinister sanguine

76);

and it

only after Gately has achieved sobriety and

"wounded in service to somebody

who did

not

deserve service" (Jest 855)

that

the color red

associatively removed from

him and replaced with associations with the color blue (particularly sky-b

e), or azure,

which signifies "renown and beauty" (Friar 344).

The

wraith further emphasizes

both

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

square things and large heads throughout, linking

them

to Gately's canted tattoo.

Incongruously interpolated comments lik

"has anybody mentioned Gately's head

square? It's almost perfectly square, massive and boxy and mysticetously blunt: the head

somebody who looks like he likes to lower his head and charge" ( 4 76),

an oft-

repeated refrain.

The

leitmotif appears with other characters

well:

candenza, Jr.'s

(supposed) second son Mario has a grotesquely oversized head (1022 n. 117); Elizabeth

Tavis

said to have a "huge square head" (901); Hal Incandenza "adapt[s] his [tennis]

game to a large head [racquet]" in distinction to his opponent, who "was born with a

large head" (678), and

forth. Square shapes and box-like objects in Infinite Jest are a

analogues for our own existential cranial boxes, our minds, a metaphor

that

Maurice

Merleau-Ponty was fond

of:

"I am never in effect enclosed

...

object in a box"

(Phenomenology 360), and, "we have to reject the age-old assumptions

that

put

the body

in the world and the seer in the body, or, conversely, the world and the body in the seer

in a box" (Visible 138). It would make sense, then, for the wraith to construct Gately

performing the "blue square" tattoo, which requires "half a day and hundreds

individual jabs" (210), instead of the cross. Gately's

lf-mutil

thus symbolizes 'street

heraldry,' after a fashion, just

knife-owners are easily identifiable to the street-savvy

Gately: "one forearm's hair has a little hairless patch, which Gately knows well spells

knife-owner" (276). Gately, then,

a walking escutcheon with a blue square (with dots

at three corners), cross, and enormous, potentially charging-even jousting

(jesting?)-head. Heraldic references further appear beyond Gately: an Alcoholics

Anonymous member has the "A.A.'s weird little insignia

a triangle inside a circle"

for

tattoo and A.A. members themselves are synonymously known

"White Flaggers" (445).

Most significantly, a "set

squeegees"

mysteriously found hung in the tennis academy's

].T. Jacob

PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

dining ha

"in a kind of saltire" (632). A saltire is an "ordinary

one of

nin

e princ

heraldic charges,

which bend-sinister is include

a "

sion of a bend [\] and a bend

sinister (I] giving an

X-

shaped cross" (Franklyn. 292). Ea

y in

e nove

bend and bend-

sinister are typ

raphica

y rendered

\ /"

est 62), and a new A.A.

Whit

agger h

"deep diagonal furrow in his fac

extending

eye

brow

left lip-come

856).

at is particula

y notable here is

e squeegee

ltire

-hun

g by

wra

ith

-s

ignifi

Gately's own

ltire ta

oo (le

arm) a

further ca

s a

ention to his

ill

egitimacy

bend sinister is a "sign of b

tard

(OED). Significations of

ill

egitima

further co

ect with lncanden

, Jr.'s (supposed)

n Mario, pr

umably

ill

egitimate

n of his uncle,

Tavis, usurper o

fln

canden

, Jr.'s Headm

ter

ition, wif

and home, a

indicated by

e gh

t-words, "LEVIRATE MARRIAGE"

(832). Infinite J

t is

LeClair observ

deformed in its

inly

pect and "resembl

prodigious bod

(35)

but

in no w

an in its awkwa

division be

een necessa

81 pages) and suppleme

ary e

ndn

(98 pages), a sinistral division of paramo

unt

importance fo

recalling

e 'sinister' portion of the heraldic shield and its definition's

caveat, "regarded from

e bearer's point of vie

(OED),

e book,

en, itself is

encoded

siniste

From

e mediating wraith's perspective (a textual conc

ity),

not

are litera

y sinistral, whereas for

e 'viewer' or reader (a convexity)

are

sinistral

t "DEXTRAL"

t 836),

at is, rig

ht-h

anded and "auspicious."

heraldry,

e dexter al

ways

surmo

unt

e sinister (particula

y in saltir

and this surmounting

ends

ace's

dulous r

for

e reader, where we may

say

e dexter

(reade

is a

ays

itioned above

e sinister (a

uth

or).

Thi

s is b

t signaled by

e fact

e notes section co

ains bo

th th

e wraith's own heraldic

mbol

'heading'

(0)-

an incresce

meni

us- and

e word

"Not

and Errata" (983), which emph

85 J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McMaster University

'sinister"s seconda

definition of "erring; erroneou

That

e nove

s weave is it

incomplet

and

e mediator-wraith is ve

fallible, is further signified by referenc

e Lindisfa

e G

pels

-H

al h

a dormitory-room carpet reproduction of one of

pels' carpet pages

t 950).

e G

pels,

Janet Bac

ouse ob

, co

ain

alm

t imperceptible "gaps and discrepancies" in

e complex interlacing d

ign out of

e a

uth

or's practice of humility in "avoiding ab

lute perfection" (55) . To create a

'perfect' work risked o

ending God, as William Gaddis ob

rves of this practice in

al carpe

ts,

" "made with a conscio

in order not to o

end

e creator of

Perfection by emulating his grand design" (Gaddis 906). For Infinite J

e minute gaps

and discrepanci

rve to underscore

e fa

of mediatio

and mediation

om a very

fallible, ve

hum

an consciousn

ess

e motif of interlacin

aps

e domina

feature of

e G

pel

n-it

lf is further highlig

ed as Infinite J

primary

television-broadc

ting ne

ork's name is none o

an "Inte

ace"

t 990 n. 24).

e G

pels

ain two versions of

e gospel texts,

e o

ginal Latin and an

"An

glo

-S

axon interlinear gl

oss

added

o and a half centuries late

17). It

would see

en,

at Infinite J

t mim

this double textuality with its core narrative

structure and with its interlinear, inte

acing pa

ern, or meta-te

aith.

entire narrative apparatus is

convoluted and co

abulated

at it represe

addition to a deformed body- a hulking machine of fals

ifi

ed language ("the machine

language" of

e mind) (117) ,

e gh

t's own tellin

e bo

likea

e and horrid

wraith

eaks him

lf through

e dial

istic construction of his own making

-hi

s own

directing

epic a

eur film-make

"Him

lf,"

thu

speaks him

lf.

As readers we

neverthel

ess

watch/hear him narrate

-t

his gh

t-stor

y-o

n grand scale, watching him

ect our own

rdid potentialiti

Jere

Hawthorn ob

J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Narrative focu

ses

our a

ention on to a stor

quence of eve

rough

e dire

mediation of a 'telling' which we bo

stare at and

rough, which is at once ce

ntr

al and peripheral to

e experience of

story, bo

and prese

e con

iousness of

ose being to

story

stare at

e 'telling' while our minds are

fix

ed upon what

telling points towards. We look at

e pointing . . .

but

our minds are

fix

upon what is pointed at.

(vii)

Infinite Jest is an exemplary mirror-te

and, in

e J

cean

, a grand book of

love (an epithalamium)

at would force us to confro

our own hideous

pects while

seeing

earing

ese very simila

human

-as

pects

we read, a

the while forcing

a suspension of judgme

er Robert Langbaum

"sy

mpa

y versus judgme

(7 5),

at is o

en required of

e reader/viewer in dramatic monologu

, in which readers

must

fir

st inhabit

e text and impartia

lly

hear/see

e speaker before judging.

mediator/

aith

fir

st creat

en inhabits his own te

"complete presence, " a

narrato

al presence

at is a "machine in

e gh

t 160, 988

24), a textual

presence

at,

for Gatel

speaks in

e reader

n "internal brain-voice"

It is

no surprise,

en,

at a suppleme

ary

ough obscure definition for 'wraith' is al

"fetch," with 'fetch' it

lf containing

e nove

s rai

n: a "far-reaching e

ort"

ass

encyclopedic novel it

lf; and "contrivance, dod

ge,

stratagem" in terms of

e created

illusion of an actual and

ry credible fictive world, and

tch

a slang

nonym for

none other

but

t.' A furthe

admittedly indirect, reference to sinistra

emer

ges

an ekphr

tic

se.

In his essay, "

amorph

s,"

Jacqu

Lacan discu

sses

foreshortened

distortion in Ho

ein

famous portrait,

e Ambassadors. '

amorph

is defined

"a distorted projection or drawing of anything,

made

at v.hen viewed

om a

partic

ar point, or by re

ection

om a suitable mirro

it appears r

ar and prope

proportioned; a deformation

and to 'anamorphose' is to "disto

into a monstrous

projection" (

OED

). In Ho

ein's portrait, two

ntlemen are displayed prominently

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

within

e mi

en scene

at signifies

e vanit

worldly accomplis

Jutting into

e frame of

e painted spac

nearly breaking

e lower left-

hand quadra

, is an unusual and unidentifiable o

(when viewed directly) ,

but

Lacan not

, "

e secret

this picture is given at

e mome

when, moving s

ghtly

ay,

little by littl

e le

ft,

en turning around, we see what

e m

ical

oating

signifi

. It re

s our own no

thin

ess,

gure of

e death's hea

(92,

emph

is added). Wa

ace's novel requires a similar left-ward or sinistral moveme

perce

at which is conceale

e entire novel it

lf cal'

read

a similar

represe

ation

vanit

e relentl

ess

t for perfection and fame

Enfield's tennis

aye

rs,

e addicts qu

fir

st, for oblivion and

cape

e reality principle and later

shake

eir substance-abu

habits. References to skulls are innumera

e in

Infinite J

t, which further underscores

e mortality

eme and links it

the Ho

ein

painting in addition to

e emph

is on Ha

et's Yorick, signa

lly

e name of one of

Incanden

za,

Jr.

production compani

es,

"Poor Yo

ck Entertainme

Unlimited" (992 n.

24). Moreover

e k

and

lective u

e word "for

hortene

(954, author

emph

is) draws a

ention

e text

anamorphic quality. But if this co

ection

remains

mewhat tenuou

aith

appropriation

Lacan's essay it

lf removes

doubt. In his essay, Lacan,

surprisingly, links anamorph

is with

allu

ow is it

at nobody h

ever

oug

of co

ecting this with .

ffect of an erection?

ine a ta

oo traced on

xual or

n ad hoc in

e state of repose and

ass

uming its,

if I m

say

so,

developed form in ano

er state. How can we not see her

immane

e geometral dimension

...

mething

mbo

c of

e function of

e lac

appearance of

allic gh

88). Compare Infinite J

amusing appropriation

of Lacan in Ennet Hou

alumnus Calvin

Thru

who h

"on

e sha

" of his "formerly

J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

The

sis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

professional porn-cartrid

-performer's Unit a ta

that

displ

ays

e m

e initials

when

e Unit is

accid and

e full name CALVIN

THRUST

when hyperemi

(208, a

uth

emph

is). Wa

ace seeds his narrative with ple

y of gags, and this m

no more

an a Lacanian pun on Hamlet

at this too too sullied

esh would melt

. " (1.2.129). If no

thin

g el

, however,

e reference

rves to emphas

e fact of

narrative distortion and

e presence of

e gh

tly a

uth

e Do

e Police in Differe

es"

s facere me

cog

is ex veterl' ("You

ked me

make a new work o

e old") -

Jerom

e Lindisfarne Gospels (qt

in Backhouse 51).

In such a lar

-scale novel, with its relentless appropriation of co

empora

and

Modernist texts

-lik

e Joyce's Ul

yss

("scrotum-tig

ening cold" and

adam P

er Jo

e's

crotumtig

nin

g sea" and "met him pike hoses

est 112)

oyce 4,

221)-it

is of no surpri

at this should eventua

y lead to a tan

ntial relationship with

T.S.

Eli

ot's

e W

te Land (1922).

My concern is not

much

e mome

s of

intertextual dovetailing between

e two work

but

e litera

ry-

cultural

circumstances

ve birth to

ese o

ginal texts a

e mode of narrative voicing

within

In an act of painstaking litera

holarship, Leven

e litera

climate

ve birth to

Eli

long poem by cons

ering his critical writin

perio

Writing for

e Dial in 1922,

Eli

ot dismi

sse

d two co

empora

nth

ologi

poetry in notic

at anal

yze

e then-co

emporary London litera

scene more

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

the actual literary compilations themselves. Eliot criticizes "literary London" for its

aesthetic "caution, a sort

worldly prudence," its "lack

ambition, laziness, and refusal

to recognize foreign competition"

that

lead

a "composition

inertias" (qtd. in

Levenson 166).

this series of 'attacks,' known

the "London Letter," Eliot would go

to criticize London's literati for their "instinct for safety" (166).

this time Eliot

observed a "strain between a poet who cares

experiment and a culture which asks to be

flattered and soothed" (166); the experimental poet

that

Eliot became, having just

written

The

Waste Land, sensed with unease the reception

that

his work was about to

kindle during a time

bland poetics and cultural lethargy. Levenson perceptively

observes

that

The

Waste Land, in addition to its obvious poetic strengths, "stands

itself

a doctrinal act, the poem

a critical gesture" (168). As

have seen thus far with

Infinite Jest,

that

novel too, although functioning in different cultural circumstances

than

Eliot encountered,

also a "critical gesture" in its stance against a poisonously ironic

American culture, one

that

also, to borrow Eliot's words, suffers from a "composition

inertias," stagnating in the

rut

the perpetual avant-garde, and in Infinite Jest's

challenging of dominant theoretical discourses (the

death

of the author). While Eliot

originally worked against a literary culture

anti-experimentation

that

opposed the

avant-garde

out

a smug self-satisfaction, Wallace works

out

of,

and in opposition to, a

culture

that

perpetually enthralled with the avant-garde and the quest for aesthetic

novelty.

2001, Wallace wrote a review-itself stylistically prescient and

experimental-for Rain Taxi Review

Books (an avant-garde literary publication)

new journal,

The

Best of the Prose Poem:

International Journal (now defunct).

The

notice

written in a bulleted, point-form style; each point

preceded

a statement and

full

colon, writes Wallace,

the "antecolonic words" do

not

"count

against "R.T.'s rigid

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster Ur iversity

1,000-word limit" (22). Hence Wallace's "tactical reason"

for

such a review, and the style

of review itself Wallace dubs, a "new, transgeneric critical form," the "Indexical Book

Review" (22). Wallace opens

pointing

out

the journal's physical dimensions, total

words and, humorously enough, its weight before getting to his critical discussion of the

new journal and the genre

the prose poem. Two

ofWa

ace's remarks are especially

instructive, and demonstrate the differences in aesthetic attitude between Eliot's and

Wallace's respective eras:

Basic aesthetic/ideological raison d'etre

the above forms [the Nonfiction

Novel, the Prose Poem, the

Lyric

Essay, etc.]: to comment on, complicate,

subvert, defamiliarize, transgress against, or otherwise fuck with received

ideas

genre, category, and (especially) formal conventions/constraints.

(See

analogy the historical progression rhymed accentual-syllabic verse

->blank

verse->

vers libre, etc.) . (22, author's emphasis and symbols)

And

the following point:

Big

paradox/oxymoron behind this raison and the current trendiness of

transgeneric forms: In fact, these putatively "transgressive" forms depend

heavily

received ideas of genre, category, and formal conventions, since

without such

estab

shed context there's nothing much to transgress

against. T ransgeneric forms are therefore most viable-most interesting,

least fatuous-during eras when literary genres themselves are relatively

stable and their conventions well-established and -codified and no one

seems much disposed to fuck with them. And ours

not

such an era.

(22)

Whereas Eliot confronted a literary culture conventional and stable to the point of

deadening the national literature, Wallace engages one in which experimentation

itself

the rule, one

that

seeks to rebel against all literary structures and conventions. 12 Further,

Wallace debunks much

the

attendant

silliness inherent in the creation and

promulgation of new genres (one need only look to some of the titles listed in Wallace's

review for confirmation, such

as,

"The Newly Renovated Opera House

Gilligan's

Island" (22) and the quest for aesthetic novelty

observing

that

"most formal

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

conventions themselves start

out

'experiments"' (24), and

that

the prose poem's

very absence of formal restraint

that

makes it, in Wallace's eyes,

"non-urgent" and

"incoherent"

-most

of the poems "literally

fall

apart under the close, concentrated

attention

that

poetry's supposed to demand" (24). This "problem," Wallace writes,

endemic to many

the trendy literary forms

that

identify/congratulate

themselves

transgressive.

And

it's easy to see why. In regarding formal

conventions primarily

"rules" to rebel against, the Professional

Transgressor

fails

to see

that

conventions often become conventions

precisely because

their power and utility, i.e., because

the paradoxical

freedoms they permit the artist who understands how to use (not merely

"obey") them. (24, author's emphasis)

Nor, for Wallace, do transgressors tend to see

that

transgressing

vital and powerful only

in the service

something greater

than

the ideal

transgression (and the writerly self);

transgression-or "renegade avant-gardism" (McCaffery 132)-for its own sake merely calls

attention to the

author-and

tends to alienate the reader who

relegated to the margins.

rule-breaking, Wallace remarks:

but

what if Leibniz and Newton had wanted to divide

zero only to show

jaded audiences how cool and rebellious they were? It'd never have

happened, because

that

kind

motivation doesn't yield results. It's

hollow. Dividing-as-if-by-zero

was

titanic and ingenious because it

was

the service of something.

The

math

world's shock was a price they had to

pay,

not

a payoff in itself. (McCaffery 133)

Wallace's indignation

raised

not

because contributors to

The

Best

the Prose Poem

experiment per se,

for

surely no accident

that

he selected the avant-garde Rain Taxi

his forum, consciously addressing

avant-garde readership and using the very avant-

garde methodology

that

these readers esteem-in doing

Wallace deliberately speaks

their dialect.

is,

rather, unjustified experimentation

that

he dismisses, first,

it tends

to result in "mediocre/bad" writing (24) and, second, because it

inevitably infused with

the writers' self-consciousness

Hegelian "being-for-itself'), which results in prose-poetry

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

that

aims at self-congratulatory cleverness instead

urgency, self-originary play over

immediacy and authenticity. It, therefore, attenuates writing from the necessary activity

(inherently of relationships) of

individual relating to the individual's community,

diminishing the synecdochic power

the one being in the many and, inversely, the many

being in the one, into a solipsistic expression of the one relating only to itself. So, the

prose poem,

Wallace finds it in this particular anthology, begins and ends with the

prose-poets themselves, often ending in insipid self-expression of the self-one need only

look at Wallace's humorous statistical comparison

the percentage of poems in the

collection

that

are "about love" and "about cooking": "0.2" for

both

(23): transgression

privileged over content.

14 In this respect, the comparison between Eliot and Wallace

becomes richer, for

The

Waste Land

critical gesture also emerged through Eliot's

aesthetic elaborations which culminated in a "need for an outer authority to restrain

inner caprice" (Levenson 210), both his own

poet and

manifesting itself in the

competing aesthetic movements

the Impressionists, Imagists, Vorticists, Futurists, and

other aesthetic schools. Eliot, Levenson writes, "positions

modem

art against

modem

society; the relation

meant to be antagonistic and therefore tonic; from

modem

social

reality

can only learn how not to be.

Art-even

it may employ superstition, taboo,

myth, dream, irrationality-works these into pattern and supphes what the

modem

world

lacks: coherence, form, control, order" (211, emphasis added).

Modem

and

contemporary reality

fragmented;

come to art to make sense of this dissolution.

The

individual voice

merged into a "single 'simultaneous order"' (212). Levenson writes

presciently of the double bind of the avant-garde:

Avant

garde movements always threaten to disappear, either shattering

into a collection of individualities or ossifying into

old guard.

And

this

because within the avant-garde there inheres a permanent conflict: the

need at once to subvert and to institutionalize.

Without

subversion a

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

movement cannot justify itself; without some institutional stability it

cannot survive. (218)

Eliot's recognition of this paradoxical tension allowed him

manipulate circumstances

intelligently, gaining himself the sobriquets, "the Editor of modernism" and the "chief

agent" of "consolidation," whereas Pound remains the "chief agent" of "provocation"

(218, emphasis added), which further suggests the singular importance of

experimentation with a deference

a tradition (not a servile obeisance to existent

norms) with an eye toward redemption, or reconstructing what has been aesthetically

dismantled. Eliot's t

then, was

"to

oversee the integration

the modernist avant-

garde into the general intellectual

life"

(219), and his genius in

The

Waste Land

is,

part, "leading modernism back towards a rapprochement with England" (211): from

aridity to promise, from torpor to ordered, meaningful flux.

Out

the explosive

experimentation of his long poem, a conflation

English and European and ancient

literary traditions, he defers to the avant-garde, yet there also remains a self-imposed

order

creative constraint

that

results in a synthesis

all

that

was

already once avant-

garde

but

now merged in the Tradition. Eliot recognized

that

the avant-garde has a rich

though temporally limited duration: it must,

necessity,

ossify

into an order

some sort

it achieves acceptance. Adherence to its innovative tenets guarantees for it a

short-though

vibrant-life. Concomitantly, the avant garde

essentially schizophrenic,

with

eye

to the rejected past and another to its vibrant immediacy, for it achieves its

zenith in the present moment and has no place in the future-it

to be absorbed in a

tradition regardless

the tradition into which it

inevitably compounded.

contrast of

The

Waste Land with Infinite Jest I am principally concerned

with aesthetic origins and narratorial voicing,

for

these are the chief hallmarks of both

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

works, and it

through the harmonized disparity

voices

that

both

works achieve their

simultaneous status

art and

critical gestures. Levenson begins his analysis, naturally,

the beginning

Eliot's poem, where most analyses have bogged down (who speaks and

how?),

observing the well-noted transitions between the differing poetic voices: "no

consciousness presides; no single voice dominates. A character appears, looming suddenly

into prominence, breaks into speech, and recedes, having bestowed momentary conscious

perception

the fragmentary scene"

72, emphasis added). This breaking into speech

similar

Infinite Jest's reference to the Brockengespenstphanom (994 n. 38)-'breaking

into ghost'-which in the

context

of the novel indicates the method by which individual

consciousnesses emerge in the text, break forth, speak, and vanish through the sporadic

agency

the wraith. Levenson contends

that

there has

not

been sufficient emphasis

upon "the peculiar angle

vision"

that

governs the opening

The

Waste Land, and

that

because Spring comes particularly and immediately to lilacs (not humankind), and more

specifically from "beneath the ground" amid the tubers and roots where snow acts

cover, the "eye here sees from the point of view

someone (or some thing)

that

buried"-"how else could tubers feed a 'little life'?"

72).

further notes

that

the "little

life" image

culled from James Thomson's "To

Our

Ladies of Death" ("Our Mother

feedeth thus our little life") and, from the successive line,

"That

tum

may feed her

with our death" and,

"One

part of me shall feed a little worm

...

One

thrill sweet grass,

one pulse in bitter weed" (qtd. in Levenson 1 72). From this Levenson posits

that

the

point of view

that

a corpse (172), the vegetal "sprouting

a corpse" (173), and notes

the "fierce irony"

that

"these buried are

not

yet dead" which further implies a "rising from

the grave" (172) and both living-dead speaking subjects and

indifferent presiding

ghostly consciousness in Tiresias. From

The

Waste Land's notes

know

that

Eliot was

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter Un

ersity

influenced by

e a

nth

ropol

ogy

of J

ess

Weston's From Ritual to Romance and Sir

Jam

aze

e Go

en Bough, in which

e la

er "d

crib

a number of my

chronicle

e re

turn

e dead

wandering gh

at ha

unt

e living

and

Leven

n we kn

Eli

ot w

"much preoccupied" with gh

tly returns from

grave

e "dra

s of

e Waste Land co

ain

veral sustained evocations of a dea

at is

e to put an end to life" (173) , not to mention "Little Gidding

s "compound

t" (Eliot 217) which su

gges

ts, although in a later poetic creation, that gh

ts are

relentl

ess

ly prese

Eli

thinking and whi

adds force to

Eli

enigmatic remark

"one ca

ot be sure

at one's own writing h

not been influenced by Poe" (qtd. in

Leven

n 174), su

gges

ting an alm

t automatic writing

om within the

adition. All of

which leads Leven

n to ca

e W

te Land "a kind of gh

t.MQiy

with protagonists

unt

ed and haunting,"

at co

ains a "distinctly di

mbodied

pect to

consciousn

ess

. which wa

tch

es without being watched and seems not

much to

inh

abit

rld

oat upon it" (174, emph

is added).

e r

ulta

problem,

however, is

at even such a coge

anal

Leven

n's, in which

e poem is

determined to consist of

oss

of clear boundaries"

articularly between life and

dea

e "di

mbodied character of consciousn

ess

," and of

neral

ation

(175), it

lf breaks down without a

ention gi

n to

e poem's

inh

ere

"problem of

er" (176) sty

stica

y and in its motif

"notice

at we do not

lve

e problem of

rder by making it

e problem of a di

rdered

' (176).

Leven

n, thu

turn

s to an examination of

Eli

doctoral di

sse

rtation on

philosopher F.H.

adl

a means of unlocking

e W

te Land

fundame

properti

es.

adley's philosoph

in Appearance and Reality, is a peculiar strain of

phenomenol

ogy

in which a

reality is

fir

t based on "immediate experience, " a

tate of

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

experience prior to any division

self and other, or self and world, a state in which

consciousness

distinguishable from its object" (177). Levenson calls Bradley's work

effort to "eradicate the hypostatization

subject and object" (177). Central to this

Bradley's Absolute, a "consummate oneness"

that

the "final synthesis

all diversity,

the supra-rational state past the reach

common sense which integrates and transcends

contradiction," a "reality

that

transcends the self and transcends rationality" (178). Eliot

later abandoned Bradley's Absolute-a "metaphysical monster" for William James-as

"embarrassingly insufficient" because it

is,

Bradley himself conceded, ultimately

unobtainable (180). He did, however, hold

to Bradley's concept of the "finite center,"

defined

a "unity

consciousness, a unity in itself, the whole world

it exists

for

individual consciousness" (180) .

easy to see the appeal

the finite center

for

Eliot-who later distilled it into his "monad" (after Leibniz), a "single momentary unity

consciousness, the perceptual (and conceptual) totality

a single point

view"

that

temporarily "constitutes the whole of reality" (180-81)-which,

Levenson notes,

akin

to Pound's conception of the image, "an intellectual and emotional complex in

instant

time" ( 181), and

manifesting itself in the severally distinct and flashing

consciousnesses of

The

Waste Land.

One

problem remained, however, for Eliot in his

integration

the finite center into his aesthetic,

that

critical accusations

either

"cosmic poetry" ("flights of rhetorical excess") or "egoism" ("personal idiosyncracy") in

poetic composition (182-83)

the Imagists were being accused

excess

one hand

and "triviality," or poets obscuring their works with themselves (183),

the other.

Fundamentally, for Eliot, once the Absolute

discarded, the risk becomes the "loss

extra-individual standards and a collapse into solipsism," for the finite center, itself

isolated and containing all

that

real,

cannot

be "separated from illusion" (183).

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

further eluc

ating

e dilemm

Leven

n quot

from

adl

(the quotation it

included

a note to

e W

te Land) (Eliot 86 n. 411), 15 and at

considering

Leven

n too long, I reproduce

adley's stateme

in full:

My exte

tions are no l

ess

private

yse

an are my

oug

or my feelin

gs.

either case my expe

ence fa

s within my own circle, a

circle closed on

e outside; and, with a

its eleme

s alike, every sphere is

opaque to

e o

ers which surround it . . . .

brie

regarded

existence which a

ears in a

ul,

e whole world for ea

is peculiar a

private to

ul.

83)

For Bradl

ey,

ere is no problem

lipsism resolves it

lf within

e Ab

lute

84),

but

for Eliot

ere is no such easy retrea

exce

into

lipsistic mind.

Eliot,

thu

s, p

tulated a

lution in his

"th

eory of points of vie

84).

Eli

ot's

is akin

Witt

nstein's sustained argume

against

e concept of a private

language, or

e problem

er minds (see Philosophical Investigations §244-271),

h essentia

y dismi

sse

e p

oss

ibility

a private language by virtue

impossibility of such a language to become unmoored from one's own original language,

one

at is relational and shared with o

ers of one's di

urs

community

-wh

ere

lf-

expr

ess

ion of a private word (

say,

for pain,

an example

that

Witt

nstein u

ses

)

still refers to language o

e this private language: "jusification consists in appealing

mething independe

" (§ 265). Leven

n summa

zes

Eliot's

ows: "while it

is true

at, within

e confin

of any given finite ce

er, reality and unrea

ty,

ubj

ectivity and o

ectivit

ot be distinguished, a compa

n among a number of

finite ce

ers mak

such distinctions possibl

uth

or's emph

is).

lf, in

Eli

ot's word

"passes from one point of view to ano

er" (qtd. in Leven

n 184) and is,

thu

s, contin

upon o

er finite ce

ers, o

er s

ubj

ectiviti

es,

"so

e rea

does not

e in the o

ect it

lf,

but

e exte

of the relations which

e o

98 J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

possesses" (qtd. in Leven

n 18

emph

is adde

. Meaning is only

tablished in a

plurality of con

iousnesses,

lf in relation to o

lvef. "con

iousn

ess

" tempered

by a "tradition of consciousnesse

( 18

Eli

ot's vision,

erefore, was not one of

"individuals versus a

uth

ority,

but

of an authority composed of individuals

"-indi

vidual

poets and

eir works,

once avant-garde in

eir original rig

, comprising a "totality of

individual

and a "requisite a

uth

ority" (186), an infinite ce

Thu

Eliot stat

in a

not

e one-eyed mercha

"melts into"

e Phoenician

Tir

ator" (specte

even) who "unit[

] a

e r

t" (Eliot

);

in this

se,

e "many

become one" (Leven

n 188). Yet how can this be

so,

ks Leven

n, and how does this

reconcile

e "poem

poly

ony" (188), how can "difference be compatible with unit

? Leven

n perceptively not

at "individual experience

individual per

naliti

are not impenetrable," a

lth

ough e

stentia

y i

late

ey are never "who

For

Eli

with Wa

ace, language is

e tool

at penetrate:; consciousness. In

words o

eau-Po

ere is "one particular cultural o

ect which is d

tined to

a crucial role in

e perception of o

er people: language" (Phenomenolo

354).

many

es of

e W

te Land,

finite ce

ers, flicker like candles-brief

luminosity

-th

at insta

aneously extinguish, not into

e vo

of i

lation and d

but

into ano

er integral, relational con

iousn

ess;

Augustine's "To Ca

rth

age

en I cam

resolves it

lf into

e (qu

Hege

an) uni

e Buddha's "Burning burning burning

burning"

(Eli

ot 74).

e poem "co

ocat

in order to culminate" by o

ering "fr

of co

ciousness," not a "juxtap

ition" of such,

but

an "interpenetration"

even

n 190,

uth

emph

is). Dialogue opens this "common ground"

oug

s of

e s

ubj

and

e inte

ocutor are "inte

oven into a single fabric

eau-Po

y writ

es:

have here a dual bein

where

e o

er is for me no lon

r a

bit of behavior in my

].T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

McM

ter

u1v

ersity

transcende

eld, nor I in hi

we are co

aborators for ea

er in consummate

reciprocit

Our

perspectiv

mer

into each o

er, and we co-e

rough a common

world. In

e pr

ent

dial

I am

eed

om m

yse

lf'' (354) .

e more t

k remains for

Leven

e "pro

em of Tir

" (

190)

, for to p

it a

verning consciousn

ess

risks

enuation of

e poem's many individual voic

es.

Leven

n argu

at Tir

"di

sso

into constitue

and,

such, is an "intermitte

phenomenon" in

e W

Land

(190)

which provid

"instants oflucidity"

(192

Thu

her/his ("the

o sexes

meet in Tir

as"

) (Eliot 82

8) vo

e is one of "a

uth

oritative consciousne

er of

e poem" (the "m

t importa

per

age

e poe

uniting a

e r

(82

8), one

at "fa

s s

, letting eve

s speak for

lves" (Leven

192

We see her

en, a unique relationship be

een

e W

nd and Infinite J

t in

terms of fundame

al, guiding aes

etic practic

(critical

ges

tur

e a

ack on

litera

lip

sism), and

an importa

literary precede

(for Infinite J

in narrative

construction and

e un

iling of con

iousnesses within

e comprehens

con

iousn

ess

aith.

Eli

aes

etic principle operat

at once within

ext of poetic co

ition and within

e W

te Land it

lf for

e t

Eli

imposed

on him

lf,

Leve

on o

es,

to "r

tore equilibrium, to e

tisfa

ory poi

among competing

aes

etic demands"

; h

thus, "re

"habit of

e modernist mind" which osc

ill

ated be

een

e extrem

e "ap

eedom" and

e "guardians of o

er"

86). Simila

y, Wa

ace al

works

-th

rough his

fiction and critical writin

-to restore a balance be

een radical experime

ation and

per

nal idi

osy

ncracy and

e o

er pole of exta

aes

etic ncrms, to create highly

cerebral work

at simultaneously engages bo

th th

e avant-garde literati and

e common

reader, to ensure

at the work of

ction-crafting does not terminate in a mer

ely

100 ].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

individualistic and, therefore, isolated practice

but

expands outward to the reader who

already inclined toward a solipsistic position because saturated in the products

the

cultural entertainment industry. In Wallace's works there are strong moments

consolidation, and one may argue

that

Wallace's entire aesthetic endeavor may be

construed

act

consolidation, what he continually calls a Dostoevskyian

redemption,

but

extra-Christian sense.

return to the Rain Taxi review, it

essential to note

that

while Wallace's

confrontation with the contemporary American avant-garde Zeitgeist

certainly

vituperative at times, it

also informed

respect and charity. In "Tense Present,"

Wallace, before embarking

a cogent engagement with Descriptivist-grammarian

principles, announces a position he calls the "Democratic Spirit" which,

he explains,

"one

that

combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus sedulous respect

for

the convictions of others" (

-4 2). Central to this position, he writes,

an "intellectual

integrity" in which "you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and your motives

for

believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually" ( 4

. It

this

"democratic spirit"

that

informs Wallace's work. For him, one must first check oneself

and one's work before criticizing the work

others. For Wallace, at the heart

any

matter there must be a charity

that

values the other

much

the individual

self,

that

values the opinions

others within the context of one's community-that one must seek

the good in relation to what

external to the individualistic self. It

at once the Eliotian

tradition

provocation and antagonizing, followed with consolidation and

rapprochement. Further, Wallace appends a brief Latin epigraph to "Tense Present" from

Augustine, "Dilige

quod

vis

fac"

(40) ('Love, and do what you will'). 16

The

quotation

crucial in two respects: first, it elucidates the spirit from which all

Wallace's

101

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

contentions

flow,

and

that

they are first and foremost informed

a spirit of charity

("sedulous respect"); second, the quotation itself implies a prescriptivist premise

that

clearly takes for a principle

that

thwarts his own inclination toward inner caprice:

that

you are first and foremost loving,

then

all subsequent action will be infused with the

democratic spirit's ethos of passion and humility, and sincere respect for others.

Throughout

the Rain Taxi review Wallace selects a number

The

Best of the Prose

Poem's contributors whose work

"good/alive/powerful/interesting," selecting one

for

particular examination, Jon Davis: "a poet whom this reviewer'd never heard

before

but

whose pieces in this anthology are

off-the-charts terrific

that

the reviewer has actually

gone

out

and bought the one Jon Davis book mentioned in his bio-note and may very well

decide to try to advertise it in this magazine, at reviewer's own expense if necessary-that's

how good this guy

is"

(23). Following this

editor's note instructing the reader to "see

page 3, upper right quadrant" where there

a prominent advertisement

for

Davis's latest

collection, Scrimmage of Appetite, and carrying the slogan, "probably well worth

checking out" in Wallace's distinctive argot ("probably well worth

...

and, in minuscule

print: "paid

for

the reviewer of

The

Best

the Prose Poem:

Int

ernational Journal"

(3).

102

].T. Jacobs, PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

8. "Making Heads

rob Heartlike"

ough the deceased

ess Orcu

our moan is the sharper, because

who

ve dwe

alone and unsure in

the

cragged ey

and mo

unt

n fastness of a de

solipsism

Edward

Dahlberg (Can

ese Bon

ve 42) .

ot comprehend m

yse

lf directl

but

only

thr

ough the me

on of what I am no

- Leszek

Kolakows

odernity on Endless

Tri

al 117, a

uth

or's emph

is).

As gh

t-story, then, for Wa

ace, Infinite J

t is al

a love-story. In Wa

ace's

short stor

"Tri-Stan: I So

sse

Nar to Ecko

e mediator inserts an editoria

liz

comment, as quotation, from an extra-diegetic

ara

...

'that

eve

love story is

[a] gh

t sto

...

')" (Brief209) . Significantly,

e mediator here ca

s a

ention to

his

er gh

tly textual presence by interpolating

e editor's square brackets and

indefinite article omitted

e 'o

ginal' quotation.

e mediator i

thu

textua

y in

pare

nth

is, a textua

y encaps

ated consciousness. Infinite J

t story, ca

nti

on to its reciprocal status

love story

("l

anguage is

out of love

(Brown,

Life 69);

e novel,

aes

etic a

egory, signifi

e love-aes

etic of

lf-

acing

artist,

uth

ority in

e spiritual world is self-liq

uid

atin

(Fry

Double 54, emph

added). Wa

ace remarks on art and love:

You've

t to discipline

urself to talk o

e part of

at loves the

thing, loves what

u're working on. M

ain lov

....

ere's

mething kind of timelessly vital and sacred abo

good writin

Thi

thin

g does

n't

have

at much to do with tale

, even glittering tale

...

Talent's just an instrument. It

like having a pen

at works instead of

one

at doesn't. I'm not saying

at I'm able to work consistently o

e pre

se,

but

it seems like

e big distinction between good art and

mewhere in

e art's heart

purpose,

e agenda of

consciousness behind

e text. It

mething to do with love.

With

having

e discipline to talk out

e part of

at can love

103

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

instead of the part

that

just wants to be loved. (McCaffery 148)

In a meticulously constructed novel like Infinite lest, it

certainly no mistake

that

Enfield Tennis Academy's campus-founded

lncandenza, Jr.-is designed "as a cardioid,"

giving the campus a "Valentine-heart aspect" (983 n. 3).

The

readers' presence in this

fictive world depends

their following the mediator's telling of this immediate story,

while consciously being aware of their receiving a told, spoken narrative. It

the readers'

tacit agreement to accept the story in this fashion-although certainly accompanied with a

sense ofbemusement and wariness

that

the narrative will resolve itself,

that

there

will

be,

Wallace

says,

a "payoff' (McCaffery

for

this confusion, this linguistic relationship,

rooted in trust.

The

wraith communicates to Gately through the "internal brain-voice,"

which "was why thoughts and insights

that

were coming from some wraith always just

sound like your own thoughts, from inside your own head, if a wraith's trying

interface

with you" (Jest 831).

Not

only do readers construct and re-create the narrative, they also

'hear' it in their own voices, their own minds.

One

oflncandenza, Jr.'s many

films

aptly

entitled, "The Machine in the Ghost" (988 n. 24).

That

Wallace intertextually refers to

Gilbert Ryle's classic "dogma

the ghost in the machine" (Ryle

15)-a

Cartesian

mind/body dualism-is very likely in a philosophical-aesthetic novel

that

attempts to

'speak' internally

readers,

bridge the existential gap, to remind them

that

they are

not

isolated "revving head[s]"-one more "brain heaving in its bone-box" (Jest

231)-

but

"complete presence" (160), one among many others

but

actualized only in relation to

others.

Ryle

outlines the situation

follows:

Material objects are situated in a common field, known

'space,' and

what happens to one body in one part of space

mechanically connected

with what happens to other bodies in other parts

space. But mental

happenings occur in insulated fields, known

'minds,' and there

is,

apart

from telepathy, no direct causal connection between what happens in one

104

J.T. Jacob

PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

mind and what happens in ano

Onl

y through

e medium of the

al public world can

e mind of one per

n make a difference to

mind of ano

e mind is its own

ace and in his inner life each of us

liv

e life of a ghostly Robin

n Crusoe. Peo

can

see, hear and jolt

one ano

er's bodi

es,

but

are irremediably blind a

deaf to

rkin

of one another

minds and inoperative upon

em. (

)

ace's phrase regarding

e reader

condition,

are "marooned" in

eir skulls

(McCa

ery 127), echoes Ryle's sentime

e o

ace's most sustained a

acks is

against

lipsism; he a

s to jolt readers out of

lipsistic thinking, to overwhelm

with

e impr

ess

ion- n

e fa

ct-that

, while readin

participate in a conversation

with ano

er, similar con

iousne

at al

feels pain, j

oy,

depr

ess

ion, lonelin

ess

-th

at is

alone. Infinite J

many chara

ers tend to "

enti

eir whole

lves with

eir head"

(272), seeing only

e duality o

f"h

eads and bodi

Hal does in

e novel's opening

ence (

;

are engaged in "life's endl

ess

war against

e self," a war "you ca

liv

e without" (84). Wa

ace's novel,

en, is primarily concerned with a "spiritua

(269,

uth

emph

is) reconciliation be

een

e spiritual and

e body

at is very much

akin to Norman

own

spiritual,

mbolical consciousn

ess

reconc

e body and spirit

would be to recover

e breath-

which is

e life-

instead of

e gh

shado

breath-con

iousn

ess

instead of brain-consciousn

ess;

body consciousn

ess

instead

head-con

iousn

ess"

(Love's Bo

231). No

rth

rop F

rye

oes Brown when he ca

for a re

turn

e "soma pneumatikon,

e spiritual body," meaning

piritual

man is a bod

(Double 14). Wa

ace's concern is steeped in a love for readers a

increasing i

lation and a

enation in a

phisticated, electronic culture

at purports to

communicate without mediation, to di

agendas and, in

e main, to

ll.

Hawthorn

not

e need for narrative in

e co

emporary era h

never been more crucial:

ve in a world increasingly dominated- and chara

eri

e telling

of stori

es;

anonymous co

mmuni

tio

messa

s notable for what has

105

J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

been termed 'agency dele

' and by di

sse

minated

but

uth

oriti

and a

uth

orita

anis

From

voi

at can now a

ounce

to us in a car

e o

pressure is dangerously low, to

e newspaper

editorial which informs us

at 'we' must acce

a decline in living

standard

eme of increasingly stride

uth

ority surviving

e dea

of many differe

uth

ors forces it

lf upon our a

ention.

(x,

emph

added)

Gadamer would concur when he ob

at our "te

chn

ical era" h

contributed to

a "for

tfuln

ess

of Bein

at h

ed us to skip "over

e continued r

istance and

persistence of certain

exible uniti

e life we a

share, unities which perdure in the

lar

and sma

forms of our fe

ow-human being-with-each-

("Destruktion" 109).

ace ca

s this a

"hun

r for narrative," noting

at "we have to s

stitute

hedonism and spiritual na

"iv

ete

at left us with nothing with somethin

" and

e m

fective means for affecting readers for Wa

ace is art, particula

rly

fiction

at "seduces

e reader and holds o

real promi

" ("1458 Word

42, emphases added). Wa

ace's

tly conceit i

indeed, shrewd and shrewdly layered

e wraith, while in

rting

words into Gately's consciousn

ess

, al

transmits into

e reader's consciousn

ess

- a

community, 'o

many, one'

Pluribus

Unum

opposed to Infinite J

t's

ara

ers'

obverse, "E Unibus Pluram" (1007, n. 110), 'o

of one, man

)-the

very narrative

processes and

eto

cal formulae (the tricks behind

e m

ic)

at Infinite J

t emp

loys

and further, by extension and implication, suggests

at this is

e w

significant,

rious

ction should perform, not obfuscating

e fact of mediation within a communicative

medium (

ace not

e e

ertainme

industry does)

but

suggesting

at this is the

only meaning

ful

at literature transa

s "spiritua

lin

d of me

t 269,

uth

or's emph

is) mea

nin

but

when

[literary works] succeed

rve

e vital &

vanishing function of reminding us of fiction's limitl

s p

oss

ibilities for

rea

& gra

sp,

for making heads

thr

ob heartlike, & for sanctifying

106 ].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

marriages of cerebration & emotion, abstraction & lived life, transcendent

truth-seeking & daily schlepping, marriages

that

in our happy epoch

technical occlusion & entertainment-marketing seem increasing

consummatable only in the imagination. ("Empty Plenum" 218)

A solipsistic self-consciousness

clearly targeted

Wallace in most

his fiction,

whether from the perspective

the writer in composing clever, self-conscious works or in

the attempt

engage the isolated reader. But Wallace's aggravation

our self-

consciousnesses has a further redemptive sense. Wallace would aggravate the isolated,

dormant self-consciousness within

that

rarely moves beyond, in G.W.F. Hegel's terms,

a "being-for-itself' or "being-in-self' toward the productive self-consciousness

that

self-

consciously "being-for-another"

the necessary correlative to living wholly, beyond the

immediate self.

Frye observes

that

in the first translation of Hegel's Phenomenology

Spirit 'geist' was mistranslated

'mind,' which distorted and diminished the power

Hegel's argument

om the start (Double 36). And, for Frye

with Wallace, attaining a

spiritual self-consciousness

essential to breaking from

"the

prison ofNarcissus" (36).

Significantly, a slight and passing reference

Hegel's Phenomenology occurs in Wallace's

first novel,

The

Broom of the System (252).

And

although a minor reference, it does

serve nevertheless

illustrate Wallace's approach

language

both

relational and

the only means for penetrating the solipsist's fortress. Hegel writes

that

"language

self-

consciousness existing for others, self-consciousness which as such

immediately present

...

the self

that

separates itself from itself, which

pure 'I' = 'I' becomes objective

itself, which in this objectivity equally preserves itself

thi

s self, just

it coalesces

directly with other selves and

their self-consciousness" (395, §652, author's emphasis).

For Hegel, language

a different "content," one

that

"no longer the perverted, and

perverting and distracted, self of the world

culture

...

the Spirit

that

has returned

107

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

into itself,

certain of itself, and certain in itself

its truth, or

its own recognition"

(395-396, §653). Language "emerges

the middle term, mediating between

independent and acknowledged self-consciousnesses" (396, §653). Language

the

crucial mediating apparatus

that

allows for one's self-consciousness

leave the self, to

find in the other a measure

similarity or "sameness" (Wallace, Brief 131), and to return

to the self transformed, less alone.

the fundamentally Hegelian dialectic

interpenetrating consciousnesses

that

Wallace employs

a rhetorical strategy in his

fiction, and there

much

congruity between Hegel's concepts

"confession" and

"forgiveness" and Wallace's linguistic-aesthetic rationale:

by putting itself, then, in this way

a level with the doer

whom it

passes judgement, it

recognized

the latter

the same

himself. This

latter does

not

merely find himself apprehended

the other

something

alien and disparate from it,

but

rather finds

that

other

. identical with

himself. Perceiving this identity and giving utterance to it, he confesses

this to the other, and equally expects

that

the other, having in fact

put

himself

the same level, will also respond in words in which he will give

utterance to this identity with him, and expects

that

this mutual

recognition will now exist in fact. His confession

not

abasement, a

humiliation, a throwing-away of himself in relation to the other; for this

utterance

not

a one-sided affair, which would establish his disparity with

the other:

the contrary, he gives himself utterance solely

account

his having seen his identity with the other; he,

his side, gives expression

to their common identity in his confession, and gives utterance to it for the

reason

that

language

the existence

Spirit

immediate self. He

therefore expects

that

the other will contribute his part to this existence.

(Hegel405, §666, author's emphasis)

In one of Wallace's most complex and dense short stories,

"O~Let,"

a series

nine "pop

quizzes" about extremely complex

human

relationships, the relationship between writer

and reader

inverted.

The

ninth

pop quiz begins, "you are, unfortunately, a fiction

writer" (Brief 123) and continues to outline the very psychologically complex dilemma

the author

these pop quizzes themselves, sincerely stating

that

the purpose

the

overall piece

to '"interrogate' a

human

'sense

of"

something inherent

all of

(123).

108

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

The

piece further elaborates

that

the entire sequence

quizzes ultimately fails,

that

the

author (whose title and responsibility have now been ceded

the reader in the context of

the quiz's question) must attempt to convey

that

the quizzes themselves attempt to "break

the textual fourth wall and kind of address (or 'interrogate') the reader directly," a

"puncturing of the veil

impersonality" (125), without resorting

"postclever

metaformal hooey" (128) and "pseudometabelletristic gamesmcmship" (127). Ultimately,

the piece concludes with the words, "so decide" (136), which implicates the reader in an

empathic understanding

what the author

trying to achieve in trying "to demonstrate

some sort of weird ambient sameness in different kinds of

human

relationships" (131-132,

author's emphasis), and demonstrating the vital relationship

that

both

are entangled

in-that

this piece takes

a Hegelian-like spiritual "confession"

that

seeks through

language

honesty and integrity with the reader and

that

further requires the reader to

respond in kind.

pursue the spiritual, the harmony between head- and body-

consciousness

that

extends beyond the mind's clamoring, for Wallace,

"not

a choice.

You either do or you're a walking dead-man, just going through the motions"-or, you

can

attain "something really powerful and beautiful" ("1458 Words" 42).

109

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Notes

1 See Frank Louis Cioffi,

'"An

Anguish Become Thing': Narrative

Performance

in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest," Narrative 8.2 (2000): 161-181; N. Katherine

Hayles, "The Illusion of Autonomy and the Fact

Recursivity: Virtual Ecologies,

Entertainment, and Infinite Jest," New Literary History 30 (1999): 675-697; Erik

Mortenson, "Xmas Junkies: Debasement and Redemption in the Work

WilliamS.

Burroughs and David Foster Wallace," Dionysos 9.2 (1999): 37-46;

Tom

LeClair, "The

Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace,"

Critique 38.1 (1996): 12-37; Catherine Nichols, "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival:

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest," Critique 43.1 (2001): 3-16. See also

own

difficulties with Infinite Jest in "American Touchstone:

The

I i

'::

Order in Gerard

Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace," Comparative Literature Studies 38.3

(2001): 215-231 and "David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest,"

The

Explicator 58.3 (2000):

172-17

For a more conventional assessment, see Sven Birkerts, "The Alchemist's

Retort,"

The

Atlantic Monthly February 1996: 106-108, where Birkerts calls Infinite Jest

a "very strange piece

business altogether" (106) and a "postmodern saga of damnation

and salvation" (108). It should also be noted that, in the interest of demonstrating the

recent critical interest in Wallace's work, the first book-length study of Wallace, Marshall

Boswell's Understanding David Foster Wallace,

forthcoming from the University of

South

Carolina Press's "Understanding Authors" series in Spring 2003.

2 For a perceptive analysis of television and contemporary American fiction, see

Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,"

The

Review of Contemporary

Fiction 13.2 (1993): 151-194, reprinted in A Supposedly

Fun

Thing I'll Never Do Again

(Boston: Little, 1997) 21-82. It should also be noted

that

Wallace in no

way

blames

television for contemporary fiction's woes: "TV didn't invent our aesthetic childishness

here any more

than

the

Manhattan

Project invented aggression" (McCaffery 129).

Rather, he contends

that

and "the commercial-art culture's trained it [American

culture]

be sort oflazy and childish in its expectations" (128) .

3 Wallace twice nods to DeLillo in particular in

lnfinit~

Jest when he refers to the

"M.I.T. language riots" (Jest 987, 996) from DeLillo's Ratner's Star, and when

Orin

lncandenza traces infinity symbols

his so-called "subjects"' "bare flank after sex" (Jest

47) which recalls David's similar actions in Americana (78).

4 See David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars

over Usage," Harper's April2001: 39-58.

----

110

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

5 See David Foster Wallace, "Greatly Exaggerated," A Supposedly

Fun

Thing I'll

Never Do Again (Boston: Little, 1997) 138-145.

6 See Stanley Fish, "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics," Self-

Consuming Artifacts:

The

Experience

Seventeenth-Century Literature. (Berkeley: U

California

1972) 383-427.

7 I am unable to track down Lang's quotation

but

am grateful to University

Wollongon (Australia) archivist Michael Organ for his superior website devoted to Lang's

Metropolis, where the quotation may be found.

<http://www.uow.edu.au/

-m

organ/Metroa.html>.

8 It

worth noting

that

the term 'vestige' itself appears in Infinite Jest

metaphor

for

Gately's previous

life

a narcotics-addicted cat burglar.

all of Gately's

prior self-destructive tendencies,

ly one survives

a vestige of his former self, his

perilous driving

his boss's "priceless art-object car" through Boston's streets without a

license and while ignoring traffic signs and l

aws:

"It's a vestige. He'd admit it's like a dark

vestige

his old low-self-esteem suicidal-thrill behaviors" (Jest 476ff). 'Vestige,' with its

own definitions

"a mark, trace, or visible sign

something" and "an impression made

upon the brain

image" (OED),

both

further signify and bolster the ghost metaphor

in the novel.

The

presence

these crescent-moon symbols has perplexed many online

readers oflnfinite Jest. See, for instance, Steve Russillo's "Infinite Jest Utilities Page,"

<http:

//members.ao

com/ru

ill

m/ij.ht

ml>,

and his "Chapter Thumbnails," where he

indicates these segments with an asterisk and posts

that

their "significance I've yet to

discern."

further significant that yet another

the wraith's ghost

-w

ords

"GERRYMANDER" (832) which indicates the literal manipulation of borders to gain

unfair advantage (usually electoral). Here, however, it signifies both the reconfiguration

North

American borders and the wraith's own transgression

narrative and existential

boundaries.

For

discussion of

The

Waste Land and Eliot's aesthetic ideals, I am heavily

indebted to Michael H. Levenson's superb critical study, A Genealogy of Modernism: A

Study

English Literary Doctrine, 1908-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984), 165-

220. Levenson provides what

is,

mind, the single most penetrating and insightful

reading

Eliot's poem to date.

interesting to note

that

in attempting to define the prose poem Wallace

questions whether certain works, such

Kafka's "Little Fable" and any

"the

111

J.T.

Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

innumerable

~'sin

Faulkner

that

scan perfectly

iambic-pentameter sonnets"

count

themselves

prose poems (22).

One

of Wallace's examples turns

out

to be Eliot's

"Hysteria,"

which Wallace's own microscopic short story, "A Radically Condensed

History

Postindustrial

Life"

contained in his Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

(Boston: Little, 1999) 0 [sic], bears a striking similarity, one

that

mirrors the fundamental

difficulties in establishing and maintaining significant relationships in our contemporary

era, just

Eliot's poem does.

The

importance

selecting and using the appropriate dialect in addressing a

specific discourse community

emphasized

Wallace in

"Tc

Present." In this piece,

he notes

that

most peop

use a plurality

dialects in day-to-day living, and admits to

using both the "Standard

Written

English"

his "hypereducated parents" and the "hard-

earned Rural Midwestern" dialect of his peers (50) . In the latter, Wallace uses

constructions like "Where's it at?" instead

"Where

it?"

part

"a naked desire to

fit in" and

not

be "rejected

egghead" (50-51). Wallace claims that the "dialect you

choose to use depends

...

whom you're addressing" and

that

"the dialect you use

depends mostly

what sort

Group your listener

part

and whether you wish to

present yourself

a fellow member of

that

Group"

(51

-52). Thus, for Wallace, there

singular importance in using a specifically transgeneric medium (in creating his "Indexical

Book Review")

to at once signify his membership in the particular community

avant-garde readers that subscribe to Rain Taxi and to submit his arguments for their

collective ratification or rejection. Either

way,

Wallace's meaning in the Rain Taxi

review, if it

to be at all heeded,

directly coextensive with the dialect he appropriates.

only fair to observe

that

Wallace has used two of the "transgeneric" forms

he disparages in his Rain Taxi review in his short story, "Incarnations of Burned

Children"

"snap fiction" piece) and two recent pieces, "Peoria ( 4 )" and "Peoria

(9)

'Whispering Pines,"' which are classified

"prose poetics." Both

these generic titles,

however, seem to be imposed

the publications themselves and cannot necessarily be

linked to Wallace. If Wallace

experimenting with these putatively transgeneric forms,

however, he is certainly doing

in the service

something

r.r

ater

than

simple

experimentation. "Incarnations,"

the title suggests,

a powerfully fast-paced evocation

a rural family's immediate reaction to their infant son's scalding

boiling water, and

their inner, self-conscious reactions to the tragedy. While the "Peoria" pair

slightly

more poetic

than

Wallace's fiction in the main, there

little if any self-conscious play at

work.

The

first piece evokes the landscape of rural Illinois

way

that

echoes Auden's

"Amor Loci" and "In Praise

Limestone" with their celebration

the immediacy and

history

place.

The

second piece essentially describes a stealthy group

children gazing

at a shaking car in the country-side, while the car's inhabitants, in Frye's words, are

"rutting in rubber" (Double

What

makes Wallace's use of the genres of 'flash fiction'

and 'prose poetry' significant

similar to his appropriation

dialect

for

his "Tense

Present" essay. Both genres are prevailing forms in current literary production, and thus

Wallace uses them to convey his singular messages, while avoiding inner caprice. See

"Incarnations

Burned Children," Esquire n.d. 2001

<http:

www.esquire.com/features/articles/2001/001012 mfr wallace

l.html>

and

"Peoria,"TriOuarterly

112

(2002): 131-133. - - -

112

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

difficult to avoid noting the fact

Eliot's appending notes to his poem

being a rather avant-garde move in itself, and one

that

continued in Infinite Jest

radically experimental in the context of the genre

the novel. Levenson observes

that

its dealing with fragmented consciousnesses,

The

Waste Land "becomes conscious

itself' (192) and, thus, the inclusion of explanatory notes-notes

that

reveal many

Eliot's poetic allusions and appropriations-calls attention to th

poem's self-consciousness,

its inherent ordered disorder, and the fact of the merging of traditions through

avant-

garde rhetorical strategy.

William James, in his

The

Varieties

Religious Experience, translates

Augustine

as,

"if you

but

love [God], you may do

you incline" (77, author's

interpolation), and William Gaddis, in his superb novel

The

Recognitions, has protagonist

Wyatt Gwyon translate the phrase

as,

"Love, and do what you want to" (899) . Both

James and Gaddis are significant to Infinite Jest: James's Varieties

referred to

throughout Infinite Jest, and Gaddis's Recognitions

a novel

that

Wallace maintains

that

he "like[s] very, very much" (Word n.p.). There are strong moments

congruity

between Wallace's aesthetic and that

Gaddis's in

The

Recognitions. If Infinite Jest,

Wallace remarks,

a "long encomium to the dead father" (Wiley n.p.),

then

may also

say

that

The

Recognitions

a long encomium to Wyatt's dead mother, for example.

The

similarities are too numerous to elaborate here and perhaps deserve a separate study,

but

both

artists' emphasis

love

informing artistic production

the most crucial

conjunction. William James claims

that

Augustine's adage

"morally one

the

profoundest

observations" (77), and Wyatt's recognition of this in application to his

day to day living and his art-"now at last, to live deliberately" (Gaddis 900)-becomes

another significant aesthetic touchstone for Wallace in

both

his fiction and non-fiction.

relation

Hegel and Wallace I am particul

:·l

y indebted to David

Morris's exemplary article, "Lived Time and Absolute Knowing: Habit and Addiction

from Infinite Jest to the Phenomenology

Spirit," Clio 30.4 (2001): 375-415. As his title

clearly indicates, Morris

particularly concerned with time and spirit in relation to habit.

And

although tangentially yoked with Morris's reading

Hegel's conception

time, I

am more interested in Hegel's dialectic

spiritual self-consciousness

integrally linked

to other self-conscious communities via the mediating power of language.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Part

Three

The

Eschatological Imagination: Translations

have never been an optimist or a pessimist. I'm an apocalyptic o;

;ly.

Our

only hope

apocalypse"-Marshall

McLuhan (The Medium and

the

Light 59).

"In every moment slumbers

the

possibility of being

the

eschatological moment. You must awake

it"-RudolfBultmann

(qtd. in Kermode, Sense 25).

wanted to get

the

Armageddon-explosion,

the

goal

that

metafiction's always been about, I

wanted to get it over with, a

then

the

rubble reaffirm the idea of art being a living

transaction between

humans"-David

Foster

ace (McCaffery 142).

The

End

I have now taken Wallace's Infinite

st through two distinct, though not

incompatible or mutually exclusive, readings, situating

that

novel in Part

One

a type

aesthetic allegory

that

links the significant and then-radical aesthetic of Gerard Manley

Hopkins with Wallace's own contemporary literary agenda, ami, in Part Two,

elaborate reply

the 'death of the author' theoretical impasse-a critique of

poststructuralism employing poststructuralist motifs and methodology-and shall now

conclude this study with a treatment

literary endings, or a theory of ending

that

is,

for

113

114

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Wallace, both ending and beginning. Theories

endings (apocalyptic and otherwise) are

not

new either to the popular imagination or to, what Northrop Frye has called, the

"educated imagination." It might be said without exaggeration

that

the apocalyptic

imagination

inherent, endlessly recurring feature of American letters and culture, if

not

the foundation of Western civilization's thinking

a whole that, of course, ultimately

emerges from the Revelation (Apocalypse)

St. John

Patmos

that

translated into

the American mythos via the Puritan settling of the New World, and undergirded with

end-times' consciousness

that

transforms New Haven into a New Jerusalem, a

transformation

that

manifests itself in both literal interpretations

the Bible and in

poetic transformations like Wallace Stevens's

"An

Ordinary Evening in New Haven."

The

manifestation

apocalyptic thinking, then,

discernible in numerous aspects

Western, particularly American, cultural organization-whether theological, philosophical,

pedagogical, or popular.

That

apocalyptic thinking continues to exert itself in the

contemporary imagination

at once both surprising and unsurprising. Surprising, in

that

the fear of a literal apocalypse has faded with the passing of the Cold War; American and

Soviet detente has been transformed into a balance

cooperative political and economic

relations; the fear of imminent nuclear annihilation has passed; and, therefore,

apocalyptic fears and projections would seem

be diminished. Yet the latent apocalyptic

imagination in the contemporary popular American imagination reviving itself in the

wake

the attacks

September 2001 and recent American foreign policy

- - -

----------------

-------

115

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

developments

that

recall the Cold

War

political stances of years ago make it unsurprising

that

apocalyptic unrest should be once again at a relatively high pitch. Public intellectual

forums, such

Harper's magazine, with its continual and necessary critique of current

American foreign policy, under the general editorship

Lewis H. Lapham, suggests

that

the seemingly dormant apocalyptic imagination

once more being revived. According to

that

magazine, in a recent cover essay "A Comet's Tale:

the Science

Apocalypse," a

recently conducted poll announced

that

59 per cent

the American public believes

that

the prophetic forecasts of the biblical book

Revelation "will come true," and a further

"quarter

Americans" also believe

that

the Bible "despite a conspicuous textual absence

airplanes, skyscrapers, or Muslims-predicted the horrific

but

hardly apocalyptic attacks

two Septembers ago" (Bissel33-34). Add to this the current American war in the

middle-east and conflagratory American

etoric

a so-called "axis

evi

(the term

coined

National Post columnist and former speech-writer tor the current Bush

administration, David Frum), and the resuscitation of the popular apocalyptic

imagination comes

no surprise whatsoever.

Naturally, however, millenarian thinking

hardly new to America, and neither

apocalyptic thinking a novelty in intellectual circles.

What

Frank Kermode has called the

"sense of

ending"

inherent feature of Western

human

ideology, theology, and

philosophy.

those-all

us-born "into the middest" (Kermode

the Heraclitian

flow

time, there seems

be a built-in metaphysical need or desire to consider our

116

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

historical age or period

apocalyptic; humankind,

Kermode suggests, requires "fictive

concords with origins and ends, such

give meaning to lives and poems.

The

End will

reflect their irreducibly intermediary preoccupations" (7).

necessity, apocalyptic

theorizing

a staple in theological seminaries,

but

that

apocalyptic proclivities should

inform much of secular Western intellectual discourse should be a more difficult

proposition to accept. Nevertheless, examples abound: one might remark

Hegel's

dialectic

that

itself apocalyptic with a synthetic ending colliding into a new and

recurring synthesis; those, like Harold Innis first, and Marshall McLuhan after him and

Arthur

Kraker in the present time, who intellectually chart the rise and

fall

empires

and civilizations through communicational and technological innovations

can

also be said

to be informed

apocalyptic imagination. Marxist ideolc

;;y

is,

like theology, itself

sustained

the sense of

ending in which the proletariat revolts and rises up against

oppressive capitalist ideologies and regimes. Philosopher and cultural critic, Leszek

Kolakowski in Modernity

Endless Trial (1990), keeps a vigilant

eye

things

apocalyptic

defending the necessity

the sacred within the context

a modern

secular cultural environment

that

would de-mythologize the sacred: "politics has replaced

religion,

...

the psychiatrist has taken the place of the priest, and

...

technological

utopias have supplanted eschatological dreams" (64). In what

arguably one of the most

significant philosophical works of the twentieth century,

Truth

and Method (1960),

Hans-Georg Gadamer enunciates an "eschatological consciomness" (xxxviii) in his broad

117

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster

C.J.i.versity

treatise

hermeneutics in contradistinction to the "aesthetic consciousness." In literary

studies there

no end

charting apocalypse

a significant cultural feature

every

period's literature, most saliently, however, in Frye's "poetic imagination" (Anatomy 125),

which in proclaiming a recurring motif

re-creation for humankind

itself both Blake an

and, therefore, fundamentally apocalyptic, though naturally without fundamentalist

zealotry, proclaiming instead

ethos

renewal or renovation through language.

The

motif of apocalypsis, Greek for 'revelation,' 'unveiling' which, in Frye's words, has "the

metaphorical sense

uncovering or taking the lid off' (Great Code 135),

inherent

feature in the theory

literary studies itself with each theory potentially flourishing and

revealing and, then, receding in prominence just

the once dominant New Criticism

gave

way

to structuralism

then

to poststructuralism, and onward to the more specifically

ideologically informed gender and race theories

today. It

can

be said, in a broad sense,

that

every literary theory

itself constructed or founded

a conception of

ending in

order to engage in a renewed exploration of literary and cultural texts: postcolonialism,

poststructuralism, and gender theories all require

assumed epistemological bedrock

some form of terminal point in which

begin their method

literary investigation; each

presupposes-

implication-an ontological end

evaluating texts from certain passe or

hegemonic perspectives: each, again essentially, requires an apocalyptic ground-clearing,

explosion

previously assumed ideals or ideologies, which,

may assume, lead to a

revelatory (an uncovering or unveiling) exploration

human

thought, a re-evaluation.

118 J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Poststructuralism requires an end to logocentric discourse and the cessation and razing

hegemonic power structures through language; feminist theory also requires the terminal

disruption

phallogocentrism; Marxism posits the detonation

capitalist agendas;

postcolonial theory requires the erasure of master narratives employed

hegemonic

discourse-each, in its own

way,

shares a foundational sense

endings, which

implied in

the shared 'post' prefix

that

adorns their nomenclature or

implied in their basic

methodology. Endings give rise to new methods of literary discourse, and all may be said

to flourish under the larger and often obscure banner

'postmodernism,' itself the Ur-

ending of an era's (such

Modernism's) own renovation of dialectic in and

art,

philosophy, and theology. Further, contemporary, postmodern discourse in the

Humanities

is,

necessity, itself eschatological, for there

no general consensus

postmodernism's genesis, direction, or end-point, and there must be

end-point to

critical discourse: the architectonic structure of literary theory's corpus

cannot

be said to

be finished or concluded, yet speculation regarding postmodernism's own ending must

become, at a certain point, a source

discourse-anxiety in the twenty-first century.

Whether

postmodernism's advent

established

1945 (after the atomic blasts

Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or the early 1960s (in parallel with American unrest, riots, civil-

rights and peace demonstrations, and the political assassinations

that

turbulent

decade), which it

held vaguely in various camps, it has now been the cultural condition

or environment

that

North

America has lived

with-or

in-for roughly

fifty

years-an

119 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

enormous length

time

for

a class of intellectual periodization, particularly in

age

instant communication and near-daily technological innovation. But who can, or

will,

forecast the end

ending? There

is,

often, little reluctance in pronouncing endings

and, in the same move, inaugurating new movements-beginnings, yet there

a general

intellectual hesitancy to move beyond the postmodern.

The

fixture

the 'post' prefix to

modernism itself implies

that

this

the last era, which perforce raises the question, quo

vadis? Even

early

1970, and well before the avant-garde term postmodernism

became a familiar, cachet term, Marshall McLuhan introduced the term "post-history" to

depict

the sense

that

all pasts

that

ever were are now present to our consciousness

and

that

all futures

that

will

be are here now. In

that

sense

are post-

history and timeless. Instant awareness

all the varieties

human

expression reconstitutes the mythic type

consciousness, of once-upon-a-

time-ness, which means all-time,

out

time. (Medium 88, author's

emphasis)

McLuhan's "post-history" succinctly encapsulates the current post-industrial, electronic

era;

seem to be,

never before, positioned

a perpetual brink, arrested in

ahistorical moment where little-and yet everything at once-changes beyond the

size,

shape, and efficiency of our electronic gadgets. In terms

contemporary American

fiction,

are now placed in a peculiar position

post-postmodernism-the original

purveyors of a postmodern sensibility (Vladimir Nabokov, John Barth, Robert Coover,

and Thomas Pynchon) now approach their senescence, not

that

human

life

span

constitutes a literary period. But the aesthetic agendas and art

a period would more

120 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

likely constitute the borders and boundaries of a period, and the ironic and black humor

fictional renovations of the 1960s and 1970s, which were especially directed to the

hypocrisy of their time, are becoming

remote

our contemporary condition

any

other period's literature-that

say,

they have become assimilated in a tradition, or

have become canonized

a once-avant garde movement. This

not

say

that

they

have lost their value to the contemporary imagination, and are, indeed, valuable literary

artifacts, only

that

the original aesthetic ideals

this distinguished vanguard no longer

have the resonance and relevance necessary to the present day.

What

further striking,

and this

a point meticulously elaborated in Wallace's essay "E Unibus Pluram:

Television and U.S. Fiction,"

that

the succeeding generations

American fiction

writers have not, in the main, moved away from the original postmodem aesthetic

bequeathed to them

the Barths, Coovers, and others, nor have these elder statesmen

literary production, in fact, adopted their own aesthetic ideals to fit their contemporary

context, aside from

incorporation of digital media and an awareness of hypertext in

their works

that

acknowledges the presence and influence

the computer age

contemporary culture-yet they offer little or nothing in terms

its consequences. If the

term "early postmodemism" seems quaint or absurd, I nevertheless continue to use

only because Wallace himself deploys it in his interview with Larry McCaffery (

7), and

for

good reason. Few would argue

that

there

a distinct difference between the poetics

Modernist poets, Stephane Mallarme and the later T.S. Eliot, and it

can

be argued

that

121

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Mallarme signifies the inauguration

Modernism while Eliot s Four Quartets signifies its

conclusion. In this sense alone

might argue

that

Mallarme represents

early

Modernism, while Eliot represents a 'high' or late Modernist aesthetic, and one not

duplicated. In an American context, William Gaddis's

The

Recognitions (1955) arguably

represents the termination of the high-Modern aesthetic in American fiction;

few

would

contest

that

The

Recognitions has a greater similarity to the aesthetics

Modernism

than

postmodernism, though perhaps inaugurating the postmodern fiction aesthetic.

sense

early and late postmodernism

is,

perhaps,

that

enhanced, aggravated, and

imposed

our culture

rapid technological and communicational developments,

developments

that

all

vie to assimilate into our daily livr

, and with which literary

theory and criticism always seems to try

catch-up. Nabokov bears little similarity

Mark Leyner in any sense beyond the minor fact

that

both

are American novelists; there

seems

be a much larger divide or schism between the aesthetic of early and current

postmodernists

than

there

was

between postmodernism and its Modernist forbears-it

easier to find congruity between Mallarme and Eliot

than

Nabokov and Leyner. If

contemporary American fiction reflects contemporary American culture, and I would

contend

that

it does if only

elementary level,

then

the mainly ironic work

the

1970s fiction writers-in confronting and depicting the first wave

nuclear fears from the

Cuban Missile Crisis, for example-can no longer claim the

san1e

powerful resonance with

the American imagination

that

it once did. This representational art would seem to have

122

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

little relevance for the contemporary reader beyond the historical relationship

the work

to the preceding cultural conditions in which they originated.

The

art

this era remains

significant

a type

touchstone; the eschatological conditions

early postmodernism

cannot

resonate with contemporary eschatological conditions

they no longer resemble

our own. Visions

the eschatological past

cannot

speak to the exigencies

the

eschatological present. Since postmodernism has been our intellectual period for

long,

and seems in certain respects to have run its course, then, perhaps it

time to re-evaluate

it from an eschatological perspective. But I shall return to this point in what follows; I

only use this postmodern conundrum

illustrate the idea

ending

contemporary

literary discourse and fiction at a foundational level. Perhaps, then,

Paul Fiddes

remarks, "all texts are eschatological" (18)

they represent a 'last discourse' in any and

all

their various manifestations, and it

only in the degree or relationship with the

contemporary culture

that

gives birth to them

that

they speak to

Frank Lentricchia's After the New Criticism (1980)

a critical-theoretical-

historical work

that

examines the so-called "crisis"-a significant term itself

that

accompanies all apocalyptic discourse and

that

also signifies apocalypse (Kermode

25)-in

then-contemporary literary theory, a crisis between efforts to "essentialize literary

discourse

making it a unique kind

language-a vast, enclosed textual and semantic

preserve-and,

the other hand,

urge to make literary language 'relevant'

locating it in larger contexts

discourse and history" (xiii). Lentricchia, in 1980,

123

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

proclaimed New Criticism to be "dead" (xiii), and, in a history of critical theory, seeks

move away from

apocalyptic examination of theory and, instead, focuses

the

"ruptures" in critical thinking rather

than

the "end of things" (xiv) . While Lentricchia

establishes his work

a "kind

dialogue with the theorists

...

examined" (xiii), there

nonetheless

implication of the end (After the New Criticism), or

ending,

"movement" (xii). Lentricchia posits

that

his work

a quasi-historical examination

American literary theory up to and beyond New Criticism, yet he

cannot

help

but

pronounce New Criticism dead. Lentricchia moves to anticipate apocalyptic concerns in

his work

writing

that

"it

the very condition of contemporary critical historicity

that

there

no 'after' or 'before' the New Criticism" (xiii), and

encapsulating the words

"ruptures" and "periods" with quotation marks, there

still no escaping the apocalyptic

agenda

renewal or purgation

contemporary theory in the wake

New Criticism ("at

the end

things") (xiv)

that

the kernel

his work. A telling term he uses in the

history

contemporary theory

"ruptures" (xiii), which itself implies

eschatological

imagination

work

this locus

investigation. I am

not

trying to quibble with

Lentricchia's work or his perspective, for the work

valuable and necessary in terms of

viewing the fertile ground of twentieth-century

North

American literary investigation;

rather, I am trying

depict the apocalyptic energies that, often of necessity, inform

human

discourse, particularly literary discourse: for,

Kermode writes, conceptions of

"the

End"-of

anything-have perhaps lost their "nai:ve imminence"

they are perpetually

124

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

disconfirmed, they have nevertheless have become

"immanent!'

in the contemporary

imagination (Kermode 6, author's emphasis).

That

say,

that

apocalyptic-or better

still, eschatological-import has become

immanent feature of all

human

discourse.

are incapable

engaging in discourse-any discourse, even a specialized autotelic

discourse such

literary

theory-that

involves the

human

imagination without invoking

or implying or unconsciously informing such discourses without the immanent

content

apocalypse, without the sense

an end. Apocalyptic discourse of the type

that

I envision

naturally

not

a literalist manifestation of the end

human

life or the cosmos or

anything related to charismatic, orthodox theological content,

but

more with

obvious

or elementary perspective, or view,

engaging in discourse with an end in mind.

The

term apocalypse has been used with such frequency and applied

promiscuously

that

it has almost become a cliche, a term

that

no longer contains much

its original meaning. A simple consideration of how it has primarily become synonymous

with Armageddon-type catastrophe instead

its original me

• .ing of 'revelation,'

'uncovering,' or 'unveiling' in the popular imagination suggests this.

The

term's

contemporary ablated meaning

for

disaster also manifests itself in current literary

discourse, particularly in studies of contemporary American fiction. Perhaps,

Derrida

has written in his essay

"nuclear criticism," "No Apocalypse,

Not

Now (full speed

ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)," there

no other

way

to conceive

twentieth-

century life, and after,

but

in apocalyptic terms, framed

eschatological imagination:

125

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

"the anticipation

nuclear war (dreaded

the fantasy, or phantasm,

a remainderless

destruction) installs humanity-and through all sorts

relays even defines the essence

modern humanity-in its rhetorical condition" (24).

Numerou~

critical studies of the

apocalyptic nature

contemporary American fiction abound, but, in the main, these

studies probe postmodern conceptions

entropy and chaos.

The

work

N. Katherine

Hayles, focuses

the emergence in the 1990s of cyberpunk fiction and the implications

digital/electronic culture

the

human

subject and the contemporary literary artifact.

Studies like

Tom

LeClair's

The

Art

Excess: Mastery in Contemporary Fiction (1989)

examine the 'systems' novel, the literary response to the complexity of military-industrial,

bureaucratic, and electronic cultural factors in elder postmodernist novelists like Don

DeLillo, Joseph McElroy, and Thomas Pynchon. Other, more recent studies, provide a

more contemporary response to the postmodern conception

chaos and disorder

resulting from the next generation of technology

that

LeClair responds to, like Joseph

Conte's Design and Debris: A Chaotics ofPostmodern Fiction (2002) and, again, N.

Katherine Hayles's Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and

Science ( 1990). All of these studies can, in general terms, be categorized or classified

apocalyptic in the sense

that

they chart cultural crisis and ruptures-and I use

Lentricchia's term ("ruptures") because in our era

unprecedented technological

expansion, each innovation has the appearance

a rupture

that

explodes the previous

innovation in a rapidly condensed span

time, ruptures

that

are difficult to make

126 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

meaning of

they outpace our ability to adapt to and incorp

c:_·

ate them into quotidian

human existence. Joseph Dewey's important In a Dark Time:

The

Apocalyptic Temper in

the American Novel of the Nuclear Age (1990)

the lone study

contemporary fiction

to frame

American mythos

apocalyptic fear in the contemporary American novel,

one

that

specifically and signally emerges from America's movement into the post-atomic

age, an 'apocalyptic temper' heightened in certain respects

the eighties' pop-cultural

infatuation with nuclear-annihilation

that

also reflected in early apocalyptic films like

Mad Max (1979), Apocalypse Now (1979), Blade Runner (1982),

War

Games (1983),

The

Terminator (1984), or the made-for-television

The

Day After (1983), a fear

that

product

the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense lr itiative, or 'Star Wars'

missile-defense initiative, now being revived under the second Bush administration. But

while Dewey's study

invaluable and notes a strong correlation between American

nuclear culture and the contemporary novel, his use of the term apocalypse

heavily

informed

the American fear of nuclear annihilation, and

thus, perhaps, better

termed the 'eschatological temper.' In fact,

PaulS.

Fiddes distinguishes between

apocalyptic types in his

The

Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature

(2000), noting

that

the apocalyptic type that Dewey employs

a methodology

for

his

study

more properly termed "apocalyptic eschatology, a kind

eschatology

that

envisag

the end

history and the cosmos, and which may (or may not) be a feature

apocalypseS' (25, author's emphasis).

That

is,

apocalypse

revelation

often distinct

127

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

from eschatological catastrophe, and the latter does

not

necessarily mean

that

or will

be accompanied

revelation, only annihilation; yet the two are often easily merged

because of the orthodox association

St. John's Revelation and the forecasted doom

his particular revelation: "the word 'apocalyptic' has

...

become synonymous with the

end of the world" (Chevalier 33). I point

out

this triviality in

word~choice

only to

emphasize the cultural shift in the meaning

apocalypse to eschaton (essentially, the

divinely ordained climax

history) (OED),

a type

human~ordained

historical

climax, again,

not

to quibble with Dewey's work. Hereafter I

will

use the term

'eschatological' in lieu

apocalypse though I

will

carefully note the differences in

apocalypse

revelation or catastrophe

appropriate when the context

muddied in

competing versions

such, for two reasons: first,

mentioned, eschatology

accurate in terms

discussing 'ends' in all of their various manifestations and, second,

because 'eschatology' means 'last discourse' (OED). In keeping with a discourse of

endings

perceived in the aesthetic of David Foster Wallace's fiction, it

more useful to

prefer eschatological to apocalyptical, though

both

signally overlap and involve a

redemptive revelation in Wallace's works. Further, although there

some attention

given to the subject of eschatology and literature in contemporary literary criticism, these

works tend to shy away from

examination of just what it means to think

eschatologically about contemporary literature, not just medieval or Renaissance

literature, which are,

for

obvious reasons, more conducive to

eschatological discourse

128

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

because those periods

both

believed in a certain literal, divinely ordained ending. If

take

axiomatic

that

live in a complex and frenetic time-more complex

than

any

other and certainly much faster

paced-a

time

exponential technological development,

the narrowing, shrinking, or even collapsing of even geo-political borders, and a peculiar

hegemonic dominance of one nation (for the United States

the sole dominant power

the globe

for

the first time since the Roman empire) militarily, economically, and

culturally, and even if

optimistically consider these days to include a flourishing

creative and intellectual energies like no other instead of

eschatological indication

the flight

Minerva's owl (after Harold Innis's theory of intellectual energy preceding

imperial decline), we must still contend with the nagging sense

that

inhabit a fragile

cusp

something

not

know. It

interesting to observe

that

the term

'eschatology,' according to Cynthia Marshall (who takes her definition from the OED),

"dates from the middle

the

nineteenth

century" (5).

That

can

see a close

correspondence between the advent of the term 'eschatology' and eschatological thinking

in Western civilization and the rise of nineteenth-century industrialism

significant. If

the genesis

industrialism in Western society signifies a parallel escalation in

eschatological complexes,

then

may

say

that

our continuation and exponential

surmounting of industrial culture with our hectic electronic culture must be matched

by,

or produces, a corresponding increase in eschatological anxiety, whether one takes our

era's eschaton to be biblical or otherwise. Rumors of clonings and the debate over stem-

129 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

cell research in the United States alone, of the most recent technological 'breakthroughs'

are clearly shocking

many levels to

American culture

that

has not had sufficient

time or legislation (for legislation seems always to be at least one remove behind

technological discovery) to absorb their cultural impact. Eschatological anxiety

is,

thus,

obvious correlative of what William Gaddis has ironically called "the rush for second

place

remove sacred and literalist connotations from eschatological thinking

are, nevertheless, left in a place where endings exert a powerful influence

the

contemporary imagination, even though, try

might, in the postmodern era to

denigrate the essential property of endings in our art. Thus, after Marshall,

might

generally conclude

that

eschatology encompasses "the complex system

ideas about last

things" that also "suggests more widely the personal, social, and historical attitudes and

approaches toward ultimate things, including

death

and apocalypse" (5). Further, if

look at contemporary American literature and art,

find

that

the artists

our time

deploy apocalyptic/eschatological motifs or themes in relation to contemporary American

culture

an unprecedented scale.

One

need only look to such works

Walker Percy's

Love in the Ruins (1971),

The

Second Coming (1980),

The

Thanatos Syndrome (1987),

Novel Writing in an Apocalyptic Time (1986); James Merrill's

The

Changing Light at

Sandover (1980), Wallace Stevens's

"An

Ordinary Evening in New Haven" (1949) (not

to mention other Modernist precursors like Eliot's

The

Waste Land [1922] and Four

Quartets [1944]), Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2 (1995), Geor

;;.:.:

Saunders's CivilWarLand

130 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

in Bad Decline (1996), Evan Dara's

The

Lost Scrapbook (1995), Chuck Palahniuk's Fight

Club (1996), anything

William T. Vollmann and Mark Leyner, Flannery O'Connor's

The

Violent Bear it Away (1955), Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973),

Don

DeLillo's Underworld (1997) and Cosmopolis (2003), all

William Gaddis, John

Updike's Toward the End

ofTime

(1997), any and all cyberpunk and science fiction

(Philip

Dick, William Gibson, and Samuel

Delaney most prominently), or any of the

films already mentioned and Larry and Andy Wachowski's

The

Matrix (1999),

not

mention more mainstream and sensational productions such

Armageddon (1998) and

Deep Impact (1998), and the appearance

ofTim

LaHaye and

rry

Jenkins's

fundamentalist, fear-mongering forecast of biblical eschatological doom in their projected

twelve-volume Left Behind (1995-) series

novels, the most recent

which,

Desecration, was the "best-selling novel of2001" (Bissel36), and

a series has sold over

fifty

million copies

of 2002 (Maryles n.p.)-truly apocalyptic numbers for any publishing

house. Yet while America's creative energies rush toward Armageddon and

eschatologically themed works, there

a peculiar silence from critical quarters; very little

in the

way

critical commentary

directed to the contemporary eschatological

imagination. Perhaps this

because, often, the eschatological imagination

difficult

to detach from the apocalyptic-eschatological imagination and ,

association, paranoid

millenarianism. Even

so,

one would still think this to be a fertile area of cultural-critical

investigation.

the more recent studies

that

involve some type of eschatological

131

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

investigation, Cynthia Marshall examines Shakespeare from

eschatological view in the

particular context

his last plays in Last Things and Last

Shakespearean

Eschatology (1991) and Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman investigate the

eschatology

the middle ages in their edited collection, Last Things:

Death

and the

Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (2000). Richard

Emmerson and Ronald

Herzman

have, perhaps, coined, or have made more prominent in critical quarters, the phrase, "the

apocalyptic imagination" in their collaborative study,

The

Ap•.y:alyptic Imagination in

Medieval Literature (1992); of necessity, however, their study relies

a close reading

early church doctrine in explicating medieval texts and, thus, their methodology does

not

resonate in a broader and more imaginative context, particularly for the later twentieth

century and after. These studies, then, although valuable, do

not

link the very

human

proclivity to endings and the eschatological imagination, and, paradoxically, they

cannot

move away from St. John's Revelation and maintain

eschatological discourse at once.

There

also a scattering of article-length studies

particular works of literature from

apocalyptic/eschatological perspective,

but

these, again, do

not

move very far from the

particular works treated, nor do they posit

eschatological temper running through the

particular artists' oeuvres

I will claim occurs in Wallace's fiction. t Moreover, there

again the sense in these critical studies

that

the eschatological imagination

that

informs

these artists' works

detached and isolated from the larger body

literary eschatological

visions.

That

say,

I find no indication

an 'eschatological theory'

that

allows

132

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

disparate works from Thomas

Kyd

to David Foster Wallace to be understood in terms

general understanding of what eschatological thinking means in the context

human

being

that

possesses an eschatological identity simply because of his individual mortality

and, more particularly, an eschatological identity

that

augmented

the specific

cultural forces

living in a time

that

constructed

post,structural, post-modem, and

post-history. It would appear

that

there

is,

to borrow Wallace Stevens's phrase, a very

necessary fiction

eschaton inherent in the

human

condition, without which

could

neither make meaning of our transient individual occupation

this globe nor understand

the future in any real sense. This

partly

because the term eschatology

loaded with

catastrophic, biblical connotations (apocalypse

Armageddon), and

is,

thus, all too easily

associated with end-times millenarian and other, more conservative orthodox,

movements, most of which contemporary criticism would sooner and, for the most part,

rightly ignore. It

is,

perhaps, difficult to disassociate the sacred connotations

eschatology, and to liberate the word from its sacred heritage, and it

probably impossible

to do

fully.

In this chapter I

will

seek to renovate, or loosen, these limiting orthodox

meanings,

much

possible, from the word

applying it to the human imagination

and, therefore, attempt to offer a theory

what it means to inspire or inform works of

contemporary American literature with

eschatological imagination

that

courageously

oriented to the production

redemptive contemporary fiction, for

eschatological

theory must,

necessity, involve a new beginning or a sense of redemption. As Frye

133

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

wrote in

The

Educated Imagination (1963), which feels

long ago, though

relevant

than

ever,

the critic's function

interpret every work

literature in the light

all

the literature he knows, to keep constantly

stru~gling

understand what

literature

a whole

about. Literature

a whole

not

aggregate

exhibitions with red and blue ribbons attached

them, like a cat-show,

but

the range

articulate human imagination

it extends from the

height of imaginative heaven to the depth

inative hell. Literature

human

apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism

not

a body

adjudications,

but

the awareness

that

revelation, the last judgment

mankind. (44, emphasis added)

might also add

films,

or all imaginative, cultural texts, to Frye's conception

literature with his approbation,

for

they too depict the full "range of articulate

human

imagination" and humankind's daily ascent to heaven or descent to hell.

And

may,

also,

say

with Frye

that

investigate "man's revelation to man"

is,

perhaps, the most

essential aspect

literary investigation that, in Derrida's famously recurring phrase,

"always already" begins with an ending.

* * *

134

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

The

Mantle

"The

language of apocalyptic writing

richly symbolic and

the

importance of

the

visions which

are described

never in their literal meaning.

can

be taken

a rule

that

every element in this

kind

writing has symbolic value-persons, places, animals, actions, parts of

the

body, numbers

and

measurements, stars, constellations, colors and

garments-and

are

not

to misunderstand

or distort the writer's message,

must appreciate

the

imagery at its true value and do our best to

translate

the

symbols back into the ideas which he

intended

them to convey" ('Apocalypse,'

The

Penguin Dictionary of Symbols 33).

"Should I find it depressing

that

the young Dostoevsky

was

just like young U.S. writers today, or

kind of a relief? Does anything ever

change?"-David

Foster Wallace ("Feodor's Guide" 28 n.

21).

For

title, 'the eschatological imagination,' I have borrowed from Joseph Frank's

five-volume biography, Dostoevsky (1976-2002). Throughou t

~is

exhaustive critical

biography, and primarily in the final two installments, Frank continually refers to

Dostoevsky's "eschatological vision of

human

life" (Mantle 1 72), his "eschatological

imagination" (196, 313; Miraculous 101, 146), his "eschatological apprehension of life"

(Miraculous 312), the "eschatological tension" of the "Christian ethic" of a "totally selfless

~,from

the "perspective of the imminent end of time" (321), his "eschatological

ideal" (341), his "eschatological hope" (Mantle 368), his "epochal formulation" of a

"future humankind

that

would literally be a huge, united, and interdependent organism-a

humankind in which any separation between individuals would no longer even be

physically conceivable" (370), and Dostoevsky's "ideological

chatology,"

the "moral

message of love and self-sacrifice

that

Christ had brought to the world" (Liberation 299).

far

I can tell Frank has coined the phrase, the eschatological imagination, though it

135

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

has been revived in recent years in James Alison's theological study, Raising Abel:

The

Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination (1996).

The

phrase appears to have evolved

in Frank's own thought over the sustained course of completing his study of the evolution

of Dostoevsky's imagination, literary aesthetic, and world-view. In his first volume,

Dostoevsky:

The

Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 (1976), Frank defines Dostoevsky's primary

aesthetic and world-view (to "conquer hatred and replace it

love")

a "mora

artistic

cosmos" (367) . Only in the second volume,

The

Years ofOrC:cal, 1850-1859 (1983),

does Frank come closer to a theoretical definition of what

will

eventua

lly

become the

more concrete "eschatological imagination" of the final three volumes. Frank first notes

that

Dostoevsky's imagination

informed

an "apocalyptic view" (37), and

that

the

"strength" of Dostoevsky's work can be traced to his desire to "communicate the saving

power of [the] eschatological core of the Christian faith" (64). Frank's "eschatological

imagination"

never extensively defined in any one of the volumes,

but

he comes closest

to estab

shing his sense of a Dostoevskian eschatological poetics in the second volume:

Dostoevsky's imagination at this point [after his incarceration in Siberia]

cou

not resist taking the eschatological leap

that

was to become

characteristic

for

him-the

leap to

e end condition of whatever empirical

situation he

considering-and

so,

in order to dramatize the supreme

importance of hope

for

human

life,

he deliberately invents a situation in

which it

systematically destroyed. (158, author's emphasis)

This "eschatological core" or "leap" eventua

y becomes the more refined eschatological

imagination of the successive volumes. Frank seems reluctant to arrive at an overarching

definition of the eschatological imagination, perhaps because of the infinite varieti

136 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

eschatological conditions and experiences

that

Dostoevsky conceived. This also calls

attention to the versatility or mutability

the eschatological imagination

suited to

any imaginative context, sacred or secular.

What

particularly striking and revealing

about this

the flexibility

the phrase; it

applied throughout to Dostoevsky's

Christian world-view, his doubts and frustrations, personal experiences, fiction writing,

and his passionate engagement with the then-contemporary ideologies (particularly

utopian socialism and nihilism among the Russian intelligentsia), all of which are bound

together

a common perception of an end, often a disastrous one, one

that

pivotally

grounded in a language of renewal. Envisioning and depicting endings, often catastrophic

ones, for Dostoevsky and for Wallace, in their fiction

their way

dramatizing cultural

transformation, or new beginnings.

I introduce Frank's work here for three reasons

that

I will return to in the course

of the chapter. First, it

clear from reading Wallace's work, particularly his essay

"Feodor's

Guide"-a

review article

Frank's biography

publisl11

in the Village Voice

Literary Supplement (1996) just three months after the release

Infinite Jest (January

1996)-that

Wallace aligns himself to the Dostoevskian tradition almost to the point

viewing himself

assuming Dostoevsky's prophetic mantle in a contemporary American

context.2 Next, there

a real similarity between the fiction of Dostoevsky and Wallace,

in terms of iconography and symbols, and, more importantly, in the correspondence

between

both

artists' unflinching eschatological depiction of debased and despairing

137

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

human

nature with a redemptive end. Thirdly,

conception

eschatological

approach

largely indebted to Frank's foundational phrase and his meticulous

observations regarding Dostoevsky's aesthetic development.

analysis

Wallace's

close reading of Frank's intimate reading and understanding of Dostoevsky allows

capture a strong sense

the similarities between Dostoevsky's and Wallace's aesthetic

and to understand how Wallace deploys this influence throughout his fiction to dramatize

ultimate endings.

may

say,

then,

that

are in medias res now in terms

arriving at

approximation of Wallace's eschatological vision

that

is,

first, steeped in Joseph Frank,

and to a larger, more important extent, Dostoevsky. Wallace's work

is,

course,

not

simply reducible to

aping of Dostoevsky's poetics, for

have already seen in the

case

ofG

Hopkins (Part One) and others, Wallace's work tends to involve a unique

appropriation

a wide variety

artistic influences and styles

that

becomes a vital

reinterpretation or reformulation constructed out

ends for new beginnings.

Wallace's use

a chatty, familiar, and conversational tone in all his essays often

belies his sincerity and passionate feelings about his subjects. Indeed, his jocular and witty

treatment

these topics seems to suggest

that

his essays are written with haste,

that

the

thoughts expressed there are random opinions, without any formal rhetorical devices at

work, and, therefore, not to be taken too seriously. They are first and foremost friendly;

though they seek to persuade the reader, they are respectful, warm, and often highly

amusing.

And

while they are extremely intelligent, and while the reader never forgets

138

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

that

the writer

extremely intelligent, these essays always have

open, even vulnerable,

style to them.

They

make

honest appeal to the reader

that

neither pretentious nor

heavy-handed.

What

most striking about these essays, and "Feodor's Guide" in

particular,

one returns to and re-reads them,

the deep and sophisticated involvement

that

they demand from the reader in parsing their subtexts. "Feodor's Guide," like the

later Rain Taxi Review review article discussed in the previous chapter,

is,

course,

simply a review article. But, like

all

Wallace's work, to consign this essay to

that

simple

class

to ignore the deeper gestures and larger ramifications

that

are its true subject

matter. Primarily, like Dostoevsky's own essays and fiction, Wallace has one target in

mind, the contemporary aesthetic condition or 'worldview'

ironic nihilism in American

fiction. Whereas Dostoevsky spent his literary and personal life engaging the utopian

socialists and intellectual nihilists (like N.G. Chernyshevsky's popular

What

to be

Done? [ 1863]), Wallace engages the contemporary American literati's easy reliance

ironic nihilism, a self-promoting nihilism

that

mocks, sneers and, thus, negates sincere

discourse and debate from the outset. Two contemporary examples of this ironic nihilism

are the work

Mark Leyner, directly addressed

Wallace in his essay

television and

American fiction, and relative new-comer, Neil Pollack.3

One

the two epigraphs

that

head "Feodor's Guide," a snippet

dialogue from Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, merits

full

quotation here:

'At

the present time, negation

the most usefui of all-and

deny-'

'Everything?'

139

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

'Everything!'

'What,

not

only art and poetry

...

but

even

...

horrible to say

...

'Everything,' repeated Bazarov, with indescribable composure.' (17)

have already noted in the epigraph

Wallace's "Tense Present: Democracy,

English, and the Wars over Usage" from Augustine, Dilige

quod

vis

fac ('Love, and do

what you will'), Wallace's epigraphs are crucial rhetorical strategies

both

in terms of

emphasizing his belief in the reader's participation (in seeking

out

a translation to the

Augustinian quotation and inviting the reader to take the meaning beyond the scope and

limitations of

essay and adopt it, or,

least, consider its consequences) and here in

"Feodor's Guide" in signifying the essential strategical engageii<ent

the essay, beyond its

immediate limits

a review article. While the essay

a generic book review for a well-

known literary supplement, it also bears the marks of a contemporary aesthetic treatise

that, again like the Rain Taxi Review essay, pillories contemporary American avant

gardists-the producers and cori.sumers of contemporary avant garde literature-in a

publication

that

considered perpetually avant garde by the literati.

In the concluding paragraph

the essay, a rally or call to arms of sorts

contemporary fiction writers

that

moves far away from the initial and ostensible subject

the essay, Wallace declares

that

although he considers the current moment to be a dark

and difficult one for fiction writers who would strive for sincerc expression, he also recalls

Dostoevsky

a "model"

(25)-much

like Wallace's earlier consideration of G.M. Hopkins

a "touchstone" (McCaffery 149)

for

contemporary writers-and concludes his piece

140

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

writing

that

"Frank's books present a hologram

one

them" (25).4

The

hologram

metaphor

a significant one for Wallace, mainly because Infinite Jest-the novel he wrote

partly to address the many literary-aesthetic dilemmas of the postmodern era-deploys

holograms in a plethora of

ways

have noted in the ghost/geist portion

the

previous chapter. In the context

his Dostoevsky essay, however,

not

only does Wallace

call attention to the fact

Frank's mediation of Dostoevsky

a model/hologram for

contemporary writers,

but

he actually acts

a hologram him

"·

lf through his own essay

mediating Dostoevsky through the particular lens of his essay-authorial

self.

In an

interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace remarks about Infinite Jest

that

he intended his

novel to be "not particularly postmodern or jumbled up or fractured," although, in respect

to his use

endnotes, he also contends that,

for

him, "reality's fractured right now" and

that

"constantly

the lookout

for

ways

to fracture the text

that

aren't totally

disorienting" (Rose 11). As

have observed, Wallace's primary motivation for

fracturing his narrative

to jar the reader into a sense

that

someone

mediating the

textual content, its data, and its arrangement and chronological sequencing-that a

human agency

responsible for this textual ordering

the other end

the literary

transaction in our contemporary world

that

tends to disguise mediation, particularly in

the commercial arts like television. Wallace's essays are no different

than

his fiction in

terms

textual strategies. "Feodor's Guide" contains six interpolated, off-set and

italicized segments encapsulated with double asterisks

that

are only tangentially related to

141

J.T. Jacob

PhD

esi

Depa

rtment

of Eng

McM

ter University

th th

e essay proper's subject, Jose

Fra

biogra

y and iJostoevsky's literary-

cultural achieveme

s. He further

eds

e essay with his now familiar a

expe

ndn

enty

-fi

ve in tota

ve pages of not

in a short, thirteen-page

, which

further

e essay's organi

tio

All s

excerpts are

fir

st-per

n, monol

ue-

style philosophical meditations

at reca

Und

erground Man's withering discour

toevsky's prose dramatic monol

Not

Und

round

864).

And

lth

ough

me of

ese are leng

I quote

thr

ee of

ese philosophical meditations

exampl

how Wa

ace

s his essay and becau

int

egra

y inform his overa

ntr

eaty:

"~<*

But

if I de

cid

ere's a

dif

rent, less selfish, less lonely po

int

my li

fe,

Isn 't

e reason

thi

s decision my desire to be less lonel

nin

g to suffer less pain! So can

e decisi

be less selfish be

anything o

an a selfish de

sion

/**

("Feodor's Guide"

19,

uth

or's

mph

is)

**Is

possible r

y to love somebod

I'm lonel

ins

everybody o

e me is pote

nti

al relief: I need

em.

But

possible to

ove

what you need! Does l

ove

have to be vo

lunt

ary to be l

ove!

Does

have to not even be in my o

best

int

erest

e love,

unt

love!';:*

(

, a

uth

or's emph

is)

;::;:

What Is

eri

n '! Do

have something in co

on,

eri

do we a

st ha

live ins

me arbitrary

und

ari

es!

eri

ffe

om o

er countri

es!

ere

something spe

al abo

! For

t abo

special priv

eges

at go with

being an

eri

are

ere spe

al responsibilities

with being an

A meri

so,

responsibilities to

?·-;:.-;:

(22, a

uth

or's emph

is)

e o

thr

ee excerpts addr

ess

such to

as,

whe

er one is a "good per

n" or not

8), "faith"

8), and be

ef (23). None of

e excerpts have any immediate relation to

Joseph Frank's biography or D

toevsky,

me tim

are completely

142

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

intertwined with Dostoevsky's eschatological imagination-for all

these conundrums

present themselves repeatedly in his fiction.

one point in the article, Wallace addresses the difficulty

reading Dostoevsky

in a contemporary American context in which Dostoevsky's fiction's "time and culture

and language are alien to

us"

(19). He further observes

that

Dosteovsky's "prose and

dialogue can come off stilted and pleonastic and silly" (19) because of "excruciating

Victorianish translations" (26

5);

that

Dostoevsky's works exhibit a "soppy-seeming

formality" (19);

that

"social etiquette

stiff to the point of ab'>urdity" augmented with

"obscure military ranks and bureaucratic hierarchies" (19); and

that

"rigid and totally

weird class distinctions" are "hard to keep straight and understand the implications

of'

(19-20).

That

Wallace is

initially hard

Dostoevsky's works

itself surprising until

come to understand the rhetorical strategy behind the essay:

that

it aims to be a

hologram of Dostoevsky-of making Dostoevsky's works more accessible to the

contemporary American imagination-through the tripartite mediation

of,

first,

Dostoevsky himself, Joseph Frank, and

then

Wallace himself. For Wallace, here,

Dostoevsky embodies such a dynamic light source

that

requires, because of the levels of

cultural obscurity

that

block or deflect his radiance, a type

light mediator-or a

translator. A translator

not

in the literal sense

translating Dostoevsky's Russian works

into the English language,

but

a translator who would translate Dostoevsky's

eological

agendas into a contemporary American idiom and context. Thus, Wallace's italicized and

143

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

int

erpolated comme

represe

s a ref

hio

nin

g and re-mediation of D

toevsky in

which

at a

uth

or's ce

ntr

al concerns are translated into an

erican p

tmode

ext, one

at h

oss

ifi

ed, for Wa

into a cultura

y toxic Weltans

auung of

iron

exivit

and morda

spoofing of

erican hyperconsume

sm. D

toevs

in Wa

ace's word

"dramati

[d]

e profoundest parts of a

hum

an bein

gs,

e parts

t conflicted, m

rious:

e on

with

e m

stak

(21).

is no mistake

e portions of Dostoevsky

at Wa

ace re-writ

from an

erican perspective have to

do with what today's p

tmodern litera

agend

and fiction-writing perspectives

uld

find trit

naiv

and insipid:

e l

or rapidly diminishin

shared valu

of per

nal

rth

and goo

ess; faith in

mething beyond

e immediate

lipsistic s

ubj

ect;

lonelin

ess

and

lfi

ess

; loving someone witho

oug

for on

elf;

e value of

communal partic

ation (as

'Am

cans'); and

e value of looking to o

er hologram

e very

hum

anistic a

eal

benea

ace's essay a

o becom

a recurre

ain

rougho

his fiction, which is

surprising

Joyce once remarked

at a

nove

st manipulat

one or two recurre

over

e cour

of a writing caree

Throu

gh his co

entions regarding D

toevsk

we see a re

ection of what is m

valuable to Wa

ace

e essayist and fiction write

FMD's conce

ays

what

be a

hum

an bein

e. how a

per

n, in

e particular social and philosophical circumstanc

nineteenth-century Ru

ia, could be a real

hum

an bein

a per

n whose

life w

informed by love a

valu

principl

, instead of being just a

shre

speci

lf-preserving anima

(21,

auth

or's e

mph

is)

144

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

ace impli

at to read D

toevsky prope

to understand

e inte

ectual battl

at D

toevsky foug

and to appreciate Dostoevsky's aes

etic is to see a re

acted

image of Dostoevsky in Wa

ace's own work. To say

at Wa

ace mirrors Dostoevsky's

atological aes

etic is to imply

at D

toevsky's society mirrors our own.

ough,

ace ob

nin

etee

nth-c

entury Ru

ian society clea

y differs from twe

y-first

ntur

erican society,

ere

a dramatic corr

ence none

eless in terms of

dramatizing

hum

an condition. While "Feodor's Guide" examin

, on

e surfac

works of Joseph Frank and D

toevsky,

e essay's deeper implication is

emporary

can nove

sts hav

in Wa

ace's words, "abandoned

eld" (24);

no lon

r dramati

e significanc

and wo

rth

of being human, or just what

it means to live in an

atol

al age. For Wa

ace, D

toevs

"possessed a p

ass

ion,

conviction, and engageme

with deep moral i

ues

at we, here, tod

ay,

ot or do not

ow our

lves" (23).

examining D

toevsky's age of nihilis

ace di

noses

prese

age:

And

on finishing Frank's books, I think any

rious

erican reader/writer

will find him

lf driven to think hard abo

what exactly it is

at mak

many of

e nove

sts of our own time look

ematica

y sha

ow and

...

To inquire why we

-und

er our own nihilist spe

ll-

seem to

require of our writers an ironic distance

om deep convictions or d

perate

tion

at co

emporary writers have to

eith

er make jokes of

profound i

or el

try

mehow to work

em in under cover of

formal trick like inte

extual quotation or incongruous juxtap

ition,

sticking

em ins

sks

part of some surreal, defamiliari

tion-o

e-reading-experience

ourish. (23)

Part of

e reason for this co

empora

, literary nihilism, Wa

ace su

gges

ts, is attributable

145

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

aesthetic shifts in the genre

the novel itself, which "involves our era's postindustrial

condition and postmodern culture" (23) . Whereas, for Wallace, the Modernists "elevated

aesthetics to the level of metaphysics" (23), making "formal ingenuity" the standard for

noteworthy fiction, postmodernist writers "presume

a matter

course

that

serious

literature

will

be aesthetically distanced from real lived life" (23). As such, the peculiar

aesthetic conception of 'serious' fiction now means, at least for Wallace, an admixture of

self-conscious textual ingenuity and the avoidance

problematic moral issues

that

emerge from the present time, issues

that

would require a writer to make some sort of

ideological claim whether masked

character or literary personae. Wallace observes

that

although Dostoevsky's fiction

celebrated for "its wisdom and compassion and moral

rigor," Dostoevsky

was

himself, ironically, "a prick in real life-vain, self-absorbed,

arrogant, spiteful, selfish" (21) . Yet despite this, Wallace calls Dostoevsky, in a word,

"brave" (24, author's emphasis). Wallace continues: "he never stopped worrying about

his literary reputation,

but

he also never stopped promulgating ideas in which he believed.

And he did

not

ignoring the unfriendly cultural circumstances in which he

was

writing,

but

confronting them, engaging them, specifically and

name" (24).

What

of crucial importance in this essay

that

while Wallace meticulously

diagnoses the contemporary literary environment, he also implicates himself several times

complicitous with the contemporary literati: "our intelligentsia (us) distrust strong

belief, open conviction" (24); and: "we will,

course, without hesitation use art to

146

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

parody, ridicule, debunk or protest ideologies. But there

a d1tference" (29 n. 25).

There

also a fundamental difference in Wallace's conception

'ideology,' for he does

not

directly refer to the types

literary theoretical ideologies (Marxism,

poststructuralism-"our age's

own

radical-intellectual fad" ("Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky"

n.p.)-feminist theory, and

forth) practiced

the neo-liberal Humanities faculties of

today's academy, which would be better understood, perhaps,

political agendas instead

of ideologies

belief, though it

arguable that he nevertheless implicates the "theory

industry" ("Fyodor"

n.3) here

well. Advancing

'ideology'-a system

ideas,

beliefs-means, for Joseph Frank, precisely to dramatize the characteristic moral-spiritual

themes

a period against the background

a particular cult·1re (qtd. in Wallace 18).

He, then, concludes the essay

quoting a portion

Dostoevsky's

The

Idiot, excerpted

from a ten-page monologue

suicide, and asks the reader to imagine the critical

reception a contemporary novelist would elicit

daring to allow a contemporary

character to speak in this fashion: "so he-we, fiction writers-won't-ever-dare try to use

serious art to advance ideologies.

The

project would be

culturally inappropriate

Menard's Quixote. We'dbe laughed

out

town" (25, emphasis added).5 In "Feodor's

Guide," Wallace has implicitly and single-handedly called for a termination

the type

postmodern self-conscious and ironic fiction

that

he sees

the hallmark of our time. In

this sense, his essay

eschatological: it both diagnoses, in demqrcating an end, and ushers

in a pivotal transformative opportunity for American fiction writers. In a sense, Wallace

147

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

drops the gauntlet and presents a cha

enge to contemporary writers who read

The

Village

Given this-and it

a given-who

to blame for the philosophical

passionlessness

our own Dostoevskys?

The

cultur

the laughers? But

they wouldn't-could

not-laugh

if a piece of passionately serious ideological

contemporary fiction

was

ingenious and radi

ant

ly transcendent fiction.

But how to do

that-how

even,

for

a writer, even a very talented writer, to

get up the guts to even

try?

There are no formulae or guarantees. But

there are models. Frank's books present a hologram

one of them. (25)

While this

no doubt a cha

enge to, or exhortation

for,

other writers, Wallace, perhaps,

subtly indicates

that

he himself has already undertaken

e very challenge he presents

to his fellow writers,

that

he has attempted to write the very "passionately serious

ideological" work

that

also "ingenious and radiantly transcendent"

that

he calls for in

his essay. Wallace,

have noted,

careful to implicate himselffirst and foremost in

his essays before moving to challenge the literary intelligentsia.

The

timing

the

appearance

this essay-April 1996-coincides with the publication of Infinite

Jest

-J

anuary 1996-too closely, too rhetorically strategically,

for

Wallace's concluding

statement to be read any other

way,

for whenever Wallace challenges the literati in his

essays,

he has done in both "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over

Usage" and the Rain Taxi Review essay, he first makes certain

that

he has attempted to

overcome the very aesthetic-philosophical dilemmas he draws attention to in his own

fiction-by practice.

Wallace has remarked in several interviews, since the release

Infinite Jest,

that

148

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

reviewers and readers have largely misunderstood his novel: "I

didn't

read a whole lot

reviews,

but

a lot

the positive ones seemed to me to misunderstand the book" (Rose

11).

That

while although he intended to write a novel

that

was

both

difficult and highly

enjoyable ("the project

...

was to do something long and difficult

that

was also fun")

(Donahue par. 9), Wallace comments

that

he wanted it to be "extraordinarily sad and

not

particularly postmodern" (Rose 11). In an interview with Laura Miller, Wallace

says

Infinite Jest: "I wanted to do something sad. I'd done some funny stuff and some heavy,

intellectual stuff,

but

I'd never done anything sad" (Miller 1). Yet although the book was

founded

a principle of sorrow, most reviewers, still partially accurately, called it

"brashly funny," "a comic masterpiece," "a blockbuster comedy," "frequently hilarious,"

and "uproarious"; one of only a

few

reviews to understand the novel somewhat accurately

called it

an"

1,088-page encyclopedia

hurt." "Feodor's Guide

indirect fashion,

moves to reply to these critics. Wallace notes two significant features of Frank's books:

first,

that

Frank founds his critical biography

the premise

that

"Dostoevsky's

masterpieces are often read and admired even without any real appreciation

their

ideological agendas"

(25

1)-that

is,

that

they are largely misunderstood-and, second,

that

Frank never mentions the intentional fallacy "or tries to head off the objection

that

his biography commits it all over the place"

(25

n. 2). Wallace observes

that

what

valuable about Frank's study

his "maximum restraint and objectivity: he's

not

about

imposing a certain theory or

way

decoding Dostoevsky, and he steers way clear of

149

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

arguing with other critics who've applied various axes' edges l0 FMD's stuff' (25 n. 2).

Frank takes

his critical methodology the view

that

understanding Dostoevsky's

intellectual environment, the "historical facts," and "Dostoevsky's own notes and letters"

(25

n.2)

the only

way

to appreciate

fully

that

novelist's works: "his argument

never

that

somebody else

wrong, just

that

they

don't

have all the facts" which, in Wallace's

view, "gives implicit authority to Frank's agenda

providing completely exhaustive and

comprehensive context,

The

Whole Story" (25 n. 2).

here

that

Wallace contrasts

Frank's methodology with contemporary criticism:

the loss

ability to countenance and discuss the particularity

works of literary genius

that

maybe most to be loathed about the theory

industry's rise to power in contemporary fiction.-criticism. A lot

post

structural theory

fascinating in its own right,

but

when it comes to

actually reading some piece of fiction, most theoretical readings consist in

just running it through a kind of powerful philosophical machine.

(25

author's emphasis)

For Wallace, what makes Frank's biography

singularly important and successful

his

"determination to treat both the ideological forces

work around Dostoevsky's fictions

and the completely distinctive and unabstractable way in which FMD transforms those

forces" (26

3, author's emphasis). Wallace also praises Frank's close readings of

Dostoevsky's most celebrated works, noting

that

these readings "aim to be explicative

rather

than

argumentative or theory-driven-i.e. their aim

to articulate

fully

possible what exactly Dostoevsky himself wanted the books to mean" (18).

There

is,

the conclusion to the essay in which Wallace challenges his contemporaries and suggests

150

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

that

his novel

example

"passionately serious ideological fiction" (25)

that

he calls

for,

a suggestion

that

his own work should be read

critics, academics, and readers in

much the same

way

that

Frank reads Dostoevsky:

"to

trace and explain the novels'

genesis

out

of Dostoevsky's own ideological engagement with Russian culture" (18).

Wallace's subtext (itself a refraction or reflection

Dostoevsky and Frank) suggests

that

forcing a particular literary-theoretical agenda

his novel will

not

apply, or will lead to

misunderstanding, at best. Such readings would

not

be 'wrong,'

but

these readings would

simply,

in the case of Frank's scholarly contemporaries

Dostoevsky,

not

"have all the

facts" (25). Frank remarks, in the preface to the fifth volume,

that

"it

impossible

read Dostoevsky, however, without becoming aware

that

his major characters are deeply

involved in the socio-political ideologies and problems

their time;

but

his own so-called

political ideas seemed

eccentric that hardly anyone took them seriously" (Mantle, xi).

Frank also contends

that

Dostoevsky "focused all the problems

that

great culture in his

great novels-not

the level in which they ordinarily appeared to his contemporaries,

but

transforming them in terms of his own eschatological

...

vision" (xiii).

make the most

his work, one must pay particular heed to the current intellectual climate and

Wallace's oblique critical writings

the state of contemporary fiction.

That

say,

endorsing Frank's critical methodology, Wallace implies

that

his own work should be read

and replied to in a similar fashion: that the intentional fallacy should be disregarded in

favor

careful explicative reading, critical theories jettisoned, and greater focus paid

151

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

Departme

of English, McM

ter University

e inte

ectual and ideolog

al stru

at an a

uth

r-W

ace him

lf, in this

case- engages in, and to focus on Infinite J

t's unique partic

ari

in relation to o

works of co

empora

American fiction. Further, what is particula

y f

cinating about

this

at Wa

ace never ac

ges

e interpolated, o

ff-

t philosophical

eces

-th

are simply le

for

e reader to pu

le o

. By including

ese meditation

however, Wa

ace indirectly seeds his essay with

riou

moral

at he finds

lacking in co

emporary fictio

."f:.'f:

Does this guy jesus Christ

hav

e anything to t

ch me even

was

n 't 'divin

e'!

What are the impli

ons that somebody who

was

supposed to be God

rela

and

so could have turned the cross into a

er or something with

st a look still vo

lunt

arily let them na

him up

ther

died!

And

did

ow!

Did

ow he could br

k the cross

with

st a look!

-Sp

king of

ing: did he

in ad

nce that the

th 'd

st be te

orary! Had God clued him in! I

bet

I could climb up

ther

oo,

if I

an eterni

of rig

ht-h

ed bliss lay on the other s

hours of pa

in-D

oes any of

thi

s even ma

Can I still believe in

j C or

Muh

ed or Buddha or

oever even

I don 't

elieve' th

re rela

ves of God! Plus

at would that even m

n, anyway:

elieve

'?-"f:·'l:

at this interpolated passage alone

ematica

y bears a striking resemblance to

discour

een

an a

Aly

ha in

e "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of

e Brothers

Karama

v in terms of be

ef is al

a textual strat

egy

on Wa

ace's part;

ese textual

interlud

on significa

hum

an s

ubj

here) indirectly whet

e reader

appetite to consult D

toevs

directly, and prepare readers for what

ey will enco

unt

in Dostoevsky's

ction.

ese interpolations are dee

y significant, in addition to

eir

jarring textual p

ition,

force

e reader to pau

and cons

er them and

152

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

questions they impose on the readers' mundane existence. They act

a clarion call for

readers to enlarge their perspective and remove themselves from the solipsistic concerns

daily life, and to cons

er the importance of believing in something

that

is larger

than

the immediate

lf.

Rhetorically, Wallace

the dilemma he postulates throughout

and through his own essay, and further ca

s attention to the tact

that

he has already

moved to redeem a terminal point in American literature through his own novel, Infinite

lest.

* * *

The

Brothers lncandenza

"'And you wouldn't believe what's happening between them now-it's terrible, it's a strain, I'm

telling you, it's such a terrible tale

that

one

cannot

believe it: they're destroying themselves, who

kno

why, and they kn

they're doing it, and they're both revelling in it"' (The Brothers

Karamazov 4.4.181).

The

significant correspondence between Wallace and Dostoevsky

not, however,

limited to "Feodor's Guide,"

for

Wallace has consciously constructed and patterned

Infinite Jest

meticulously after Dostoevsky's greatest and final novel,

The

Brothers

Karamazov (1880), that, one could argue, in many significant

ways,

Infinite Jest

are

writing, re-contextualization-even a (re)translation-ofThe Brothers Karamazov into the

contemporary American idiom and context.6 Stylistically and thematically, Infinite Jest

153

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

e "hologram" of

e Brothers Karam

azo

ace's nove

in many crucial and

metim

obvious respe

we have seen, bears striking similariti

to Joyce's Ulysses

and

peare's Hamlet, in addition to Eliot's

e W

te L

but

e m

t importa

and overarc

hin

pri

ation of a W

litera

is of D

toevsk

y's

e Brothers

Karama

v. In "Feodo

s Guide" Wa

ace devotes

thr

ee consecutive notes to what he

e "excruciatingly Victorianish translation

of Constance Ga

(26 n. 5) , and

critiqu

en-rece

translation of Crime and Punis

hment

chard Pevear

ssa

Volo

onsky by quoting from

eir translation:

'"Now is

e Kingdom of reason a

lig

. . . a

wi/1

ength .

sha

see! N

we sha

cross swo

s!' he a

umptu

ousl

as i

ddressing some da

for

cha

enging

...

Umm, why not just 'as if addr

ess

ing

me dark

rce'? Umm, can

cha

a dark force witho

addr

ess

ing it?

ere, in

e Rus

an,

mething

at keeps

e above

om being re

dund

, stilted, ba

why not recogni

at in English it's ba

and cl.ean it up in an acclaimed

new Knopf translation? I just do

n't

t it. (26 n.

uth

or's emph

e succeeding not

ace qu

tions just what

e ubiquitous Dostoevskian phrase

"fl

y at"

mebody rea

y means: "it happens d

oze

ns of tim

in eve

FMD nove

at, 'fly at'

em in order to beat

em up? To

t in

eir fac

y not just

u're

anslatin

g?"

6 n. 6). Wallace is not being mean-spirited toward

e va

able

work o

evear and Volo

ons

, and it is clear

at he dee

y admir

toevsky's

works, and it is preci

ly becau

he rever

Dostoevsky

that

he finds it lame

able

his works- and his

ematic and sty

stic brillian

ce-

do not translate ve

eas

y and we

into Eng

sh, particula

y millennial

erican Eng

sh. As neither a

flu

speaker of

154

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Russian, nor

expert in Russian literature, Wallace

clearlv in no position to translate

Dostoevsky's works himself to his own satisfaction; he

is,

however, in a unique position to

translate in a more broad and figurative sense, nevertheless.

What

Wallace does achieve

in Infinite Jest, however,

a transposition or transumption-a textual metalepsis-ofThe

Brothers Karamazov into the specific ideological environment of contemporary America.

Just

Dostoevsky's "particular

foes

were the Nihilists, the radical progeny of the '40's

socialists" (29 n. 23), Wallace's "foes" are the contemporary literary ironic nihilists, the

type

that

refuses to countenance or confront serious moral issues through art. Wallace

tempers his nihilistic conception, however, for he concedes

that

inaccurate to claim

that

have rejected all religious and moral principles

the more radical nihilists of

Dostoevsky's time espoused: "maybe it's

not

true

that

today are nihilists.

the very

least we have devils

believe in. These include sentimentality, naivete, archaism,

fanaticism. Maybe it'd be better to call our art's culture one

congenital skepticism"

(24).

through Infinite Jest

that

Wallace acts to engage this "congenital skepticism."

A further reason why Dostoevsky's works do

not

translate well, or are easily

misunderstood

the contemporary reader,

that

because the "devils"-a significant word

for Wallace to choose considering

that

the title

a major Dostoevsky novel (1871)

and because

the important dialogue between Ivan Karamazov and the Devil in

Brothers Karamazov-of our time ("sentimentality, naivete, archaism, fanaticism") are

155

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

mainly what the contemporary reader distills from Dostoevsky's translated works.

Ironically, the ideological traits

that

now abhor are mainly what the contemporary

reader adduces from Dostoevsky's works:

often find the (translated) language

Dostoevsky's fictions embarrassingly sentimental and

na"ive

(because of the characters'

sincere expression), replete with archaisms (linguistic and cultural), and Dostoevsky's

characters to be fanatical in their actions. Dostoevsky moved to engage what he

perceived to be destructive ideological elements

his society, elements

that

our

contemporary society mirrors, though in a different form, yet, and this is the irony, his

works read,

Wall ace remarks, stilted

and badly and make

uncomfortable to the

point

that

fail to see the imp

ortant

correlations between Dostoevsky's society and our

own. While Dostoevsky's work has never been more relevant and necessary

for

contemporary American culture, his works nevertheless appear to

to be the very type

fiction

that

should (and do, in the main)

shun

na"ive

and fanatical;

that

while his

works couldact

a necessary homeopathic remedy for what «Js contemporary American

society,

frequently see them

an exemplar

what

flee from.

cannot

get past

the surface translations.

have, instead

regarding Dostoevsky

important

exemplar of a courageous writer

for

our time

well

his own, embraced Dostoevsky's

heir, Nietzsche;

have spumed belief and now cling to

individualism

that

privileges

solipsistic gratification over communal values. This

modem

lack

belief philosopher

Leszek Kolakowski calls a "massive self-aware secularity"

(8)

introduced

"the prophet

156

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

modernity" (9), Nietzsche:

he was successful in passionately attacking the spurious mental security of

people who failed to realize what really had happened, because it was he

who said everything to the end: the world generates no meaning and no

distinction between good and evil; reality

pointless, and there

other

hidden reality behind it; the world

see it

the Ultimum; it does

not

try to convey a message to

us;

it does

not

refer to anything else; it

lf-

exhausting and deaf-mute. All this had to be said, and Nietzsche found a

solution or a medicine for the despair: this solution was madness.

-9)

"Feodor's Guide," Wallace writes

that

"in our own age and culture

enlightened

atheism

are very much Nietzsche's children, his ideological heirs; and without

Dostoevsky there would have been no Nietzsche; and yet Dostoevsky

among the most

deeply religious

all writers

...

" (27 n. 9). Infinite Jest calls this contemporary

enlightened atheism, "enlightened self-interest" and "unconsidered atheism" (Jest 428,

443).

That

Dostoevsky was such a blatantly religious writ

er-though

he cultivated his

own faith

much

like developing his own aesthetic-may a

o have something to do with his

untranslatibility and his sometimes cool reception among contemporary writers,

for

our

culture does

not

respond well to religious belief, particularly in art: religious belief tends to

contain

all

of our 'devils'-sentimental, na'ive, archaic, and fanatical-who are supposedly

exorcized

our contemporary writers. But if

compare Dostoevsky's time with our

own, and substitute 'belief and 'rational thought' for Dostoevsky's 'reason and faith' and

'atheism,'

then

perhaps there

more congruence between Dostoevsky's fiction and our

time

than

are currently aware

of,

or are prepared to acknowledge. In our time,

157

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

gious fa

ith

and a

eism have little cultural capital, or even meanin

are far too

i:v

e, particula

y among our literary

int

elli

sia, to be taken

ously.

e word

eism' alone seems to be a quaint and anachronistic wo

among a culture of a

eists

where a

eism is it

e accepted norm, or en viro

at rarely requir

articulation, instead of a particular label or p

ition

at would be stated in D

toevsky's

tim

Nevertheless, and this is Wa

ace's point througho

his essays and fiction,

empora

erican culture h

mething importa

when we sacrifice 'be

ef to

'reason' and confu

e impo

ance of be

ef in

neral with

ntime

al or fanatical

religious be

"Feodor's Guid

" Wallace stat

e believe

that

eol

ogy

is now

the province

SIGs [Special

Int

t Groups] and

PAC

olitical Action Committees]

trying to

t its slice of

e big green pie- and, looking around us, we see

at it is

indeed

" because, for Wallac

e have abandoned

eld" (24) .

e o

ginal

rsion of this essa

however, Wa

ace addresses by name

e specific groups we have, for

him, abandoned

fundame

st Christian moveme

s whose ab

nce of compa

ion and

whose readin

ess

to jud

show

ey're cluel

ess

abo

'Christian' principl

they would impose on o

ers. To

ghtist militias

and conspiracy

-th

sts whose paranoia abo

e governme

depends

e governme

ing just w

more or

d and efficie

than

rea

y is. And,

pecia

lly

in litera

and academic

s, to

e m

tly

absurd and embarr

ass

ing Political Correc

ess

moveme

, whose obsession

with

e fo

s of

utt

erance and behavior show too we

how d

iccated

and aes

etici

d our m

t liberal instincts have become, how desperately

removed

om what's rea

y importa

: motive,

(

elin

ef and its

nce. ("Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" n.p

uth

or's emph

is)

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

For

e published version of this essay, Wa

ace confin

his discu

ion

e litera

arts

and be

ef in

neral term

but

e origina

exci

d version he a

acks

ght-wing

con

rvative moveme

s and

e academ

it is u

ful, in comparing

o versions, to

rve

at Wa

ace finds

e co

empora

phenomenon of unbe

ef to have ra

perniciously insinuated it

lf at all levels of co

empora

cul

tur

not just

e literary arts

which he primarily tar

ts. Moreover, Wallace's findings make the corresponde

e with

toevsky a

e more releva

, for, in D

toevsky's time,

at w

written w

ection of what

u be

eve

your ideol

ogy.

In a short intervie

Wallace speaks abo

e importance of a type of fiction

at engages a

agoni

zes

nse of be

ef in

cultur

It's nothing l

ess

an trying to addr

ess

cultural infantilism.

en people

my age talk abo

how mi

rable a time this i

usua

y explain it by

diminished economic expectations. But I think of it more

a lack of

identification. If

u're abo

thirty, believing in something

gger

you is not a cho

e. You e

ith

er do or

u're a walking dead man, just going

thr

ough

e motion

Conce

s like

'dut

y' and 'fidelity' m

sound quaint

we've inherited

e b

t and

e worst, and we've got to make it up

we go alon

I abso

lut

ely believe in somethin

even

ough I do

n't

what it is.

1458 Words" 42, emph

is added)

For Wa

ace,

e importance is not in celebrating a religious be

ef after D

toevsky,

but

of a

ckn

edging

e impo

ance of be

ef in our belie

f-b

ankrupt tim

ace

continu

es:

e be

ef, in whatever it is, is not for

mething b

for

ur own sake. If we

n't

neration find

at, we'

ith

er cr

h a

burn or come up with something

rea

y powerful and beautiful"

(42

). Wa

ace's concern with be

ef is often

ked to his

159

].T. Jacobs, PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

conce

with

erican cultural

lip

sism;

e notion

ef is essentia

in his vie

cons

ering

mething

at is lar

e immediate s

ubj

ect,

mething

at can

move

lf into an ackno

edgme

thin

g importa

al to

e o

lf-

rbed concerns of

e co

emporary individua

In this impo

nse,

belie

f-D

toevskean or Wa

ace

an-i

s essential to

hum

an condition.

Alth

ough

toevsky clearly held dee

ated re

gious convictions, it is, however, importa

recall

e Brothe

Karamazo

in Victor Terras

word

"a work of

cular

literature" (Reading Dostoevsky

. It is further impo

rtant

to note

st how inten

gious be

ef w

bound up with

e mo

practical nature of living in nineteenth-

century Ru

and

at re

gious be

ef informed politics and

cial policy. To advocate a

socia

st utopian

eal w

, in m

t case

to advocate

eistic belief syste

er words, re

gious expression in D

toevsky is al

political expre

ssi

on; religio

integra

y informed one's cultural views and actions to a much larger d

ree

an in our

time.

at we o

en associate

e re

gious be

ef of D

toevsk

y's

works with

e more

naive and fanatical re

gious be

ef of our time is o

en to misread D

toevsky and mi

on his importa

cultural comme

a comme

nta

at is

ost instructive to our own

age.

at Wa

ace chooses one of his e

graphs for "Feodor

Guide"

Tur

ev's Fa

ers and Sons (18

62)

eady mentione

is further significa

when we

cons

at Dostoevsky spe

much of his litera

career engaging

e litera

ry-

philosophical

eol

ogy

of his co

emporar

Tur

In tracing

e countl

ess

litera

ry,

160

J.T.

Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

mythical, and biblical intertextual quotations and echoes and allusions throughout

The

Brothers Karamazov, Victor Terras observes

that

"the figure

the Devil [Karamazov

11.9.634]

fits

the image

man

who, in one way or another, accompanied Dostoevsky

through virtually all

his adult

life,

Ivan Turgenev.

safe to say

that

no other living

man

occupied

important a place in Dostoevsky's mind

did Turgenev" (Reading 116).

Although Dostoevsky admired Turgenev's literary ability, he nevertheless personally

disliked Turgenev and rejected

both

his "pessimistic agnosticism" (118) and his

"attacking Russia in print and moving to Germany and declaring himself a German"

which "offended Dostoevsky's passionate nationalism" (Wallace, "Feodor's Guide" 2 7 n.

14).

a letter, Dostoevsky wrote ofTurgenev's short story, "Phantoms,"

that

"in

opinion, there

a great deal

trash in

that

piece: something pettily nasty, sickly, senile,

unbelievingfrom weakness, in a word, the whole Turgenev and his convictions.

(However, the poetry in it will redeem a great deal)" (qtd. in Terras 118, author's

emphasis). Interestingly, Turgenev's story was published in D

_:_.

stoevsky' journal, Epoch,

which, in conjunction with Dostoevsky's passing praise ofTurgenev's prose signifies a

perhaps modest respect for his contemporary. Turgenev,

for

his part, declared Dostoevsky

to be a "latter-day de Sade" and considered Dostoevsky's characters to be "bywords for

depravity and degeneration" (Avsey xi). As such, Turgenev's works are parodied and

challenged throughout much

The

Brothers Karamazov.

The

significance

Wallace

choosing a T urgenev quotation to preface his discussion

Dostoevsky

itself

161

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

int

ertextua

ace a

ckn

edges

-throu

gh a

Tur

nev quotation

at emph

zes

absolute cultural negation and nihilis

m-D

toevsky's

eological commitme

in his

ction, a

prov

es an example of

e type

litera

nihilislll

at Dostoevsky fought.

doing

, Wa

ace subtly su

ests

me kind of cultural nihilism of

Dostoevs

's time is a

are

in co

emporary

erican literature. Wa

ace, thus, closes

e circle of

int

ectual progr

ess

ion through Dostoevsk

e, and back to

emporary mome

: he picks up

e litera

mantle bequeathed by Dostoevsky to

engage "Niet

zsc

he's children, his

eolog

al heir

7 n.

, and empl

oys

Dostoevs

kyi

an me

odol

ogy

to en

anslator and scholar, !gnat Av

sey

, ca

lls

e Bro

ers Karamazov a "panorama of Dostoevsky's m

t p

ass

ionately he

efs and

eas"

iii

); we m

say,

en,

at D

toevsky's final novel is a

ovel of be

ef,

' and

ef in humani

first and forem

t and

hum

anity's necessar

:::~

bilit

to co

dark

pects of it

lf and redeem

thr

ough language.

Infinite J

t mirrors

e Bro

ers Karamazov in even

e m

t minute, sty

stic

ays

ough bo

novels resemble each o

er significantly in terms of

ot structur

of c

onol

ogy

, typ

narration, poly

onic voicin

engageme

with respective

eologies, elaborate characteri

tion and

aracter types, leng

and density,

inte

extuality, and

e u

of richly comic e

des within lar

r dark and heav

inte

ectual

es.

ese

o novels,

fir

st and forem

howeve

resemble each o

eir staggering and inventi

ses

of language. D

toevsky is now cons

ered to be a

162

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis,

Department

English, McMaster University

master stylist. However,

Victor Terras writes, "a reputation

a poor stylist has

accompanied Dostoevsky since

the

publication

his first works" (Reading 10). Critics

have attacked Dostoevsky's style

"prolix, repetitious,

and

lacking

polish"; his works

have further

been

"found to lack balance, restraint,

and

good taste," and their "aesthetic

value [has been] found to be slight or nonexistent" ( 1 0). T err

observes

that

the

stain

the

initial critics' opinions was removed only

M.M. Bakhti:, 's insights

Dostoevsky

his Problems

Dostoevsky's Poetics (1984 [first published in 1929]) (Reading 10), where

Bakhtin observed

that

Dostoevsky's novels are intentionally fractured, nonlinear, and

constructed

a "polyphonic concert ofliving voices" (10). For Terras, a "controlled,

economical,

and

well-integrated narrative style

not

what

Dostoevsky pursues.

will

write elegantly only

when

the

voice in question demands it" (10). Terras concedes

that,

"if

one

disregards

the

'polyphony' argument,"

then

Dostoevsky's highly uneven narrative style, often distinctly colloquial,

often journalistic, sometimes chatty,

then

again lyrical, solemn, or

pathetic,

...

and

may be legitimately seen

aesthetic flaw. Today it

commonly seen

innovative trait, adopted by [Louis-Ferdinand]

line,

[William] Faulkner, [Gunter] Grass,

and

other

leading novelists

the

twentieth century. (10, emphasis added)

These stylistic traits

Dostoevsky's novels-and

The

Brothers Karamazov

particular-essentially marked a shift in

the

nineteenth-century

novel. Dostoevsky's

radical aesthetic

exploring characters'

inner

psychological turmoil and motives

opposed to

emphasis

external conditions has since

been

widely emulated

twentieth-century novelists.7 Accompanying this stylistic recognition, however, arises a

163

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: MEDIATING DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S INFINITE JEST PDF Free Download

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: MEDIATING DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S INFINITE JEST PDF free Download. Think more deeply and widely.

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THE ESCHATOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

THE

ESCHATOLOG

CAL

IMAGINATION

: MEDIATING DAVID FOSTER

WALLACE

INFINITE JEST

JOHN

TIMOTHY

JACOBS, B.A., B.A. (Hons), M.A.

Submitted to

e School of Graduate Studi

in Partial Fulfillme

e Requireme

for

e Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

McM

ter University

Timo

y Jacob

July 2003

Doctor of Philosophy (2003)

(English)

TITLE:

AUTHOR:

ADVISOR:

NUMBER

PAGES:

McM

ter University

Hamilton,

Ont

ario

The

Eschatol

ical Im

inatio

Mediating Dav

ter

Wallace's Infinite J

Tim

y Jacobs, B.A. (University of Calgary), B.A.

(Hons) (McMaster University), M.A. (McMaster

University)

Professor H. Jo

Ferns

vii, 241

ABSTRACT

ere is an inhere

risk in studying co

empora

fiction. Serious qu

tions form

around i

of an a

uth

or's lon

vity and legacy, a work's merit and its endurance for

later s

olarship, and

e varieti

of curre

critical reception and me

odology against

e shifts

come.

The

enda

difficulty of assessing and anal

ing a work before an

industry of critical reception h

formed al

prese

enges. David Foster Wa

ace's

Infinite J

t ( 1996) represe

ese cha

enges, and

much

more; it is at once an

clopedic novel of 1079 pages, full of bo

lib

eral a

s and

ientific eruditio

and an

encomium

an apocalyptic e

of late millennial

erican cultur

e novel is highly

allegorical and operat

with

thr

ee crucial subtext

in addition

e standard diegetic

narra

. In this study, I prese

thr

ee differe

ough not mutua

y exclus

interpretations of this nove

a novel

at h

prese

ed interpretive difficulti

to s

olars

of co

emporary

ction. In Part

e, I surv

compare W a

ace's aes

etic with

radica

lf-

ained, aes

etic of

e poet, G.

Hopkin

o examin

int

ral concept of mediation and explor

e subtext of

e re

turn

e dead

uth

r-th

e novel operat

es,

in part,

a rejoinder to

e death-of-the-a

uth

or critical

impasse; Pa

Thr

ee is primarily comparative a

anal

yzes

dor D

toevs

Brothers Karamazov

880). Wa

ace h

rewritten (or reimagine

Dostoevsky's novel

and translated it into a co

emporary co

ext a

idiom

a remedy for p

tmode

erican solipsis

111

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to ext

anks to my

is committee: Dr. Alan

shop (First

Reader), Dr. J

fery Dona

n (Second Reader), and Dr. Johu Fe

s (Doctoral Adviso

All have made significa

contributions to my graduate education. Especial

anks,

however, are reserved for Dr. Ferns for his patience, receptivity to my seemingly

incongrue

studies, guidance, and, m

t importantl

r exhorting me to "be happy in

rk" during

e dark season.

For

Nikki,

e Only L

ove

of My Only

Lif

-'A

in & A lways'

Contents

Introduction

In Pare

nth

is:

Reading David Foster Wallace

Part

One

American Touchstone:

The

ea of Order

Part Two

Infinite Geist: Lexical Investigation, Mediatio

and th" Ghost of the Author

Part

Three

The

Eschatological Im

ination: Translations

113

Conclusion

The

Art of Moral Fiction: A Coda

219

Bibliography

232

"Beware when

e great God lets loose a thinker on this plane

en a

thin

are at

sk"

-R

alph Wa

Circl

es"

172).

].T. Jaco

bs,

PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Introduction

Parenthesis: Reading David Foster Wallace

"In a

the

art

adhering to a sch

l and i

uing group manifestoes 1

sta

tement

common

aims is a sign of youthfulness, a

to some degree

immaturity;

a pa

int

er or writer or

her

creative person grows o

er a

acquires more a

uth

ity,

tend

s to withdraw from a

such

nizations and become simply him

lf'-N

orthrop Frye (qtd. in

Weber

vii).

'"Sch

ls'

fiction are for cra

nk-turn

ers.

e founder

a move

ment

never

part

the

movem

ent"-

David Foster Wa

ace (McCaffery 144).

"Irony is an im

portant

nre for us because so

much

contemporary liter

ure

ironic in its tone.

irony appeals

is a sense

normality

...

that

sense

normality in

the

audience

enables irony

make its

point

iron

With

that

sense

the

norma

irony would

cease

become ir

ic and become simply a descrip

tion"-Northrop

Frye ("Liter

erapy"

29).

In his essay "Contemporary American Fiction

Throu

gh University Pr

ess

Filters,"

Sanford Pinsker recently reviewed three critical studies of contemporary American

fiction. 1 In this review article Pinsker laments the

path

taken in rece

schola

y literary

studies, particularly within the context

current American fiction

his title s

ges

ts,

noting

that

university presses now tend

produce "sausage-grinder stuff'

that

"contextualiz[

] with a vengeance" (375). All three works treated

Pinsker tend

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

esi

Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

organi

a random and ostensibly disparate

lection of post-Second World War novels

around

e now-common literary

-th

eoretical template o

in Pinsker's words, "

ntit

politic

(375

at is to say, race, class,

nder, and queer

eor

Alth

ough he makes

many

nsible po

int

-p

int

at a

, pe

more applicable to

e curre

state of

academic publis

hin

-Pin

skcr ra

er amusingly grinds his axe on

ese specific critical

works, just

he supposes

ese critics' a

erence to and application of curre

litera

theories to

erican fiction functions

"axes to grind with regard

eir

distinguished predecessors"

79). It is not my

int

nti

e debate over

'culture wars,' or the merits of certain me

ods of literary anal

is of curre

erican

fiction, nor

engage

e pere

nni

al debate abo

just

what

cons

titut

es significa

emporary

ction, which works merit academic

spection, or of questions of popular-

high-culture litera

tur

I have instead

ed one co

emporary

erican novel for critical

examination, Dav

ter Wa

ace's Infinite Jest (1996).

stead of privileging a

eoretical discour

in this study of

erican

ction, I have priv

eged

e litera

artifa

fir

st and

en made

lective u

of literary-philosophical

eories and

perspectives,

rra

ed and appropriate. It should be noted,

en,

employme

of secondar

eoretical te

s in this study o

en emerges from Wa

ace's

own references

ese texts and not

om a preconceived

eoretical model to apply to

ace's fiction.

Thi

s is particula

y significa

ese po

int

s of embarkation lead

Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Depa

rtm

glish,

McM

ter University

more fertile a

significa

und

erstanding of one of

erica's

most

disturbing, erudite,

imaginative literary voices.

density a

encyclopedic co

ent, Infinite Jest

sta

s o

aga

e broad re

ef-map of

erican

ction a

s alr

dy been

compared with similar

-s

tyled, notable pre

cur

sor

William Gaddis's

e Recognitions

(1955) a

omas Pyncho

s Gravity's Rainbow (1973), bo

which

hav

e received

substa

nti

al critical

in bo

article a

book-leng

studies. Becau

Wall

ace

actively publishes essays

popular fo

rum

s (

ough an 'academic') , a

int

erviews on

e a

ction, I

ve, na

tur

ize

s ideas a

eories

with

his seco

nove

Becau

ther

e is still no full-leng

critical study

Infinite Jes

and

becau

of its core complexity a

e failure of s

olars

and

general readers

come to

even a general con

nsus on how

e novel's plot resolves

sel

the

primary aim of

study is explicative. Fragme

chr

onology is a major f

tur

e of

thi

s novel, as

Burn

has meticulously

aborated

recent

der's guide

Infinite Jest (2003), a

r of narrative eve

s is mi

etic narrative ("Year of Glad,"

narrative prese

which

e novel o

pen

s). Many reviewer

most notably

e New

York

Tim

es's

chiko Ka

kut

ani, have claimed

e novel to be poorly edited and,

borrowing

Henr

y James, have ca

ed it a "'loose baggy monster"'

kut

n.p.) ;

ace has co

unter

ed by asse

rtin

at "it may be a mess,

but

it's a ve

careful me

. A

lot of work we

int

o making it l

k like

at.

at mig

und

like a pa

etic lie,

but

it's not" (Dona

e n.p

, some

thin

Burn

suppo

s in his deta

ed r

din

g of Infinite

J.T. Jacob

PhD

esis, Departme

Eng

sh, McM

ter

iversity

Jest's chronological sequence. Becau

thi

s chronological lac

a, however,

ere can

be no d

initive

nsus on

e resolution

nite Jest's pLot. S

ace h

car

ully composed a novel

at is bo

a reader-respon

eorist

worst nig

htm

are or

textual cornucopi

each individual reader e

e diegetic narrative after

e reading

and extrapolat

from

e few slender

t crucial clues how

e narrative concludes.

result is a powerful textual resonance, like none

her in rece

can fiction, a

one

which such a scrupulous artist

ace must surely have been aware

of.

In what

ows, I provide t

ee distinct,

ough not

mutu

y exclusive,

int

erpretations or

readin

Infinite Jest.

Part

merican Touchstone:

e Idea of

Ord

er," outlines Wa

ace's

aes

eti

linking it

one

his greatest

ough seemingly ur· l:kely influences,

Victorian poet Gerard Manl

Hopkin

this

cha

er, I f

urth

er comme

on Wa

ace's views toward co

emporary art, particula

y co

emporary

erican fiction,

and highlig

the ways in which Wa

ace h

appropriated Hopkins's aes

etic and

transformed it

int

o a co

emporary visionary model of his own. In this ope

nin

g cha

e w

ays

in which Infinite Jest is multi-layered with various levels of s

ubt

ext.

of its more significa

subtexts is

at it operates

an aes

ic a

egory in which

narrator obliquely

mme

s on

emporary a

and

e curre

proclivi

of curre

artists, particula

y fiction writers,

make

works primarily ironic witho

gro

undin

their irony in what Fr

s "a

of normalit

Litera

tur

e" 29). In an

int

ervie

5 J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Depa

rtment

of Eng

McM

ter University

ace ca

s this

ironic ground -clearin

irony and

nicism were just what

S. hypocri

e fifti

and

sixti

ed fo

what made

e early postmodernists great artist

e great thing abo

irony is

at it splits

thin

apart,

ts us up above

we can

aws and hypocrisi

, a

dupliciti

....

Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great w

ays

to strip o

stuff's

k and show

e unpleasa

reality behind it.

e problem is

at once

e rul

for a

are debunked, and once

e unpleasa

liti

e irony

diagnoses are revealed and di

nosed, then what do we do? Irony's useful

for debunking illusion

but

t of

illu

debunking in

S. h

now been done and redon

(McCa

ery 14 7, interviewer

emph

e ends of irony concern Wa

ace. In his aes

etic formulation, irony is now

unm

oored

fro

m any aes

etic constra

int

s (Frye's "normality"), a

it is instructi

to note

para

els he defin

between

e a

ected forms

cultural e

nnui

and "p

tmodern iron

a "hatred that winks and nudges

u a

pretends it

just kidding" (14 7), a

e artistic

production and consumption of this cultural attitude.

at is to say, for Wa

ace,

ere is

no division between artis

c production/consumption and co

emporary

ving;

mille

nni

a! a

s have, becau

of commercial art

co-opting of

rious

ction's strategi

increasingly become "our guide to inclusion. A how-to"

t 694). Wa

ace works to

remedy what he diagnoses

an extreme mille

nni

erican "Romantic glorification of

Welt

with i

affected "world-weariness" a

"hip e

nnui

" (694). In this

se,

ace proclaims G.

Hopkins a co

emporary

erican aes

etic "touchston

" and

uses him

a star to steer b

In do

g so, Wa

ace inevitably commences

e very thing

he s

hun

a literary

hool or moveme

, by providing a radica

lf-co

ained and

ntr

ed aes

etic

her co

emporary writers to observ

].T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

e next real litera

'rebels' in this country mig

emer

some

ird

bunch

of anti-rebel

born oglers who dare somehow

back aw

from ironic watchin

who have

e childish ga

actua

y to endor

and

insta

nti

ate single-e

ndr

e princ

ipl

es.

o treat of

ain o

untr

endy

hum

an troubl

and emotions in U.S. life with reverence a

conviction.

lf-consciousness a

hip

tigue.

ese anti-rebels would

be outdated, of cour

se,

before

even sta

ed Dead on

e page. Too

sincere. Clea

rly

repressed. Backward, quaint, na·ive,

achronistic.

at'll be

e point. M

at's why

ey'

e next real

rebels. Real rebels,

far

I can see, risk disapprova

e o

postmode

sur

s risked

e gasp and squea

shock, di

ust, outrage,

censorship, accu

tions of socia

anarchism, nihilis

Today's risks are

different.

e new rebels mig

be artists willing to risk

wn,

e cool smil

e nud

d ribs,

e paro

of gifted ironists.

E Unibus Pluram" 8

Thi

apter operates

an esse

nti

al grounding in Wa

ace's aesthetic view

and

an introductory b

is to embark upon a more deta

ed comme

ary on a

understa

ndin

of Infinite J

t in

e anal

yses

to com

e succee

din

apters.

Part Two, "Infinite Geist: Lexical Inv

tigation, Mediation, and

t of

Auth

" reads Wa

ace's novel in terms o

exical anal

is and narrative mediation, bo

of which are fo

und

ational to

e work cons

ered and to Wa

ace's conception of

e a

fiction. Becau

it seems more

an any o

er co

empora

erican

nove

appropriat

aes

etic me

ods and styl

om a legion of

urces,

e study is

also inevitably comparative at tim

es.

I have employed a tripartite me

odol

ogy

for this

apter

at includ

hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadame

enomenol

ogy

aurice

Merleau-Po

y), a

reader-r

pon

eory (Wolfgang l

r). I further explore

relationship between i

lated words

at operate

dense

coded leitmotifs in

e novel

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

and demonstrate,

in Part

at Infinite J

t is

elaborate critica

aesthetic

egor

and

at it is structured

a subtle rejoinder to

e 'de

ath

e author' imp

ass

in critical

eory.

Onl

y one o

er critic h

noted

e p

oss

ibility of such a readin

and

at is to be found in Burn's reader's guide. Becau

Burn's

nin

ety-six-page guide is

prima

ril

y intended for an undergraduate audience,

part of Co

ntinuum

ess

'Continuum Co

empora

of uniform precis guid

to rece

fiction, he does

not, however, explore this cha

enging and exciting area of critical inquiry into Infinite

t in any deta

but

instead suggests it for a possible essay and/or discu

ion qu

tio

ace is clearly aware of developme

s in p

tstructura

st criticism over

e l

t few decad

. Can

e s

etch

e novel

at deta

an a

uth

returning

e grave to explain how his 'radical rea

sm' (836) h

been misunderstoo

be read

an oblique comme

ary on Roland

rth

'Th

e Dea

Auth

or'? (79)

Part

Thr

ee,

"Th

e Es

atol

al Im

ination," argu

that

Infinite Jest is a subtle

and elaborate rewriting (re-im

ining or re-visioning) of Feodor D

toe

ky's l

t and

great

t nove

e Bro

ers Karam

azo

879-1880); in this chapte

I co

end

ace h

figurati

ly translated D

toevsky's novel

int

o bo

a co

emporary

can idiom and co

ext, while preserving

e prima

philosophical-thematic

of Dostoevsky's o

ginal nove

e i

ues of reason versus faith

r be

and

significance

eol

ical engageme

rough

ction. Becau

Infinite J

t operat

several aes

etic level

this chapter argu

at Wa

ace subtly prob

e qu

tion of

whe

er mille

nni

can art h

as,

at long l

viewed

e ends of p

tmodernist

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

literature; I co

not only

at Wallace's novel is esc

hat

ological-instead of

'apocalyptic'

-but

at his own aes

etic is al

chly informed with

atol

ical

nsibility partly inherited from D

toevsky. As a 'critic' I have

ass

umed

e role of

mediato

and hope

at my discu

ion of Infinite J

rves three purp

es: to encourage

further critical discour

on it;

ers,

lik

e me, who have worked or continue to

work on Wa

ace's fiction and

ays

; and

ass

ist new

aders of the novel

arrive at a

full

er appreciation of Wa

ace's extraordinary achievement. As with a

works o

flit

erature

ere can never be a single and terminal definitive interpretation of a litera

artifact, and

ese three chapters are intended

be anything

but

definitive

-they

represe

only

outcome of several years of

ose study of Wa

ace's work

Find

lly,

e study is partly a

cultural study of

erican art and its con

quences on contemporary life and the i

lated

ubj

ect;

e social rol

of communication and

e significance and active influence of

ction on

erican culture are

tan

ntia

lly

sse

d through the lens of Wa

ace's

ction.

* * *

ace's entry o

e American scene of co

emporary-fiction writing began in

87 with

e publication of his

fir

st nove

e Broom of

e 0yste

gina

y written

nior undergraduate

is at

Amh

erst Co

ege, M

ass

achusetts. Two years later

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

the publication of his first co

ection of s

hort

ction,

e Girl with Curious Hair (

89),

e product of academic work, this time from

e University

Ari

na's creative-

writing program where he took his M.F.A.

eris

referred to by Wa

ace

his

ter of

atule

Art

ree) (Bruni n.

Summ

er 1993, with Infinite Jest still,

in Wa

ace's own words, a "quite a bit lon

thin

g in progress" ("Progress" 223),

Review of Co

empora

cti

on featured Wa

ace (with fe

ow emerging fiction writers,

William T. Vollma

and Susan Daitch) in its inaugural

ounger

Writ

ers I

ue for

ose writers who, wrote editor Larry

McC

ery, "desnite a lifetime of literary

achieve

ment

, have received little critical a

ention,"

t are "promising enough to suggest

will eve

ntu

y achieve historical importance" (7). McCa

ery's words have proved

prophetic, a

lth

ough, at

e time, Wa

ace's litera

output

could have been sa

to be

with only one novel a

one co

ection

sho

ction publishe

is fair to say,

then,

at Wa

ace's work remained lar

unkn

own until

e publication of his massive

cond novel,

e 1079-pa

Infinite Jest, which immediately broug

him a notewo

rth

if not peculia

blend of prai

from

erican book critics in publications ranging

Atl

antic Monthly

e New York

Tim

es and an immediate 'cult fo

owing' on

the

Int

et and comparisons

simila

style nove

sts like

nch

on, William G

ass

William Burrough

and William Gaddi

among o

4 Wa

ace h

since published a

ection of "essays and argume

" A Supposedly

Fun

Thing

I'll Never Do Again

(1997), which consists of his contributions

various mainstream publications like

10 ].T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

is,

Departme

of Eng

McM

ter University

Harper's; a second co

ection of short fiction, Brief

Int

erviews with Hideous Men ( 1999);

with a third co

ection, Oblivion, fo

rth

coming (2004) , and h

aborated with Mark

Coste

o on a critical work,

e some

what

dated Signifying Rappe

: Rap a

Race in

Urban Prese

( 1990). T

ing to his di

int

ts and brea

dth

holarly abilit

ace h

written a critical bi

raphy of the ma

ematician, Georg Ca

or (1845-

191

8), entitled Everything and Mor

Cantor & Zeno & Ma

& Abs

action & oo

(Oct

ober 2003).

ere i a curious dichotomy between

mewhat

odding critical a

popular inter

t in David Foster Wa

ace,

en his work (including his jo

urn

stic

contributions to publications like Harper's and Rolling

one Mag

ine) is mediated by

his academic sta

ndin

Prior to writing Infinite 1

t, Wa

ace spe

time pursuing a

doctorate in Philosophy- or more prec

"aes

etic

(Coste

235)-

at Harvard

Uni

rsity before

aving

e program., pr

uma

y (although Wa

ace me

nti

ons this

nowhere), to devote him

lffull-time to writing

ction.5

1992, he accepted a position

with

e Departme

of Eng

sh at Illinois

ate University (Norma

and, as of this year,

commenced

e position

Disn

air

eati

Writin

g at Pomona Co

ege

(Claremo

, California), a cha

endowed

rough a $1.7 5 million gift by R

Edwa

Disn

airman of

e Disn

Corporation a

ew of

e late Walt Disn

which endowme

sparked a

of media a

nti

on becau

of Wa

ace's

tirical

examination of corporation

rtising, and marketing in his fictio

t notably

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Infinite Jest and

e short story "Mr Squishy. "6 In terms of Wa

ace's fiction-writing

ability and g

eral erudition

ere is little doubt

at he is of

fir

st ra

. He is

recipie

of an

Henry Award

(19

89),

e Pa

s Review Pri

(1988

Whitin

Writ

ers' Award (198

, a La

an Foundation award (1996) and, m

t recently, the

tigious Jo

and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fe

owship, popula

known

a 'genius gra

' (1997). Pe

aps one of the reasons for Wa

ace's a

eal

compelling literary

gure for study in

e ea

y t

y-first ce

ntu

is his active

engageme

a public inte

ectual, literary artist, and acade

For Wa

ace's

rks

tend to ce

er upon a sma

ran

of recurring

es,

at are continua

y re

fin

ed by

him, and

at he vi

rously works at in

e b

t inter

ts of his readership. As I argue in

Part Two, Wa

ace is a hig

y skilled manipulator of textual form

ously using capital

foo

and e

ndn

es,

interpolated edito

al pare

nth

eses- "[,]" (Brief 150)- a

punctuation-"'

(Je

st 782 )- for strat

ect

e text and underscor

e fa

of a mediating presence within

e text at a

tim

for the

ade

It can be

id,

en,

at this unique a

uth

or continua

liv

in parenthesis within his work, a

ays

endeavoring to conver

with his reader

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

Eng

sh, McMaster University

Notes

1 See Sa

ord Pinsker, "Co

empora

can Fiction

Throu

gh Uni

rsity

ess

Filters,"

The

Geo

rgi

a Review 55.2 (2001): 374-38

Thi

s passage is excerpted from Wa

ace's revi

d version of this

say reprinted

in his co

ection of e

ays, A Supp

edly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

ton: Little,

1997): 21-82. For

e o

ginal version see "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S.

Fiction."

e Review of Co

emporary Fiction 13.2 (1993): 151-194.

3 See

e Review of Co

empora

ction 13.2 (

93) : 127ff.

4 Academic-critical reception to Wa

ace w

initia

y cool or distance

McCa

ery ob

r back

1993, until

e publication o

om LeCla

"Th

Prodigious Fiction of

cha

Power

William Vollma

and David F

ter Wa

ace,"

Critique 3

1 (1996

12-37.

e popular reception to Infinite J

howeve

creation of many 'fan'

-b

ased, Inte

et web sit

a chat-group and

st-serv

devoted to Wa

ace and his work

online indices and readers' guides al

appeared. For

me of

e more promine

web p

es, see: Tim Ware, "Infinite J

Onlin

e Index,"

<http://wwvi.ironhorsc.com/

-thamer

/dfw.html>; Bob Wak

"Infinite J

t: Re

ews,

Articles, and Misce

y,"

<http://www.smallbytcs.net/

-hohkat!icstcrlist.html>;

Nick

Manti

"Th

e Howling Fa

ods,"

<htw://www.gcocitics.com/Athcns/Acropolis/8175/

dfw.htm>;

Auth

or, "

And

But So

at's

Thi

s: A

ara

er Guide to Infinite J

<http://www.ilsm.edu/

-tffeene

/ij/characterguidc.html> .

It should al

be noted

at Wa

ace's

ction,

pecia

y Infinite J

t, h

nerated

num

erous undergraduate

eses devoted to Wa

ace,

me of which arc p

ted

e Inte

et e

ith

er in installme

s or entirel

see, for exampl

T oon

euwi

t for Infinite J

Enqui

into

e En

clopedic and P

odernist Nature of

David F

ter Wa

ace's Infinite J

t." More recently,

o unpublished doctoral

dis

rtations have a

eared in which a

apter of each explo

'' Infinite J

William

Str

ecke

"Ecologi

of Kno

: Narrative Ecol

ogy

in Co

empora

erican

Fiction

ss.,

ate U, 2000

and

Gregory Ruberto, "Tec

ologies of

Self:

chard Power

Neal

ephen

n, D

ter Wa

ace," di

ss.,

Harvard U, 2000.

5 See Mark C

tello, "

ghting to

Writ

ort Reminiscence of D.F. Wa

ace

e Review of Co

empora

Fiction 13.2 (1993

235-236. Mark C

a nove

him

lf, w

ace's roommate during Wa

ace's time at Harvard, and it w

at this

time

e two co

aborated on

eir study of rap musi

Jacobs,

PhD

The

is,

Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

In an ema

er to Ha

's noted philoso

er of langua

aes

eti

cs,

Stanl

Cave

, I inquired if in fact Cave

had supervi

d W a

ace during

e nove

st's

time at Harvard. Professor Cave

promptly r

ponded (26 January 2002), writin

ough I am impressed by what I know of Dav

Foster Wa

ace's work . . . I'm sorry to

say

that he did not work with me while he w

at Harvard." Cave

goes on to convey a

peculiar anecdote, however: "I w

told several years ago by one of my close

fri

end

former stude

of mine,

at Wa

ace came to a

minar of mine once and w

ended

some

thin

g I said or

e way I

it, and never returned. Since I don't regard

lf as

careless of o

er peo

e's feelin

, I w

pained to lea

bad

beh

avio

can only

at it was an aberration on my part. I do not reca

e incident."

6 For more on

e Disn

endowme

see Eli

Franck, "Disn

ter

ace,"

e New York Observer 3 December 2001: 3, or

The

New York

rver

Onlin

e, 24 Ja

ary 2002,

p://www.obscrver.com/pag

/story.asp?ID = 3938#to

p>.

Eli

emm (p

udony

David Foster Wa

ace), "Mr Squishy

Tim

othy

McSweene

arte

rly

Concern 5 (2000): 199-248.

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Part

One

American Touchstone:

The

Idea

Order

"Nothing

bad in itself except disorder"-T.E. Hulme ("A Tory Philosophy,"

The

Collected

Writings ofT.E. Hulme 235).

"Is

there no order here?"-Bertolt Brecht (The Trial

Lucullus,

"Custom

hath

made it in him a property of I Easiness"-William Shakespeare (Hamlet, 5

.1.67

-68).

In the first critical article

David Foster Wallace's second novel, Infinite Jest

(1996),

Tom

LeClair calls the work

"allegory of aesthetic orphanhood" (33).

Wallace's novel

at once a dense compendium of American neuroses and addictions,

astute examination

the insatiable American proclivity

the pursuit

happiness-"happification" (Jest

42)-in

age

infinite stimulative choice, and a l

atent

aesthet

allegory. For Wallace, the typically American rush toward attaining (and

sustaining) pleasure

lf-destructive habit of mind

that

has its root in the arts,

particularly the literary arts of millennia! America.

The

postmodern bequest of heavily

ironic and self-conscious fiction has corrupted literature, according to Wallace,

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

diminishing it from its previous status

a "living transaction between humans," leaving

literary orphans in its wake (McCaffery 142, 150).

The

consequence, for Wallace,

that

current fiction regresses into a game

that

celebrates the author and privileges the artifact

over the reader, terminating any potential transcendent communicative power. Wallace

attributes the aporia between writer and reader

a state

aesthetic rulelessness in

which writers are no longer "using formal innovation in the service of

original vision"

(145). In Infinite Jest, Wallace revives the mimetic tradition of realism-"little-r" for

Wallace

he negotiates "canonical distinctions" ( 140)-by defamiliarizing current literary

perceptions and expectations within his artifact. Infinite Jest creates a new space for

American fiction

recalling past practitioners

mimesis and through adherence to

aesthetic rules

that

recall Gerard Manley Hopkins's exacting yet prescient aesthetic. In

doing

so,

Wallace establishes

aesthetic

that

combines order with originality, and one

that

conveys a singular message in

unself-conscious manner.

The

correspondence

between these two artists surpasses their artistic production; their art symbolically

transforms the mythos of their literature into what Northrop Frye has called a "myth to

live

by"

(17), in which literature bridges existential loneliness and, in Wallace's case,

American "lostness" (Miller 2).

Wallace attributes current fiction's malaise to a culture of irony founded

American postmodernists like Nabokov, Pynchon, Coover, Barth, and other innovative

writers who "weathered real shock" (McCaffery 135) and inventively exercised irony to

T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

destabilize their docile society.

Their

fictions defamiliarized the familiar by making

standard things strange. In the aftermath there has followed a series of "crank turners"

(135) weaned

the same ironic formulae,

but

operating

when

the strange

now

normal, the defamiliar all-too familiar: "we need fiction writers to restore strange things'

ineluctable strangeness' (McCaffery 140, interviewer's emphasis). Fiction's function is

now "reversed" ( 140). Irony

a cultur

currency has sent

retreating further into the

mind; authorial posturing replaces conviction

"all U.S. irony

based

implicit 'I

don't

really mean what I say"' premise

that

"serves

exclusiH

:ly

negative function"

(Wallace, "E Unibus" 183). Wallace contends

that

purposeless

ony (for irony's sake)

paralyzes when it "becomes in and of itself just a mode of social discourse.

That

is,

it's

not

really about causing any sort

change anymore, it's just sort

a hip, cool way to do

it-to

speak and act, to sort

make fun

everything and yourself and being really afraid

being made fun

of'

(Wiley 1). In her somewhat prophetic essay, "Spoofing and Schtik

[sic]

"(1965),

Pauline Kael cautions

that

"unlike satire, spoofing has

serious objectives

it has no cleansing power. It's just a technique of ingratiation: the spoof apologizes

for

its existence, assures

that

...

it isn't aiming

for

beauty or expressiveness or meaning or

relevance" (85).

The

result

a fiction

that

aims

ly for the 'wow' factor, a relentless

reminder

that

the "author

smart and funny" ("E Unibus" 191).

The

author becomes

the novel's ostensible subject, and readers are forced to read such works

flattering their

"erudite postmodern Weltschmerz"

for

'getting'

author's references and tricks (191).

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

e muddling con

quence of this irony vogue is twofold. 1 First, fiction is

creasingly

concerned abo

communicating (not didactica

but

penetrating

ano

er's consciousness) with

e reader; a

, seco

, becau

"irony's singula

unu

ful

when it comes to constructing anything to re

ace

e hypocrisi

it de

bunk

83), a va

cuum

remains

at fiction writers u

a forum of expression of

e "loo

at-

me-please

-l

ove-me-l-hate-

u" type

at s

purn

e reader and celebrates

e artifact

instead of a

ndin

g to its recipie

(McCa

. Fiction slips

int

o a state of rule less

lip

sism. In Infinite J

t, ha

lfw

hou

Gunth

er "amus

her

lf'

wearing her gl

ass

eye "so

e pupil and

e iris face in and

e dead white and tiny

nuf

acturer's spec

ifi

cations on

e back .

face o

" (363).

Gunth

er's gl

ass

eye

(solipsis

e nove

s primary meta

or for involuted a

at terminat

with

artificer.

Art

in her time fails to engage her a

leaves her, like the novel

chara

rs,

"ch

ained in a cage of

lf'

(777).

example of literary p

turing

ace uses in his essay, "E Unibus Plura

Television a

U.S. Fiction," is image-

ction writer Mark Leyner's

Cousin,

troe

erolo

st (1990). Leyner's work is

a novel

an it is a co

age of familiar popular culture image

warmed-up in ironic

hion:

I'm stirring a pitcher o

anquer

martinis with one ha

and sliding a

froze

n clams oreganata into

e oven with my foo

I've

t a dozen

cigare

going simultaneously in

htr

ays

over

e apartment. God,

ese Me

edrine supp

itori

at Yogi

Vith

aldas gave me are good! As

I iron a pa

of tennis sho

s I dictate a haiku

int

o a tape recorder a

h o

to snake a clogged drain in

e bathroom sink and

en do

thr

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

minutes

the speedbag before making

origami praying mantis and

then

reading

article in High Fidelity magazine

I stir the coq au vin.

(Leyner 49, "E Unibus" 191)

Leyner's fiction mimes American materialist culture in a world-weary fashion-something

that

television now does, Wallace notes

("E

Unibus" 174ff)-but offers nothing in the

intervening gap, and provides readers nothing with which they are not already familiar.

Wallace calls this affliction "cleveritis" (McCaffery 134), and insists

that

a constant

for

artistic cleverness ultimately ends in

aesthetic stalemate

which the reader

inundated with the familiar.

Wallace contends

that

serious fiction needs

counter television's implicit denial

"that

we're lonely" and

that

its images (and the Internet's

well) contribute to loneliness

providing only the "facsimile

a relationship without the work of a relationship"

(136). Fiction's job, then,

to "aggravate"-even antagonize-a "sense

entrapment and

loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible

human redemption requires

first

face what's dreadful, what

want

deny" (136).

In its fullest realization, the novel

than

a verbal joust, and should be a "deep,

significant conversation with another consciousness" in which a "relationship"

forged

that

enables the reader to feel "unalone-intellectually, emotionally, [and] spiritually"

(Miller 5).

Without

confronting our own sense

mortality

cannot begin to live

abundantly,

but

will instead slip into further solipsism and what Wallace calls

"anhedonia" (Jest 695), an alienating form

analgesia that numbs

from a meaningful

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department ofEngli h, McMaster University

knowledge of ourselves. For the driven kids

Infinite Jest's Enfield Tennis Academy, the

"idea

that

achievement doesn't automatically confer interior worth

is,

to them, still,

this age, an abstraction, rather like the prospect

their own

death-'Caius

Mortal' and

on" (693).2 Wallace here echoes the syllogism from Tolstoy's "The

Death

Ilych": "Caius

a man,

men

are morta

therefore Caius

mortal" (Tolstoy 1723). For

Ilych, Caius

a pure abstracti

on-the

'other' faceless persons

the world

that

die,

not

him.

ych lives a status quo existence, and his

goal

the thoughtless acquisition of

material goods and a decorous

life.

When

sudden disease and his impending

death

overtake him, he

shocked into a recognition of his own mortality, one

that

comes too

late. His

wife

and daughters dishonestly console him and

fail

themselves to acknowledge

his deathbed situation. Tolstoy's novella does precisely what Wallace calls

for

American fiction: it forces readers to face their own mortality. In Infinite Jest, the "

liv

ely

arts

the millennia! U.S.A."

fail

to awaken its characters from their withdrawn state.

Instead, they treat

anhedonia and internal emptiness

hip and cool. It's maybe the vestiges

the Romantic glorification

ofWe

ltschmerz, which means world-

weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it's the fact

that

most of the arts here are

produced

world-weary and sophisticated older people and

then

consumed

younger people who

not

only consume art

but

study it for

clues

how to be cool,

hip-and

keep in mind that, for kids and younger

people, to be hip and cool

the same

to be admired and accepted and

included and

Unalone

....

The

U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A

how-to.

are shown how to fashion masks

ennui and jaded irony at a

young age

...

And

then

it's stuck there, the weary cynicism

that

saves

from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. Sentiment equals

naivete

this continent. (Jest 694)

T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Tele

sion,

Int

ernet, and Passaro's renai

ssa

nce in

erican fiction have produced an

"anaes

ia of

nn''

at dulls

ses

a temporary and unfulfilling "an

etic

against loneliness"

failing

engage peo

e (McCa

ery

6, interviewer's emph

is).

ace not

at "our dread of being trapped inside a

chic self, not just a

lf)

to do with an

t about dea

e recognition

at I'm

ing to di

and

die very much alon

and

e r

t of

e world is going

merrily on without me"

36). Successful fiction

rces a recognition of our morta

communicating with

reade

Onl

en can we begin

ve, not

rough

e simulacra of television and

Internet which purport

take us o

of our

es,

but

only

v id

e image of realit

not

e experience, whe

er an exotic locale or a relationship. Wa

ace's aes

etic

requir

ction disturb our sta

existence and propel us into

e common

ences of human life.

Like Wa

ace, Ke

Burke argu

in his

e Philosophy of Litera

Form

(1941)

at enriched

hum

an expe

ence

-th

e "ultimate philosophic vision"

-i

s o

ained

only

thr

ough

e '"dialectical' a

roach"

"dram

of conflict" (157), in which we

per

y grapple with

e troubling

pects of being human and transmit

at heritage.

ving, Burke str

es,

ot be accomplished by "going aro

und

drama,"

but

only by

"going th

ugh dram

(157, a

uth

or's emph

is). Burke argue

e best of human

oug

is distilled

ere ari

ses

sk of "a

enuation" (157).

Art

is succ

ess

ively

diminished when

r artists, impressed with aes

etic innovation

empt to

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

'begin"' where the innovator left

off,

"as though there could

handed to them,

platter, the imaginative grasp

this ultimate period" which the founding artist "earned

that

had gone before it" (158). Wallace's conception

the 'crank turner' echoes

Burke

today's literary artists attempt to "'project"' the "last styl

of the innovator

"with efficiency into a mannerism" (158).

The

difference between

e two types of artist

that

today's writers no longer participate in

aesthetic conflict

their own and,

instead, convey an inherited and diminished aesthetic

that

fits neither writer nor

reader: "the only stuff a writer can get from

artistic ancestor

a certain set of aesthetic

values and beliefs, and maybe a set of formal techniques

that

might-just might-help the

writer chase his own click" (McCaffery

7).

The

innovator attains a mode

aesthetic

representation forged in the foundry of conflict, of testing thought with (symbo

lic

) action:

"there

a crucial difference between the peace

a warrior who

lays

down his arms

...

and the peace

those who are innocent

war (innocence untried being like snow fallen

in the night; let

not praise it

for

not

melting until the sun has been full upon it)"

(Burke 158). Wallace and Burke both contend

that

emerging artists must make their

own art out of the fragments

the inherited past, adapting it to the conflicts of their

cultur

Visionary artists,

out

conflict, evo

e projects

for

atonement, Versohnung, assuagement.

They hand these

to others.

And

the heirs must either make these

structures

atonement the basis

a new conflict, or be emptied. Much

the best in thought

evolved to teach

how to die well; whereupon it

studied and built upon

those who have never lived well. Either

anesthesia

earned

aesthesia, or it

empty. (158)

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

McM

ter University

Untried image-con

ious

ction becom

a game witho

rul

becau

it lacks a guiding

os; it remains perpetua

y static

it repeatedly depicts

e same cultural

enomen

It "depict[s]

e w

a culture's bound and defined by mediated gratification a

image"

(McCa

ery 136)

but

ers no

thin

an antidote to redeem cultural deadening. Form is

privileged over function as works are made "involuted in

e rig

way

" with

"appropriate

int

extual referenc

at make

em "look smart" at

e expen

of any

mea

nin

ful

exchan

(142). For Wa

ace,

e impasse arises from a disregard of aes

etic

traints

ince everybody can do pretty much whatever

ey wa

, witho

bounda

to define

em or constraints to stru

le against,

t this continual avant-ga

e rush

witho

ne bo

ering to spec

ate on

e d

tination,

e goal of

e fo

ard

rush" (132). Literature

at seeks only to shock ceases after a time

be "progr

ess

and

becom

an end in it elf' (132).

this aes

etic aimlessness, Wa

ace remarks:

We've seen

u can break any or a

e rul

witho

getting

laughed o

of town,

but

we've also seen

e toxicity

at anarchy for its

own sake can yield. It's often u

ful

dispen

with sta

ard formul

, of

course,

but

it's just

often valuable and brave :o see what can be done

within a

t of rul

-which

is why formal poe

y's so much more inter

ting

ee ver

se.

Maybe our touchstone now should be

Hopkins, who made up his

t of formal constraints and

everyone's footwear o

om ins

ere's some

thin

g abo

thin an ordered and disciplined structure

at resonat

for readers.

And

ere's something abo

complete caprice a

flux

at's deade

nin

(149-50,

fir

st emph

is adde

ace's reference

Hopkins is significa

he looks back to

e Victorian poet's

en-radical aes

eti

for his own rai

n d'etre;

e directionless aes

etic of

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

contemporary fiction invites a look

past aesthetic precedents.

The

primary moment of conjunction between the two aesthetics

Wallace's

admiration for Hopkins's self-imposed aesthetic boundaries

that

result in vibrant poetry. 3

Hopkins attains his own version

Burke's "ultimate philosophic vision"

effacing

himself and adhering to rules, thereby writing himself

out

of depression and

alienation-from

God-through

the rigors of aesthetic conflict. Hopkins demonstrates the

conflict through his artifact, instead of using it

a method of involution and psychic

withdrawal. In a letter to Robert Bridges

August 1877, Hopkins writes

that

his

aesthetic-perceived

chaotic in his time-was steeped in moderation to achieve specific

ends:

Only remark,

you say

that

there

conceivable licence I should

not

be able to justify,

that

with all

licences, or rather laws, I am stricter

than

you and I might say

than

anybody I know . . . . I may say

apparent

licences are counterbalanced, and more,

strictness. In fact all

English verse, except Milton's, almost, offends me

'licentious.'

Remember this. (Letters to

44-45)

Wallace similarly imposes

himself

aesthetic restraint in Infinite Jest

that

diminishes

his presence

author

and concomitantly 'speaks' to the reader's consciousness.

Wallace's artifact demonstrates his artistic ideal even

it comments

its own aesthetic

limits. Enfield Tennis Academy's kids play

annual game of"Eschaton" (Jest 321), a

nuclear-war type of game, played

a netless

court-a

"rectangular projection of the

planet earth" (333

)-with

tennis balls and distributed athletic gear for missiles and

nations; players' parabolic lobs simulate nuclear assault, and damage ratios are tabulated

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

a "gamem

ter" (322).4

ow fa

s during

a dis

put

e arises over

wheth

er it

affe

e missiles' (te

nni

s ba

trajectories (334).

e game master explains

snow is "only real-world snow if it's already in

e scena1io

but

the

children ca

distinguish between

mediating a

cti

ons a

eir

lf-

conscious prese

e within

game (334,

auth

or's e

mph

is). Ultimately,

me reverts into a "worst-case-&-

utt

y-deco

ed-Armageddo

n-t

ype situation" (340)

unch

at ea

instead of

ctional territories. Eschaton is a meta

or for art's

"Arma

geddon"

(

McC

ery 134),

e inevitable end of co

ntinu

y involuted

lf-

conscious a

Within

Infinite Jest, Wa

ace co

s on his perception of curre

fiction through

the

ego

of Eschaton a

e gamem

ter's reasoning:

aye

es can't be valid tar

::;

aren't

side the

god da

gam

ayers are pa

e a

ara

s of

e game.

're

e map.

snowing on

ayers

but

not on

e territo

ry.

ey're pa

e m ap, not

e cluster-fucking terri

You can only

ch aga

e territ

OJy.

Not aga

e m ap. It's like

the

one

ground-rule bo

und

ary

at keeps Es

chat

om degenerating

int

o chaos.

aton

ntl

emen is abo

logic and axiom and ma

ematical probity

ipline a

verity and o

er. You do not g

int

s for

hittin

anybody re

al.

Onl

e gear

at m aps

at's rea

(lest 338, a

uth

or's

mph

is)

Players (fiction writer

ot be tar

ts because

have no place

e game it

lf;

ey are its mediators (conversationalists) and ca

ot be

e game's (or novel'

subject.

e not-too-dista

erican society

at Infinite Jest envisions is one in which

its age

s are paralytica

lf-

rbed primarily becau

failure. Wa

ace's m

telling critique of American a

occurs

y Notkin's graduation pa

-h

eld by herself

T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster Uruversity

for herself-at which the participants are inhibited

self-consciousness and the involuted

artistic expression

that

surrounds them. A group dances the latest "East Coast anticraze,"

the "Minimal Mambo" (229). Like minimalist fiction

that

tends to "substitute lists

external environmental details for the creation

character from within" (Aldridge 145),

the "better dancers" make their "movements"

exaggeratedly

tiny they are evocat

e and compel watching, their near-static mass

curdled and

bent

somehow subtly around one beautiful young woman,

quite beautiful, her back undulating minimally in a thin tight blue-and-

white-striped sailorish top

she alludes to a cha-cha with maracas empty

anything to rattle, watching herself almost dance in the full-length

mirror. (Jest 229)

The

dance represents minimalism's premise

that

"pretend[s] [that] there Is no narrative

consciousness in [the] text"; the dancers movements are vainly affected

if to imply

that

there

no self-conscious impetus to their overstated-understated dancing (McCaffery,

author's emphasis). Their quest to avoid the

lf-conscious apparatus

motion only calls

attent

to themselves

juxtaposed to the animated party

that

surrounds them.

The

central young woman becomes transfixed

her own near-static mirror image which

hangs "between two emptyornate gilt frames [that] otkin thinks she's been retroironic

having the frames themselves framed, in rather less ornate frames" (Jest 229, emphasis

added).

The

image

an apt one

it describes the terminal destination of self-conscious

art, the self (or writer) framed within frames, "making art

out

uf the accessories

artistic

presentation" (229). She watches herself with

unselfconscious fascination in the

ly serviceable mirror

...

This absence

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

of shame at

e self-o

ssi

....

But now, whispered to by a nea

motionl

ess

man in an equ

trian helme

she

turn

s abruptly falling aw

from her own re

ection to explain, not to

e man so much as no one in

partic

ar,

e whole dancing m

ass:

I w

just looking at my

tit

s she

says

looking down at her

lf aren't

beautiful, and it

moving,

ere's

something

heartbreaking

sincere in what she sa

...

e girl raising

her striped arms in triumph or artl

ess

s for being constructed this

ay,

ese 'tits

built by whom and for whom never occurring, artl

ess

ecstatic. (230, a

uth

or's emph

is)

at is disturbing is that

e woman operat

in an insular univer

of on

and is

incapable of perceiving anything outside her

ubj

ect, r

ulting in vapid

lf-w

orship.

She

trammeled in a cage of

lf,

and

e a

of her time only reinforces her

detachme

as she reverts into

omb of

lip

sis

edonia, dea

in life"

839) .

the

me cockta

party, a medl

of vo

snippets of conversation are

interpolated into

e narrati

's ce

ntr

al action. In a

ries of

attributed dial

es,

one

unn

amed chara

mewhat pretentiously remark

"de

stibus non

t dis

put

andum"

t 232), meanin

'there is no disputing about t

; every per

n to their taste'

-or

simply, there's no accounting for t

e context

Wallace's a

etic

ego

ry,

this o

erwi

innocuous phrase is pivotal to

e nov

eme

that

literature

produced without boundari

ults in

aotic and

lip

sistic expr

ess

ion.

Alth

ough

phrase h

since been adopted into co

oquial Eng

sh a

predates Hopkins, it is

inte

sting to ob

rve

at it is al

located in his

"On

the

Ori

gin of Beauty: A Platonic

Dialogue"

ournals and Pape

. It is of little importance whe

er or not Wa

ace here

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

quot

Hopkins's dial

ue- a

lth

ough

a former do

oral candidate in philosophy (in

aes

eti

cs)

and Hopkins's admirer, it is likely

at he would be familiar with it.

at is

esse

nti

al, however, is

at bo

artists articulate

me aes

etic

eal:

ere must

be a rationale or crite

a for

e eva

ation of beau

ty,

and witho

such, art slips into a

rulel

ess

and purposel

ess

stat

ace's co

ention througho

Infinite J

t is

at t

and artistic jud

are no lon

r disputable becau

of a rejection of aes

etic

guidelin

eal which leads to an overindul

nce in

lf-

conscious expression in

arts for

ke only.

y form of artistic expr

ess

ion i

e ironist, immune

criticis

creating an aes

etic vo

of unprincipled and alienating a

rt-th

ere

no lon

r a

cohere

t of premi

ses

for

e production, eva

ation, and e

of art. In his

"On

e Signs of Health and Decay in

Art

s," Hopkins explicitly stat

at art must have a

standard of eva

ation or it becom

a futile e

erpri

it is impossible

apply

ience

exact

e arts of painting and still l

ess

of poet

we do to

ose of music and architectur

but

ientific

basis

aes

etical criticism is absolutely needed; criticism ca

ot advance

r witho

it; and at

e beginning of any science of aes

etics must stand

e anal

is of

e nature of Beau

ournals and Papers 7 5)

For Hopkins and Wa

ace, art transforms and re-orders a

at is det

table and grot

que

e human conditio

Hopkins further writ

at in "

inqL

ting what are

e signs of a

healthy and a decade

Art

we must

fir

st know what

Art

oug

to be doing and pursuing"

(75).

With

knowing how or why we partic

ate and r

pond

rt-

or witho

having

any princ

ipl

for doing

so-a

rt ceases

be art and becom

ulto

expr

ess

ion.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Wallace

both

diagnoses fiction's current malady and prescribes

alternative

course. James lncandenza's last film ("Infinite Jest")

a "magically entertaining" work

that

seeks to overcome solipsistic death.

The

work

intended to be a form of

communication, a conversation, between the director and his youngest son, Hal,

stop

the teen from becoming a "steadily more and more hidden boy," and

"bring him 'out of

himself'" (Infinite 838, 839, author's emphasis).

The

film

a metaphor for the potentially

meaningful conversation

that

takes place between

(unself-conscious) author and the

reader that forces

examination

mortality. Toward the end of the novel, lncandenza

(as

a wraith) appears

the hospitalized

Don

Gately and explains his films' aesthetic

rationale:

I goddamn bloody well made sure

that

either the whole entertainment

was

silent or else if it wasn't silent

that

you could bloody well hear every single

performer's voice, no matter how far

out

the cinematographic or

narrative periphery they were; and it wasn't just the self-conscious

overlapping dialogue

a poseur like Schwulst or Altman, i.e. it wasn't just

the crafted imitation of aural chaos: it

was

real life's real egalitarian babble

of figurantless crowds,

the animate world's real agora, the babble of

crowds every member

which

was

the central and articulate protagonist

his own entertainment. (835-36)

lncandenza's filmic innovation

ahead of his time

that

his critics cannot fathom why

the "babble(/babel)" interferes with the supposedly "really meaningful central narrative

conversations," and they assume

that

"some self-conscious viewer-hostile heavy-art

directorial pose, instead of radical

realism"

(836, emphasis added). Wallace's "radical

realism"

a call for a return to mimetic representation (or the "neo-real") (832) in

-----

- -

---------

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

American fiction

that

"renders real aspects

real experiences

that

have previously been

excluded from art" (McCaffery 140), which recalls Hopkins's emphasis

mimesis:

"[beauty]lies in a (not sensuous

but

purely intellectual) comparison of the representation

Art

with the memory

the true thing (Journals and

Paper

75).5

That

is,

effective

(and affective) art must render things

they are,

not

in the Realist school

literary

representation,

but

in the real experiences of daily

human

existence.

Wallace expects the reader to become engaged with his work-as opposed to the

"passive spectation"

that

television prescribes-by sharing the burden of the writer/reader

relationship: "this process

a relationship between the writer's consciousness and her

own, and

that

in order for it to be anything like a real full

human

relationship, she's going

to have to put in her share

the linguistic work" (McCaffery 137, 138). Wallace puts a

premium

readerly exertion, which accounts for Infinite Jest's heft (1079 pages) and

sheer difficulty (388 six-point-font endnotes).

The

reader

responsible for ordering the

work's jumbled chronological sequence, often overwhelming array of information and

detail, numerous narratorial perspectives, and unsettling (or defamiliarizing) juxtaposition

of the comic and grotesque. Most significantly, the reader has to fight through the often-

chatty mediating voice to penetrate Infinite Jest's insight into the thought and

peculiarities of the culture-the reader's own culture, re-presented.

Many of the notes are purposely unnecessary, and are at times simply

gags,

number 216's "No clue" (1036) and 192's "She didn't literally say shitstorm" (1033,

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

author's emphasis),

that

force the reader to

flip

physically to the back

Dunciad fashion.

Whereas some notes are playful, others, like the eight-page nt!Jnber 24 (with its own series

of footnotes), yield

much

indispensable information

that

it must be periodically

returned to.

The

notes are also staggered according

length, with some running several

pages in length; and the difficulty

compounded in simply locating the shorter notes

they are buried between longer ones. Wallace's participatory aesthetic

evinced

readers adopt the narrative and physically reconstitute it

their own.

The

difference,

however, between Wallace's readers' frustration

and

image-fiction's !-subject type

that

Infinite

Test

provides

"accessible payoff' for the reader's efforts (McCaffery 137).

Readers take valuable information from the notes and come away with the sense

that

they

have actually participated jointly in the game, instead

being

the receiving end of a

barrage of authorial poses.

The

reading pattern

moving from text to endnotes mimes

conversational intercourse itself and the back-and-forth shuttling

a tennis

match-surely intentional in a book

that

has conversation and tennis

for

its primary

subjects.6

Wallace's insistence

engaging the reader stems from self-abnegation-much like

Hopkins-in which he realizes

that

once the work

written it

longer serves a purpose

for its creator: "this

the way Barthian and Derridean poststructuralism's helped me the

most

a fiction writer: once I'm done with the thing, I'm basically dead, and probably

the text's dead; it becomes simply language, and language lives

not

just

but

through the

T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster U" iversity

reader" (McCaffery 141, interviewer's emphasis). This

precisely why Wallace contends

that

writers have no place inhabiting their artifacts: they are no longer its possessors:

"once the first-person creeps into your agenda you're dead art-wise" (135). Recalling

Burke's symbolic action, an artifact lives when it

adopted

active readers who

transform it into their own, mythos: "the reader's own

life

'outside' the story changes the

story" ( 141), making it personally and uniquely her/his own

re-inscribed, re-

enacted, or re-lived in the mind.

In their study of Hopkins and T.S. Eliot, Kinereth Meyer and Rachel Salmon

determine

that

the language of these poets

both

constitutes experience and reports it

(235) .

That

is,

the poet's experience

re-created in the consciousness of readers who

"choose to read" poetry "not only

describing

but

also

enacting conversion" (235).

Wallace, who effaces himself in the production of his art and releases it to his readers

thereafter, Hopkins, too, employed a similar self-negation, suppressing his works, although

he did allow

for

the future possibility

that

they "may be published after [his] death"

(Letters to

66). And although he closely held

to his works it

clear

that

Hopkins

was

nonetheless driven to share them with others

twice offering

The

Wreck of the

'Deutschland' and "The

Loss

of the 'Eurydice"' to the Jesuit journal,

The

Month

(66) .

Works like

The

Wreck of the 'Deutschland' and

"That

Nature

a Heraclitean Fire and

of the Comfort of the Resurrection" begged

the nature of their topics-a memorial to

Franciscan nuns in

The

Wreck and a declaration on the human condition in

"That

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Nature

...

"-to

be released to others. In a letter to Alexander Baillie

September

1864, Hopkins indirectly distills his conception

the purpose of writing when he writes

that

the "letter-writer

principle does

not

make his letter only

answel' (Further

Letters 215, author's emphasis), which

why he avoided responding to letters

immediately. Instead, he allowed a letter's

contents-another

's mscape-to resonate in his

mind, merging with his own. A work answers questions, "but

that

not

its main motive"

(215); rather, it

a powerful communicative connection

"two minds jump together

even if it be a leap into the dark" (215) . All writing, then,

than

a simple response,

also the significant merger of a self with another self's response to the common

anxieties of

human

existence, and

human

"ins tress," to use Hopkins's neologism.

Hopkins further writes

that

inspired poetry must engage readers

piercing their minds,

filling the "broken sentence" (217)

the existential gap

things are upheld

instress and are meaningless without it" (Journals and Papers

7). Hopkins maintains

that

language perpetually breaks down in transmission, and th;\t it

the reader's

responsibility to read and reread, wrestle with difficult material, and finally stamp it

one's personal inscape, thereby finishing the work (or act) in

ever-changing inscape,

making it new, vibrant, and distinctive.

The

process

one

"great, abnormal

...

mental acuteness," involving a "stress and action of the brain"

it "strike[s] into [the

reader or writer] unasked" (Further 216).

Hopkins's chosen rhythm upholds his principle of the reader's active participation

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

in the poetry. Sprung rhythm, with its capacity for "boundless variety" (Further 360)

within defined fields, evinces Hopkins's concern for the reader's apprehension; individual

readers necessarily read poetry differently (in placing stresses

uld deciphering poetic

meaning) and, therefore, make it their own.

The

reader must fight through the difficult

rhythm, alliteration, assonance, neologisms, and dense, skipping imagery to appreciate

fully a poem.

the head of the manuscript broadsheet for

"The

Leaden Echo and the

Golden Echo," Hopkins wrote an editorial note to Bridges in which he questioned

continuing with marking a poem's stresses for the reader:

have marked the stronger

stresses,

but

with a degree of stress

perpetually varying no marking

satisfactory. Do

you think

that

all had best be left to the reader?" (Manuscripts 232). For Hopkins,

readers must make the poem their own.

"On

the Signs

Health

and Decay in the

Arts," Hopkins writes

that

aesthetic "recovery must be a breaking up, a violence"

(Journals and Papers

79)

in which readers must first destroy the poem, breaking it open to

apprehend its buried insight, to attain the poet's instress, (re)making the

poem-reconstructing it in the mind. Hopkins's poetry

once operates in a series of

creative tensions

conservatism and radicalism, the terrible and beautiful (Further 217),

violence and peace, and flux and order. Hopkins's demands

readers are never

excessive, however. In his quest for realistic expression, he chose (and invented) Sprung

rhythm because it

the "rhythm of natural speech, the least forced, the most rhetorical

and emphatic of all possible rhythms, combining

...

opposite and

...

incompatible

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

excellences, markedness of rhythm

...

and naturalness

exr

ssion" (Letters to

46,

emphasis added) . Hopkins understood

that

poetry

can

only engage a reader when it

inclines toward common speech and emphatic expression in a self-effacing manner. For

Hopkins, poetry

that

does not have these elements

goals

cannot

effectively (and

affectively) "touch" the reader (Further 218); otherwise, it regresses into a hollow form of

authorial expression: "want

earnest I take to be the deepest fault a work

art

can

have. It does

not

stiike

first,

but

it withers them in the end" (360,

emphasis).

Hopkins discounts authorial preening and a self-involved style with "archaic diction"

"Parnassian" (360, 216).

Hopkins disparaged the withering mannerism

the poetry

his time

"Parnassian":

"that

language which genius speaks

fitted to its exaltation, and place

among other genius,

but

does not sing' (360, emphasis added). Sprung rhythm enabled

Hopkins to fashion poetry

that

avoided the conformist poetics

his time

for,

he writes

in "Health and Decay," "the old conventionalisms had been abolished,

but

conventionalism

not abolished" (Journals and Papers 78).

That

is,

Hopkins recognized

the ever-present and latent danger of resting in conventional literary practice (Wallace's

'crank turning'); each poetic attempt must be a sustained effort to keep conventionalism

at bay, to keep it

out

of one's art. Many poets

Hopkins's time were accomplished and

could "see things in

[a]

Parnassian

way

and describe them in this Parnassian tongue,

without further effort of inspiration," falling into the rut

"mannerism" (Further 216).

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Hopkins concedes

that

the Parnassian poets are gifted,

but

asserts that they are only

rarely inspired and, thus, remain in a creative stasis. They

fell

into a pattern

poetic

familiarity and, therefore, only wrote the familiar. Although Hopkins lauded Tennyson's

genius, he also uses him

example of a Parnassian

poet-an

afflicti

to which a

poets are vulnerable.

Wallace echoes Hopkins's indictment

the Parnassian styl

"there's something

kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn't have

that

much

to do with talent, even glittering talent

...

Talent's just

instrument. It's like having a

pen

that

works instead

one

that

doesn't" (McCaffery 148). For both Hopkins and

Wallace, talent

undermined when it

expended

'withering' (for Hopkin

or image-

conscious (for Wallace) artistic endeavors.

What

essential to literature's "sacred"

potential

"art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's

got something to do with love.

With

having the discipline to talk

out

of the part

yourself

that

can

love instead of the part

that

just wants to be loved" (148). Fulfilling art,

for

Wallace, requires "a willingness to disclose yourself, open yourself up in spiritual and

emotional

ways

....

be willing to sort

die in order to move the reader, somehow"

(149). Hopkins attains this unself-conscious authorial sacrifice in a poetics

that

yearns

for

both

annihilation and assimilation with God-resulting in a potential redemption for his

readers. His poems are a simultaneous declaration

vulnerability and devotion

that

continues to resonate for readers, despite his religious orthodoxy.

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

The

inspired artist's effusion "takes you

it were

surprise," and involves a

genius

meaningful articulation

that

makes the poet's "greatness stare into your eyes and

din

into yourear5' (Further 217, emphasis added). Most ofWallace's and Hopkins's

aesthetic relies

intuition

there

no specific formula for creating a "redeeming [and]

remedy~ing"

literature (McCaffery

7),

but

both

stress the importance

flux with

constraints, and discipline fused with creative variety. Hopkins calls this intuition

"inspiration," and Wallace calls it "chasing the click," a "special sort of buzz, a special

moment

that

comes sometimes" in creating and consuming literature ( 138). 7 Although

removed from Wallace in literary period, genre, nation, and, perhaps, beliefs, Hopkins

continues to be a compelling aesthetic "touchstone" for Wallace

the novelist recognizes

the importance

Hopkins's aesthetic achievements and imperative to stay in continual

motion

moving constantly toward the "trumpet crash" (Hopkins,

"That

Nature" 112)

the literary "din."

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Notes

*This

chapter originally appeared in different form

"American Touchstone:

The

Idea of Order in Gerard Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace," Comparative

Literature Studies 38.3 (2001): 215-231. Copyright (2001)

The

Pennsylvania State

University Press. Reproduced

permission of the publisher.

1 In a review article, Vince Passaro enthusiastically praises current short

American fiction

"more various, more successfully experimental, more urbane, funnier,

and more

tingly ironic

than

that

written in the Hemingway tradition" (81, emphasis

added). Instead of discussing fiction's contemporary function or what specifically

undermined, Passaro concentrates his attention solely

the "reckless irony" (84), "ironic

play" (84), "hills of irony" (87), and (more) "irony" (88). Significantly, the other attribute

he yokes with this ironic "renaissance"

its "experimental" nature, a manifestation of

what Wallace refers to

the unchecked rush toward the avant-garde (McCaffery 132).

See Vince Passaro, "Unlikely Stories:

The

Quiet

Renaissance of American Short Fiction,"

Harper's Aug. 1999: 80-89.

2 Even Wallace's style

somewhat reminiscent

Hopkins's. Like Hopkins,

Wallace uses punctuation to control his prose's

'pace'-

Wallace's term borrowed from his

junior tennis career. Here Wallace uses a steady

flow

commas to stunt this sentence's

pace, forcing the reader to pause at each brief clause. This sentence also happens to be

the novel's thesis in short. Otherwise, Wallace uses commas sparingly in his text

attempts to mime the speed and ferocity of common speech.

Other

stylistic similarities

between Hopkins and Wallace include neologisms ("glittershit

(Jest 134), hyphenated

words and alliteration (the sky's "spilled-fuel shimmer") (136), and repetition ("one

beautiful woman, quite beautiful

...

(229), among others.

The

author recently requested an interview with Wallace to discuss (primarily)

Hopkins's work and its relation to the novelist's creative ideals. Wallace declined the

interview in a letter (David Foster Wallace, letter to author, 28 Mar. 2000), citing his

reason to be

that

he "like[s] Hopkins too much to talk about him in

interview." He

then

suggested consulting "the scene near the end

Saving Private Ryan where Matt

Damon asks

Tom

Hanks to tell him about his memory of his [Hanks's]

wife

in the garden,

and Hanks declines and

says,

'That

one I keep just

for

me."' Wallace's reluctance to

speak formally about Hopkins implies

that

the poet

particularly significant to his work

and creative enterprise.

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster U

•'

iversity

4 Eschaton recalls the card game,

-E-G-W-A-R" ("The Exciting Game

Without

Any Rules"),

that

"stands for the l

ess

cruelty

that

claims

...

Bruce Pearson's life" in

Mark Harris's Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), where the only object of the game appears

to be the ability to keep a straight face (Harris

19,

Limon 164) .

5 Infinite Jest also specifically recalls Stendhal's

The

Red and

e Black in many

ways

. Its most significant similarity, however,

its sharing Stendhal's emph

asis

realism-the "founder" of "serious realism" for Erich Auerbach (Mimesis 463). Stendhal's

aesthetic axiom (itself borrowed from Hamlet)

that

a "novel

a mirror going along a

main road" (80, 371)

echoed

Infinite Jest's Quebecois terrorists who "stretch mirrors

across U.S. highways" (1015). See

"David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest,"

The

Explicator 58.3 (2000): 172-175.

6 It should be noted

that

Wallace was a top-ranked junior tennis player in his

youth and has written several essays

the subject. See his collection of "essays and

arguments," A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (Boston: Littl

1997).

7 Wallace borrows the term "click" from Yeats and cou1pares this intuitive,

aesthetic feeling to the "click

a well-made box" (McCaffery 138).

worth noting,

well,

that

Wallace's 'click' echoes Tennesse Williams's

Cat

a H

Tin

Roof (1955),

where the alcoholic Brick chases his own 'click' through alcohol:

click

that

I get in

head

that

makes me peaceful" (81). For Wallace, the click represents a 'high,' or

says,

a "buzz," obtained through the creation and enjoyment of literature. For a

perceptive discussion of alcohol and the creative spirit, see Lewis Hyde, "Alcohol and

Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking," American Poetry Review 4.4 (1975):

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Departme

of English, McMaster University

Part

Two

Infinite Geist: Lexical Investigation, Mediation, and the Ghost

the

Author

"In art man enco

unt

ers himself, spirit meets spirit"-Hans-Georg Gadamer

(Truth

and

59).

"Let

therefore consider ourselves insta

ed among the multitude

things, living beings,

mbol

instruments, and men, and l

try

form notions

that

would enable

comprehend what happens

us there. Our first

truth-which

prejudges nothing and

cannot

contested-w

ill be

that

there is presence,

that

'something' is there, and

that

'someone'

there"-Maurice Me

ty (The Visible and the Invisible 160) .

e "Sichation"

(Je

st 619)

In a recent article on David F

ter Wa

ace's Infinite Jest,

"'An

Anguish Become

Thin

: Narrative

Performance in Dav

ter Wa

ace's Infinite Jest" (2000), Frank

Louis Cioffi bravely attempts to articulate the peculiar experience of

ading Wallace's

second novel while simultaneously accounting

for

its stunning

fect

on him

reade

"I did not abandon it,

ough I confess I

was

tempted to. As I read o

I rea

zed

that

this novel

was

ing a curious impact on m

was

penetrating my consciousness in a

way

at struck me

unusual" (162). It is perhaps at once singular and refreshing

that

litera

scholar can now

feel

liberated enough in a journal article both to comment

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

critically

a literary artifact andmuse

its effects

him

reader. This

means intended

disparaging, for Wallace's novel, indeed all

his fiction, does provoke

a myriad of shifting emotions and reader responses. Even the process of providing a basic

plot summary

Infinite Jest

a daunting exercise. Cioffi rightly asserts

that

it "resists

formal description" (163),

but

then

takes two pages to

mmar

ize

the plot.

e st

ill

embryonic critical work

this unique novel

inevitably variegated.

her article

Infinite Jest, N. Katherine Hayles feels compelled to develop a complex eco-critical

position for

ten

pages before actually tackling the novel itself, and

then

proceeds to insert

sporadic synopses

necessary. Erik

Mortenson, in his comparison of WilliamS.

Burroughs and Wallace, works in the opposite direction, narrowly defining his parameters

analysis to eight pages (128-135)

this 1079-page novel.

Tom

LeClair, who wrote the

first critical article

Infinite Jest in 1996, still seems

provide the most cogent account

the work when he suggests (in comparing it

the "prodigious" works of Wallace's

fellow novelists, Richard Powers and William T. Vollman)

that

it "can be most

economically described

synthesizing and extending characte

stics of its predecessors"

(31) thereby eluding the plot-summary quagmire. ' In discussing the reader's

entanglement in a text, Wolfgang Iser, in his

The

Act

Reading: A Theory

Aesthetic

Response, asserts

that

upon finishing a work

"do

not

first know what

happening

us.

This

why

often feel the need to talk about books

have read

...

Even

literary crit

s frequently do no more

than

seek

translate their entangl

ement

into

].T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Department

English, McMaster University

referential language" (131). It

precisely this

at critics like Cioffi and

e o

have

empted

do in

work on Infinite

st, to di

ges

t what Cioffi h

"performative"

pect of Wa

ace's work into a concreti

d understanding of

temporarily

liv

ed expe

ence with

that

boo

k-f

e a

of reading is, according

certainly an experience of living with and in

e text. In what follows I o

er a lexical

exempli

atia of how Wa

ace's interactive writer-reader linguistic aesthetic operat

, and

demonstrate

byp

s Wallace's lexical strategies, or meta-text,

much

of his te

elemental meaning. Wa

ace's writing is highly symbolic and empl

oys

much

mbolic iconography to underscore his conception of 'presence' or mediation

within

e te

amining Infinite Jest's lexical and

mbolic properties also yie

s a

subtle rejoinder

e 'dea

e a

uth

or' sta

in co

emporary literary criticism

e point of view of

e ghost of the

auth

All of which returns

ace's

engageme

with a literary

lip

sis

he sees it,

at is wasting

e millennial

erican

art

ass

ivity a

Activity

"She h

this w

Hal of

e chocolate

yog

urt

with

e spoon and then

inverting

e spoon, turning the spoon ove

at it a

ays e

nter

her

uth

ups

e-down a

her tongue

ts to co

act the co

ection immediately, witho

the :·,1edia

on of co

spoon, a

for some reason this h

ays

en under Hal

skin"

est 702) .

In his review

David Mark

n's

88 novel, Wittgenstein's Mistress, Wa

ace

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

argues

that

"certain novels not only cry

out

for

critical interpretations

but

actually try to

direct them," calling this the "INTERPRET-ME phenomenon" ("Empty" 217, 218). I

take Wallace's statement

vitally relevant to Infinite Jest, which calls for interpretation

while it directs readers toward prestructured interpretations. There

operating in

Wallace's fiction a participatory ethos demanded

the reader and, consequently, a

particular

way

to read and decode his work.

That

not

say

that

there

only one,

definitive critical approach, just that Wallace codes his

ficti011

in a particular fashion, and

that

examining the lexical properties and structure leads to specific and significant

meanings. Naturally, there are many other critical alternatives,

but

will

focus

the

textual apparatus

that

compels Cioffi to call Wallace a "virtuoso vocabulist

...

aggressively demonstrating his skill" (168). In his expansive and striking interview with

Larry McCaffery (conducted in 1993 while Infinite Jest

was

still a work in progress),

Wallace comments that a

his fiction emphasizes the fact of mediated presence in

narratives and

that

television (and the commercial arts, in general) ease recipients into

"easy cerebral rhythms. It [TV] admits

passive spectation. Encourages it.

-type

art's biggest hook

that

it's figured out

ways

to reward passive spectation" (137,

interviewer's emphasis).2

That

is,

in the interest of commercial gain and promoting

North

American hyperconsumption, television has stunted mediation, the "complete

suppression

narrative consciousness, with its own agenda" (137). Thus, much of

Wallace's fiction

comprised of a chatty and sometimes hostile mediator and "uneasy"

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

(

ttling narration with an abundance

film-like

h-cut

spar

and

pro

punctuation; den

long

ences; grand interruption

interpolation

and

digr

ess

ions; multiple-frame narratio

and a preponderance of fo

otn

typica

y seen

in mode

or co

emporary fiction (Infinite J

t co

ains 388 six-point fo

ndn

otes).

ace a

ows

at his me

are

othing terribly

phist

ted" (137) ,

t it is his

underlying strat

egy

of forcing readers to penetrate

e mediator's pre

nce and to ma

e requisite co

ections and narrative linking and textual

e)arranging

at a

ows for

linguistic participation. Wallace remarks

that

his fiction works

count

er to what

does,

"it's trying to prohibit

e reader

om for

tting

at she's receiving heav

y mediated

data,

at this process is a relationship between

e writer

consciousn

ess

and her own,

and

at in order for it to be anything like a real full

hum

an relationship, she's

ing to

have to

put

in her share of

e ling

stic work" (

8). Wa

ace's literary aes

etic is

heavily

Witt

nsteinian with his interest in

at philoso

work on language

primarily "a function of relationships between per

(143

);

eriou

ction, for

ace, is a ling

stic exerci

in bridging

e existential

p between peo

a tonic

for lonelin

ess

. Wa

ace is ever mindful

e reader is,

says,

"marooned in her

own skull" and

at part of what draws us to litera

s is an enactme

of suffering to

overcome

e fa

e reader "suffer[s] alone in

e world" (127).

Thi

s expe

ence,

vicarious

it m

Wallace remarks, can only be "nourishing, redemptiv

become l

ess

alone inside" (127).

ea of a litera

'conversation

or what Roland

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Barthes calls "entering a dialogue" between writer and reader (148),

central to

Wallace's aesthetic. In a limited and perhaps reductive sense, however, all narratives can

be said to have

inherent participatory ethos to them; reading

always

active

exercise contrasted with television's pure, visual passivity. Perhaps, then, readerly

participation or exertion

merely a question of degree and, if

so,

then

Wallace's fiction

requires the highest degree of active, narrative construction.

A Theory

Our

Discontent

"It'll help your attitude

look for evidence of design" (Jest 113).

From all appearances, Wallace suffers little from Harold Bloom's "anxiety

influence," although his fiction

full

shrewd intertextual references and allusions to

authors ranging from Shakespeare to Stendhal, and Julio Cortazar to Don DeLillo.3 But,

beyond aesthetic influence, Wallace

also well informed about current literary-

theoretical practices and their implications

for

his fiction. In his essay "Tense Present:

Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage," Wallace displays

acute understanding

the culture wars and

critical theory, and the politics of language.4 Moreover, during

his time at Harvard

a doctoral candidate in philosophy (aesthetics), Wallace wrote a

review article

H.L. Hix's Morte D'Author:

Autopsy entitled, "Greatly

Exaggerated," in which he demonstrates a strong familiarity with the long debate between

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

textual critics (or "auteurist criticism," in Sean Burke's words) (52) and poststructuralists

regarding the

death

the author.5 Incidentally, Wallace overtly favors neither

theoretical position in this piece, although he leans toward a "pro-lif

stance

("Exaggerated" 143), when he asserts, "for those

civi

ans who know in our gut

that

writing

act

communication between one

human

being and another, the whole

question seems sort of arcane" (144).

What

most sign

ific

ant about Wallace's familiarity

with poststructuralism, however,

his adoption (or reconstitution)

it for his own

fiction. In "Feodor's Guide," a review article

the fourth volume of]oseph Frank's

Dostoevsky biography, Wallace remarks

that

poststructuralism

simply "fascinating in its

own right" (25), and in his discussion with Larry McCaffery he indicates the importance

deconstructive erasure for him

a writer: the writer

"dead, and probably the text's

dead; it becomes simply language, and language lives

not

just in

but

through the reader"

(141, interviewer's emphasis). Wallace's interest

ays

the writer/reader paradigm, of

"one gut talking to another gut" ("1458 Words" 41). In the production

his works he

effaces himself (but not the mediator), and thus in the reception of his fiction he

dead,

erased; the literary work

reduced to fixed and inert language, requiring readers to

animate it in their minds

they live it while reading. Intended or not, Wallace's

aesthetic

most closely aligned with reader-response criticism, particularly the early and

prototypical work

Wolfgang Iser, whose theory occupies the middle ground between

the quarrels

auteurists and poststructuralists.

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Wallace employs,

use Stanley Fish's phrase,

"affective stylistics"

rhetorical strategy in his fiction.6 Wallace has remarked

that

he once had a teacher who

said

that

"good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and

LllSturb

the comfortable"

(McCaffery

7), and it

precisely this aphorism

that

informs Wallace's aesthetic.

Wallace's motives

a fiction writer tend to focus

two

the primary conditions of

being human: cultural familiarity and existential despair.

for these reasons

that

Wallace makes it part of his mission also

appeal

other fiction writers. For Wallace,

American culture

already familiar with a sense

that

inhabit a banal and hedonistic

era:

We'd

probably most

agree

that

these are dark times, and stupid ones,

but

need fiction

that

does nothing

but

dramatize how dark and

stupid everything

is?

dark times, the definition of good art would seem

to be art

that

locates and applies

CPR

to those elements of what's

human

and magical

that

still live and glow despite the time's darkness. Really

good fiction could have

dark a worldview

it wished,

but

it'd find a

way

both

depict this dark world and

illuminate the possibilities for

being alive and

human

in it. (131, interviewer's emphasis)

He further remarks that, "if you operate, which most

do, from the premise

that

there

are things about the contemporary U.S.

that

make it distinctively hard

be a real

human

being,

then

maybe half of fiction's job

to dramatize what it

that

makes it tough.

The

other half

to dramatize the fact

still are

human

beings, now" (131, interviewer's

emphasis).

And

in regard to American consumerism, Wallace asserts

that

already know U.S. culture

materialistic. This diagnosis can be done

in about two lines.

doesn't engage anybody.

What's

engaging and

artistically real

is,

taking it

axiomatic

that

the present

grotesquely

].T. Jacob

PhD

esis, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

materia

stic, how is it

at we

hum

an being

;;

till have

e capacity for

arity,

nuin

e co

ections, for stuff

at doesn't have a pric

(132,

interviewer's e

mph

amatizing

hum

an condition,

en, with an e

mph

is on

human

suffering,

arity,

hum

an relationships, is esse

nti

al to Wa

ace's fictio

Rea

zing

ese

s of

erican culture are rarely, if at a

ll,

addressed

'serious'

erican fiction h

compe

ed Wa

ace to an aes

etic

at te

s aw

om casual represe

ations of familiar

cultural aspect

Instead, he works to,

r's words, "defamiliari

e familiar" (87):

ction

job is opposite [to] what it used to be

-n

o lon

r making

e s

tran

familiar

but

making

e familiar s

again. It seems impo

to find wa

of reminding our

at most 'familiarit

is mediated a

delus

e" (

McC

141,

int

erviewer's e

mph

is).

ercing

e Ve

"Th

e reader must first discover

r himself

e code unde

ying the text, and this is tantamo

unt

bringing o

the meanin

e process of

scovery is itself a ling

stic ac

on in so far

constitut

the means

which the reader m

communicate with the text

Wolf

ng lser

(Th

of Reading: A

of A

the

c R

pon

60).

e Act of Reading,

er's b

nti

on is

e litera

text a

reader

constitute two pol

"literary communication," and, appe

ndin

g a note to his u

word 'r

pon

se,

' notes

e German word for 'response'

irkung)

a more

rsatile meaning

an its Eng

sh co

unt

erpart,

at of bo

ect' a

ponse' (ix n.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

1). Thus, the act

reading inherently implies a "dialectical relationship"

(x)

between the

literary artifact and its readers. This

is,

perhaps, rudimentary,

Iser himself notes in his

introduction,

but

interest in Iser's

reader~response

criticism lies in his extension

what critics have themselves become familiar

with-that

is,

his theory of aesthetic response

goes beyond communication with readers and also invo

a transformation within

readers who actively participate in

re~creating

the text in the imagination

"dynamic

happening") (22), and thereby inhabit the work, temporarily living within the text: "the

aesthetic experience leads to a nonaesthetic experience" (23); "it has the character of

event" ( 6 7). Iser argues

that

each literary text

coded or "prestructured" with a

"repertoire" of "accepted procedures" (its "organizational structure") (85) for readers to

follow; these are the text's strategies and readers' guide (69).

The

text

"prestructured,"

with its own conditions

"conception and perception," and thus "constitute

[s]

organization

signifiers which do not serve to designate a signified object,

but

instead

designate instructions for the production

the signified" (65, author's emphasis). This

acts

"a kind

self~regu

ating

system" (67), and readers continually participate

absorbing new and unpredictable events, incorporating them into a dynamic and shifting

whole, modifying them through active progression; the act of reading, then,

a "dynamic

process

lf~c

orrection"

(67). Readers constantly feed back reactions

they absorb

new data; reading becomes a "continual process

realization

...

and 'happens' like

event

...

open~ended

situation, at one time concrete and yet fluid" (68). In the act

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

reading there

a constant "mutual bombardment,"

Rudolf Arnheim has observed,

that

results in a "tension

that

sets off a series

different actions and interactions" (qtd. in Iser

95). Iser calls this the snow-ball effect (67),

for

the Argentinian novelist Julio Cortazar it

an "attack

accumulation" (534), and for Wallace it

"sudden and percussive,"

causing "a kind

explosion

associative connections within the recipient"

that

compares with the "venting of a long-stuck valve" ("Laughing" 23).

all times, then,

readers are provoked into what Iser calls a "synthetizing activity" (119) through image-

building and formulating the text through "gestalt groupings" (120). Iser argues

that

readers are suspended between a "total entanglement" in and "latent detachment" from

the text which results in a "dialectic" between "illusion-forming and illusion-breaking":

"through gestalt-forming,

actually participate in the text, and this means

that

are

caught up in the very thing

are producing. This

why

often have the impression,

read, that

are living another life" (127). In image-building, gestalt-forming, and

through the various imaginative suspensions,

"leave behind who

are"

(12

7). Iser

rightly argues

that

textual meaning does

not

lie

in the various expectations and

frustrations: these are "simply the reactions

that

take place

n the gestalten are

disturbed" (128). Instead,

"react to what

ourselves have produced, and it

this

mode

reaction that, in fact, enables

to experience the text

actual event

...

these

that

make

animate the meaning of the text

a reality" (128-129). Further,

because the entire process takes place within the imagination,

"cannot escape from it";

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

our participation in and absorption

the text transforms the work into a "presence"

(131). Reading, for lser, has the "same structure

experience" because it contains

familiar experiences

that

are transcended through defamiliarization (131).

The

aesthetic transaction between text and reader goes further, however, and

achieves its zenith

affect, paradoxically, when readers

beco

·:.~

fully cognizant of the

illusory situation they are bound in, for this

the highest level

textual communication:

the perception

another's consciousness immanent with the reader's. Although lser's

theory

reading

invaluable-and all the more because he offers it

"a" theory, one

potentially many-he does

not

take his analysis beyond the interaction between text and

reader. It

in the final step of the reader's conscious awareness moving from the aspect

of the text-(re)animated language-to the aspect of a consciou ness behind or within the

apparatus of the text

that

the fullest ramifications

the reader's transcendence

achieved and realized. lser writes

that

apprehension

a literary work comes about through the interaction

between the reader's presence in the text and his habitual experiences,

which are now a past orientation. As such it

not

a passive process

acceptance,

but

a productive response. This reaction generally transcends

the reader's previous range of orientation, and

the question arises

what actually controls his reaction. It cannot be any prevailing code and it

cannot

be his past experience,

for

both are transcended

the aesthetic

experience. It

at this point

that

the discrepancies produced

the

reader during the gestalt-forming process take

their true significance.

They have the effect

enabling the reader actually to become aware

the gestalten he has produced,

that

he may detach himself from his own

participation in the text and see himself being guided from without. (133-

134)

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

The

reader occupies a "strange, halfway position: he

involved, and he watches himself

being involved" (134). Iser raises a crucial point here: that readers attain a near-timeless,

near-ecstatic moment, where they remain in the actual event that

the world of the

textual moment

that

they temporarily inhabit.

What

Iser here articulates

the readers'

ultimate penetration of the illusion of the textual apparatus and achievement of an

epiphany-while still engaged in the act of reading, decoding, and reformulating and, most

significantly, they become self-conscious about this process-a sudden realization of

another's presence-that

say,

the presence of another, similar consciousness. Call it

Wayne Booth's implied author, the author, speaker, persona, or mediating presence, the

semantic name

for

this presence

immaterial;

all

that

matters

the reader's sudden

recognition of another's (pre-coded) consciousness during the linguistic moment.

The

triangulation of reader, text, and writer

broken and, therefore, admits a two-

way

relationship between reader and pre-structured authorial consciousness (however

understand and contest 'author'). Iser does not take the final leap here and only

acknowledges this transaction

one of the "transfer of the text into the reader's

consciousness" ( 135), however, it clearly seems

a much stronger perceptive state

extending beyond the present accumulation of language. Sean Burke, in his Death and

Return of the Author, argues

that

this textual presence need

not

necessarily be reduced

to any monologic "author-God" (49) but instead, quoting Bakhtin, insists

that

authorial

consciousness

a "voice amongst the many which holds together the polyphonic strands

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

the text's composition, an author who 'resides within the controlling center constituted

the intersection of the surfaces"' (48). For Burke, the "renunciation

the author-God

does not do away with the idea

authorship, nor impede the creativity

the author and

the intensity

his engagement with and within his text" ( 49).

The

imputation of

writerly consciousness within a text does not compromise the "anti-representational ethos

of a writerly writing" ( 49).

Readers transcend the

text-a

complementary shattering of illusion while

paradoxically remaining in the text's imaginative space-and are doubled (vitally caught

and living in the textual moment and yet

lf-consciously observing themselves operating

such) and finding

then

a pure transaction with, a penetration

of,

or merging with,

another's consciousness. A textual transcendence

achieved although

not

metaphysical one. In Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida's discourse

ghosts and

Marx(ism)-a self-termed "hauntology" (51)-he comments that,

transcendence, the movement of super-, the step beyond (tiber, epekeina),

made sensuous in

that

very excess. It renders the non-sensuous

sensuous.

One

touches there

what one does not touch, one feels there

where one does

not

feel, one even suffers there where suffering does

not

take place, when at least it does

not

take place where one suffers (which

also, let

not forget, what

said about phantom limb

that

phenomenon

marked with

X for any phenomenology of perception). ( 151)

have, then, at this vital moment pierced the veil

narrato

implied author, and

mediator-pierced the "veil

print" (Bowers

81)-and

attained

not

any literal author-God

but

another

hum

an being's consciousness, or

that

consciousnc:::.s's original ideation,

that

T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

which

was

born in ano

er subject's mind prior to its infusion-"prestructur[ing]" (Iser 85)

rather

than

post-structuring-into the text,

but

that

remains dormant, awaiting re-birth,

(re)animation in the reader's consciousness. Illusion and the bounda

of the text and

imagination fall away

ropes of sand from the mind; readers attain what Paul Ricoeur

s the text's "universal power of unveiling" (193).

stead

offu

lly

committing him

this peculiar and nearly indescribable phenomenon, Iser quotes Jean Starobinski: "what

see arising here

a complex reality, in which the difference between subject and

object disappears" (qtd. in Iser 135, author's emphasis).

And

because

readers have

produced an image from the imaginary object, the object

that

transformed text,

hich

otherwise has no existence

its own,"

are, then, "actua

y in its presence and it

ours" (139) .

may be

to contend

that

are in the author's (revivified)

presence.

Ghost/Geist

"In a

text

which purports to be written neither

a subject, nor about subjects, who or what

ivates its narrative, stands

autho

rity for its claims?"-Sean Burke (

The

Death

and Return of

the

Auth

or 78).

"The

ghost,

re-venant,

the

survivor, appears only

means of figure or ficti on,

but

its

appearance

not

nothing, nor

it a mere semblance"-Jacques Derrida ("The

Art

of Memoires"

64).

After discussing various philosophical texts in search

a rational response

the

problem of the reader

participant in Infinite Jest, Cioffi concludes

that

his "somewhat

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

counterintuitive solution to the paradox

that

when reading certain works, such

this case Infinite Jest,

are

not

under the impression or illusion

that

what

happening

in the text

rea

rather, for

real, it has become actual" (172).

And

although I

have argued now

length for the possibility of the reader actually indwelling a literary

text, and believe

that

this potential exists

all times when reading Wallace's fiction, I

finally, however, do

not

believe this to be the ultimate reason for the profound and urgent

readerly engagement

that

this text inspires. I would contend almost the opposite,

that

although Infinite Jest

captivating like

few

other novels, it nevertheless succeeds in this

respect because of its sincere presentation

its status

illusory aesthetic object. It does

not

revel in the self-conscious play of its own artificiality for its own sake

many

postmodern works do; rather, it presents itself

extremely improbable while it remains

encyclopedically and vibrantly plausible, immediate, and overwhelming.

That

is,

its

content

only too believable and 'real,' often disturbingly

so,

but

it calls

attention

to the

possibility

its being nothing more

than

a 'told' story within

i.Ls

larger status

a novel.

This

paradoxically no metafictional play

Wallace's part, which brand of fiction's

inward and terminal regression he calls a "permanent migraine" (McCaffery 142),

but

rather a return to more essential narrative construction, what Infinite Jest's wraith calls

"radical realism" (Jest 836). Metafiction,

for

Wallace,

only "valuable" in

that

it "helps

reveal fiction

a mediated experience" and in

that

it emphasizes the "recursive

component to utterance" (McCaffery 142). Its latent danger, for Wallace,

its potential

55 J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

to become "empty and solipsistic" (142).

The

significant difference between 'standard'

metafiction and Wallace's metafiction-like strategies

that

the inevitable inward spiral to

the mediator's consciousness does

not

remain fixed

an end; tt rather spirals outward to

the reader

a vibrant linguistic phenomenon: "recursive metafiction worships the

narrative consciousness, makes

the subject of the text" (144, interviewer's emphasis).

Infinite lest's many (intended) mistakes draw attention to the presence

a very fallible

'presenter,' one

that

at times seeks effacement and

others wildly surges to the fore.

Infinite Jest

a ghost story told

a ghost; its most significant conceit

that, for all of its

density and 'realism,' the narrative events are meant to signify nothing beyond the fact of

its own telling.

In his reading oflnfinite Jest,

Tom

LeClair suggests

that

Wallace himself enters his

narrative

the wraith (32), whose appearance, however,

v·

ifiably limited to the

hospital-visitation episode (Jest 827-845)

but

subtly emerges throughout the text.

LeClair's assertion

founded

the fact

that

the wraith

"lexically gifted" and

"etymology conscious" (32), just

Wallace certainly

is.

LeClair further conflates

Wallace-as-wraith because the wraith-who

literally a ghost

one

the deceased

primary characters, the "apres-garde" (985 n. 24) film-maker, physics and optics genius,

former junior tennis star, and founder

Enfield Tennis Academy, Dr. James

Orin

lncandenza, Jr.-as a former artist himself, promulgates similar aesthetic ideals to which

Wallace himself

partial (LeClair 33). While there

can

be little doubt

that

the wraith

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

possesses many

Wallace's ideas of necessity the contention •:'tat the wraith equals

Wallace himself

untenable simply because of the obvious connection of the wraith to

Incandenza, Jr. (Jest 829). This

not to

say

that

I dismiss LeClair's claim outright;

rather, I agree

that

Wallace's 'presence' saturates the text. I do contend, however,

that

Wallace 'enters' his text through the wraith in a more rhetorically subtle manner

than

LeClair estimates, and

that

a simple equation of the wraith with Wallace

a reduction of

Wallace's aesthetic achievement.

The

wraith functions

the text's mediator, the

centering and orienting presence that organizes the entire narrative structure. While the

text

profoundly moving and absorbing there

never a moment when the reader

not

aware of the illusion of narrative although simultaneously immersed in Wallace's fictive

world.

The

reason for this

the mediating filter or presence within the text. This

mediating presence

none other

than

the wraith, and it

only in the hospital with the

gunshot-wounded Gately

that

he makes his presence acute and palpable, thereafter

receding

the narrative's inherent consciousness, its narrative periphery, yet always

present.

Sporadically scattered throughout Wallace's works are the words 'phantom,'

'ghost,' 'wraith,' 'specter,' 'apparition,' and 'revenant' encoded with all

their

etymological meanings and interpretive associations.

Often

these words are emblematic

they are specifically linked with certain characters (Incandenza,

Jr.

/wraith,

Hal/revenant, Mario/apparition, and

forth). Wallace's title alone, borrowed from

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Hamlet's graveyard scene (5.1.184ff),

every critic has observed,

itself mentioned in

Infinite Jest (1076 n. 337), itself implies the presence of a textual ghost, in signifying the

elder Hamlet. Early in Infinite Jest appears the significant note 38: "ghostly light- and

monster-shadow phenomenon particular to certain mountains; e.g. q.v. Part I

Goethe's

Faust, the Walpurgisnacht six-toed

danceathon

the Harz-Bracken, in which there's

described a classic 'Brockengespenstphanom.' (Gespenst means specter or wraith.)" (994).

And

note 24-lncandenza, Jr.'s filmography-contains the very significant word "mediated"

itself (986), calling attention to precisely who mediates the novel. Frequent emphasis

the concept

mediation occurs indirectly when attention

drawn to lncandenza, Jr.'s

still-hanging poster

Fritz Lang directing his 1927

film

Metropolis (Jest 48, 193, 951,

1078 n. 381), which film no longer exists

originally created and first shown in

Germany-Lang once said to novelist Robert Bloch, "why are you

interested in a film

which no longer exists?"7 Metropolis's essential disappearance recalls lncandenza, Jr.'s

own supposedly lost film "Infinite Jest"; and the presence

the Mediator, a messianic

figure, in Metropolis signifies the importance

mediation itself to Infinite Jest. Because

lncandenza himself was originally an optics genius, Infinite Jest contains numerous

references to light, lenses, reflections and refractions, mirrors, concave and convex forms,

holograms and holographs, optical doubling and illusions. Amplification

Wallace's

references

all

return to the idea

a ghost and ghostly mediation:

-show re-runs

haunt

the airwaves (600); a holograph

itself a ghostly image; duplicated

images are known

58 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

ghost-images/forms; in lenses and telescopes, secondary images, produced through

defects, acquire a ghostly definition or appearance (OED); Enfield Tennis Academy's

students suspect

that

a ghost haunts the campus; in addition

the obsessive use of the

words "ghastly" and "ghostly" throughout.

The

word 'figurant' also appears throughout

the text, and

used particularly

the wraith for mute, peripheral film and

characters (Jest 835-836). Even here

a tangential relationship to ghosts. Erich

Auerbach, in his etymological study

the history

the word 'figura'

remote ancestor

of our contemporary 'figurant') in ancient sources, observes

that

'figura' has

associative

meaning of "copy" and occurs in Lucretius's "doctrine of the structures

that

peel off things

like membranes and float round in the air," and

further related to his "Democritean

doctrine of the 'film images' (Diels), or eidola"; Auerbach further notes

that

Lucretius

was

the first to introduce 'figurae'

"employed in the sense

'dream image,' 'figment

fancy,' 'ghost"' (17). Enfield Tennis Academy's students use Lemon Pledge

phenomenal sunscreen" (Jest 99) which later peels off in "Pledge-husks" (101) and copies

their several limbs thereby contributing

the overall sensation

a ghost-inhabited

environment. I do

not

argue here

that

Wallace

aware of Au._rbach's essay,

but

that

the

accumulation

specific words

that

are all synonymous with 'ghost' necessarily creates

emphasis

the ghost/wraith metaphor in Infinite Jest and, thus, calls for interpretation.

What

significant about these many references

that

in order to perceive a ghost image,

there must, in most cases

(as

in optics and broadcast media, signally in this narrative), be

59 ].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

some inherent

flaw

or defect in the originating source. This

perhaps one

the more

signal aspects oflnfinite Jest's narrative construction:

that

the mediator himself, although

strangely erudite,

also incredibly defective and disturbing. This upholds Wallace's

redemptive aesthetic,

for

only through the apprehension of defects

that

any form

remedying action

can

occur, whether it pertains to aesthetic

J:.;lOduction

or cultural

malaise. Offiction's redemptive possibilities, Wallace remarks

that

you're at once allowing the reader to sort of escape self

achieving some

sort

identification with another

human

psyche-the writer's, or some

character's,

etc.-and

you're also trying to antagonize the reader's intuition

that

she

self,

that

she

alone and going to die alone. You're trying

somehow

both

to deny and affirm

that

the writer

over here with his

agenda while the reader's over there with her agenda, distinct. This

paradox

what makes good fiction sort of magical, I think.

The

paradox

can't

be resolved,

but

can

somehow be mediated-'remediated,' since this

probably where poststructuralism rears its head for me-by the fact

that

language and linguistic intercourse

is,

in and of itself, redeeming, remedy-

ing. (McCaffery

interviewer's emphasis)

In another interview Wallace remarks

that

he wanted Infinite Jest "to sound intimate and

conversational,

if somebody

was

talking right to you. So I think there

was

a kind

ghost reader

for

me all the

way

along" (OPBR n.p.). Ghost-reader implies ghost-writer.

What

I call the 'wraith-function' stands for the mediating presence

that

Wallace infuses

into his novel,

for

these ghostly clues direct readers to the inescapable fact

that

they are

the recipients of "heavily mediated data" (McCaffery

138)-in

life, the popular media, and

this

text-and

that

their responsibility in this communicative relationship between the

"writer's consciousness and her own" (138)-is linguistic and requires, if it

to be revived

and actualized, active readers and responses, the readers' doubles, their ghosts.

Infinite Jest's first page are the words,

am in here" (3). In the immediate context this

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

presumably Hal Incandenza's thought, although this

not explicitly clear

these words

occupy their own line and are positioned between two of Hal's interior monologue

accounts of his meeting with the University of Arizona's administration. They ar

fact, 'ghost-words,' thought

Hal

but

operating

a secondary, meta-level. As the

novel expands and Wallace's mediation principle

discovered, these words take on

additional, associative meaning:

that

the wraith

"in here," in the text, and

the

mediating presence

that

confabulates and distills the novel's contents. In fact, the entire

novel has, just like its latent aesthetic layers-as

allegory of "aesthetic orphanhood,"

for

LeClair

(33

)-a

latent contrapunta

y lin

ist

structure, a significant deep-narrative

below the welter of the surface-narrative. This, in part, accounts for the novel's

complexity and the mediator's playful, cozening yet hostile presence.

obsolete, variant

form of'wraith,' in fact,

rath

and variants of'ghost' are "fury," "anger," "to rage,"

"to terrify," and, signally, "to wound, tear, pull to pieces" (OED): a

which Infinite

Jest's wraith performs

he creates, manipulates, and mediates the text; the reader,

however, reconstructs the wounded text. In

aesthetic-a

egorical context, the

'wrath/rage' meaning extends to Wallace's own chagrin at the state

the American

millennial arts and

that

his novel moves through language to "re-medy" or "re-mediate"

(McCaffery 137) the situation; the mediator himself-it

no coincidence

that

lnc

andenza,

Jr.

referred to

his three sons

"Himself," indicating his abiding textual presence

both character and wraith/mediator-thus intervenes to produce reconciliation between

the two consciousnesses of writer/author and reader. Even Wallace's choice

e word

'wraith,' in the main,

opposed to the more familiar 'ghost'

itself telling in the context

authorship and textual presence. 'Ghost,' according to the Oxford English Dictionary,

defined

"the supposed apparition

a dead person," whereas 'wraith'

defined

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

"the spectral appearance of a living person supposed to portend

that

person's death";

Webster's Dictionary similarly terms a 'wraith' an apparition of "a living person in his

exact likeness seen usually just before his death" (emphases added). Infinite Jest

emphasi

zes

the lexical difference between the two words when the mediator interpolates

into Gately's free indirect discourse, "does wraith mean like a ghost,

in dead?" (833 ,

author's emphasis), emphasizing the wraith's quickened aspect in the text. In her article

Int

ertextual Madness in Hamlet:

The

Ghost's Fragmented Pcrformativity," Hilaire

Kallendorf builds

the well-known fact

that

Shakespeare's works were intertextually

informed

Daemonologie (1597)

King James I. According to King James, "these

kindes of

irites, when they appeare in the shaddow

a person newlie dead

...

are

called Wraithes" and serve to "discover

unto

them [the newly dead's friendes], the will

the defunct, or what was the way of his slauchter" (qtd. in Kallendorf 77), which further

extends Infinite Jest's considerable debt to Hamlet

but

also implies

that

candenza, Jr.

himself was

murdered-that

the auteur, the 'au

or,' was killed in

both

this novel and the

Novel's wider theoretical

context

. 'Revenant' too

a logical word choice, however,

that

the mediator specifica

y designates for Hal (Jest 260,

461)-one

the two protagonists,

second son of Incandenza, Jr., and a lexical prodigy himself who recalls entire entries

the

OED

from memory (950)-with its meanings

"one who

turns

from the dead" and

"one who returns to a place." Both definitions are appropriate for Hal

considered

to have fallen "into the womb

solipsism, anhedonia,

death

in life" (838)

his father,

but

presumably emerges from his "death in life" condition, ex-narrative.

That

is,

Hal

returns to his father's grave with Gately-scrupulously referred to in passing

both

characters,

but

must infer

that

this nevertheless occurs (Jest 17,

934)-to

dig up the

master copy of Incandenza, Jr.'s lethally entertaining

film

"Infinite J

t" (again recalling

].T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

et's graveyard scene) which is interred with

lnc

ande

a, Jr., in his microwave-

annihilated head (1030 n. 160).

e implication of '

aith,' however, is

at Infinite

t's textual presence, its mediator, is a

ve when resuscitated

e reader, and can a

be read

an intertextual nod

e dea

e a

uth

or imp

se, where neither acco

unt

rea

lly

matters

readers

er a text's

orld of intuiti,

" (l

r 64),

but

for

textual critics p

oss

ibly represe

e textual

t' or 'fetch' on deconstruction, where

eory of

e dea

e a

uth

or, according

impo

s an "ab

nce ra

an presence" and "involves not

e imp

ition

but

e er

ure of consciousn

ess

("Grea

tly"

140).

aith,

en,

as a transmission of

e a

uth

or's embedded

consciousn

ess

and a

ows Wa

ace to deconstruct deconstruction's own premi

ses

through

his nove

through written language, deconstruction

own priv

eged form (or

"graphocentric model" for M.H. Abrams) (429). Imbuing

aith with his own

write

y con

iousness and

tablishing it

ara

er and not-quite chara

er, Wa

ace

ains a textual presence

at transmits his 'message' through

e exa

program

deconstruction asse

e complete er

ure of a

uth

al presenc

As Marjo

e Garber

remarks, quoting Freud, in her wide-ranging

peare's Glr)st

Writ

et is a

not only informed with

e unca

but

informed abo

it.

t is only

e m

t explicit marker of uncannin

ess

e ultimate articulation of 'unce

ainty whe

mething is dead or a

liv

e"' (127, a

uth

or's emph

is).

assertion

at is just

applicable to Infinite J

t and

at provok

such a speculation in the embodime

aith. Just

peare, it is widely held, him

lf a

e role of

t in

(Bl

oom 387), it i

in a novel replete with Hamlet references, significa

ace himself would al

'pla

e significant roles of lncande

a, Jr. (King of

en state

at is Enfield Tennis Academy) and

aith, underscoring

e duality of

Jacobs, PhD

esis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

e a

uth

For Infinite lest's great

t j

t is

ere is no

auth

orial presence

while it is paradoxica

y steeped with a

uth

orial consciousn

ess

. It

stake

at,

according to Hal, "deconstruct" al

ens to be

"th

e one

rd"

at Incande

a, Jr.

"hated more

" any o

er word

eory), readers must infer

t 251). All

while Wallace

tablish

a co

ection and permits

e reader to penetrate

consciousn

ess

e textual apo

a is

fill

ed by

e reade

e presence not even

deconstruction would den

Burke ob

rves: "a

eory of

e a

uth

or of

e ab

nce

e a

uth

ot withstand

e practice of readin

for

ere is not an ab

lute cogito

of which individual a

uth

ors are

e subalte

mani-f

tation

but

uth

many

uth

ors, and

e differences

at e

st be

een a

uth

ors

-within

uth

ors

hip-d

efy

reduction to any uni

zing aes

etic" (191). Hence I

r's semi-acceptance

ere

s to

e tattered re

s of New Criticism and deconstruction. A further

etymol

ical derivative for 'gh

t' is al

e German geist, or

pirit, spiritualit

inte

ectuality" (OED

Geist it

lf h

many related forms

~-.:g

to Infinite l

t, such

geister, an ob

lete form of'j

ter.' In this

, Wa

ace's mediating gh

t/geist(e

e l

t 'laugh' or 'fetch' at deconstruction's expen

* * *

ace dedicated his

89 short story, "Girl

With

Curious Hair" (Girl 53) , to

Norman

Brown, a

uth

or of Life Against Death:

e Psycholanalytical Meaning of

Histo

and Love's Bo

ges

ture is significa

ace's works are informed by

own

unique philosophical-cl

ass

icis

mbo

c meditations. Brown's own inte

ectual

developme

took a radical be

om philol

ogy

to a spiritual understanding when he

embarked upon a re-reading of Freud's oeuvre,

he writ

in the introduction to Life

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

esi

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Against Death: "In 19

turn

ed to a deep study of Freud, feeting

e need

reapprai

e nature and d

of man"

While reappraising

e nature and d

tiny of

hum

ankind is certainly a remot

if not

sible ideal,

critical inqui

in today's academic

ttin

it clea

y was not

r Brown who developed a

mbo

cal and spiritual

hum

based epistemol

ogy

. I do not mention Brown

works here

end for any deta

corr

pondence between

own's and Wa

ace's

rldviews

but

merely intend to

demonstrate Wa

ace's emph

is on spiritual understandin

partia

y inherited from

Brown. Love's Body is a m

merizing p

tiche of a

orisms culled

om a broad ran

ass

al, biblical, and philosophical writin

spliced toge

er with Brown

interpretations

and formed into what he ca

s a

rldview

"sy

mbo

cal consciousness,"

is,

of what

it means to be a

hum

an being in a highly tec

ological age.

e gh

tly relationship

between writer and reader, Brown writ

es,

Spiritual understanding (geistig

Verstehen) becom

a gh

tly operation,

an operation with gh

ts (Geisteswi

sse

e docume

starts

speaking for itself;

e reader starts hearing voices.

e subjective

dimension in historical understanding is to animate

e dead le

er with

ving reader's bloo

his "experience"; and simultaneously let

e gh

e dead a

uth

or s

lid

e int

become one with,

e reader's

ul.

It is

necroman

cy,

or shamanis

magical

entification with ancestors; instead

ving spirit,

be possessed by

e dead. (199)

ace's u

e wraith

roxy

inhabit his text is doubly significa

he achieves- or a

empts

achieve- a spiritual relationship with his readers

thr

ough his

text, and circumn

igat

deconstruction

eory of

e dea

e a

uth

or at once by

instantiating his narrating con

iousn

ess

rough

e spiritual agen

aith-

eoretical coeval

e re

turn

or r

urrection

e dead a

uth

or. For,

ends and

ace demonstrat

es,

e text h

e prim

ary

power to convey

presence of con

iousn

ess

ano

er con

iousness. M.H. Abram

in a re

y to

Hillis

Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

Miller, writ

at to experience a text witho

e presence of an a

uth

orial con

iousness

is to perce

e it

lf a

eady irremediably dea

His [Miller

] origin and ground are his gra

ocentric premises,

e closed

chamber of texts for which he invit

abandon our ordina

realm of

experience in speaking, hearin

readin

and understanding langu

age

And

om such a beginning we move to a foregone conclusion. For

Derrida's

amber of texts is a sealed e

o-chamber in which meanin

are

reduced

a ceasel

ess

olalia, a vertical and lateral reverberation

sign

sign of gh

tly non-presenc

emanating

om no voice, inte

no on

ferring

nothin

bombinating in a void. ( 4 31)

Abrams's remarks on deconstruction reca

Nik

Kaza

kis's in

e L

t Temptation,

where

e spiritual essence in and of language remains

apprehended

me: "

but

what

can

e le

ers

say?

are

ack bars of

e pri

n where

e spirit strangl

with screaming. Between

e le

ers and

e lines, and a

around the bla

margins,

spirit circulat

freely" (qtd. in Brown 196).

e 'wraith-functio

further undermin

deconstruction by acting it

a Derridean trace of

e a

uth

-a

tly non-

presence (

e Derridean

us ratur

"under er

ure")

reca

Abrams- al

ways

eady

prese

e te

, one whose annulled presence through in

ription ca

but

still ca

ention to it

lf neve

rth

ess

as presence- and thu

Derrida's construction, is

(Grammatolo

19),

ince

e word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since it is necessa

it remains legible" (Spivak

. G

aya

tri

akravorty Spivak writ

, in her preface to

Grammatolo

gy,

in discu

ing Derrida's concepts of er

ure and trace

at, in distinction to

Heidegger's Being, Derrida's "

trace

e mark of

e ab

nce of a presence, an a

ays

eady ab

present, of

e lack of origin

at is

e condition of

oug

and

experience" (xv

e trace

fac

lf even

it prese

s its legibili

viii).

And

she assert

in a

mewhat disin

nuous move

at antic

and stifles pote

nti

criticism,

at "we must remember this when we

ack Derrida

...

on certain

66 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

sorts

straightforward logical grounds" (xviii), which

imply

that

the entire

Derridean enterprise

itself founded

a fragile foundation-that

say,

that

one must

hold one's logical criticism in abeyance. Wallace has

occasion doffed the critical cap

to Derrida: "if Derrida and the infamous Deconstructionists have done nothing else,

they've debunked the idea

that

speech

language's primary instantiation" ("Tense

Present" 45).

And

it would seem

that

his 'attack'

Derridean deconstruction through

Infinite Jest tends to operate within the acknowledged confines

deconstruction itself,

appropriated deconstruction-or trace of deconstruction-one that, for example, asserts

the erasure

the author in deferring-even dying, a scapegoat (sparagmos) author (Frye,

Anatomy

193)-to

and

for

the reader: the author, for Wallace, has "to be willing

sort

die in order

move the reader" (McCaffery 149).

The

wraith, then, of necessity

'wraith' (the embodiment, the return,

a dead being), acts

a cozening device: the

Wallacean contention

that

while the author may be dead, his spirit nevertheless may

well return to

haunt

his former topology, the gaps between the inky bars of the text. As

wraith, then, it

not

the

author-but

the author.

strike

out

a word, however, to

put

under erasure, does not kill the word's spirit, its internal geist, but liberates it and allows it

to resonate within readers' minds. It

akin to the striking of court-testimony, where the

juridical action

cannot

strike the trace of the annulled commentary from the jurists'

minds where they

will,

possibly, continue to exert a Heisenbergian influence

the

proceedings. Garber relates Spivak's preface to the concept of the ghost: "it

this

specifically Derridean

[sic]

inflection of 'under erasure,' 'sous rature,'

that

uncannily

resembles a ghost-resembles, in fact, the Being of a ghost. 'There are more

things

heaven and earth, Horatio, I

Than

are dreamt

in your philosophy"' ( 180 n. 57). Spivak

notes

that

Derrida "uses the word 'metaphysics' very simply

shorthand for any science

J.T. Jacob

PhD

esis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

of presenc

xi, emph

is added),

but

reca

Sean Burke

-th

e "re

nun

ciation of

author-God does not do aw

with a

uth

orship, nor impede

e creativity of

e a

uth

and the intensity of his engageme

with and within his text" (

49)-w

e can see

at it is

lf to abu

traig

htf

ard l

ic"

at Spivak disparages in making

e Derridian

leap

om textual immanence

a "science of presence": to p

e brick of

e a

uth

or is

not necessarily to p

it, reductively, an edifice of Weste

metaph

s and

transcende

al signified. In his re

y to Derrid

"Destruktion and Deconstruction,"

Hans-Georg Gadamer writ

ere is

o 'language of meta

ere is only a

metaph

ica

ought-o

coinage of concepts

at have been lifted

om living speech"

(107). Such re

ance on a misleading con

nsus of a "coinage of conce

s" thus

tablish

"a f

ed conceptual tradition and con

quently lead[s]

an a

enation

e living language" (107), for Gadame

Thu

ace u

ses

e wraith-function to a

a trace, even

abse

presence,

at neve

rth

eless conv

eys

int

ral meanin

ace h

e concept of trace in mind in Infinite Jest is signified by

Orin

lnc

ande

a's

perspiration impressions in his bed, "white salty outline [s] just s

ghtly o

e week

other faint dried outlines"

Deconstruction becom

lf a meta

s of

language with its own

lectively re-appropriated "'u

ful

' word

(Spivak xx)

aced under

e stamp of er

ure, and

aces any problematic word (for

deconstructive metaph

ic) under er

"if he [Derrida]

re to a

empt a

rous

definition of metaph

, the

would no doubt go 'under er

ure"' (xx

at is

operating here is a

atonic excommunication of terms

at do not belong in

deconstruction

lexical-kingdo

which is,

Spivak re

e "j

ful

t labo

ous

strat

egy

of rewriting the o

language"

and, in an interview, "it seems

at '

histo

of metaph

ics' w

a bad name" (qtd. in Burke 150, interviewer

emph

is),

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

sanitizing o

anguage for Spivak. To this me

odol

ogy,

we must invoke Sean Burke's

"transcende

al lure," which is to

say

at "any determined discour

e dea

of man

will find it

lf ensnared in a similar labyrinth of transcende

al pr

upp

itions" (99) . To

put a metaph

ysi

c under er

ure is only to p

ition and pr

uppose ano

er in its

uch indeed is the ab

yss

awaiting any a

uth

e death of man.

e s

ubj

who

ces

e disappearance of s

ubj

ectivity does

only at the

sk of

becoming- i

erentia

y at leas

t-th

le s

ubj

ect,

e L

t and Ab

lute s

ubj

, le

to face

his s

ubj

cth

ood in

fac

e [o

an o

erwi

ubj

ectl

ess

terrain, ever captive to a mirror

lip

sis

(Burke 103). To confro

e "dea

of man" (interchangeable with 'dea

e a

uth

or' for Burk

"either nec

ess

itat

transcending its tenets or fa

s pr

to its own

anat

raphy" ( 103). To ca

for 'pr

ence' in a te

is, for

me, critica

y n

a·

and

ace anticipat

this by having

e a

uth

or-function r

e who

lly

within

aith-

function, a

gure

at is it

lf a trace (Derridian or o

erwi

), or a v

tig

e a

uth

In an interview with Imre Sa

sin

Derrida once remarked

at, "since

ve a

ays

been inter

ted in literature

-m

y deepest desire being to write literatur

to write

fictions

-I'v

e feeling

at philosophy h

been a detour for me to come back to

literatur

aps I'll never reach this point,

but

was

my desire even when I w

very

g" (qtd. in Burke 170). It is thus with a

mewhat

d irony

at Burke

conclud

his chapter on Derrida with

e words of

e lamenting a

uth

prosopopeia

e dea

Derrida addresses

e ab

uth

or of him

lf-

e P

t Card and

Memoir

: For Pa

deMan r

pective

have never had any

thin

g to write. You are the

only one to understand why it rea

y w

necessa

at I write exactly

e opp

concerns axiomatics, of what I know my d

ire to be, in o

er words

ving spee

presence it

and,

have never

own how to te

a stor

(qtd. in Burk

171).

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

irony is

at Derrida h

never been able to sl

his own (gh

tly)

uth

lf in e

ith

his philosophical litera

(it

lf creative) or

gurative and

lf-claime

lf-

imposed dea

of his

uthful, would-be

auth

e a

uth

or who w

still-bo

, who

int

ended to write

ction

instead 'spe

' his entire life in either repressing

erhaps

sublimatin

even) his a

uth

orial

lf,

or killing it;

but

it h

neve

rth

ess

turn

or w

never gon

e one a

uth

at he could never put under er

ure

him

lf.

this

, one m

come aw

with a differing

int

ed by Spivak when she

remarks in her preface

at,

acqu

Derrida is al

this co

ection of te

s" (ix). Spivak

conclud

her preface by simila

y putting her own words under er

ure when she

remarks, "and a

and don

at is

rt of reader I would hope fo

A reader who

would f

ten upon my mistranslations, a

with

at leverage deconstruct Derrida's te

beyond what Derrida

rolling s

ubj

dire

ed in it" (lxxxvii).

Thi

etorical

ourish impli

e preface's argume

be taken

part of a new meta

ic while it

simultaneously a

empts to distance it

e spe

er of

fir

st principl

. Spivak's

final comme

is crucial to her overa

argument, for not to release

e te

(Derrida's a

her own) is to claim an Ab

lute s

ubj

ectivity (thus,

lipsis

and fa

deconstruction's own tenets,

but

release it is

preserve a trace, a

owing it

e full

onomy of play.

And

ith

er w

ere is no escaping

e fact of inte

nti

onal inscription,

of a

uth

al direction. For Ga

er, "a gh

t is

e concreti

tion of a mi

ing presence,

e sign of what is

ere by not being

ere" (129).

this w

ay,

ace's wra

ith

signifies

e presence of

e re

turn

ed a

uth

or in spectral gui

Ultimately, deconstruction and its significance recede for Wa

ace, since

conver

tion between writer and reader is his primary aes

etic conce

write pro

at creat

e impr

ess

ion in

e reader of "a

human

being actua

y sitting rig

ere

70 ].T. jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

talking to him" (Wallace, "Indexical" 23). There

much in the philosophy

Gadamer

that

relevant

Wallace's purpose. For Gadamer, language

primarily "conversation,"

and to "overcome confusion"-the "strangeness

that

arises between one

human

being and

another"-one "must look for the word

that

can reach another person," the "language

the other person,"

"cross over into the language of the other in order

reach the

other" ("Destruktion" 106). For Gadamer and Frank Kermode, in his "Cornelius and

Voltemand: Doubles in Hamlet," 'conversation'

a "habit

:::

community"

that

much

"broader"

than

our contemporary usage currently suggests (Kermode 4 7): "the action of

consorting or having dealings with others; living together, commerce" ( 4

OED).

Paraphrasing Lacan, Gadamer contends

that

the "word

not

directed

another person

such an empty word"

06). Gadamer challenges the contemporary concept of the

"'language of metaphysics"' itself, which he claims "really has no meaning,"

for

"certainly

what it can mean

not the language in which metaphysics

was

first developed, namely,

the philosopher's language

the Greeks" but, rather, means

"that

certain conceptual

formulations, derived from the original language of metaphysics, have impressed

themselves into the living languages of present-day speech communities" (106) . He

further cites correlative examples of such in "scientific and philosophic discourse" and in

the "mathematics-based natural sciences" where the "introduction

terms

purely a

matter

convention, serving to designate states

affairs available

all, and which do

not

involve any genuine relation of meaning between these terms introduced into

international use and the peculiarities of national language," citing the "volt"

removed

from immediate thinking

the scientist, Alessandro Volta ( 106-1 07). Gadamer

considers his "dialectic"

referring

the "whole wide-ranging totality

the Western

tradition of metaphysics," and, thus, considers Derrida's deconstruction

reside within

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

at whole in a totality of philosophical dialecti

which is at once inclusive and

charitable, for a

lth

ough Gadamer departs

om Derridian deconstruction, he does,

howeve

acknowled

Derrida's work to be a significa

compone

and even concludes

his essay thu

"this conver

tion should seek its pa

rtn

er every

just becau

this

rtn

er is o

and

pecia

y if

e o

er is completely diff

er<

. m.

oever wa

s me to

take deconstruction to heart and insists on difference stands at

e beginning of a

conver

tion, not at its end" (113).

Thu

s, Gadamer

"path" is "

om dialectic back to

dialogue, back to con

tion" (109) , instead of deconstruction's impl

ion

"background network

mea

nin

g-relations l

ng at

e b

speech" ( 1 09).

Gadamer's word

"Derrida immer

ses

him

lf in

e m

ous multiplicity lod

d in a

word and in

e diversity of its meanin

, in

e indeterminate potential of its

differentiations of meanin

(11

Such

a program remains, of necessit

in a

lita

space, a verbal pri

at guards against

e penetration of meaning into

e i

lated

examination of individua

y i

lated words. In "Signature

ext," Derrida uses

e example of "green is or"

a construction

at does not constitute its co

ext in it

and further asserts

at "nothing prevents [its] functio

nin

<mo

er co

ext

signi

g marks,"

"'green is or' still signifi

an example of agrammaticality" and for

e "possibility of extraction and citational grafting which belon

e struc

tur

e of

every mark

writin

at i

as a p

oss

ibility of functioning

cut

, at a certain point,

from its 'o

gina

meaning and

om its belonging to a

turable and

cons

aining co

ery sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or

written

...

a sma

or lar

unit

can be cited, (put between quotation

marks);

ereby it can break with every g

en co

, and en

nder

infinitely new co

exts in an ab

lutely non

turable f

hion

...

ere are

only co

exts witho

any ce

er of ab

lute anchoring. (320, a

uth

or's

emph

J.T. Jacob

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

However,

Sea

e argu

in his re

y to Derrid

"green is o

is not "

rammatica

Derrida insist

but

is simply incoherent, an i

lated phrase

at signifi

nothing: "

quence 'le vert

t ou' does not MEAN an example of

grammatica

ty,

it does not

mean anythin

er it

an example of

grammaticality . .

To mention it is not

e same

to u

it"

e 203, a

uth

or's emph

is). To enclo

within quotation marks

only to draw a

nti

on to or place emph

is on

e words (or "marks

and does not signi

, or if it does, it only signifi

incohere

e a

mpt

toward

production of meaning or a

lf-conscious e

ort toward non-meaning

e phrase h

ext whatsoever, excepting in

e addressor's mind where it can only be deemed e

ith

a linguistic error or an a

empt at a private language.

e e

erpri

lf can be

construed as

lip

sistic beca

e it is only comprehensible to the i

lated

lf,

choosing as it

does to remain i

lated and

incomprehensible

a private language witho

its co

nch

ored in a community's shared discour

. But, for Gadamer (and Wa

ace), a "word

exists only in conver

tion and never e

sts

ere

an i

lated word

but

e totality of

a w

of accounting by means of s

aking and answering" ("Destruktion" 112).

Thu

ace's lexical strat

egy

in Infinite Jest forc

an immediate investi

tion of

individual

rds and a determination of

eir lar

r significance in

e broad weave of

entire tex

e appearance,

en, of

e gh

t-word (and p

tstructura

st term)

"BRICOLAGE" in Gately's con

iousn

ess

(from

e wraith)

t 832) implies bo

th th

engineered whole of

e te

and

e readers' similar assemblage or reconstruction of

words in

eir own consciousnes

ses

as a linguistic exerci

which is

e analogue of

conver

tion.

e forced le

cal engageme

with Infinite J

in its essential demand on

e reader to anal

yze

individual words and apply

em in a lar

r co

ext, is

remedying action of being in conversation, and is what tak

lexical investigation beyond

J.T. Jacob

PhD

Departme

of English, McM

ter University

deconstruction

torpor and analytic paral

is over

e i

lated word and further

evacuation of lin

ring meta

ical impressions or vesti

ges.

And, for Gadame

"to be in

a conver

tion

...

means to be beyond onese

lf,

to think with

e o

er and to come back

to oneself

if to ano

er" ("D

truktion" 110). For bo

Gate

and

e reader this

becom

es,

in Gadamer

words,

e "fulfillme

of an intention of consciousn

ess

" which

"does mean 'presence.' It is

e de

arative vo

ix)

ass

igned to

e presence of what

oug

in thinking" (112, a

uth

or's emph

is).

ace's novel is an erudite compendium of etymological referenc

where,

again, geist can al

be read

'spirit' and, by e

ension,

~'~

Zeitgeis

"th

e spirit of

e a

ge"-

clea

y no mistake in a novel

at al

seeks to undermine

e co

emporary

erican

pirit' of iron

partic

arly, for Wa

ace,

manifested in curre

ction. It is

further no coinc

ence

cande

a, Jr.

(fr

e Latin incand

cere- 'to hine

white

'-which

adds to his gh

tly

pect) is an a

eur film-make

adding emph

is to his

uth

al presenc

Moreove

canden

, Jr. is

equently referred to

"appropriation artist"

t 23) in terms of his intertextual film-making which explains

both his dire

or-h

tile commandeering of

e narrative and

e novel's own nea

infinite interte

xt-h

e conflat

and subsum

er vo

and aes

etic practic

in his

monolithic telling. Hal further comme

at his fa

er w

an "am

ingly shit

editor

of his own stuff' (94

which ca

s a

ention to

e enormity of Infinite J

and a

foo

ote to

cande

Jr.

film

ography cites

hum

orous pseudo

-j

ournal articl

James

lncanden

Onc

e Produced

e Genuinely

Ori

ginal or

ropriated or Nonde

vative

Thin

g?"' (990 n. 2

. It is u

ful

to reca

ace's stateme

at "certain novels not only c

out for critical interpretations

but

actua

y try to dire

("Empty" 217, emph

is adde

, which is certainly the case

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

with Infinite Jest.

their Performance, Culture, and Identity, Elizabeth Fine and Jean

Speer

chart

intertextuality

the power

narrators to create meaning and project cultural values

through different renditions

the same traditional ghost story

....

These

studies provide examples

the process

'entextualization' and

'recontextualization' in which a performance may be detached from one

social situation (entextualized, decentered) and performed in another

social situation (recontextualized, recentered). (qtd. in Kallendorf 71)

Kallendorf calls this the "echo of a shared discourse" (70), anrl tt

between Infinite Jest's

very

much

alive mediator/wraith and Shakespeare and a legion of other artists, literary

and visual, and between the auteur's consciousness and the reader's

that

a ghostly

discourse

shared.

The

(Sinistral) Machine in the (Sinister) Ghost

very good clue

afforded when a sinistral sign

disco

vered"-An

onymous ('Sinistral' qtd. in

the OED).

"0"

(Jest 3).

the suspenseful episode in which

Don

Gately,

fornK;.

cat-burglar, drug addict,

and current night staffer,

shot outside the

Ennet

House drug and alcohol rehabilitation

center, the narrative takes

the quality

reportage.

That

is,

the narrative

told

the

wraith in a conversational tone

that

personal and familiar

that

the illusion of

'hearing' this ghost-story (literally, a story told by a ghost)

is,

in-deed, arresting.

The

strategic use

the German word Brockengespen tphanom ("breaking into ghost") in

note 38,

noted above (Jest 994),

even more significant

observe

that

gespenst

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

resides in the middle

this phrase, just

the wraith

centrally located in the narrative

both

the character Incandenza, Jr. and

the text's mediator; the wraith ruptures the

text itself, literally breaking it into ghostliness.

The

wraith's textual presence itself

subtle throughout except for the overt hospital episode,

but

Wallace provides one subtle

clue besides the reader's recognition

that

what

received

is,

fact, told instead of merely

presented, or shown, in the Jamesian sense. Twenty-seven of the novel's many

unnumbered chapters and subsections are specifically marked with a circular symbol with

a narrow blackened crescent

(0);

each symbol, or meniscus, signifies the overt mediating

presence of the wraith in

that

episode; all other sections are either narrated in the first

person or are otherwise mediated without the denuded presence

the wraith;

that

is,

all

mediated, the polyphonic voices collated,

the wraith,

but

the meniscus-symbol

segments signify

immediately told narrative-and the immediacy of presence-rather

than

a presented narration.9

The

narrative

dialogic, yet also complexly monologic in

the sense

that

the wraith assembles the many voices through his own voice; and the

narrator

also

both

heterodiegetic and homodiegetic at once, being simultaneously a

(deceased) character and also its narrator. Sean Burke writes 1

hat

absolute authorial

erasure

impossible (echoing Wayne Booth's

contention

that

an "author

can

disguise

himself,"

but

"can never choose to disappear") (qtd. in Ricoeur 188), iffor nothing else,

because the "author operates

a principle

uncertainty in the text, like the

Heisenbergian scientist whose presence invariably disrupts the scientificity

the

observation" (Burke 190). "Himself"s narration thus directly influences characters and

manipulates events in such a Heisenbergian fashion-in a "Heisenbergian dimension" (Jest

831)-as

his perceptions, reporting/editorializing, and consequences of his actions

former character

cannot

'cut

out' of the narrative; they are vitally interlocked.

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Wallace thus creates a character/narrator who

inseparable from the raw events. This

vital to Wallace's aesthetic

conjoining writer and readerly consciousnesses. In "Tense

Present," he remarks

that

"even in the physical sciences,

ever

~hing

from

quantum

mechanics to Information Theory has shown

that

an act of observation

itself part

the

phenomenon observed and

analytically inseparable from it" (46). Both the writer's

consciousness alters the textual phenomenon (via the wraith) and the reader's

consciousness, the "reader's own

life

'outside' the story changes the story" (McCaffery

141). Wallace notes

that

"you could argue

at it affects

ly 'her [the reader's] reaction

to the story' or 'her take

the story.' But these things are the story" (141, interviewer's

emphasis). Wallace's title to his Harper's essay even, with the calculated inversion

'present tense' to "tense present," itself calls attention to the 'tense presence' of both

writer's and reader's consciousnesses-and Infinite Jest's mediator/wraith's peculiar abiding

presence

both (former) character and narrating (tense/hostile) presence, a "double-

voicing" presence (Phelan 60).

The

wraith

both

present

till

recedes throughout,

miming his sudden appearances and disappearances in the hospital episode.

The

signification of these sporadic meniscus symbols

is,

again, lexical. This clue appears

throughout

but

in no episode more significantly

than

the wraith's appearance to the

hospitalized Gately, where the wraith telepathically transmits one

many narratively

integral words into Gately's hallucinating mind in caps: "MENISCUS"

(kg

832). Much

Wallace's reader's participatory ethos

derived through lexical investigation-that

is,

simply keeping a dictionary nearby, for

Cioffi fittingly observes,

he novel sends even

the relatively well-educated to the dictionary dozens, if not scores

times" and even

then

"some words remain elusive" (167-168). Meniscus has seven definitions, two

which are

germane here: "1. a crescent-shaped body; crescent moon (rare);

a lens convex

one

----

---

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Departme

of English, McMaster University

side a

concave on

e o

prope

e convexo-concave form

...

but

en applied

e concavo-convex,

e two being

metim

distinguished

converging and

diverging meni

us r

pectivel

(OED). Infinite J

ays

e concave-convex motif

througho

, appearing m

t memorably in

Jr.'s experime

al film-making and

with his va

lf-inve

ed len

ses.

Moreover, No

rth

erica it

lf is reconfigured and

renamed

tion of No

rth

erican

(O.

N.A.N

.-a

int

ended pun) with

a portion of

e north-easte

Unit

for

cefully ceded to Canada;

ne, ca

th th

e "Great Concavity/Grand Convexite" (1032 n. 177) depending on one's

perspective, is a wa

ed-off dumping ground for

can w

te.10

Alth

ough

fir

definition of meni

y corr

ponds to

e text's sporadic cr

mbol

I am

particula

y co

ed with

cond definition

e wraith,

narrative presence a

'embodied' litera

meniscu

foca

zes

and prese

s a

textual mate

for it is his

presence

at brin

e submer

d, textual a

uth

orial-consciousn

ess

(concavity) and

merges it

e reader's exte

al con

iousn

ess

(convexity

e two meni

i diver

and conver

simultaneously througho

, enacting

e lexical equivale

of a

conver

tion: "and we converse"

t 131).

sk of di

ating

e g

shot epi

de's linguistic power, I will neve

rth

ess

summari

it: Gately is

rced to protect one of

e r

s of his ha

lf-w

hou

thr

ee Canadian terrorists. He succ

ess

fully

s o

two of

em and suffers a g

shot

wound from

e third; while

e shooter is rendered temporarily vulnerable

sustaining ejected cordite powder in his face,

e o

watc

hin

g r

ide

s subdue him.

at is crucial is

e ma

er in which

e epi

de is (re)prese

for it is not 'shown'

udo-o

ectively

e reader using conventional third-per

n narration,

but

is simply

stor

at is,

ere is an overwhelming

nsation of not being im

inati

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

present, or even 'seein

e eve

r co

ends

e reader can. As

e e

unf

e mediator/wraith car

ully describ

e entire scen

Gately's ph

ical action

and

e o

er r

rds and action

who are engaged in parking

eir cars on

opp

ite side

e street according to a municipal bylaw.

e wraith's reportage is it

filmic a

he mim

his own

t) film-making aes

etic of ensuring

at "e

ith

whole e

ertainme

or el

if it w

n't

u could bloody we

hear

eve

single performer's voice"

t 835)

at a

e res

s' actions and voices

are acco

unt

ed for and heard during

e telling

Gately's

g!:-_

He further editoria

zes

and interrupts

e scene with remarks like, "it's not

much

thin

slow

break

into

es"

(608), signifying his film-maker's perception of

e scene, and "a

this

appraisa

s taking only second

it only tak

time to

st it" (609), emph

izing

e telling

e eve

instead of

e illu

reade

y perception of immediac

of im

inatively

'seeing'

e event. As Gately me

y prepar

for

ght, he twice suffers

"Remembe

r-Wh

etming" (6

10)

, fears of

e o

come and memo

om his criminal p

at, if indul

d in, would poss

ibly

e him to

ee. After

ese

oug

e wraith

twice in

"this line of thinking is intolerable" (610, 611),

ereafter Gately steels his

resol

for

ght.

at is narratologica

y significa

e wraith's very

narration influences Gately's beh

ior and impli

ese words are in

rted into

Gately's own con

iousness just

are simultaneously for

··

he reader, and which al

rves to foreshadow

e later h

pital

ene where

mut

e and immobile Gately is

ubj

ed to

e wraith

"gh

t-words" (832, 922)

eard' in Gately's "inte

al brain-

voice" (831). It is perhaps worthwhile me

nti

oning Christine

ooke-Rose's assertion, in

her study of

Turn

e Screw,

ere is "nothing in gh

t-lore

at forbids

oug

ht-tr

ansference" (398 n.

10)

e mediator/wra

ith

rts further

eas and

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

thoughts into Gately and the other, surrounding characters,

that

influence the actual

narrative integrity and continuity. These moments are signally prefaced with the

leitmotif, "it occurs" (610ff), and are repeated later

when

the wraith manifests himself to

Gately directly in the hospital (82 7ff). This leitmotif explains why Gately rather suicidally

approaches the terrorists to begin with when he knows he will assuredly be shot and

killed: "it occurs to Gately if you

fire

with

Item right up to yvur sighting-eye like

that

won't you get a face full

cordite" ( 610, emphasis added). This passage demonstrates

the interlacing of doubled voices in Wallace's text: Gately's free indirect discourse, his

assumed thought ("won't you get a face full of cordite"),

conjoined with the wraith's

telling; it

both

his thinking and the wraith's suggestion, with the result

that

the wraith

both

narrates/tells and manipulates the narrative's circumstances ("divisions collapse,"

interpolates the wraith here) (612) by suggesting to Gately

that

can

only be shot once

the terrorist will be incapacitated by the cordite. Gately's heroism

implied in the fact

his willingness to, and knowledge

that

will,

sustain

least one shot in order to

rescue the abhorrent Randy Lenz ('lens'). Moreover, the wraith goes to great length to

construct Gately

sanguine before and during the fight; he

progressively described

as:

"of jolly calm" (

0), "almost jolly" ( 611), "of ferocious good

heer" ( 612), "of cheery

competence and sangfroid" ( 614),

he horrifically beats the Canadian terrorists. Yet

after this mediator-constructed cheerfulness,

are informed in a note

that

Gately once

killed a

man

after being sprayed with Mace, "but it was only

accident," reports the

mediator/wraith-yet Gately

said to have experienced a "red curtain of rage" and

have

turned the victim's head "180° around

his neck and had the little Mace

can

all the

way up one nostril" (1078 n. 369). This

but

one inconsistency

many, and suggests

that

the mediator

partial to Gately, and

bent

redeeming his

flaws.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Yet it

the mediator/wraith himself who bears the inherent

flaws,

and infuses the

text with them. His Dogberryesque solecisms are many and humorous: "Grand Mall

epilepsy"

78) and "Morris code"

(27

5).

other times, his linguistic solecisms translate

into behavioral

lecisms, and are sinister. Like many

Infinite Jest's characters, he

once charming and hideous.

appreciate his technical abilities and brilliance (in

optics, film-making, genera

st erudition, and, not least, sophisticated story-telling), yet

are repulsed

his alcoholism

(as

lncandenza, Jr.), sexism and xenophobia

(as

the

wraith): halfway-house resident Charlotte

Treat

referred to

the wraith

a "clueless"

"poor bitch" (271); Canadians are "fucking Nucksters" or simply, "Nucks" (215); "puke

white Irish are

every corner" (477); a tennis

ayer's face

depicted

having

"Eskimoid structure"

(26

7); African Americans are disparaged throughout: a character

"shakes his hand in the complex

way

Niggers" (

444);

Asian Americans are derisively

referred to

"Orientals" and "Chinese," their walking

"scuttling" (716); Asian

languages are ridiculed

"monkey-language[s]

,"with

regrettable commentary like,

"evoluti

proved your Orientoid tongues were closer to your primatallanguages

than

not" (716) and "it

was

universally well known

that

your basic Orientoid types carried

their earthly sum-total of personal wealth with them at all times. As in

their person

while they scuttled around" (718).

The

wraith, however, compensates for his darker

aspect

seeding his story with countless references to left-hand things, and constantly

mentions the words "SINISTRAL" and "sinister" (the former

another ghost-word)

(832).

The

sinistral/sinister connection works in Infinite Jest

several compatible leve

ls.

'Sinistral' means, among other things, "darkly suspicious," "illegitimate," and "pertaining

to the left hand or side" (OED) .

extension, 'sinister'

defined variously

"not

straightforward," "prejudicial, adverse, unfavorable";

information, it

"given with

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

intent to deceive or mislead"; it connotes both "erring" and "erroneous"; all in addition to

its more conventional meanings of "situated

the left side of the body" and "relating to

the use

the left hand" after its etymological cousin, 'sinistral' (OED). Both words'

definitions signify the nature

Infinite Jest's narration and its mediator: the

mediator/wraith

at times rankly prejudicial,

erroneous, and highly mischievous.

What

most striking, however,

'sinister"s most obscure definition, etymologically

drawn from heraldry: "forming, or situated on, the left half

a shield (regarded from the

bearer's point of view)" (OED). Infinite Jest

a mise

abyme narrative with the

rumored existence of

five

"Infinite Jest"

films,

all

them created

Incandenza,

Jr.

The

crucial one, "Infinite Jest (V),"

compelling to watch

that

it renders its viewers

catatonic, and

searched

for

two groups, a Quebecois terrorist organization which

plans to copy the film-copies

can

only be made from the master, however-and

disseminate it throughout the United States to avenge the "territorial reconfiguration"

(1032 n. 177), and a C.I.A.-analogue organization (the O.U.S.-"Office of Unspecified

Services") (88)

out

foil

the terrorists' plot.

The

film,

much like the novel itself,

singularly entertaining and incurably addictive.

Don

Gately's appearance and

circumstances place him within the heraldic tradition, albeit in a millennial American

context: he has a "Prince Valiantish haircut" (277, 477) (with perhaps

intertextual

nod to Prince Valiant's author, Hal Foster, after Wallace's middle name, his maternal

grandfather's surname-F.P. Foster-to whom the novel

dedicated);

a child Gately

plays under the name "Sir Osis ofThuliver" (cirrhosis

the liver-a condition from which

Gately's alcoholic mother dies) (449); his mother calls him her "good sir knight" (448);

and, in a 'heroic' context, note 254 informs the reader

that

"Gately's made it

iron

point never again ever to run, once he got straight" ( 104 5 n.

L.S4),

which refers to the

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

fight scene. Gately's own body

inscribed with the twentieth-century's equivalent

street-heraldic iconography. During a prison term, prior to the novel's narrated events,

Gately etches a "jailhouse tatt"

his right-hand wrist, a "plain ultraminimal blue squar

(210) which

"canted and has sloppy extra blobs

three of the corners" (211), and

the inside

ofhis

left forearm he has a

loppy cross" tattooed

his cellmate (210).

The

description

the tattoos

oddly sustained, with the blue-square tattoo mentioned three

times in a single par

raph and the cross mentioned

but

once. But Gately

"right

handed" (211), which raises the question

why he performs the square tattoo with his

left hand instead

rendering a more precise cross-instead of the cellmate's "sloppy"

version

(210)-on

his left forearm: attention

twice called to Gately's sinistral aspect.

Gately's inverted tattoos are furthermore symbolic of a heraldic "rebatement

honor,"

nine marks reserved

"deface the arms

one found guilty

offence against the

standards of chivalry" (Franklyn 2 74). Gately's offence

cowardice in abandoning his

mother, first, when she

physically abused

Gately's step-father and, later, when he

abandons her prior

her death. Two colors are specifically reserved for marks of

disgrace: sanguine and tenne ('stain'; tawny, orange-brown); the latter color al

happens

be the reverse spelling

Gately's rehabilitation center, 'Ennet' House. Gately

referred to synaesthetically throughout in relation to the color red, and his tattoos are

inverted

his 'arms':

"an

inscutcheon

[is]

reversed for a deserter" (Franklyn 276).

The

official symbol

abatement

honor for cowardice

the gore sinister sanguine

76);

and it

only after Gately has achieved sobriety and

"wounded in service to somebody

who did

not

deserve service" (Jest 855)

that

the color red

associatively removed from

him and replaced with associations with the color blue (particularly sky-b

e), or azure,

which signifies "renown and beauty" (Friar 344).

The

wraith further emphasizes

both

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

square things and large heads throughout, linking

them

to Gately's canted tattoo.

Incongruously interpolated comments lik

"has anybody mentioned Gately's head

square? It's almost perfectly square, massive and boxy and mysticetously blunt: the head

somebody who looks like he likes to lower his head and charge" ( 4 76),

an oft-

repeated refrain.

The

leitmotif appears with other characters

well:

candenza, Jr.'s

(supposed) second son Mario has a grotesquely oversized head (1022 n. 117); Elizabeth

Tavis

said to have a "huge square head" (901); Hal Incandenza "adapt[s] his [tennis]

game to a large head [racquet]" in distinction to his opponent, who "was born with a

large head" (678), and

forth. Square shapes and box-like objects in Infinite Jest are a

analogues for our own existential cranial boxes, our minds, a metaphor

that

Maurice

Merleau-Ponty was fond

of:

"I am never in effect enclosed

...

object in a box"

(Phenomenology 360), and, "we have to reject the age-old assumptions

that

put

the body

in the world and the seer in the body, or, conversely, the world and the body in the seer

in a box" (Visible 138). It would make sense, then, for the wraith to construct Gately

performing the "blue square" tattoo, which requires "half a day and hundreds

individual jabs" (210), instead of the cross. Gately's

lf-mutil

thus symbolizes 'street

heraldry,' after a fashion, just

knife-owners are easily identifiable to the street-savvy

Gately: "one forearm's hair has a little hairless patch, which Gately knows well spells

knife-owner" (276). Gately, then,

a walking escutcheon with a blue square (with dots

at three corners), cross, and enormous, potentially charging-even jousting

(jesting?)-head. Heraldic references further appear beyond Gately: an Alcoholics

Anonymous member has the "A.A.'s weird little insignia

a triangle inside a circle"

for

tattoo and A.A. members themselves are synonymously known

"White Flaggers" (445).

Most significantly, a "set

squeegees"

mysteriously found hung in the tennis academy's

].T. Jacob

PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

dining ha

"in a kind of saltire" (632). A saltire is an "ordinary

one of

nin

e princ

heraldic charges,

which bend-sinister is include

a "

sion of a bend [\] and a bend

sinister (I] giving an

X-

shaped cross" (Franklyn. 292). Ea

y in

e nove

bend and bend-

sinister are typ

raphica

y rendered

\ /"

est 62), and a new A.A.

Whit

agger h

"deep diagonal furrow in his fac

extending

eye

brow

left lip-come

856).

at is particula

y notable here is

e squeegee

ltire

-hun

g by

wra

ith

-s

ignifi

Gately's own

ltire ta

oo (le

arm) a

further ca

s a

ention to his

ill

egitimacy

bend sinister is a "sign of b

tard

(OED). Significations of

ill

egitima

further co

ect with lncanden

, Jr.'s (supposed)

n Mario, pr

umably

ill

egitimate

n of his uncle,

Tavis, usurper o

fln

canden

, Jr.'s Headm

ter

ition, wif

and home, a

indicated by

e gh

t-words, "LEVIRATE MARRIAGE"

(832). Infinite J

t is

LeClair observ

deformed in its

inly

pect and "resembl

prodigious bod

(35)

but

in no w

an in its awkwa

division be

een necessa

81 pages) and suppleme

ary e

ndn

(98 pages), a sinistral division of paramo

unt

importance fo

recalling

e 'sinister' portion of the heraldic shield and its definition's

caveat, "regarded from

e bearer's point of vie

(OED),

e book,

en, itself is

encoded

siniste

From

e mediating wraith's perspective (a textual conc

ity),

not

are litera

y sinistral, whereas for

e 'viewer' or reader (a convexity)

are

sinistral

t "DEXTRAL"

t 836),

at is, rig

ht-h

anded and "auspicious."

heraldry,

e dexter al

ways

surmo

unt

e sinister (particula

y in saltir

and this surmounting

ends

ace's

dulous r

for

e reader, where we may

say

e dexter

(reade

is a

ays

itioned above

e sinister (a

uth

or).

Thi

s is b

t signaled by

e fact

e notes section co

ains bo

th th

e wraith's own heraldic

mbol

'heading'

(0)-

an incresce

meni

us- and

e word

"Not

and Errata" (983), which emph

85 J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McMaster University

'sinister"s seconda

definition of "erring; erroneou

That

e nove

s weave is it

incomplet

and

e mediator-wraith is ve

fallible, is further signified by referenc

e Lindisfa

e G

pels

-H

al h

a dormitory-room carpet reproduction of one of

pels' carpet pages

t 950).

e G

pels,

Janet Bac

ouse ob

, co

ain

alm

t imperceptible "gaps and discrepancies" in

e complex interlacing d

ign out of

e a

uth

or's practice of humility in "avoiding ab

lute perfection" (55) . To create a

'perfect' work risked o

ending God, as William Gaddis ob

rves of this practice in

al carpe

ts,

" "made with a conscio

in order not to o

end

e creator of

Perfection by emulating his grand design" (Gaddis 906). For Infinite J

e minute gaps

and discrepanci

rve to underscore

e fa

of mediatio

and mediation

om a very

fallible, ve

hum

an consciousn

ess

e motif of interlacin

aps

e domina

feature of

e G

pel

n-it

lf is further highlig

ed as Infinite J

primary

television-broadc

ting ne

ork's name is none o

an "Inte

ace"

t 990 n. 24).

e G

pels

ain two versions of

e gospel texts,

e o

ginal Latin and an

"An

glo

-S

axon interlinear gl

oss

added

o and a half centuries late

17). It

would see

en,

at Infinite J

t mim

this double textuality with its core narrative

structure and with its interlinear, inte

acing pa

ern, or meta-te

aith.

entire narrative apparatus is

convoluted and co

abulated

at it represe

addition to a deformed body- a hulking machine of fals

ifi

ed language ("the machine

language" of

e mind) (117) ,

e gh

t's own tellin

e bo

likea

e and horrid

wraith

eaks him

lf through

e dial

istic construction of his own making

-hi

s own

directing

epic a

eur film-make

"Him

lf,"

thu

speaks him

lf.

As readers we

neverthel

ess

watch/hear him narrate

-t

his gh

t-stor

y-o

n grand scale, watching him

ect our own

rdid potentialiti

Jere

Hawthorn ob

J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

Narrative focu

ses

our a

ention on to a stor

quence of eve

rough

e dire

mediation of a 'telling' which we bo

stare at and

rough, which is at once ce

ntr

al and peripheral to

e experience of

story, bo

and prese

e con

iousness of

ose being to

story

stare at

e 'telling' while our minds are

fix

ed upon what

telling points towards. We look at

e pointing . . .

but

our minds are

fix

upon what is pointed at.

(vii)

Infinite Jest is an exemplary mirror-te

and, in

e J

cean

, a grand book of

love (an epithalamium)

at would force us to confro

our own hideous

pects while

seeing

earing

ese very simila

human

-as

pects

we read, a

the while forcing

a suspension of judgme

er Robert Langbaum

"sy

mpa

y versus judgme

(7 5),

at is o

en required of

e reader/viewer in dramatic monologu

, in which readers

must

fir

st inhabit

e text and impartia

lly

hear/see

e speaker before judging.

mediator/

aith

fir

st creat

en inhabits his own te

"complete presence, " a

narrato

al presence

at is a "machine in

e gh

t 160, 988

24), a textual

presence

at,

for Gatel

speaks in

e reader

n "internal brain-voice"

It is

no surprise,

en,

at a suppleme

ary

ough obscure definition for 'wraith' is al

"fetch," with 'fetch' it

lf containing

e nove

s rai

n: a "far-reaching e

ort"

ass

encyclopedic novel it

lf; and "contrivance, dod

ge,

stratagem" in terms of

e created

illusion of an actual and

ry credible fictive world, and

tch

a slang

nonym for

none other

but

t.' A furthe

admittedly indirect, reference to sinistra

emer

ges

an ekphr

tic

se.

In his essay, "

amorph

s,"

Jacqu

Lacan discu

sses

foreshortened

distortion in Ho

ein

famous portrait,

e Ambassadors. '

amorph

is defined

"a distorted projection or drawing of anything,

made

at v.hen viewed

om a

partic

ar point, or by re

ection

om a suitable mirro

it appears r

ar and prope

proportioned; a deformation

and to 'anamorphose' is to "disto

into a monstrous

projection" (

OED

). In Ho

ein's portrait, two

ntlemen are displayed prominently

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

within

e mi

en scene

at signifies

e vanit

worldly accomplis

Jutting into

e frame of

e painted spac

nearly breaking

e lower left-

hand quadra

, is an unusual and unidentifiable o

(when viewed directly) ,

but

Lacan not

, "

e secret

this picture is given at

e mome

when, moving s

ghtly

ay,

little by littl

e le

ft,

en turning around, we see what

e m

ical

oating

signifi

. It re

s our own no

thin

ess,

gure of

e death's hea

(92,

emph

is added). Wa

ace's novel requires a similar left-ward or sinistral moveme

perce

at which is conceale

e entire novel it

lf cal'

read

a similar

represe

ation

vanit

e relentl

ess

t for perfection and fame

Enfield's tennis

aye

rs,

e addicts qu

fir

st, for oblivion and

cape

e reality principle and later

shake

eir substance-abu

habits. References to skulls are innumera

e in

Infinite J

t, which further underscores

e mortality

eme and links it

the Ho

ein

painting in addition to

e emph

is on Ha

et's Yorick, signa

lly

e name of one of

Incanden

za,

Jr.

production compani

es,

"Poor Yo

ck Entertainme

Unlimited" (992 n.

24). Moreover

e k

and

lective u

e word "for

hortene

(954, author

emph

is) draws a

ention

e text

anamorphic quality. But if this co

ection

remains

mewhat tenuou

aith

appropriation

Lacan's essay it

lf removes

doubt. In his essay, Lacan,

surprisingly, links anamorph

is with

allu

ow is it

at nobody h

ever

oug

of co

ecting this with .

ffect of an erection?

ine a ta

oo traced on

xual or

n ad hoc in

e state of repose and

ass

uming its,

if I m

say

so,

developed form in ano

er state. How can we not see her

immane

e geometral dimension

...

mething

mbo

c of

e function of

e lac

appearance of

allic gh

88). Compare Infinite J

amusing appropriation

of Lacan in Ennet Hou

alumnus Calvin

Thru

who h

"on

e sha

" of his "formerly

J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

The

sis, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

professional porn-cartrid

-performer's Unit a ta

that

displ

ays

e m

e initials

when

e Unit is

accid and

e full name CALVIN

THRUST

when hyperemi

(208, a

uth

emph

is). Wa

ace seeds his narrative with ple

y of gags, and this m

no more

an a Lacanian pun on Hamlet

at this too too sullied

esh would melt

. " (1.2.129). If no

thin

g el

, however,

e reference

rves to emphas

e fact of

narrative distortion and

e presence of

e gh

tly a

uth

e Do

e Police in Differe

es"

s facere me

cog

is ex veterl' ("You

ked me

make a new work o

e old") -

Jerom

e Lindisfarne Gospels (qt

in Backhouse 51).

In such a lar

-scale novel, with its relentless appropriation of co

empora

and

Modernist texts

-lik

e Joyce's Ul

yss

("scrotum-tig

ening cold" and

adam P

er Jo

e's

crotumtig

nin

g sea" and "met him pike hoses

est 112)

oyce 4,

221)-it

is of no surpri

at this should eventua

y lead to a tan

ntial relationship with

T.S.

Eli

ot's

e W

te Land (1922).

My concern is not

much

e mome

s of

intertextual dovetailing between

e two work

but

e litera

ry-

cultural

circumstances

ve birth to

ese o

ginal texts a

e mode of narrative voicing

within

In an act of painstaking litera

holarship, Leven

e litera

climate

ve birth to

Eli

long poem by cons

ering his critical writin

perio

Writing for

e Dial in 1922,

Eli

ot dismi

sse

d two co

empora

nth

ologi

poetry in notic

at anal

yze

e then-co

emporary London litera

scene more

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

the actual literary compilations themselves. Eliot criticizes "literary London" for its

aesthetic "caution, a sort

worldly prudence," its "lack

ambition, laziness, and refusal

to recognize foreign competition"

that

lead

a "composition

inertias" (qtd. in

Levenson 166).

this series of 'attacks,' known

the "London Letter," Eliot would go

to criticize London's literati for their "instinct for safety" (166).

this time Eliot

observed a "strain between a poet who cares

experiment and a culture which asks to be

flattered and soothed" (166); the experimental poet

that

Eliot became, having just

written

The

Waste Land, sensed with unease the reception

that

his work was about to

kindle during a time

bland poetics and cultural lethargy. Levenson perceptively

observes

that

The

Waste Land, in addition to its obvious poetic strengths, "stands

itself

a doctrinal act, the poem

a critical gesture" (168). As

have seen thus far with

Infinite Jest,

that

novel too, although functioning in different cultural circumstances

than

Eliot encountered,

also a "critical gesture" in its stance against a poisonously ironic

American culture, one

that

also, to borrow Eliot's words, suffers from a "composition

inertias," stagnating in the

rut

the perpetual avant-garde, and in Infinite Jest's

challenging of dominant theoretical discourses (the

death

of the author). While Eliot

originally worked against a literary culture

anti-experimentation

that

opposed the

avant-garde

out

a smug self-satisfaction, Wallace works

out

of,

and in opposition to, a

culture

that

perpetually enthralled with the avant-garde and the quest for aesthetic

novelty.

2001, Wallace wrote a review-itself stylistically prescient and

experimental-for Rain Taxi Review

Books (an avant-garde literary publication)

new journal,

The

Best of the Prose Poem:

International Journal (now defunct).

The

notice

written in a bulleted, point-form style; each point

preceded

a statement and

full

colon, writes Wallace,

the "antecolonic words" do

not

"count

against "R.T.'s rigid

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster Ur iversity

1,000-word limit" (22). Hence Wallace's "tactical reason"

for

such a review, and the style

of review itself Wallace dubs, a "new, transgeneric critical form," the "Indexical Book

Review" (22). Wallace opens

pointing

out

the journal's physical dimensions, total

words and, humorously enough, its weight before getting to his critical discussion of the

new journal and the genre

the prose poem. Two

ofWa

ace's remarks are especially

instructive, and demonstrate the differences in aesthetic attitude between Eliot's and

Wallace's respective eras:

Basic aesthetic/ideological raison d'etre

the above forms [the Nonfiction

Novel, the Prose Poem, the

Lyric

Essay, etc.]: to comment on, complicate,

subvert, defamiliarize, transgress against, or otherwise fuck with received

ideas

genre, category, and (especially) formal conventions/constraints.

(See

analogy the historical progression rhymed accentual-syllabic verse

->blank

verse->

vers libre, etc.) . (22, author's emphasis and symbols)

And

the following point:

Big

paradox/oxymoron behind this raison and the current trendiness of

transgeneric forms: In fact, these putatively "transgressive" forms depend

heavily

received ideas of genre, category, and formal conventions, since

without such

estab

shed context there's nothing much to transgress

against. T ransgeneric forms are therefore most viable-most interesting,

least fatuous-during eras when literary genres themselves are relatively

stable and their conventions well-established and -codified and no one

seems much disposed to fuck with them. And ours

not

such an era.

(22)

Whereas Eliot confronted a literary culture conventional and stable to the point of

deadening the national literature, Wallace engages one in which experimentation

itself

the rule, one

that

seeks to rebel against all literary structures and conventions. 12 Further,

Wallace debunks much

the

attendant

silliness inherent in the creation and

promulgation of new genres (one need only look to some of the titles listed in Wallace's

review for confirmation, such

as,

"The Newly Renovated Opera House

Gilligan's

Island" (22) and the quest for aesthetic novelty

observing

that

"most formal

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

conventions themselves start

out

'experiments"' (24), and

that

the prose poem's

very absence of formal restraint

that

makes it, in Wallace's eyes,

"non-urgent" and

"incoherent"

-most

of the poems "literally

fall

apart under the close, concentrated

attention

that

poetry's supposed to demand" (24). This "problem," Wallace writes,

endemic to many

the trendy literary forms

that

identify/congratulate

themselves

transgressive.

And

it's easy to see why. In regarding formal

conventions primarily

"rules" to rebel against, the Professional

Transgressor

fails

to see

that

conventions often become conventions

precisely because

their power and utility, i.e., because

the paradoxical

freedoms they permit the artist who understands how to use (not merely

"obey") them. (24, author's emphasis)

Nor, for Wallace, do transgressors tend to see

that

transgressing

vital and powerful only

in the service

something greater

than

the ideal

transgression (and the writerly self);

transgression-or "renegade avant-gardism" (McCaffery 132)-for its own sake merely calls

attention to the

author-and

tends to alienate the reader who

relegated to the margins.

rule-breaking, Wallace remarks:

but

what if Leibniz and Newton had wanted to divide

zero only to show

jaded audiences how cool and rebellious they were? It'd never have

happened, because

that

kind

motivation doesn't yield results. It's

hollow. Dividing-as-if-by-zero

was

titanic and ingenious because it

was

the service of something.

The

math

world's shock was a price they had to

pay,

not

a payoff in itself. (McCaffery 133)

Wallace's indignation

raised

not

because contributors to

The

Best

the Prose Poem

experiment per se,

for

surely no accident

that

he selected the avant-garde Rain Taxi

his forum, consciously addressing

avant-garde readership and using the very avant-

garde methodology

that

these readers esteem-in doing

Wallace deliberately speaks

their dialect.

is,

rather, unjustified experimentation

that

he dismisses, first,

it tends

to result in "mediocre/bad" writing (24) and, second, because it

inevitably infused with

the writers' self-consciousness

Hegelian "being-for-itself'), which results in prose-poetry

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

that

aims at self-congratulatory cleverness instead

urgency, self-originary play over

immediacy and authenticity. It, therefore, attenuates writing from the necessary activity

(inherently of relationships) of

individual relating to the individual's community,

diminishing the synecdochic power

the one being in the many and, inversely, the many

being in the one, into a solipsistic expression of the one relating only to itself. So, the

prose poem,

Wallace finds it in this particular anthology, begins and ends with the

prose-poets themselves, often ending in insipid self-expression of the self-one need only

look at Wallace's humorous statistical comparison

the percentage of poems in the

collection

that

are "about love" and "about cooking": "0.2" for

both

(23): transgression

privileged over content.

14 In this respect, the comparison between Eliot and Wallace

becomes richer, for

The

Waste Land

critical gesture also emerged through Eliot's

aesthetic elaborations which culminated in a "need for an outer authority to restrain

inner caprice" (Levenson 210), both his own

poet and

manifesting itself in the

competing aesthetic movements

the Impressionists, Imagists, Vorticists, Futurists, and

other aesthetic schools. Eliot, Levenson writes, "positions

modem

art against

modem

society; the relation

meant to be antagonistic and therefore tonic; from

modem

social

reality

can only learn how not to be.

Art-even

it may employ superstition, taboo,

myth, dream, irrationality-works these into pattern and supphes what the

modem

world

lacks: coherence, form, control, order" (211, emphasis added).

Modem

and

contemporary reality

fragmented;

come to art to make sense of this dissolution.

The

individual voice

merged into a "single 'simultaneous order"' (212). Levenson writes

presciently of the double bind of the avant-garde:

Avant

garde movements always threaten to disappear, either shattering

into a collection of individualities or ossifying into

old guard.

And

this

because within the avant-garde there inheres a permanent conflict: the

need at once to subvert and to institutionalize.

Without

subversion a

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

movement cannot justify itself; without some institutional stability it

cannot survive. (218)

Eliot's recognition of this paradoxical tension allowed him

manipulate circumstances

intelligently, gaining himself the sobriquets, "the Editor of modernism" and the "chief

agent" of "consolidation," whereas Pound remains the "chief agent" of "provocation"

(218, emphasis added), which further suggests the singular importance of

experimentation with a deference

a tradition (not a servile obeisance to existent

norms) with an eye toward redemption, or reconstructing what has been aesthetically

dismantled. Eliot's t

then, was

"to

oversee the integration

the modernist avant-

garde into the general intellectual

life"

(219), and his genius in

The

Waste Land

is,

part, "leading modernism back towards a rapprochement with England" (211): from

aridity to promise, from torpor to ordered, meaningful flux.

Out

the explosive

experimentation of his long poem, a conflation

English and European and ancient

literary traditions, he defers to the avant-garde, yet there also remains a self-imposed

order

creative constraint

that

results in a synthesis

all

that

was

already once avant-

garde

but

now merged in the Tradition. Eliot recognized

that

the avant-garde has a rich

though temporally limited duration: it must,

necessity,

ossify

into an order

some sort

it achieves acceptance. Adherence to its innovative tenets guarantees for it a

short-though

vibrant-life. Concomitantly, the avant garde

essentially schizophrenic,

with

eye

to the rejected past and another to its vibrant immediacy, for it achieves its

zenith in the present moment and has no place in the future-it

to be absorbed in a

tradition regardless

the tradition into which it

inevitably compounded.

contrast of

The

Waste Land with Infinite Jest I am principally concerned

with aesthetic origins and narratorial voicing,

for

these are the chief hallmarks of both

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

works, and it

through the harmonized disparity

voices

that

both

works achieve their

simultaneous status

art and

critical gestures. Levenson begins his analysis, naturally,

the beginning

Eliot's poem, where most analyses have bogged down (who speaks and

how?),

observing the well-noted transitions between the differing poetic voices: "no

consciousness presides; no single voice dominates. A character appears, looming suddenly

into prominence, breaks into speech, and recedes, having bestowed momentary conscious

perception

the fragmentary scene"

72, emphasis added). This breaking into speech

similar

Infinite Jest's reference to the Brockengespenstphanom (994 n. 38)-'breaking

into ghost'-which in the

context

of the novel indicates the method by which individual

consciousnesses emerge in the text, break forth, speak, and vanish through the sporadic

agency

the wraith. Levenson contends

that

there has

not

been sufficient emphasis

upon "the peculiar angle

vision"

that

governs the opening

The

Waste Land, and

that

because Spring comes particularly and immediately to lilacs (not humankind), and more

specifically from "beneath the ground" amid the tubers and roots where snow acts

cover, the "eye here sees from the point of view

someone (or some thing)

that

buried"-"how else could tubers feed a 'little life'?"

72).

further notes

that

the "little

life" image

culled from James Thomson's "To

Our

Ladies of Death" ("Our Mother

feedeth thus our little life") and, from the successive line,

"That

tum

may feed her

with our death" and,

"One

part of me shall feed a little worm

...

One

thrill sweet grass,

one pulse in bitter weed" (qtd. in Levenson 1 72). From this Levenson posits

that

the

point of view

that

a corpse (172), the vegetal "sprouting

a corpse" (173), and notes

the "fierce irony"

that

"these buried are

not

yet dead" which further implies a "rising from

the grave" (172) and both living-dead speaking subjects and

indifferent presiding

ghostly consciousness in Tiresias. From

The

Waste Land's notes

know

that

Eliot was

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter Un

ersity

influenced by

e a

nth

ropol

ogy

of J

ess

Weston's From Ritual to Romance and Sir

Jam

aze

e Go

en Bough, in which

e la

er "d

crib

a number of my

chronicle

e re

turn

e dead

wandering gh

at ha

unt

e living

and

Leven

n we kn

Eli

ot w

"much preoccupied" with gh

tly returns from

grave

e "dra

s of

e Waste Land co

ain

veral sustained evocations of a dea

at is

e to put an end to life" (173) , not to mention "Little Gidding

s "compound

t" (Eliot 217) which su

gges

ts, although in a later poetic creation, that gh

ts are

relentl

ess

ly prese

Eli

thinking and whi

adds force to

Eli

enigmatic remark

"one ca

ot be sure

at one's own writing h

not been influenced by Poe" (qtd. in

Leven

n 174), su

gges

ting an alm

t automatic writing

om within the

adition. All of

which leads Leven

n to ca

e W

te Land "a kind of gh

t.MQiy

with protagonists

unt

ed and haunting,"

at co

ains a "distinctly di

mbodied

pect to

consciousn

ess

. which wa

tch

es without being watched and seems not

much to

inh

abit

rld

oat upon it" (174, emph

is added).

e r

ulta

problem,

however, is

at even such a coge

anal

Leven

n's, in which

e poem is

determined to consist of

oss

of clear boundaries"

articularly between life and

dea

e "di

mbodied character of consciousn

ess

," and of

neral

ation

(175), it

lf breaks down without a

ention gi

n to

e poem's

inh

ere

"problem of

er" (176) sty

stica

y and in its motif

"notice

at we do not

lve

e problem of

rder by making it

e problem of a di

rdered

' (176).

Leven

n, thu

turn

s to an examination of

Eli

doctoral di

sse

rtation on

philosopher F.H.

adl

a means of unlocking

e W

te Land

fundame

properti

es.

adley's philosoph

in Appearance and Reality, is a peculiar strain of

phenomenol

ogy

in which a

reality is

fir

t based on "immediate experience, " a

tate of

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

experience prior to any division

self and other, or self and world, a state in which

consciousness

distinguishable from its object" (177). Levenson calls Bradley's work

effort to "eradicate the hypostatization

subject and object" (177). Central to this

Bradley's Absolute, a "consummate oneness"

that

the "final synthesis

all diversity,

the supra-rational state past the reach

common sense which integrates and transcends

contradiction," a "reality

that

transcends the self and transcends rationality" (178). Eliot

later abandoned Bradley's Absolute-a "metaphysical monster" for William James-as

"embarrassingly insufficient" because it

is,

Bradley himself conceded, ultimately

unobtainable (180). He did, however, hold

to Bradley's concept of the "finite center,"

defined

a "unity

consciousness, a unity in itself, the whole world

it exists

for

individual consciousness" (180) .

easy to see the appeal

the finite center

for

Eliot-who later distilled it into his "monad" (after Leibniz), a "single momentary unity

consciousness, the perceptual (and conceptual) totality

a single point

view"

that

temporarily "constitutes the whole of reality" (180-81)-which,

Levenson notes,

akin

to Pound's conception of the image, "an intellectual and emotional complex in

instant

time" ( 181), and

manifesting itself in the severally distinct and flashing

consciousnesses of

The

Waste Land.

One

problem remained, however, for Eliot in his

integration

the finite center into his aesthetic,

that

critical accusations

either

"cosmic poetry" ("flights of rhetorical excess") or "egoism" ("personal idiosyncracy") in

poetic composition (182-83)

the Imagists were being accused

excess

one hand

and "triviality," or poets obscuring their works with themselves (183),

the other.

Fundamentally, for Eliot, once the Absolute

discarded, the risk becomes the "loss

extra-individual standards and a collapse into solipsism," for the finite center, itself

isolated and containing all

that

real,

cannot

be "separated from illusion" (183).

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

further eluc

ating

e dilemm

Leven

n quot

from

adl

(the quotation it

included

a note to

e W

te Land) (Eliot 86 n. 411), 15 and at

considering

Leven

n too long, I reproduce

adley's stateme

in full:

My exte

tions are no l

ess

private

yse

an are my

oug

or my feelin

gs.

either case my expe

ence fa

s within my own circle, a

circle closed on

e outside; and, with a

its eleme

s alike, every sphere is

opaque to

e o

ers which surround it . . . .

brie

regarded

existence which a

ears in a

ul,

e whole world for ea

is peculiar a

private to

ul.

83)

For Bradl

ey,

ere is no problem

lipsism resolves it

lf within

e Ab

lute

84),

but

for Eliot

ere is no such easy retrea

exce

into

lipsistic mind.

Eliot,

thu

s, p

tulated a

lution in his

"th

eory of points of vie

84).

Eli

ot's

is akin

Witt

nstein's sustained argume

against

e concept of a private

language, or

e problem

er minds (see Philosophical Investigations §244-271),

h essentia

y dismi

sse

e p

oss

ibility

a private language by virtue

impossibility of such a language to become unmoored from one's own original language,

one

at is relational and shared with o

ers of one's di

urs

community

-wh

ere

lf-

expr

ess

ion of a private word (

say,

for pain,

an example

that

Witt

nstein u

ses

)

still refers to language o

e this private language: "jusification consists in appealing

mething independe

" (§ 265). Leven

n summa

zes

Eliot's

ows: "while it

is true

at, within

e confin

of any given finite ce

er, reality and unrea

ty,

ubj

ectivity and o

ectivit

ot be distinguished, a compa

n among a number of

finite ce

ers mak

such distinctions possibl

uth

or's emph

is).

lf, in

Eli

ot's word

"passes from one point of view to ano

er" (qtd. in Leven

n 184) and is,

thu

s, contin

upon o

er finite ce

ers, o

er s

ubj

ectiviti

es,

"so

e rea

does not

e in the o

ect it

lf,

but

e exte

of the relations which

e o

98 J.T. Jacobs, PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

possesses" (qtd. in Leven

n 18

emph

is adde

. Meaning is only

tablished in a

plurality of con

iousnesses,

lf in relation to o

lvef. "con

iousn

ess

" tempered

by a "tradition of consciousnesse

( 18

Eli

ot's vision,

erefore, was not one of

"individuals versus a

uth

ority,

but

of an authority composed of individuals

"-indi

vidual

poets and

eir works,

once avant-garde in

eir original rig

, comprising a "totality of

individual

and a "requisite a

uth

ority" (186), an infinite ce

Thu

Eliot stat

in a

not

e one-eyed mercha

"melts into"

e Phoenician

Tir

ator" (specte

even) who "unit[

] a

e r

t" (Eliot

);

in this

se,

e "many

become one" (Leven

n 188). Yet how can this be

so,

ks Leven

n, and how does this

reconcile

e "poem

poly

ony" (188), how can "difference be compatible with unit

? Leven

n perceptively not

at "individual experience

individual per

naliti

are not impenetrable," a

lth

ough e

stentia

y i

late

ey are never "who

For

Eli

with Wa

ace, language is

e tool

at penetrate:; consciousness. In

words o

eau-Po

ere is "one particular cultural o

ect which is d

tined to

a crucial role in

e perception of o

er people: language" (Phenomenolo

354).

many

es of

e W

te Land,

finite ce

ers, flicker like candles-brief

luminosity

-th

at insta

aneously extinguish, not into

e vo

of i

lation and d

but

into ano

er integral, relational con

iousn

ess;

Augustine's "To Ca

rth

age

en I cam

resolves it

lf into

e (qu

Hege

an) uni

e Buddha's "Burning burning burning

burning"

(Eli

ot 74).

e poem "co

ocat

in order to culminate" by o

ering "fr

of co

ciousness," not a "juxtap

ition" of such,

but

an "interpenetration"

even

n 190,

uth

emph

is). Dialogue opens this "common ground"

oug

s of

e s

ubj

and

e inte

ocutor are "inte

oven into a single fabric

eau-Po

y writ

es:

have here a dual bein

where

e o

er is for me no lon

r a

bit of behavior in my

].T. Jacob

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

McM

ter

u1v

ersity

transcende

eld, nor I in hi

we are co

aborators for ea

er in consummate

reciprocit

Our

perspectiv

mer

into each o

er, and we co-e

rough a common

world. In

e pr

ent

dial

I am

eed

om m

yse

lf'' (354) .

e more t

k remains for

Leven

e "pro

em of Tir

" (

190)

, for to p

it a

verning consciousn

ess

risks

enuation of

e poem's many individual voic

es.

Leven

n argu

at Tir

"di

sso

into constitue

and,

such, is an "intermitte

phenomenon" in

e W

Land

(190)

which provid

"instants oflucidity"

(192

Thu

her/his ("the

o sexes

meet in Tir

as"

) (Eliot 82

8) vo

e is one of "a

uth

oritative consciousne

er of

e poem" (the "m

t importa

per

age

e poe

uniting a

e r

(82

8), one

at "fa

s s

, letting eve

s speak for

lves" (Leven

192

We see her

en, a unique relationship be

een

e W

nd and Infinite J

t in

terms of fundame

al, guiding aes

etic practic

(critical

ges

tur

e a

ack on

litera

lip

sism), and

an importa

literary precede

(for Infinite J

in narrative

construction and

e un

iling of con

iousnesses within

e comprehens

con

iousn

ess

aith.

Eli

aes

etic principle operat

at once within

ext of poetic co

ition and within

e W

te Land it

lf for

e t

Eli

imposed

on him

lf,

Leve

on o

es,

to "r

tore equilibrium, to e

tisfa

ory poi

among competing

aes

etic demands"

; h

thus, "re

"habit of

e modernist mind" which osc

ill

ated be

een

e extrem

e "ap

eedom" and

e "guardians of o

er"

86). Simila

y, Wa

ace al

works

-th

rough his

fiction and critical writin

-to restore a balance be

een radical experime

ation and

per

nal idi

osy

ncracy and

e o

er pole of exta

aes

etic ncrms, to create highly

cerebral work

at simultaneously engages bo

th th

e avant-garde literati and

e common

reader, to ensure

at the work of

ction-crafting does not terminate in a mer

ely

100 ].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

individualistic and, therefore, isolated practice

but

expands outward to the reader who

already inclined toward a solipsistic position because saturated in the products

the

cultural entertainment industry. In Wallace's works there are strong moments

consolidation, and one may argue

that

Wallace's entire aesthetic endeavor may be

construed

act

consolidation, what he continually calls a Dostoevskyian

redemption,

but

extra-Christian sense.

return to the Rain Taxi review, it

essential to note

that

while Wallace's

confrontation with the contemporary American avant-garde Zeitgeist

certainly

vituperative at times, it

also informed

respect and charity. In "Tense Present,"

Wallace, before embarking

a cogent engagement with Descriptivist-grammarian

principles, announces a position he calls the "Democratic Spirit" which,

he explains,

"one

that

combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus sedulous respect

for

the convictions of others" (

-4 2). Central to this position, he writes,

an "intellectual

integrity" in which "you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and your motives

for

believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually" ( 4

. It

this

"democratic spirit"

that

informs Wallace's work. For him, one must first check oneself

and one's work before criticizing the work

others. For Wallace, at the heart

any

matter there must be a charity

that

values the other

much

the individual

self,

that

values the opinions

others within the context of one's community-that one must seek

the good in relation to what

external to the individualistic self. It

at once the Eliotian

tradition

provocation and antagonizing, followed with consolidation and

rapprochement. Further, Wallace appends a brief Latin epigraph to "Tense Present" from

Augustine, "Dilige

quod

vis

fac"

(40) ('Love, and do what you will'). 16

The

quotation

crucial in two respects: first, it elucidates the spirit from which all

Wallace's

101

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

contentions

flow,

and

that

they are first and foremost informed

a spirit of charity

("sedulous respect"); second, the quotation itself implies a prescriptivist premise

that

clearly takes for a principle

that

thwarts his own inclination toward inner caprice:

that

you are first and foremost loving,

then

all subsequent action will be infused with the

democratic spirit's ethos of passion and humility, and sincere respect for others.

Throughout

the Rain Taxi review Wallace selects a number

The

Best of the Prose

Poem's contributors whose work

"good/alive/powerful/interesting," selecting one

for

particular examination, Jon Davis: "a poet whom this reviewer'd never heard

before

but

whose pieces in this anthology are

off-the-charts terrific

that

the reviewer has actually

gone

out

and bought the one Jon Davis book mentioned in his bio-note and may very well

decide to try to advertise it in this magazine, at reviewer's own expense if necessary-that's

how good this guy

is"

(23). Following this

editor's note instructing the reader to "see

page 3, upper right quadrant" where there

a prominent advertisement

for

Davis's latest

collection, Scrimmage of Appetite, and carrying the slogan, "probably well worth

checking out" in Wallace's distinctive argot ("probably well worth

...

and, in minuscule

print: "paid

for

the reviewer of

The

Best

the Prose Poem:

Int

ernational Journal"

(3).

102

].T. Jacobs, PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

8. "Making Heads

rob Heartlike"

ough the deceased

ess Orcu

our moan is the sharper, because

who

ve dwe

alone and unsure in

the

cragged ey

and mo

unt

n fastness of a de

solipsism

Edward

Dahlberg (Can

ese Bon

ve 42) .

ot comprehend m

yse

lf directl

but

only

thr

ough the me

on of what I am no

- Leszek

Kolakows

odernity on Endless

Tri

al 117, a

uth

or's emph

is).

As gh

t-story, then, for Wa

ace, Infinite J

t is al

a love-story. In Wa

ace's

short stor

"Tri-Stan: I So

sse

Nar to Ecko

e mediator inserts an editoria

liz

comment, as quotation, from an extra-diegetic

ara

...

'that

eve

love story is

[a] gh

t sto

...

')" (Brief209) . Significantly,

e mediator here ca

s a

ention to

his

er gh

tly textual presence by interpolating

e editor's square brackets and

indefinite article omitted

e 'o

ginal' quotation.

e mediator i

thu

textua

y in

pare

nth

is, a textua

y encaps

ated consciousness. Infinite J

t story, ca

nti

on to its reciprocal status

love story

("l

anguage is

out of love

(Brown,

Life 69);

e novel,

aes

etic a

egory, signifi

e love-aes

etic of

lf-

acing

artist,

uth

ority in

e spiritual world is self-liq

uid

atin

(Fry

Double 54, emph

added). Wa

ace remarks on art and love:

You've

t to discipline

urself to talk o

e part of

at loves the

thing, loves what

u're working on. M

ain lov

....

ere's

mething kind of timelessly vital and sacred abo

good writin

Thi

thin

g does

n't

have

at much to do with tale

, even glittering tale

...

Talent's just an instrument. It

like having a pen

at works instead of

one

at doesn't. I'm not saying

at I'm able to work consistently o

e pre

se,

but

it seems like

e big distinction between good art and

mewhere in

e art's heart

purpose,

e agenda of

consciousness behind

e text. It

mething to do with love.

With

having

e discipline to talk out

e part of

at can love

103

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

instead of the part

that

just wants to be loved. (McCaffery 148)

In a meticulously constructed novel like Infinite lest, it

certainly no mistake

that

Enfield Tennis Academy's campus-founded

lncandenza, Jr.-is designed "as a cardioid,"

giving the campus a "Valentine-heart aspect" (983 n. 3).

The

readers' presence in this

fictive world depends

their following the mediator's telling of this immediate story,

while consciously being aware of their receiving a told, spoken narrative. It

the readers'

tacit agreement to accept the story in this fashion-although certainly accompanied with a

sense ofbemusement and wariness

that

the narrative will resolve itself,

that

there

will

be,

Wallace

says,

a "payoff' (McCaffery

for

this confusion, this linguistic relationship,

rooted in trust.

The

wraith communicates to Gately through the "internal brain-voice,"

which "was why thoughts and insights

that

were coming from some wraith always just

sound like your own thoughts, from inside your own head, if a wraith's trying

interface

with you" (Jest 831).

Not

only do readers construct and re-create the narrative, they also

'hear' it in their own voices, their own minds.

One

oflncandenza, Jr.'s many

films

aptly

entitled, "The Machine in the Ghost" (988 n. 24).

That

Wallace intertextually refers to

Gilbert Ryle's classic "dogma

the ghost in the machine" (Ryle

15)-a

Cartesian

mind/body dualism-is very likely in a philosophical-aesthetic novel

that

attempts to

'speak' internally

readers,

bridge the existential gap, to remind them

that

they are

not

isolated "revving head[s]"-one more "brain heaving in its bone-box" (Jest

231)-

but

"complete presence" (160), one among many others

but

actualized only in relation to

others.

Ryle

outlines the situation

follows:

Material objects are situated in a common field, known

'space,' and

what happens to one body in one part of space

mechanically connected

with what happens to other bodies in other parts

space. But mental

happenings occur in insulated fields, known

'minds,' and there

is,

apart

from telepathy, no direct causal connection between what happens in one

104

J.T. Jacob

PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

mind and what happens in ano

Onl

y through

e medium of the

al public world can

e mind of one per

n make a difference to

mind of ano

e mind is its own

ace and in his inner life each of us

liv

e life of a ghostly Robin

n Crusoe. Peo

can

see, hear and jolt

one ano

er's bodi

es,

but

are irremediably blind a

deaf to

rkin

of one another

minds and inoperative upon

em. (

)

ace's phrase regarding

e reader

condition,

are "marooned" in

eir skulls

(McCa

ery 127), echoes Ryle's sentime

e o

ace's most sustained a

acks is

against

lipsism; he a

s to jolt readers out of

lipsistic thinking, to overwhelm

with

e impr

ess

ion- n

e fa

ct-that

, while readin

participate in a conversation

with ano

er, similar con

iousne

at al

feels pain, j

oy,

depr

ess

ion, lonelin

ess

-th

at is

alone. Infinite J

many chara

ers tend to "

enti

eir whole

lves with

eir head"

(272), seeing only

e duality o

f"h

eads and bodi

Hal does in

e novel's opening

ence (

;

are engaged in "life's endl

ess

war against

e self," a war "you ca

liv

e without" (84). Wa

ace's novel,

en, is primarily concerned with a "spiritua

(269,

uth

emph

is) reconciliation be

een

e spiritual and

e body

at is very much

akin to Norman

own

spiritual,

mbolical consciousn

ess

reconc

e body and spirit

would be to recover

e breath-

which is

e life-

instead of

e gh

shado

breath-con

iousn

ess

instead of brain-consciousn

ess;

body consciousn

ess

instead

head-con

iousn

ess"

(Love's Bo

231). No

rth

rop F

rye

oes Brown when he ca

for a re

turn

e "soma pneumatikon,

e spiritual body," meaning

piritual

man is a bod

(Double 14). Wa

ace's concern is steeped in a love for readers a

increasing i

lation and a

enation in a

phisticated, electronic culture

at purports to

communicate without mediation, to di

agendas and, in

e main, to

ll.

Hawthorn

not

e need for narrative in

e co

emporary era h

never been more crucial:

ve in a world increasingly dominated- and chara

eri

e telling

of stori

es;

anonymous co

mmuni

tio

messa

s notable for what has

105

J.T. Jaco

bs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of English, McM

ter University

been termed 'agency dele

' and by di

sse

minated

but

uth

oriti

and a

uth

orita

anis

From

voi

at can now a

ounce

to us in a car

e o

pressure is dangerously low, to

e newspaper

editorial which informs us

at 'we' must acce

a decline in living

standard

eme of increasingly stride

uth

ority surviving

e dea

of many differe

uth

ors forces it

lf upon our a

ention.

(x,

emph

added)

Gadamer would concur when he ob

at our "te

chn

ical era" h

contributed to

a "for

tfuln

ess

of Bein

at h

ed us to skip "over

e continued r

istance and

persistence of certain

exible uniti

e life we a

share, unities which perdure in the

lar

and sma

forms of our fe

ow-human being-with-each-

("Destruktion" 109).

ace ca

s this a

"hun

r for narrative," noting

at "we have to s

stitute

hedonism and spiritual na

"iv

ete

at left us with nothing with somethin

" and

e m

fective means for affecting readers for Wa

ace is art, particula

rly

fiction

at "seduces

e reader and holds o

real promi

" ("1458 Word

42, emphases added). Wa

ace's

tly conceit i

indeed, shrewd and shrewdly layered

e wraith, while in

rting

words into Gately's consciousn

ess

, al

transmits into

e reader's consciousn

ess

- a

community, 'o

many, one'

Pluribus

Unum

opposed to Infinite J

t's

ara

ers'

obverse, "E Unibus Pluram" (1007, n. 110), 'o

of one, man

)-the

very narrative

processes and

eto

cal formulae (the tricks behind

e m

ic)

at Infinite J

t emp

loys

and further, by extension and implication, suggests

at this is

e w

significant,

rious

ction should perform, not obfuscating

e fact of mediation within a communicative

medium (

ace not

e e

ertainme

industry does)

but

suggesting

at this is the

only meaning

ful

at literature transa

s "spiritua

lin

d of me

t 269,

uth

or's emph

is) mea

nin

but

when

[literary works] succeed

rve

e vital &

vanishing function of reminding us of fiction's limitl

s p

oss

ibilities for

rea

& gra

sp,

for making heads

thr

ob heartlike, & for sanctifying

106 ].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

marriages of cerebration & emotion, abstraction & lived life, transcendent

truth-seeking & daily schlepping, marriages

that

in our happy epoch

technical occlusion & entertainment-marketing seem increasing

consummatable only in the imagination. ("Empty Plenum" 218)

A solipsistic self-consciousness

clearly targeted

Wallace in most

his fiction,

whether from the perspective

the writer in composing clever, self-conscious works or in

the attempt

engage the isolated reader. But Wallace's aggravation

our self-

consciousnesses has a further redemptive sense. Wallace would aggravate the isolated,

dormant self-consciousness within

that

rarely moves beyond, in G.W.F. Hegel's terms,

a "being-for-itself' or "being-in-self' toward the productive self-consciousness

that

self-

consciously "being-for-another"

the necessary correlative to living wholly, beyond the

immediate self.

Frye observes

that

in the first translation of Hegel's Phenomenology

Spirit 'geist' was mistranslated

'mind,' which distorted and diminished the power

Hegel's argument

om the start (Double 36). And, for Frye

with Wallace, attaining a

spiritual self-consciousness

essential to breaking from

"the

prison ofNarcissus" (36).

Significantly, a slight and passing reference

Hegel's Phenomenology occurs in Wallace's

first novel,

The

Broom of the System (252).

And

although a minor reference, it does

serve nevertheless

illustrate Wallace's approach

language

both

relational and

the only means for penetrating the solipsist's fortress. Hegel writes

that

"language

self-

consciousness existing for others, self-consciousness which as such

immediately present

...

the self

that

separates itself from itself, which

pure 'I' = 'I' becomes objective

itself, which in this objectivity equally preserves itself

thi

s self, just

it coalesces

directly with other selves and

their self-consciousness" (395, §652, author's emphasis).

For Hegel, language

a different "content," one

that

"no longer the perverted, and

perverting and distracted, self of the world

culture

...

the Spirit

that

has returned

107

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

into itself,

certain of itself, and certain in itself

its truth, or

its own recognition"

(395-396, §653). Language "emerges

the middle term, mediating between

independent and acknowledged self-consciousnesses" (396, §653). Language

the

crucial mediating apparatus

that

allows for one's self-consciousness

leave the self, to

find in the other a measure

similarity or "sameness" (Wallace, Brief 131), and to return

to the self transformed, less alone.

the fundamentally Hegelian dialectic

interpenetrating consciousnesses

that

Wallace employs

a rhetorical strategy in his

fiction, and there

much

congruity between Hegel's concepts

"confession" and

"forgiveness" and Wallace's linguistic-aesthetic rationale:

by putting itself, then, in this way

a level with the doer

whom it

passes judgement, it

recognized

the latter

the same

himself. This

latter does

not

merely find himself apprehended

the other

something

alien and disparate from it,

but

rather finds

that

other

. identical with

himself. Perceiving this identity and giving utterance to it, he confesses

this to the other, and equally expects

that

the other, having in fact

put

himself

the same level, will also respond in words in which he will give

utterance to this identity with him, and expects

that

this mutual

recognition will now exist in fact. His confession

not

abasement, a

humiliation, a throwing-away of himself in relation to the other; for this

utterance

not

a one-sided affair, which would establish his disparity with

the other:

the contrary, he gives himself utterance solely

account

his having seen his identity with the other; he,

his side, gives expression

to their common identity in his confession, and gives utterance to it for the

reason

that

language

the existence

Spirit

immediate self. He

therefore expects

that

the other will contribute his part to this existence.

(Hegel405, §666, author's emphasis)

In one of Wallace's most complex and dense short stories,

"O~Let,"

a series

nine "pop

quizzes" about extremely complex

human

relationships, the relationship between writer

and reader

inverted.

The

ninth

pop quiz begins, "you are, unfortunately, a fiction

writer" (Brief 123) and continues to outline the very psychologically complex dilemma

the author

these pop quizzes themselves, sincerely stating

that

the purpose

the

overall piece

to '"interrogate' a

human

'sense

of"

something inherent

all of

(123).

108

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

The

piece further elaborates

that

the entire sequence

quizzes ultimately fails,

that

the

author (whose title and responsibility have now been ceded

the reader in the context of

the quiz's question) must attempt to convey

that

the quizzes themselves attempt to "break

the textual fourth wall and kind of address (or 'interrogate') the reader directly," a

"puncturing of the veil

impersonality" (125), without resorting

"postclever

metaformal hooey" (128) and "pseudometabelletristic gamesmcmship" (127). Ultimately,

the piece concludes with the words, "so decide" (136), which implicates the reader in an

empathic understanding

what the author

trying to achieve in trying "to demonstrate

some sort of weird ambient sameness in different kinds of

human

relationships" (131-132,

author's emphasis), and demonstrating the vital relationship

that

both

are entangled

in-that

this piece takes

a Hegelian-like spiritual "confession"

that

seeks through

language

honesty and integrity with the reader and

that

further requires the reader to

respond in kind.

pursue the spiritual, the harmony between head- and body-

consciousness

that

extends beyond the mind's clamoring, for Wallace,

"not

a choice.

You either do or you're a walking dead-man, just going through the motions"-or, you

can

attain "something really powerful and beautiful" ("1458 Words" 42).

109

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

Notes

1 See Frank Louis Cioffi,

'"An

Anguish Become Thing': Narrative

Performance

in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest," Narrative 8.2 (2000): 161-181; N. Katherine

Hayles, "The Illusion of Autonomy and the Fact

Recursivity: Virtual Ecologies,

Entertainment, and Infinite Jest," New Literary History 30 (1999): 675-697; Erik

Mortenson, "Xmas Junkies: Debasement and Redemption in the Work

WilliamS.

Burroughs and David Foster Wallace," Dionysos 9.2 (1999): 37-46;

Tom

LeClair, "The

Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace,"

Critique 38.1 (1996): 12-37; Catherine Nichols, "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival:

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest," Critique 43.1 (2001): 3-16. See also

own

difficulties with Infinite Jest in "American Touchstone:

The

I i

'::

Order in Gerard

Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace," Comparative Literature Studies 38.3

(2001): 215-231 and "David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest,"

The

Explicator 58.3 (2000):

172-17

For a more conventional assessment, see Sven Birkerts, "The Alchemist's

Retort,"

The

Atlantic Monthly February 1996: 106-108, where Birkerts calls Infinite Jest

a "very strange piece

business altogether" (106) and a "postmodern saga of damnation

and salvation" (108). It should also be noted that, in the interest of demonstrating the

recent critical interest in Wallace's work, the first book-length study of Wallace, Marshall

Boswell's Understanding David Foster Wallace,

forthcoming from the University of

South

Carolina Press's "Understanding Authors" series in Spring 2003.

2 For a perceptive analysis of television and contemporary American fiction, see

Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,"

The

Review of Contemporary

Fiction 13.2 (1993): 151-194, reprinted in A Supposedly

Fun

Thing I'll Never Do Again

(Boston: Little, 1997) 21-82. It should also be noted

that

Wallace in no

way

blames

television for contemporary fiction's woes: "TV didn't invent our aesthetic childishness

here any more

than

the

Manhattan

Project invented aggression" (McCaffery 129).

Rather, he contends

that

and "the commercial-art culture's trained it [American

culture]

be sort oflazy and childish in its expectations" (128) .

3 Wallace twice nods to DeLillo in particular in

lnfinit~

Jest when he refers to the

"M.I.T. language riots" (Jest 987, 996) from DeLillo's Ratner's Star, and when

Orin

lncandenza traces infinity symbols

his so-called "subjects"' "bare flank after sex" (Jest

47) which recalls David's similar actions in Americana (78).

4 See David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars

over Usage," Harper's April2001: 39-58.

----

110

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

5 See David Foster Wallace, "Greatly Exaggerated," A Supposedly

Fun

Thing I'll

Never Do Again (Boston: Little, 1997) 138-145.

6 See Stanley Fish, "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics," Self-

Consuming Artifacts:

The

Experience

Seventeenth-Century Literature. (Berkeley: U

California

1972) 383-427.

7 I am unable to track down Lang's quotation

but

am grateful to University

Wollongon (Australia) archivist Michael Organ for his superior website devoted to Lang's

Metropolis, where the quotation may be found.

<http://www.uow.edu.au/

-m

organ/Metroa.html>.

8 It

worth noting

that

the term 'vestige' itself appears in Infinite Jest

metaphor

for

Gately's previous

life

a narcotics-addicted cat burglar.

all of Gately's

prior self-destructive tendencies,

ly one survives

a vestige of his former self, his

perilous driving

his boss's "priceless art-object car" through Boston's streets without a

license and while ignoring traffic signs and l

aws:

"It's a vestige. He'd admit it's like a dark

vestige

his old low-self-esteem suicidal-thrill behaviors" (Jest 476ff). 'Vestige,' with its

own definitions

"a mark, trace, or visible sign

something" and "an impression made

upon the brain

image" (OED),

both

further signify and bolster the ghost metaphor

in the novel.

The

presence

these crescent-moon symbols has perplexed many online

readers oflnfinite Jest. See, for instance, Steve Russillo's "Infinite Jest Utilities Page,"

<http:

//members.ao

com/ru

ill

m/ij.ht

ml>,

and his "Chapter Thumbnails," where he

indicates these segments with an asterisk and posts

that

their "significance I've yet to

discern."

further significant that yet another

the wraith's ghost

-w

ords

"GERRYMANDER" (832) which indicates the literal manipulation of borders to gain

unfair advantage (usually electoral). Here, however, it signifies both the reconfiguration

North

American borders and the wraith's own transgression

narrative and existential

boundaries.

For

discussion of

The

Waste Land and Eliot's aesthetic ideals, I am heavily

indebted to Michael H. Levenson's superb critical study, A Genealogy of Modernism: A

Study

English Literary Doctrine, 1908-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984), 165-

220. Levenson provides what

is,

mind, the single most penetrating and insightful

reading

Eliot's poem to date.

interesting to note

that

in attempting to define the prose poem Wallace

questions whether certain works, such

Kafka's "Little Fable" and any

"the

111

J.T.

Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

innumerable

~'sin

Faulkner

that

scan perfectly

iambic-pentameter sonnets"

count

themselves

prose poems (22).

One

of Wallace's examples turns

out

to be Eliot's

"Hysteria,"

which Wallace's own microscopic short story, "A Radically Condensed

History

Postindustrial

Life"

contained in his Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

(Boston: Little, 1999) 0 [sic], bears a striking similarity, one

that

mirrors the fundamental

difficulties in establishing and maintaining significant relationships in our contemporary

era, just

Eliot's poem does.

The

importance

selecting and using the appropriate dialect in addressing a

specific discourse community

emphasized

Wallace in

"Tc

Present." In this piece,

he notes

that

most peop

use a plurality

dialects in day-to-day living, and admits to

using both the "Standard

Written

English"

his "hypereducated parents" and the "hard-

earned Rural Midwestern" dialect of his peers (50) . In the latter, Wallace uses

constructions like "Where's it at?" instead

"Where

it?"

part

"a naked desire to

fit in" and

not

be "rejected

egghead" (50-51). Wallace claims that the "dialect you

choose to use depends

...

whom you're addressing" and

that

"the dialect you use

depends mostly

what sort

Group your listener

part

and whether you wish to

present yourself

a fellow member of

that

Group"

(51

-52). Thus, for Wallace, there

singular importance in using a specifically transgeneric medium (in creating his "Indexical

Book Review")

to at once signify his membership in the particular community

avant-garde readers that subscribe to Rain Taxi and to submit his arguments for their

collective ratification or rejection. Either

way,

Wallace's meaning in the Rain Taxi

review, if it

to be at all heeded,

directly coextensive with the dialect he appropriates.

only fair to observe

that

Wallace has used two of the "transgeneric" forms

he disparages in his Rain Taxi review in his short story, "Incarnations of Burned

Children"

"snap fiction" piece) and two recent pieces, "Peoria ( 4 )" and "Peoria

(9)

'Whispering Pines,"' which are classified

"prose poetics." Both

these generic titles,

however, seem to be imposed

the publications themselves and cannot necessarily be

linked to Wallace. If Wallace

experimenting with these putatively transgeneric forms,

however, he is certainly doing

in the service

something

r.r

ater

than

simple

experimentation. "Incarnations,"

the title suggests,

a powerfully fast-paced evocation

a rural family's immediate reaction to their infant son's scalding

boiling water, and

their inner, self-conscious reactions to the tragedy. While the "Peoria" pair

slightly

more poetic

than

Wallace's fiction in the main, there

little if any self-conscious play at

work.

The

first piece evokes the landscape of rural Illinois

way

that

echoes Auden's

"Amor Loci" and "In Praise

Limestone" with their celebration

the immediacy and

history

place.

The

second piece essentially describes a stealthy group

children gazing

at a shaking car in the country-side, while the car's inhabitants, in Frye's words, are

"rutting in rubber" (Double

What

makes Wallace's use of the genres of 'flash fiction'

and 'prose poetry' significant

similar to his appropriation

dialect

for

his "Tense

Present" essay. Both genres are prevailing forms in current literary production, and thus

Wallace uses them to convey his singular messages, while avoiding inner caprice. See

"Incarnations

Burned Children," Esquire n.d. 2001

<http:

www.esquire.com/features/articles/2001/001012 mfr wallace

l.html>

and

"Peoria,"TriOuarterly

112

(2002): 131-133. - - -

112

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

difficult to avoid noting the fact

Eliot's appending notes to his poem

being a rather avant-garde move in itself, and one

that

continued in Infinite Jest

radically experimental in the context of the genre

the novel. Levenson observes

that

its dealing with fragmented consciousnesses,

The

Waste Land "becomes conscious

itself' (192) and, thus, the inclusion of explanatory notes-notes

that

reveal many

Eliot's poetic allusions and appropriations-calls attention to th

poem's self-consciousness,

its inherent ordered disorder, and the fact of the merging of traditions through

avant-

garde rhetorical strategy.

William James, in his

The

Varieties

Religious Experience, translates

Augustine

as,

"if you

but

love [God], you may do

you incline" (77, author's

interpolation), and William Gaddis, in his superb novel

The

Recognitions, has protagonist

Wyatt Gwyon translate the phrase

as,

"Love, and do what you want to" (899) . Both

James and Gaddis are significant to Infinite Jest: James's Varieties

referred to

throughout Infinite Jest, and Gaddis's Recognitions

a novel

that

Wallace maintains

that

he "like[s] very, very much" (Word n.p.). There are strong moments

congruity

between Wallace's aesthetic and that

Gaddis's in

The

Recognitions. If Infinite Jest,

Wallace remarks,

a "long encomium to the dead father" (Wiley n.p.),

then

may also

say

that

The

Recognitions

a long encomium to Wyatt's dead mother, for example.

The

similarities are too numerous to elaborate here and perhaps deserve a separate study,

but

both

artists' emphasis

love

informing artistic production

the most crucial

conjunction. William James claims

that

Augustine's adage

"morally one

the

profoundest

observations" (77), and Wyatt's recognition of this in application to his

day to day living and his art-"now at last, to live deliberately" (Gaddis 900)-becomes

another significant aesthetic touchstone for Wallace in

both

his fiction and non-fiction.

relation

Hegel and Wallace I am particul

:·l

y indebted to David

Morris's exemplary article, "Lived Time and Absolute Knowing: Habit and Addiction

from Infinite Jest to the Phenomenology

Spirit," Clio 30.4 (2001): 375-415. As his title

clearly indicates, Morris

particularly concerned with time and spirit in relation to habit.

And

although tangentially yoked with Morris's reading

Hegel's conception

time, I

am more interested in Hegel's dialectic

spiritual self-consciousness

integrally linked

to other self-conscious communities via the mediating power of language.

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Part

Three

The

Eschatological Imagination: Translations

have never been an optimist or a pessimist. I'm an apocalyptic o;

;ly.

Our

only hope

apocalypse"-Marshall

McLuhan (The Medium and

the

Light 59).

"In every moment slumbers

the

possibility of being

the

eschatological moment. You must awake

it"-RudolfBultmann

(qtd. in Kermode, Sense 25).

wanted to get

the

Armageddon-explosion,

the

goal

that

metafiction's always been about, I

wanted to get it over with, a

then

the

rubble reaffirm the idea of art being a living

transaction between

humans"-David

Foster

ace (McCaffery 142).

The

End

I have now taken Wallace's Infinite

st through two distinct, though not

incompatible or mutually exclusive, readings, situating

that

novel in Part

One

a type

aesthetic allegory

that

links the significant and then-radical aesthetic of Gerard Manley

Hopkins with Wallace's own contemporary literary agenda, ami, in Part Two,

elaborate reply

the 'death of the author' theoretical impasse-a critique of

poststructuralism employing poststructuralist motifs and methodology-and shall now

conclude this study with a treatment

literary endings, or a theory of ending

that

is,

for

113

114

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Wallace, both ending and beginning. Theories

endings (apocalyptic and otherwise) are

not

new either to the popular imagination or to, what Northrop Frye has called, the

"educated imagination." It might be said without exaggeration

that

the apocalyptic

imagination

inherent, endlessly recurring feature of American letters and culture, if

not

the foundation of Western civilization's thinking

a whole that, of course, ultimately

emerges from the Revelation (Apocalypse)

St. John

Patmos

that

translated into

the American mythos via the Puritan settling of the New World, and undergirded with

end-times' consciousness

that

transforms New Haven into a New Jerusalem, a

transformation

that

manifests itself in both literal interpretations

the Bible and in

poetic transformations like Wallace Stevens's

"An

Ordinary Evening in New Haven."

The

manifestation

apocalyptic thinking, then,

discernible in numerous aspects

Western, particularly American, cultural organization-whether theological, philosophical,

pedagogical, or popular.

That

apocalyptic thinking continues to exert itself in the

contemporary imagination

at once both surprising and unsurprising. Surprising, in

that

the fear of a literal apocalypse has faded with the passing of the Cold War; American and

Soviet detente has been transformed into a balance

cooperative political and economic

relations; the fear of imminent nuclear annihilation has passed; and, therefore,

apocalyptic fears and projections would seem

be diminished. Yet the latent apocalyptic

imagination in the contemporary popular American imagination reviving itself in the

wake

the attacks

September 2001 and recent American foreign policy

- - -

----------------

-------

115

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

developments

that

recall the Cold

War

political stances of years ago make it unsurprising

that

apocalyptic unrest should be once again at a relatively high pitch. Public intellectual

forums, such

Harper's magazine, with its continual and necessary critique of current

American foreign policy, under the general editorship

Lewis H. Lapham, suggests

that

the seemingly dormant apocalyptic imagination

once more being revived. According to

that

magazine, in a recent cover essay "A Comet's Tale:

the Science

Apocalypse," a

recently conducted poll announced

that

59 per cent

the American public believes

that

the prophetic forecasts of the biblical book

Revelation "will come true," and a further

"quarter

Americans" also believe

that

the Bible "despite a conspicuous textual absence

airplanes, skyscrapers, or Muslims-predicted the horrific

but

hardly apocalyptic attacks

two Septembers ago" (Bissel33-34). Add to this the current American war in the

middle-east and conflagratory American

etoric

a so-called "axis

evi

(the term

coined

National Post columnist and former speech-writer tor the current Bush

administration, David Frum), and the resuscitation of the popular apocalyptic

imagination comes

no surprise whatsoever.

Naturally, however, millenarian thinking

hardly new to America, and neither

apocalyptic thinking a novelty in intellectual circles.

What

Frank Kermode has called the

"sense of

ending"

inherent feature of Western

human

ideology, theology, and

philosophy.

those-all

us-born "into the middest" (Kermode

the Heraclitian

flow

time, there seems

be a built-in metaphysical need or desire to consider our

116

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

historical age or period

apocalyptic; humankind,

Kermode suggests, requires "fictive

concords with origins and ends, such

give meaning to lives and poems.

The

End will

reflect their irreducibly intermediary preoccupations" (7).

necessity, apocalyptic

theorizing

a staple in theological seminaries,

but

that

apocalyptic proclivities should

inform much of secular Western intellectual discourse should be a more difficult

proposition to accept. Nevertheless, examples abound: one might remark

Hegel's

dialectic

that

itself apocalyptic with a synthetic ending colliding into a new and

recurring synthesis; those, like Harold Innis first, and Marshall McLuhan after him and

Arthur

Kraker in the present time, who intellectually chart the rise and

fall

empires

and civilizations through communicational and technological innovations

can

also be said

to be informed

apocalyptic imagination. Marxist ideolc

;;y

is,

like theology, itself

sustained

the sense of

ending in which the proletariat revolts and rises up against

oppressive capitalist ideologies and regimes. Philosopher and cultural critic, Leszek

Kolakowski in Modernity

Endless Trial (1990), keeps a vigilant

eye

things

apocalyptic

defending the necessity

the sacred within the context

a modern

secular cultural environment

that

would de-mythologize the sacred: "politics has replaced

religion,

...

the psychiatrist has taken the place of the priest, and

...

technological

utopias have supplanted eschatological dreams" (64). In what

arguably one of the most

significant philosophical works of the twentieth century,

Truth

and Method (1960),

Hans-Georg Gadamer enunciates an "eschatological consciomness" (xxxviii) in his broad

117

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster

C.J.i.versity

treatise

hermeneutics in contradistinction to the "aesthetic consciousness." In literary

studies there

no end

charting apocalypse

a significant cultural feature

every

period's literature, most saliently, however, in Frye's "poetic imagination" (Anatomy 125),

which in proclaiming a recurring motif

re-creation for humankind

itself both Blake an

and, therefore, fundamentally apocalyptic, though naturally without fundamentalist

zealotry, proclaiming instead

ethos

renewal or renovation through language.

The

motif of apocalypsis, Greek for 'revelation,' 'unveiling' which, in Frye's words, has "the

metaphorical sense

uncovering or taking the lid off' (Great Code 135),

inherent

feature in the theory

literary studies itself with each theory potentially flourishing and

revealing and, then, receding in prominence just

the once dominant New Criticism

gave

way

to structuralism

then

to poststructuralism, and onward to the more specifically

ideologically informed gender and race theories

today. It

can

be said, in a broad sense,

that

every literary theory

itself constructed or founded

a conception of

ending in

order to engage in a renewed exploration of literary and cultural texts: postcolonialism,

poststructuralism, and gender theories all require

assumed epistemological bedrock

some form of terminal point in which

begin their method

literary investigation; each

presupposes-

implication-an ontological end

evaluating texts from certain passe or

hegemonic perspectives: each, again essentially, requires an apocalyptic ground-clearing,

explosion

previously assumed ideals or ideologies, which,

may assume, lead to a

revelatory (an uncovering or unveiling) exploration

human

thought, a re-evaluation.

118 J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Poststructuralism requires an end to logocentric discourse and the cessation and razing

hegemonic power structures through language; feminist theory also requires the terminal

disruption

phallogocentrism; Marxism posits the detonation

capitalist agendas;

postcolonial theory requires the erasure of master narratives employed

hegemonic

discourse-each, in its own

way,

shares a foundational sense

endings, which

implied in

the shared 'post' prefix

that

adorns their nomenclature or

implied in their basic

methodology. Endings give rise to new methods of literary discourse, and all may be said

to flourish under the larger and often obscure banner

'postmodernism,' itself the Ur-

ending of an era's (such

Modernism's) own renovation of dialectic in and

art,

philosophy, and theology. Further, contemporary, postmodern discourse in the

Humanities

is,

necessity, itself eschatological, for there

no general consensus

postmodernism's genesis, direction, or end-point, and there must be

end-point to

critical discourse: the architectonic structure of literary theory's corpus

cannot

be said to

be finished or concluded, yet speculation regarding postmodernism's own ending must

become, at a certain point, a source

discourse-anxiety in the twenty-first century.

Whether

postmodernism's advent

established

1945 (after the atomic blasts

Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or the early 1960s (in parallel with American unrest, riots, civil-

rights and peace demonstrations, and the political assassinations

that

turbulent

decade), which it

held vaguely in various camps, it has now been the cultural condition

or environment

that

North

America has lived

with-or

in-for roughly

fifty

years-an

119 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

enormous length

time

for

a class of intellectual periodization, particularly in

age

instant communication and near-daily technological innovation. But who can, or

will,

forecast the end

ending? There

is,

often, little reluctance in pronouncing endings

and, in the same move, inaugurating new movements-beginnings, yet there

a general

intellectual hesitancy to move beyond the postmodern.

The

fixture

the 'post' prefix to

modernism itself implies

that

this

the last era, which perforce raises the question, quo

vadis? Even

early

1970, and well before the avant-garde term postmodernism

became a familiar, cachet term, Marshall McLuhan introduced the term "post-history" to

depict

the sense

that

all pasts

that

ever were are now present to our consciousness

and

that

all futures

that

will

be are here now. In

that

sense

are post-

history and timeless. Instant awareness

all the varieties

human

expression reconstitutes the mythic type

consciousness, of once-upon-a-

time-ness, which means all-time,

out

time. (Medium 88, author's

emphasis)

McLuhan's "post-history" succinctly encapsulates the current post-industrial, electronic

era;

seem to be,

never before, positioned

a perpetual brink, arrested in

ahistorical moment where little-and yet everything at once-changes beyond the

size,

shape, and efficiency of our electronic gadgets. In terms

contemporary American

fiction,

are now placed in a peculiar position

post-postmodernism-the original

purveyors of a postmodern sensibility (Vladimir Nabokov, John Barth, Robert Coover,

and Thomas Pynchon) now approach their senescence, not

that

human

life

span

constitutes a literary period. But the aesthetic agendas and art

a period would more

120 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

likely constitute the borders and boundaries of a period, and the ironic and black humor

fictional renovations of the 1960s and 1970s, which were especially directed to the

hypocrisy of their time, are becoming

remote

our contemporary condition

any

other period's literature-that

say,

they have become assimilated in a tradition, or

have become canonized

a once-avant garde movement. This

not

say

that

they

have lost their value to the contemporary imagination, and are, indeed, valuable literary

artifacts, only

that

the original aesthetic ideals

this distinguished vanguard no longer

have the resonance and relevance necessary to the present day.

What

further striking,

and this

a point meticulously elaborated in Wallace's essay "E Unibus Pluram:

Television and U.S. Fiction,"

that

the succeeding generations

American fiction

writers have not, in the main, moved away from the original postmodem aesthetic

bequeathed to them

the Barths, Coovers, and others, nor have these elder statesmen

literary production, in fact, adopted their own aesthetic ideals to fit their contemporary

context, aside from

incorporation of digital media and an awareness of hypertext in

their works

that

acknowledges the presence and influence

the computer age

contemporary culture-yet they offer little or nothing in terms

its consequences. If the

term "early postmodemism" seems quaint or absurd, I nevertheless continue to use

only because Wallace himself deploys it in his interview with Larry McCaffery (

7), and

for

good reason. Few would argue

that

there

a distinct difference between the poetics

Modernist poets, Stephane Mallarme and the later T.S. Eliot, and it

can

be argued

that

121

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Mallarme signifies the inauguration

Modernism while Eliot s Four Quartets signifies its

conclusion. In this sense alone

might argue

that

Mallarme represents

early

Modernism, while Eliot represents a 'high' or late Modernist aesthetic, and one not

duplicated. In an American context, William Gaddis's

The

Recognitions (1955) arguably

represents the termination of the high-Modern aesthetic in American fiction;

few

would

contest

that

The

Recognitions has a greater similarity to the aesthetics

Modernism

than

postmodernism, though perhaps inaugurating the postmodern fiction aesthetic.

sense

early and late postmodernism

is,

perhaps,

that

enhanced, aggravated, and

imposed

our culture

rapid technological and communicational developments,

developments

that

all

vie to assimilate into our daily livr

, and with which literary

theory and criticism always seems to try

catch-up. Nabokov bears little similarity

Mark Leyner in any sense beyond the minor fact

that

both

are American novelists; there

seems

be a much larger divide or schism between the aesthetic of early and current

postmodernists

than

there

was

between postmodernism and its Modernist forbears-it

easier to find congruity between Mallarme and Eliot

than

Nabokov and Leyner. If

contemporary American fiction reflects contemporary American culture, and I would

contend

that

it does if only

elementary level,

then

the mainly ironic work

the

1970s fiction writers-in confronting and depicting the first wave

nuclear fears from the

Cuban Missile Crisis, for example-can no longer claim the

san1e

powerful resonance with

the American imagination

that

it once did. This representational art would seem to have

122

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

little relevance for the contemporary reader beyond the historical relationship

the work

to the preceding cultural conditions in which they originated.

The

art

this era remains

significant

a type

touchstone; the eschatological conditions

early postmodernism

cannot

resonate with contemporary eschatological conditions

they no longer resemble

our own. Visions

the eschatological past

cannot

speak to the exigencies

the

eschatological present. Since postmodernism has been our intellectual period for

long,

and seems in certain respects to have run its course, then, perhaps it

time to re-evaluate

it from an eschatological perspective. But I shall return to this point in what follows; I

only use this postmodern conundrum

illustrate the idea

ending

contemporary

literary discourse and fiction at a foundational level. Perhaps, then,

Paul Fiddes

remarks, "all texts are eschatological" (18)

they represent a 'last discourse' in any and

all

their various manifestations, and it

only in the degree or relationship with the

contemporary culture

that

gives birth to them

that

they speak to

Frank Lentricchia's After the New Criticism (1980)

a critical-theoretical-

historical work

that

examines the so-called "crisis"-a significant term itself

that

accompanies all apocalyptic discourse and

that

also signifies apocalypse (Kermode

25)-in

then-contemporary literary theory, a crisis between efforts to "essentialize literary

discourse

making it a unique kind

language-a vast, enclosed textual and semantic

preserve-and,

the other hand,

urge to make literary language 'relevant'

locating it in larger contexts

discourse and history" (xiii). Lentricchia, in 1980,

123

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

proclaimed New Criticism to be "dead" (xiii), and, in a history of critical theory, seeks

move away from

apocalyptic examination of theory and, instead, focuses

the

"ruptures" in critical thinking rather

than

the "end of things" (xiv) . While Lentricchia

establishes his work

a "kind

dialogue with the theorists

...

examined" (xiii), there

nonetheless

implication of the end (After the New Criticism), or

ending,

"movement" (xii). Lentricchia posits

that

his work

a quasi-historical examination

American literary theory up to and beyond New Criticism, yet he

cannot

help

but

pronounce New Criticism dead. Lentricchia moves to anticipate apocalyptic concerns in

his work

writing

that

"it

the very condition of contemporary critical historicity

that

there

no 'after' or 'before' the New Criticism" (xiii), and

encapsulating the words

"ruptures" and "periods" with quotation marks, there

still no escaping the apocalyptic

agenda

renewal or purgation

contemporary theory in the wake

New Criticism ("at

the end

things") (xiv)

that

the kernel

his work. A telling term he uses in the

history

contemporary theory

"ruptures" (xiii), which itself implies

eschatological

imagination

work

this locus

investigation. I am

not

trying to quibble with

Lentricchia's work or his perspective, for the work

valuable and necessary in terms of

viewing the fertile ground of twentieth-century

North

American literary investigation;

rather, I am trying

depict the apocalyptic energies that, often of necessity, inform

human

discourse, particularly literary discourse: for,

Kermode writes, conceptions of

"the

End"-of

anything-have perhaps lost their "nai:ve imminence"

they are perpetually

124

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

disconfirmed, they have nevertheless have become

"immanent!'

in the contemporary

imagination (Kermode 6, author's emphasis).

That

say,

that

apocalyptic-or better

still, eschatological-import has become

immanent feature of all

human

discourse.

are incapable

engaging in discourse-any discourse, even a specialized autotelic

discourse such

literary

theory-that

involves the

human

imagination without invoking

or implying or unconsciously informing such discourses without the immanent

content

apocalypse, without the sense

an end. Apocalyptic discourse of the type

that

I envision

naturally

not

a literalist manifestation of the end

human

life or the cosmos or

anything related to charismatic, orthodox theological content,

but

more with

obvious

or elementary perspective, or view,

engaging in discourse with an end in mind.

The

term apocalypse has been used with such frequency and applied

promiscuously

that

it has almost become a cliche, a term

that

no longer contains much

its original meaning. A simple consideration of how it has primarily become synonymous

with Armageddon-type catastrophe instead

its original me

• .ing of 'revelation,'

'uncovering,' or 'unveiling' in the popular imagination suggests this.

The

term's

contemporary ablated meaning

for

disaster also manifests itself in current literary

discourse, particularly in studies of contemporary American fiction. Perhaps,

Derrida

has written in his essay

"nuclear criticism," "No Apocalypse,

Not

Now (full speed

ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)," there

no other

way

to conceive

twentieth-

century life, and after,

but

in apocalyptic terms, framed

eschatological imagination:

125

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

"the anticipation

nuclear war (dreaded

the fantasy, or phantasm,

a remainderless

destruction) installs humanity-and through all sorts

relays even defines the essence

modern humanity-in its rhetorical condition" (24).

Numerou~

critical studies of the

apocalyptic nature

contemporary American fiction abound, but, in the main, these

studies probe postmodern conceptions

entropy and chaos.

The

work

N. Katherine

Hayles, focuses

the emergence in the 1990s of cyberpunk fiction and the implications

digital/electronic culture

the

human

subject and the contemporary literary artifact.

Studies like

Tom

LeClair's

The

Art

Excess: Mastery in Contemporary Fiction (1989)

examine the 'systems' novel, the literary response to the complexity of military-industrial,

bureaucratic, and electronic cultural factors in elder postmodernist novelists like Don

DeLillo, Joseph McElroy, and Thomas Pynchon. Other, more recent studies, provide a

more contemporary response to the postmodern conception

chaos and disorder

resulting from the next generation of technology

that

LeClair responds to, like Joseph

Conte's Design and Debris: A Chaotics ofPostmodern Fiction (2002) and, again, N.

Katherine Hayles's Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and

Science ( 1990). All of these studies can, in general terms, be categorized or classified

apocalyptic in the sense

that

they chart cultural crisis and ruptures-and I use

Lentricchia's term ("ruptures") because in our era

unprecedented technological

expansion, each innovation has the appearance

a rupture

that

explodes the previous

innovation in a rapidly condensed span

time, ruptures

that

are difficult to make

126 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

meaning of

they outpace our ability to adapt to and incorp

c:_·

ate them into quotidian

human existence. Joseph Dewey's important In a Dark Time:

The

Apocalyptic Temper in

the American Novel of the Nuclear Age (1990)

the lone study

contemporary fiction

to frame

American mythos

apocalyptic fear in the contemporary American novel,

one

that

specifically and signally emerges from America's movement into the post-atomic

age, an 'apocalyptic temper' heightened in certain respects

the eighties' pop-cultural

infatuation with nuclear-annihilation

that

also reflected in early apocalyptic films like

Mad Max (1979), Apocalypse Now (1979), Blade Runner (1982),

War

Games (1983),

The

Terminator (1984), or the made-for-television

The

Day After (1983), a fear

that

product

the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense lr itiative, or 'Star Wars'

missile-defense initiative, now being revived under the second Bush administration. But

while Dewey's study

invaluable and notes a strong correlation between American

nuclear culture and the contemporary novel, his use of the term apocalypse

heavily

informed

the American fear of nuclear annihilation, and

thus, perhaps, better

termed the 'eschatological temper.' In fact,

PaulS.

Fiddes distinguishes between

apocalyptic types in his

The

Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature

(2000), noting

that

the apocalyptic type that Dewey employs

a methodology

for

his

study

more properly termed "apocalyptic eschatology, a kind

eschatology

that

envisag

the end

history and the cosmos, and which may (or may not) be a feature

apocalypseS' (25, author's emphasis).

That

is,

apocalypse

revelation

often distinct

127

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

from eschatological catastrophe, and the latter does

not

necessarily mean

that

or will

be accompanied

revelation, only annihilation; yet the two are often easily merged

because of the orthodox association

St. John's Revelation and the forecasted doom

his particular revelation: "the word 'apocalyptic' has

...

become synonymous with the

end of the world" (Chevalier 33). I point

out

this triviality in

word~choice

only to

emphasize the cultural shift in the meaning

apocalypse to eschaton (essentially, the

divinely ordained climax

history) (OED),

a type

human~ordained

historical

climax, again,

not

to quibble with Dewey's work. Hereafter I

will

use the term

'eschatological' in lieu

apocalypse though I

will

carefully note the differences in

apocalypse

revelation or catastrophe

appropriate when the context

muddied in

competing versions

such, for two reasons: first,

mentioned, eschatology

accurate in terms

discussing 'ends' in all of their various manifestations and, second,

because 'eschatology' means 'last discourse' (OED). In keeping with a discourse of

endings

perceived in the aesthetic of David Foster Wallace's fiction, it

more useful to

prefer eschatological to apocalyptical, though

both

signally overlap and involve a

redemptive revelation in Wallace's works. Further, although there

some attention

given to the subject of eschatology and literature in contemporary literary criticism, these

works tend to shy away from

examination of just what it means to think

eschatologically about contemporary literature, not just medieval or Renaissance

literature, which are,

for

obvious reasons, more conducive to

eschatological discourse

128

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

because those periods

both

believed in a certain literal, divinely ordained ending. If

take

axiomatic

that

live in a complex and frenetic time-more complex

than

any

other and certainly much faster

paced-a

time

exponential technological development,

the narrowing, shrinking, or even collapsing of even geo-political borders, and a peculiar

hegemonic dominance of one nation (for the United States

the sole dominant power

the globe

for

the first time since the Roman empire) militarily, economically, and

culturally, and even if

optimistically consider these days to include a flourishing

creative and intellectual energies like no other instead of

eschatological indication

the flight

Minerva's owl (after Harold Innis's theory of intellectual energy preceding

imperial decline), we must still contend with the nagging sense

that

inhabit a fragile

cusp

something

not

know. It

interesting to observe

that

the term

'eschatology,' according to Cynthia Marshall (who takes her definition from the OED),

"dates from the middle

the

nineteenth

century" (5).

That

can

see a close

correspondence between the advent of the term 'eschatology' and eschatological thinking

in Western civilization and the rise of nineteenth-century industrialism

significant. If

the genesis

industrialism in Western society signifies a parallel escalation in

eschatological complexes,

then

may

say

that

our continuation and exponential

surmounting of industrial culture with our hectic electronic culture must be matched

by,

or produces, a corresponding increase in eschatological anxiety, whether one takes our

era's eschaton to be biblical or otherwise. Rumors of clonings and the debate over stem-

129 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

cell research in the United States alone, of the most recent technological 'breakthroughs'

are clearly shocking

many levels to

American culture

that

has not had sufficient

time or legislation (for legislation seems always to be at least one remove behind

technological discovery) to absorb their cultural impact. Eschatological anxiety

is,

thus,

obvious correlative of what William Gaddis has ironically called "the rush for second

place

remove sacred and literalist connotations from eschatological thinking

are, nevertheless, left in a place where endings exert a powerful influence

the

contemporary imagination, even though, try

might, in the postmodern era to

denigrate the essential property of endings in our art. Thus, after Marshall,

might

generally conclude

that

eschatology encompasses "the complex system

ideas about last

things" that also "suggests more widely the personal, social, and historical attitudes and

approaches toward ultimate things, including

death

and apocalypse" (5). Further, if

look at contemporary American literature and art,

find

that

the artists

our time

deploy apocalyptic/eschatological motifs or themes in relation to contemporary American

culture

an unprecedented scale.

One

need only look to such works

Walker Percy's

Love in the Ruins (1971),

The

Second Coming (1980),

The

Thanatos Syndrome (1987),

Novel Writing in an Apocalyptic Time (1986); James Merrill's

The

Changing Light at

Sandover (1980), Wallace Stevens's

"An

Ordinary Evening in New Haven" (1949) (not

to mention other Modernist precursors like Eliot's

The

Waste Land [1922] and Four

Quartets [1944]), Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2 (1995), Geor

;;.:.:

Saunders's CivilWarLand

130 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

in Bad Decline (1996), Evan Dara's

The

Lost Scrapbook (1995), Chuck Palahniuk's Fight

Club (1996), anything

William T. Vollmann and Mark Leyner, Flannery O'Connor's

The

Violent Bear it Away (1955), Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973),

Don

DeLillo's Underworld (1997) and Cosmopolis (2003), all

William Gaddis, John

Updike's Toward the End

ofTime

(1997), any and all cyberpunk and science fiction

(Philip

Dick, William Gibson, and Samuel

Delaney most prominently), or any of the

films already mentioned and Larry and Andy Wachowski's

The

Matrix (1999),

not

mention more mainstream and sensational productions such

Armageddon (1998) and

Deep Impact (1998), and the appearance

ofTim

LaHaye and

rry

Jenkins's

fundamentalist, fear-mongering forecast of biblical eschatological doom in their projected

twelve-volume Left Behind (1995-) series

novels, the most recent

which,

Desecration, was the "best-selling novel of2001" (Bissel36), and

a series has sold over

fifty

million copies

of 2002 (Maryles n.p.)-truly apocalyptic numbers for any publishing

house. Yet while America's creative energies rush toward Armageddon and

eschatologically themed works, there

a peculiar silence from critical quarters; very little

in the

way

critical commentary

directed to the contemporary eschatological

imagination. Perhaps this

because, often, the eschatological imagination

difficult

to detach from the apocalyptic-eschatological imagination and ,

association, paranoid

millenarianism. Even

so,

one would still think this to be a fertile area of cultural-critical

investigation.

the more recent studies

that

involve some type of eschatological

131

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

investigation, Cynthia Marshall examines Shakespeare from

eschatological view in the

particular context

his last plays in Last Things and Last

Shakespearean

Eschatology (1991) and Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman investigate the

eschatology

the middle ages in their edited collection, Last Things:

Death

and the

Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (2000). Richard

Emmerson and Ronald

Herzman

have, perhaps, coined, or have made more prominent in critical quarters, the phrase, "the

apocalyptic imagination" in their collaborative study,

The

Ap•.y:alyptic Imagination in

Medieval Literature (1992); of necessity, however, their study relies

a close reading

early church doctrine in explicating medieval texts and, thus, their methodology does

not

resonate in a broader and more imaginative context, particularly for the later twentieth

century and after. These studies, then, although valuable, do

not

link the very

human

proclivity to endings and the eschatological imagination, and, paradoxically, they

cannot

move away from St. John's Revelation and maintain

eschatological discourse at once.

There

also a scattering of article-length studies

particular works of literature from

apocalyptic/eschatological perspective,

but

these, again, do

not

move very far from the

particular works treated, nor do they posit

eschatological temper running through the

particular artists' oeuvres

I will claim occurs in Wallace's fiction. t Moreover, there

again the sense in these critical studies

that

the eschatological imagination

that

informs

these artists' works

detached and isolated from the larger body

literary eschatological

visions.

That

say,

I find no indication

an 'eschatological theory'

that

allows

132

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

disparate works from Thomas

Kyd

to David Foster Wallace to be understood in terms

general understanding of what eschatological thinking means in the context

human

being

that

possesses an eschatological identity simply because of his individual mortality

and, more particularly, an eschatological identity

that

augmented

the specific

cultural forces

living in a time

that

constructed

post,structural, post-modem, and

post-history. It would appear

that

there

is,

to borrow Wallace Stevens's phrase, a very

necessary fiction

eschaton inherent in the

human

condition, without which

could

neither make meaning of our transient individual occupation

this globe nor understand

the future in any real sense. This

partly

because the term eschatology

loaded with

catastrophic, biblical connotations (apocalypse

Armageddon), and

is,

thus, all too easily

associated with end-times millenarian and other, more conservative orthodox,

movements, most of which contemporary criticism would sooner and, for the most part,

rightly ignore. It

is,

perhaps, difficult to disassociate the sacred connotations

eschatology, and to liberate the word from its sacred heritage, and it

probably impossible

to do

fully.

In this chapter I

will

seek to renovate, or loosen, these limiting orthodox

meanings,

much

possible, from the word

applying it to the human imagination

and, therefore, attempt to offer a theory

what it means to inspire or inform works of

contemporary American literature with

eschatological imagination

that

courageously

oriented to the production

redemptive contemporary fiction, for

eschatological

theory must,

necessity, involve a new beginning or a sense of redemption. As Frye

133

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

wrote in

The

Educated Imagination (1963), which feels

long ago, though

relevant

than

ever,

the critic's function

interpret every work

literature in the light

all

the literature he knows, to keep constantly

stru~gling

understand what

literature

a whole

about. Literature

a whole

not

aggregate

exhibitions with red and blue ribbons attached

them, like a cat-show,

but

the range

articulate human imagination

it extends from the

height of imaginative heaven to the depth

inative hell. Literature

human

apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism

not

a body

adjudications,

but

the awareness

that

revelation, the last judgment

mankind. (44, emphasis added)

might also add

films,

or all imaginative, cultural texts, to Frye's conception

literature with his approbation,

for

they too depict the full "range of articulate

human

imagination" and humankind's daily ascent to heaven or descent to hell.

And

may,

also,

say

with Frye

that

investigate "man's revelation to man"

is,

perhaps, the most

essential aspect

literary investigation that, in Derrida's famously recurring phrase,

"always already" begins with an ending.

* * *

134

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

The

Mantle

"The

language of apocalyptic writing

richly symbolic and

the

importance of

the

visions which

are described

never in their literal meaning.

can

be taken

a rule

that

every element in this

kind

writing has symbolic value-persons, places, animals, actions, parts of

the

body, numbers

and

measurements, stars, constellations, colors and

garments-and

are

not

to misunderstand

or distort the writer's message,

must appreciate

the

imagery at its true value and do our best to

translate

the

symbols back into the ideas which he

intended

them to convey" ('Apocalypse,'

The

Penguin Dictionary of Symbols 33).

"Should I find it depressing

that

the young Dostoevsky

was

just like young U.S. writers today, or

kind of a relief? Does anything ever

change?"-David

Foster Wallace ("Feodor's Guide" 28 n.

21).

For

title, 'the eschatological imagination,' I have borrowed from Joseph Frank's

five-volume biography, Dostoevsky (1976-2002). Throughou t

~is

exhaustive critical

biography, and primarily in the final two installments, Frank continually refers to

Dostoevsky's "eschatological vision of

human

life" (Mantle 1 72), his "eschatological

imagination" (196, 313; Miraculous 101, 146), his "eschatological apprehension of life"

(Miraculous 312), the "eschatological tension" of the "Christian ethic" of a "totally selfless

~,from

the "perspective of the imminent end of time" (321), his "eschatological

ideal" (341), his "eschatological hope" (Mantle 368), his "epochal formulation" of a

"future humankind

that

would literally be a huge, united, and interdependent organism-a

humankind in which any separation between individuals would no longer even be

physically conceivable" (370), and Dostoevsky's "ideological

chatology,"

the "moral

message of love and self-sacrifice

that

Christ had brought to the world" (Liberation 299).

far

I can tell Frank has coined the phrase, the eschatological imagination, though it

135

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

has been revived in recent years in James Alison's theological study, Raising Abel:

The

Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination (1996).

The

phrase appears to have evolved

in Frank's own thought over the sustained course of completing his study of the evolution

of Dostoevsky's imagination, literary aesthetic, and world-view. In his first volume,

Dostoevsky:

The

Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 (1976), Frank defines Dostoevsky's primary

aesthetic and world-view (to "conquer hatred and replace it

love")

a "mora

artistic

cosmos" (367) . Only in the second volume,

The

Years ofOrC:cal, 1850-1859 (1983),

does Frank come closer to a theoretical definition of what

will

eventua

lly

become the

more concrete "eschatological imagination" of the final three volumes. Frank first notes

that

Dostoevsky's imagination

informed

an "apocalyptic view" (37), and

that

the

"strength" of Dostoevsky's work can be traced to his desire to "communicate the saving

power of [the] eschatological core of the Christian faith" (64). Frank's "eschatological

imagination"

never extensively defined in any one of the volumes,

but

he comes closest

to estab

shing his sense of a Dostoevskian eschatological poetics in the second volume:

Dostoevsky's imagination at this point [after his incarceration in Siberia]

cou

not resist taking the eschatological leap

that

was to become

characteristic

for

him-the

leap to

e end condition of whatever empirical

situation he

considering-and

so,

in order to dramatize the supreme

importance of hope

for

human

life,

he deliberately invents a situation in

which it

systematically destroyed. (158, author's emphasis)

This "eschatological core" or "leap" eventua

y becomes the more refined eschatological

imagination of the successive volumes. Frank seems reluctant to arrive at an overarching

definition of the eschatological imagination, perhaps because of the infinite varieti

136 J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

eschatological conditions and experiences

that

Dostoevsky conceived. This also calls

attention to the versatility or mutability

the eschatological imagination

suited to

any imaginative context, sacred or secular.

What

particularly striking and revealing

about this

the flexibility

the phrase; it

applied throughout to Dostoevsky's

Christian world-view, his doubts and frustrations, personal experiences, fiction writing,

and his passionate engagement with the then-contemporary ideologies (particularly

utopian socialism and nihilism among the Russian intelligentsia), all of which are bound

together

a common perception of an end, often a disastrous one, one

that

pivotally

grounded in a language of renewal. Envisioning and depicting endings, often catastrophic

ones, for Dostoevsky and for Wallace, in their fiction

their way

dramatizing cultural

transformation, or new beginnings.

I introduce Frank's work here for three reasons

that

I will return to in the course

of the chapter. First, it

clear from reading Wallace's work, particularly his essay

"Feodor's

Guide"-a

review article

Frank's biography

publisl11

in the Village Voice

Literary Supplement (1996) just three months after the release

Infinite Jest (January

1996)-that

Wallace aligns himself to the Dostoevskian tradition almost to the point

viewing himself

assuming Dostoevsky's prophetic mantle in a contemporary American

context.2 Next, there

a real similarity between the fiction of Dostoevsky and Wallace,

in terms of iconography and symbols, and, more importantly, in the correspondence

between

both

artists' unflinching eschatological depiction of debased and despairing

137

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

human

nature with a redemptive end. Thirdly,

conception

eschatological

approach

largely indebted to Frank's foundational phrase and his meticulous

observations regarding Dostoevsky's aesthetic development.

analysis

Wallace's

close reading of Frank's intimate reading and understanding of Dostoevsky allows

capture a strong sense

the similarities between Dostoevsky's and Wallace's aesthetic

and to understand how Wallace deploys this influence throughout his fiction to dramatize

ultimate endings.

may

say,

then,

that

are in medias res now in terms

arriving at

approximation of Wallace's eschatological vision

that

is,

first, steeped in Joseph Frank,

and to a larger, more important extent, Dostoevsky. Wallace's work

is,

course,

not

simply reducible to

aping of Dostoevsky's poetics, for

have already seen in the

case

ofG

Hopkins (Part One) and others, Wallace's work tends to involve a unique

appropriation

a wide variety

artistic influences and styles

that

becomes a vital

reinterpretation or reformulation constructed out

ends for new beginnings.

Wallace's use

a chatty, familiar, and conversational tone in all his essays often

belies his sincerity and passionate feelings about his subjects. Indeed, his jocular and witty

treatment

these topics seems to suggest

that

his essays are written with haste,

that

the

thoughts expressed there are random opinions, without any formal rhetorical devices at

work, and, therefore, not to be taken too seriously. They are first and foremost friendly;

though they seek to persuade the reader, they are respectful, warm, and often highly

amusing.

And

while they are extremely intelligent, and while the reader never forgets

138

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

that

the writer

extremely intelligent, these essays always have

open, even vulnerable,

style to them.

They

make

honest appeal to the reader

that

neither pretentious nor

heavy-handed.

What

most striking about these essays, and "Feodor's Guide" in

particular,

one returns to and re-reads them,

the deep and sophisticated involvement

that

they demand from the reader in parsing their subtexts. "Feodor's Guide," like the

later Rain Taxi Review review article discussed in the previous chapter,

is,

course,

simply a review article. But, like

all

Wallace's work, to consign this essay to

that

simple

class

to ignore the deeper gestures and larger ramifications

that

are its true subject

matter. Primarily, like Dostoevsky's own essays and fiction, Wallace has one target in

mind, the contemporary aesthetic condition or 'worldview'

ironic nihilism in American

fiction. Whereas Dostoevsky spent his literary and personal life engaging the utopian

socialists and intellectual nihilists (like N.G. Chernyshevsky's popular

What

to be

Done? [ 1863]), Wallace engages the contemporary American literati's easy reliance

ironic nihilism, a self-promoting nihilism

that

mocks, sneers and, thus, negates sincere

discourse and debate from the outset. Two contemporary examples of this ironic nihilism

are the work

Mark Leyner, directly addressed

Wallace in his essay

television and

American fiction, and relative new-comer, Neil Pollack.3

One

the two epigraphs

that

head "Feodor's Guide," a snippet

dialogue from Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, merits

full

quotation here:

'At

the present time, negation

the most usefui of all-and

deny-'

'Everything?'

139

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

'Everything!'

'What,

not

only art and poetry

...

but

even

...

horrible to say

...

'Everything,' repeated Bazarov, with indescribable composure.' (17)

have already noted in the epigraph

Wallace's "Tense Present: Democracy,

English, and the Wars over Usage" from Augustine, Dilige

quod

vis

fac ('Love, and do

what you will'), Wallace's epigraphs are crucial rhetorical strategies

both

in terms of

emphasizing his belief in the reader's participation (in seeking

out

a translation to the

Augustinian quotation and inviting the reader to take the meaning beyond the scope and

limitations of

essay and adopt it, or,

least, consider its consequences) and here in

"Feodor's Guide" in signifying the essential strategical engageii<ent

the essay, beyond its

immediate limits

a review article. While the essay

a generic book review for a well-

known literary supplement, it also bears the marks of a contemporary aesthetic treatise

that, again like the Rain Taxi Review essay, pillories contemporary American avant

gardists-the producers and cori.sumers of contemporary avant garde literature-in a

publication

that

considered perpetually avant garde by the literati.

In the concluding paragraph

the essay, a rally or call to arms of sorts

contemporary fiction writers

that

moves far away from the initial and ostensible subject

the essay, Wallace declares

that

although he considers the current moment to be a dark

and difficult one for fiction writers who would strive for sincerc expression, he also recalls

Dostoevsky

a "model"

(25)-much

like Wallace's earlier consideration of G.M. Hopkins

a "touchstone" (McCaffery 149)

for

contemporary writers-and concludes his piece

140

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

writing

that

"Frank's books present a hologram

one

them" (25).4

The

hologram

metaphor

a significant one for Wallace, mainly because Infinite Jest-the novel he wrote

partly to address the many literary-aesthetic dilemmas of the postmodern era-deploys

holograms in a plethora of

ways

have noted in the ghost/geist portion

the

previous chapter. In the context

his Dostoevsky essay, however,

not

only does Wallace

call attention to the fact

Frank's mediation of Dostoevsky

a model/hologram for

contemporary writers,

but

he actually acts

a hologram him

"·

lf through his own essay

mediating Dostoevsky through the particular lens of his essay-authorial

self.

In an

interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace remarks about Infinite Jest

that

he intended his

novel to be "not particularly postmodern or jumbled up or fractured," although, in respect

to his use

endnotes, he also contends that,

for

him, "reality's fractured right now" and

that

"constantly

the lookout

for

ways

to fracture the text

that

aren't totally

disorienting" (Rose 11). As

have observed, Wallace's primary motivation for

fracturing his narrative

to jar the reader into a sense

that

someone

mediating the

textual content, its data, and its arrangement and chronological sequencing-that a

human agency

responsible for this textual ordering

the other end

the literary

transaction in our contemporary world

that

tends to disguise mediation, particularly in

the commercial arts like television. Wallace's essays are no different

than

his fiction in

terms

textual strategies. "Feodor's Guide" contains six interpolated, off-set and

italicized segments encapsulated with double asterisks

that

are only tangentially related to

141

J.T. Jacob

PhD

esi

Depa

rtment

of Eng

McM

ter University

th th

e essay proper's subject, Jose

Fra

biogra

y and iJostoevsky's literary-

cultural achieveme

s. He further

eds

e essay with his now familiar a

expe

ndn

enty

-fi

ve in tota

ve pages of not

in a short, thirteen-page

, which

further

e essay's organi

tio

All s

excerpts are

fir

st-per

n, monol

ue-

style philosophical meditations

at reca

Und

erground Man's withering discour

toevsky's prose dramatic monol

Not

Und

round

864).

And

lth

ough

me of

ese are leng

I quote

thr

ee of

ese philosophical meditations

exampl

how Wa

ace

s his essay and becau

int

egra

y inform his overa

ntr

eaty:

"~<*

But

if I de

cid

ere's a

dif

rent, less selfish, less lonely po

int

my li

fe,

Isn 't

e reason

thi

s decision my desire to be less lonel

nin

g to suffer less pain! So can

e decisi

be less selfish be

anything o

an a selfish de

sion

/**

("Feodor's Guide"

19,

uth

or's

mph

is)

**Is

possible r

y to love somebod

I'm lonel

ins

everybody o

e me is pote

nti

al relief: I need

em.

But

possible to

ove

what you need! Does l

ove

have to be vo

lunt

ary to be l

ove!

Does

have to not even be in my o

best

int

erest

e love,

unt

love!';:*

(

, a

uth

or's emph

is)

;::;:

What Is

eri

n '! Do

have something in co

on,

eri

do we a

st ha

live ins

me arbitrary

und

ari

es!

eri

ffe

om o

er countri

es!

ere

something spe

al abo

! For

t abo

special priv

eges

at go with

being an

eri

are

ere spe

al responsibilities

with being an

A meri

so,

responsibilities to

?·-;:.-;:

(22, a

uth

or's emph

is)

e o

thr

ee excerpts addr

ess

such to

as,

whe

er one is a "good per

n" or not

8), "faith"

8), and be

ef (23). None of

e excerpts have any immediate relation to

Joseph Frank's biography or D

toevsky,

me tim

are completely

142

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

intertwined with Dostoevsky's eschatological imagination-for all

these conundrums

present themselves repeatedly in his fiction.

one point in the article, Wallace addresses the difficulty

reading Dostoevsky

in a contemporary American context in which Dostoevsky's fiction's "time and culture

and language are alien to

us"

(19). He further observes

that

Dosteovsky's "prose and

dialogue can come off stilted and pleonastic and silly" (19) because of "excruciating

Victorianish translations" (26

5);

that

Dostoevsky's works exhibit a "soppy-seeming

formality" (19);

that

"social etiquette

stiff to the point of ab'>urdity" augmented with

"obscure military ranks and bureaucratic hierarchies" (19); and

that

"rigid and totally

weird class distinctions" are "hard to keep straight and understand the implications

of'

(19-20).

That

Wallace is

initially hard

Dostoevsky's works

itself surprising until

come to understand the rhetorical strategy behind the essay:

that

it aims to be a

hologram of Dostoevsky-of making Dostoevsky's works more accessible to the

contemporary American imagination-through the tripartite mediation

of,

first,

Dostoevsky himself, Joseph Frank, and

then

Wallace himself. For Wallace, here,

Dostoevsky embodies such a dynamic light source

that

requires, because of the levels of

cultural obscurity

that

block or deflect his radiance, a type

light mediator-or a

translator. A translator

not

in the literal sense

translating Dostoevsky's Russian works

into the English language,

but

a translator who would translate Dostoevsky's

eological

agendas into a contemporary American idiom and context. Thus, Wallace's italicized and

143

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Depa

rtm

of Eng

McM

ter University

int

erpolated comme

represe

s a ref

hio

nin

g and re-mediation of D

toevsky in

which

at a

uth

or's ce

ntr

al concerns are translated into an

erican p

tmode

ext, one

at h

oss

ifi

ed, for Wa

into a cultura

y toxic Weltans

auung of

iron

exivit

and morda

spoofing of

erican hyperconsume

sm. D

toevs

in Wa

ace's word

"dramati

[d]

e profoundest parts of a

hum

an bein

gs,

e parts

t conflicted, m

rious:

e on

with

e m

stak

(21).

is no mistake

e portions of Dostoevsky

at Wa

ace re-writ

from an

erican perspective have to

do with what today's p

tmodern litera

agend

and fiction-writing perspectives

uld

find trit

naiv

and insipid:

e l

or rapidly diminishin

shared valu

of per

nal

rth

and goo

ess; faith in

mething beyond

e immediate

lipsistic s

ubj

ect;

lonelin

ess

and

lfi

ess

; loving someone witho

oug

for on

elf;

e value of

communal partic

ation (as

'Am

cans'); and

e value of looking to o

er hologram

e very

hum

anistic a

eal

benea

ace's essay a

o becom

a recurre

ain

rougho

his fiction, which is

surprising

Joyce once remarked

at a

nove

st manipulat

one or two recurre

over

e cour

of a writing caree

Throu

gh his co

entions regarding D

toevsk

we see a re

ection of what is m

valuable to Wa

ace

e essayist and fiction write

FMD's conce

ays

what

be a

hum

an bein

e. how a

per

n, in

e particular social and philosophical circumstanc

nineteenth-century Ru

ia, could be a real

hum

an bein

a per

n whose

life w

informed by love a

valu

principl

, instead of being just a

shre

speci

lf-preserving anima

(21,

auth

or's e

mph

is)

144

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

ace impli

at to read D

toevsky prope

to understand

e inte

ectual battl

at D

toevsky foug

and to appreciate Dostoevsky's aes

etic is to see a re

acted

image of Dostoevsky in Wa

ace's own work. To say

at Wa

ace mirrors Dostoevsky's

atological aes

etic is to imply

at D

toevsky's society mirrors our own.

ough,

ace ob

nin

etee

nth-c

entury Ru

ian society clea

y differs from twe

y-first

ntur

erican society,

ere

a dramatic corr

ence none

eless in terms of

dramatizing

hum

an condition. While "Feodor's Guide" examin

, on

e surfac

works of Joseph Frank and D

toevsky,

e essay's deeper implication is

emporary

can nove

sts hav

in Wa

ace's words, "abandoned

eld" (24);

no lon

r dramati

e significanc

and wo

rth

of being human, or just what

it means to live in an

atol

al age. For Wa

ace, D

toevs

"possessed a p

ass

ion,

conviction, and engageme

with deep moral i

ues

at we, here, tod

ay,

ot or do not

ow our

lves" (23).

examining D

toevsky's age of nihilis

ace di

noses

prese

age:

And

on finishing Frank's books, I think any

rious

erican reader/writer

will find him

lf driven to think hard abo

what exactly it is

at mak

many of

e nove

sts of our own time look

ematica

y sha

ow and

...

To inquire why we

-und

er our own nihilist spe

ll-

seem to

require of our writers an ironic distance

om deep convictions or d

perate

tion

at co

emporary writers have to

eith

er make jokes of

profound i

or el

try

mehow to work

em in under cover of

formal trick like inte

extual quotation or incongruous juxtap

ition,

sticking

em ins

sks

part of some surreal, defamiliari

tion-o

e-reading-experience

ourish. (23)

Part of

e reason for this co

empora

, literary nihilism, Wa

ace su

gges

ts, is attributable

145

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

aesthetic shifts in the genre

the novel itself, which "involves our era's postindustrial

condition and postmodern culture" (23) . Whereas, for Wallace, the Modernists "elevated

aesthetics to the level of metaphysics" (23), making "formal ingenuity" the standard for

noteworthy fiction, postmodernist writers "presume

a matter

course

that

serious

literature

will

be aesthetically distanced from real lived life" (23). As such, the peculiar

aesthetic conception of 'serious' fiction now means, at least for Wallace, an admixture of

self-conscious textual ingenuity and the avoidance

problematic moral issues

that

emerge from the present time, issues

that

would require a writer to make some sort of

ideological claim whether masked

character or literary personae. Wallace observes

that

although Dostoevsky's fiction

celebrated for "its wisdom and compassion and moral

rigor," Dostoevsky

was

himself, ironically, "a prick in real life-vain, self-absorbed,

arrogant, spiteful, selfish" (21) . Yet despite this, Wallace calls Dostoevsky, in a word,

"brave" (24, author's emphasis). Wallace continues: "he never stopped worrying about

his literary reputation,

but

he also never stopped promulgating ideas in which he believed.

And he did

not

ignoring the unfriendly cultural circumstances in which he

was

writing,

but

confronting them, engaging them, specifically and

name" (24).

What

of crucial importance in this essay

that

while Wallace meticulously

diagnoses the contemporary literary environment, he also implicates himself several times

complicitous with the contemporary literati: "our intelligentsia (us) distrust strong

belief, open conviction" (24); and: "we will,

course, without hesitation use art to

146

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

parody, ridicule, debunk or protest ideologies. But there

a d1tference" (29 n. 25).

There

also a fundamental difference in Wallace's conception

'ideology,' for he does

not

directly refer to the types

literary theoretical ideologies (Marxism,

poststructuralism-"our age's

own

radical-intellectual fad" ("Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky"

n.p.)-feminist theory, and

forth) practiced

the neo-liberal Humanities faculties of

today's academy, which would be better understood, perhaps,

political agendas instead

of ideologies

belief, though it

arguable that he nevertheless implicates the "theory

industry" ("Fyodor"

n.3) here

well. Advancing

'ideology'-a system

ideas,

beliefs-means, for Joseph Frank, precisely to dramatize the characteristic moral-spiritual

themes

a period against the background

a particular cult·1re (qtd. in Wallace 18).

He, then, concludes the essay

quoting a portion

Dostoevsky's

The

Idiot, excerpted

from a ten-page monologue

suicide, and asks the reader to imagine the critical

reception a contemporary novelist would elicit

daring to allow a contemporary

character to speak in this fashion: "so he-we, fiction writers-won't-ever-dare try to use

serious art to advance ideologies.

The

project would be

culturally inappropriate

Menard's Quixote. We'dbe laughed

out

town" (25, emphasis added).5 In "Feodor's

Guide," Wallace has implicitly and single-handedly called for a termination

the type

postmodern self-conscious and ironic fiction

that

he sees

the hallmark of our time. In

this sense, his essay

eschatological: it both diagnoses, in demqrcating an end, and ushers

in a pivotal transformative opportunity for American fiction writers. In a sense, Wallace

147

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

drops the gauntlet and presents a cha

enge to contemporary writers who read

The

Village

Given this-and it

a given-who

to blame for the philosophical

passionlessness

our own Dostoevskys?

The

cultur

the laughers? But

they wouldn't-could

not-laugh

if a piece of passionately serious ideological

contemporary fiction

was

ingenious and radi

ant

ly transcendent fiction.

But how to do

that-how

even,

for

a writer, even a very talented writer, to

get up the guts to even

try?

There are no formulae or guarantees. But

there are models. Frank's books present a hologram

one of them. (25)

While this

no doubt a cha

enge to, or exhortation

for,

other writers, Wallace, perhaps,

subtly indicates

that

he himself has already undertaken

e very challenge he presents

to his fellow writers,

that

he has attempted to write the very "passionately serious

ideological" work

that

also "ingenious and radiantly transcendent"

that

he calls for in

his essay. Wallace,

have noted,

careful to implicate himselffirst and foremost in

his essays before moving to challenge the literary intelligentsia.

The

timing

the

appearance

this essay-April 1996-coincides with the publication of Infinite

Jest

-J

anuary 1996-too closely, too rhetorically strategically,

for

Wallace's concluding

statement to be read any other

way,

for whenever Wallace challenges the literati in his

essays,

he has done in both "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over

Usage" and the Rain Taxi Review essay, he first makes certain

that

he has attempted to

overcome the very aesthetic-philosophical dilemmas he draws attention to in his own

fiction-by practice.

Wallace has remarked in several interviews, since the release

Infinite Jest,

that

148

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

reviewers and readers have largely misunderstood his novel: "I

didn't

read a whole lot

reviews,

but

a lot

the positive ones seemed to me to misunderstand the book" (Rose

11).

That

while although he intended to write a novel

that

was

both

difficult and highly

enjoyable ("the project

...

was to do something long and difficult

that

was also fun")

(Donahue par. 9), Wallace comments

that

he wanted it to be "extraordinarily sad and

not

particularly postmodern" (Rose 11). In an interview with Laura Miller, Wallace

says

Infinite Jest: "I wanted to do something sad. I'd done some funny stuff and some heavy,

intellectual stuff,

but

I'd never done anything sad" (Miller 1). Yet although the book was

founded

a principle of sorrow, most reviewers, still partially accurately, called it

"brashly funny," "a comic masterpiece," "a blockbuster comedy," "frequently hilarious,"

and "uproarious"; one of only a

few

reviews to understand the novel somewhat accurately

called it

an"

1,088-page encyclopedia

hurt." "Feodor's Guide

indirect fashion,

moves to reply to these critics. Wallace notes two significant features of Frank's books:

first,

that

Frank founds his critical biography

the premise

that

"Dostoevsky's

masterpieces are often read and admired even without any real appreciation

their

ideological agendas"

(25

1)-that

is,

that

they are largely misunderstood-and, second,

that

Frank never mentions the intentional fallacy "or tries to head off the objection

that

his biography commits it all over the place"

(25

n. 2). Wallace observes

that

what

valuable about Frank's study

his "maximum restraint and objectivity: he's

not

about

imposing a certain theory or

way

decoding Dostoevsky, and he steers way clear of

149

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

arguing with other critics who've applied various axes' edges l0 FMD's stuff' (25 n. 2).

Frank takes

his critical methodology the view

that

understanding Dostoevsky's

intellectual environment, the "historical facts," and "Dostoevsky's own notes and letters"

(25

n.2)

the only

way

to appreciate

fully

that

novelist's works: "his argument

never

that

somebody else

wrong, just

that

they

don't

have all the facts" which, in Wallace's

view, "gives implicit authority to Frank's agenda

providing completely exhaustive and

comprehensive context,

The

Whole Story" (25 n. 2).

here

that

Wallace contrasts

Frank's methodology with contemporary criticism:

the loss

ability to countenance and discuss the particularity

works of literary genius

that

maybe most to be loathed about the theory

industry's rise to power in contemporary fiction.-criticism. A lot

post

structural theory

fascinating in its own right,

but

when it comes to

actually reading some piece of fiction, most theoretical readings consist in

just running it through a kind of powerful philosophical machine.

(25

author's emphasis)

For Wallace, what makes Frank's biography

singularly important and successful

his

"determination to treat both the ideological forces

work around Dostoevsky's fictions

and the completely distinctive and unabstractable way in which FMD transforms those

forces" (26

3, author's emphasis). Wallace also praises Frank's close readings of

Dostoevsky's most celebrated works, noting

that

these readings "aim to be explicative

rather

than

argumentative or theory-driven-i.e. their aim

to articulate

fully

possible what exactly Dostoevsky himself wanted the books to mean" (18).

There

is,

the conclusion to the essay in which Wallace challenges his contemporaries and suggests

150

].T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

that

his novel

example

"passionately serious ideological fiction" (25)

that

he calls

for,

a suggestion

that

his own work should be read

critics, academics, and readers in

much the same

way

that

Frank reads Dostoevsky:

"to

trace and explain the novels'

genesis

out

of Dostoevsky's own ideological engagement with Russian culture" (18).

Wallace's subtext (itself a refraction or reflection

Dostoevsky and Frank) suggests

that

forcing a particular literary-theoretical agenda

his novel will

not

apply, or will lead to

misunderstanding, at best. Such readings would

not

be 'wrong,'

but

these readings would

simply,

in the case of Frank's scholarly contemporaries

Dostoevsky,

not

"have all the

facts" (25). Frank remarks, in the preface to the fifth volume,

that

"it

impossible

read Dostoevsky, however, without becoming aware

that

his major characters are deeply

involved in the socio-political ideologies and problems

their time;

but

his own so-called

political ideas seemed

eccentric that hardly anyone took them seriously" (Mantle, xi).

Frank also contends

that

Dostoevsky "focused all the problems

that

great culture in his

great novels-not

the level in which they ordinarily appeared to his contemporaries,

but

transforming them in terms of his own eschatological

...

vision" (xiii).

make the most

his work, one must pay particular heed to the current intellectual climate and

Wallace's oblique critical writings

the state of contemporary fiction.

That

say,

endorsing Frank's critical methodology, Wallace implies

that

his own work should be read

and replied to in a similar fashion: that the intentional fallacy should be disregarded in

favor

careful explicative reading, critical theories jettisoned, and greater focus paid

151

J.T. Jacobs, PhD

Departme

of English, McM

ter University

e inte

ectual and ideolog

al stru

at an a

uth

r-W

ace him

lf, in this

case- engages in, and to focus on Infinite J

t's unique partic

ari

in relation to o

works of co

empora

American fiction. Further, what is particula

y f

cinating about

this

at Wa

ace never ac

ges

e interpolated, o

ff-

t philosophical

eces

-th

are simply le

for

e reader to pu

le o

. By including

ese meditation

however, Wa

ace indirectly seeds his essay with

riou

moral

at he finds

lacking in co

emporary fictio

."f:.'f:

Does this guy jesus Christ

hav

e anything to t

ch me even

was

n 't 'divin

e'!

What are the impli

ons that somebody who

was

supposed to be God

rela

and

so could have turned the cross into a

er or something with

st a look still vo

lunt

arily let them na

him up

ther

died!

And

did

ow!

Did

ow he could br

k the cross

with

st a look!

-Sp

king of

ing: did he

in ad

nce that the

th 'd

st be te

orary! Had God clued him in! I

bet

I could climb up

ther

oo,

if I

an eterni

of rig

ht-h

ed bliss lay on the other s

hours of pa

in-D

oes any of

thi

s even ma

Can I still believe in

j C or

Muh

ed or Buddha or

oever even

I don 't

elieve' th

re rela

ves of God! Plus

at would that even m

n, anyway:

elieve

'?-"f:·'l:

at this interpolated passage alone

ematica

y bears a striking resemblance to

discour

een

an a

Aly

ha in

e "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of

e Brothers

Karama

v in terms of be

ef is al

a textual strat

egy

on Wa

ace's part;

ese textual

interlud

on significa

hum

an s

ubj

here) indirectly whet

e reader

appetite to consult D

toevs

directly, and prepare readers for what

ey will enco

unt

in Dostoevsky's

ction.

ese interpolations are dee

y significant, in addition to

eir

jarring textual p

ition,

force

e reader to pau

and cons

er them and

152

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

questions they impose on the readers' mundane existence. They act

a clarion call for

readers to enlarge their perspective and remove themselves from the solipsistic concerns

daily life, and to cons

er the importance of believing in something

that

is larger

than

the immediate

lf.

Rhetorically, Wallace

the dilemma he postulates throughout

and through his own essay, and further ca

s attention to the tact

that

he has already

moved to redeem a terminal point in American literature through his own novel, Infinite

lest.

* * *

The

Brothers lncandenza

"'And you wouldn't believe what's happening between them now-it's terrible, it's a strain, I'm

telling you, it's such a terrible tale

that

one

cannot

believe it: they're destroying themselves, who

kno

why, and they kn

they're doing it, and they're both revelling in it"' (The Brothers

Karamazov 4.4.181).

The

significant correspondence between Wallace and Dostoevsky

not, however,

limited to "Feodor's Guide,"

for

Wallace has consciously constructed and patterned

Infinite Jest

meticulously after Dostoevsky's greatest and final novel,

The

Brothers

Karamazov (1880), that, one could argue, in many significant

ways,

Infinite Jest

are

writing, re-contextualization-even a (re)translation-ofThe Brothers Karamazov into the

contemporary American idiom and context.6 Stylistically and thematically, Infinite Jest

153

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Depa

rtm

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

e "hologram" of

e Brothers Karam

azo

ace's nove

in many crucial and

metim

obvious respe

we have seen, bears striking similariti

to Joyce's Ulysses

and

peare's Hamlet, in addition to Eliot's

e W

te L

but

e m

t importa

and overarc

hin

pri

ation of a W

litera

is of D

toevsk

y's

e Brothers

Karama

v. In "Feodo

s Guide" Wa

ace devotes

thr

ee consecutive notes to what he

e "excruciatingly Victorianish translation

of Constance Ga

(26 n. 5) , and

critiqu

en-rece

translation of Crime and Punis

hment

chard Pevear

ssa

Volo

onsky by quoting from

eir translation:

'"Now is

e Kingdom of reason a

lig

. . . a

wi/1

ength .

sha

see! N

we sha

cross swo

s!' he a

umptu

ousl

as i

ddressing some da

for

cha

enging

...

Umm, why not just 'as if addr

ess

ing

me dark

rce'? Umm, can

cha

a dark force witho

addr

ess

ing it?

ere, in

e Rus

an,

mething

at keeps

e above

om being re

dund

, stilted, ba

why not recogni

at in English it's ba

and cl.ean it up in an acclaimed

new Knopf translation? I just do

n't

t it. (26 n.

uth

or's emph

e succeeding not

ace qu

tions just what

e ubiquitous Dostoevskian phrase

"fl

y at"

mebody rea

y means: "it happens d

oze

ns of tim

in eve

FMD nove

at, 'fly at'

em in order to beat

em up? To

t in

eir fac

y not just

u're

anslatin

g?"

6 n. 6). Wallace is not being mean-spirited toward

e va

able

work o

evear and Volo

ons

, and it is clear

at he dee

y admir

toevsky's

works, and it is preci

ly becau

he rever

Dostoevsky

that

he finds it lame

able

his works- and his

ematic and sty

stic brillian

ce-

do not translate ve

eas

y and we

into Eng

sh, particula

y millennial

erican Eng

sh. As neither a

flu

speaker of

154

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

Russian, nor

expert in Russian literature, Wallace

clearlv in no position to translate

Dostoevsky's works himself to his own satisfaction; he

is,

however, in a unique position to

translate in a more broad and figurative sense, nevertheless.

What

Wallace does achieve

in Infinite Jest, however,

a transposition or transumption-a textual metalepsis-ofThe

Brothers Karamazov into the specific ideological environment of contemporary America.

Just

Dostoevsky's "particular

foes

were the Nihilists, the radical progeny of the '40's

socialists" (29 n. 23), Wallace's "foes" are the contemporary literary ironic nihilists, the

type

that

refuses to countenance or confront serious moral issues through art. Wallace

tempers his nihilistic conception, however, for he concedes

that

inaccurate to claim

that

have rejected all religious and moral principles

the more radical nihilists of

Dostoevsky's time espoused: "maybe it's

not

true

that

today are nihilists.

the very

least we have devils

believe in. These include sentimentality, naivete, archaism,

fanaticism. Maybe it'd be better to call our art's culture one

congenital skepticism"

(24).

through Infinite Jest

that

Wallace acts to engage this "congenital skepticism."

A further reason why Dostoevsky's works do

not

translate well, or are easily

misunderstood

the contemporary reader,

that

because the "devils"-a significant word

for Wallace to choose considering

that

the title

a major Dostoevsky novel (1871)

and because

the important dialogue between Ivan Karamazov and the Devil in

Brothers Karamazov-of our time ("sentimentality, naivete, archaism, fanaticism") are

155

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department

English, McMaster University

mainly what the contemporary reader distills from Dostoevsky's translated works.

Ironically, the ideological traits

that

now abhor are mainly what the contemporary

reader adduces from Dostoevsky's works:

often find the (translated) language

Dostoevsky's fictions embarrassingly sentimental and

na"ive

(because of the characters'

sincere expression), replete with archaisms (linguistic and cultural), and Dostoevsky's

characters to be fanatical in their actions. Dostoevsky moved to engage what he

perceived to be destructive ideological elements

his society, elements

that

our

contemporary society mirrors, though in a different form, yet, and this is the irony, his

works read,

Wall ace remarks, stilted

and badly and make

uncomfortable to the

point

that

fail to see the imp

ortant

correlations between Dostoevsky's society and our

own. While Dostoevsky's work has never been more relevant and necessary

for

contemporary American culture, his works nevertheless appear to

to be the very type

fiction

that

should (and do, in the main)

shun

na"ive

and fanatical;

that

while his

works couldact

a necessary homeopathic remedy for what «Js contemporary American

society,

frequently see them

an exemplar

what

flee from.

cannot

get past

the surface translations.

have, instead

regarding Dostoevsky

important

exemplar of a courageous writer

for

our time

well

his own, embraced Dostoevsky's

heir, Nietzsche;

have spumed belief and now cling to

individualism

that

privileges

solipsistic gratification over communal values. This

modem

lack

belief philosopher

Leszek Kolakowski calls a "massive self-aware secularity"

(8)

introduced

"the prophet

156

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

modernity" (9), Nietzsche:

he was successful in passionately attacking the spurious mental security of

people who failed to realize what really had happened, because it was he

who said everything to the end: the world generates no meaning and no

distinction between good and evil; reality

pointless, and there

other

hidden reality behind it; the world

see it

the Ultimum; it does

not

try to convey a message to

us;

it does

not

refer to anything else; it

lf-

exhausting and deaf-mute. All this had to be said, and Nietzsche found a

solution or a medicine for the despair: this solution was madness.

-9)

"Feodor's Guide," Wallace writes

that

"in our own age and culture

enlightened

atheism

are very much Nietzsche's children, his ideological heirs; and without

Dostoevsky there would have been no Nietzsche; and yet Dostoevsky

among the most

deeply religious

all writers

...

" (27 n. 9). Infinite Jest calls this contemporary

enlightened atheism, "enlightened self-interest" and "unconsidered atheism" (Jest 428,

443).

That

Dostoevsky was such a blatantly religious writ

er-though

he cultivated his

own faith

much

like developing his own aesthetic-may a

o have something to do with his

untranslatibility and his sometimes cool reception among contemporary writers,

for

our

culture does

not

respond well to religious belief, particularly in art: religious belief tends to

contain

all

of our 'devils'-sentimental, na'ive, archaic, and fanatical-who are supposedly

exorcized

our contemporary writers. But if

compare Dostoevsky's time with our

own, and substitute 'belief and 'rational thought' for Dostoevsky's 'reason and faith' and

'atheism,'

then

perhaps there

more congruence between Dostoevsky's fiction and our

time

than

are currently aware

of,

or are prepared to acknowledge. In our time,

157

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

is, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

gious fa

ith

and a

eism have little cultural capital, or even meanin

are far too

i:v

e, particula

y among our literary

int

elli

sia, to be taken

ously.

e word

eism' alone seems to be a quaint and anachronistic wo

among a culture of a

eists

where a

eism is it

e accepted norm, or en viro

at rarely requir

articulation, instead of a particular label or p

ition

at would be stated in D

toevsky's

tim

Nevertheless, and this is Wa

ace's point througho

his essays and fiction,

empora

erican culture h

mething importa

when we sacrifice 'be

ef to

'reason' and confu

e impo

ance of be

ef in

neral with

ntime

al or fanatical

religious be

"Feodor's Guid

" Wallace stat

e believe

that

eol

ogy

is now

the province

SIGs [Special

Int

t Groups] and

PAC

olitical Action Committees]

trying to

t its slice of

e big green pie- and, looking around us, we see

at it is

indeed

" because, for Wallac

e have abandoned

eld" (24) .

e o

ginal

rsion of this essa

however, Wa

ace addresses by name

e specific groups we have, for

him, abandoned

fundame

st Christian moveme

s whose ab

nce of compa

ion and

whose readin

ess

to jud

show

ey're cluel

ess

abo

'Christian' principl

they would impose on o

ers. To

ghtist militias

and conspiracy

-th

sts whose paranoia abo

e governme

depends

e governme

ing just w

more or

d and efficie

than

rea

y is. And,

pecia

lly

in litera

and academic

s, to

e m

tly

absurd and embarr

ass

ing Political Correc

ess

moveme

, whose obsession

with

e fo

s of

utt

erance and behavior show too we

how d

iccated

and aes

etici

d our m

t liberal instincts have become, how desperately

removed

om what's rea

y importa

: motive,

(

elin

ef and its

nce. ("Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" n.p

uth

or's emph

is)

].T. Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

For

e published version of this essay, Wa

ace confin

his discu

ion

e litera

arts

and be

ef in

neral term

but

e origina

exci

d version he a

acks

ght-wing

con

rvative moveme

s and

e academ

it is u

ful, in comparing

o versions, to

rve

at Wa

ace finds

e co

empora

phenomenon of unbe

ef to have ra

perniciously insinuated it

lf at all levels of co

empora

cul

tur

not just

e literary arts

which he primarily tar

ts. Moreover, Wallace's findings make the corresponde

e with

toevsky a

e more releva

, for, in D

toevsky's time,

at w

written w

ection of what

u be

eve

your ideol

ogy.

In a short intervie

Wallace speaks abo

e importance of a type of fiction

at engages a

agoni

zes

nse of be

ef in

cultur

It's nothing l

ess

an trying to addr

ess

cultural infantilism.

en people

my age talk abo

how mi

rable a time this i

usua

y explain it by

diminished economic expectations. But I think of it more

a lack of

identification. If

u're abo

thirty, believing in something

gger

you is not a cho

e. You e

ith

er do or

u're a walking dead man, just going

thr

ough

e motion

Conce

s like

'dut

y' and 'fidelity' m

sound quaint

we've inherited

e b

t and

e worst, and we've got to make it up

we go alon

I abso

lut

ely believe in somethin

even

ough I do

n't

what it is.

1458 Words" 42, emph

is added)

For Wa

ace,

e importance is not in celebrating a religious be

ef after D

toevsky,

but

of a

ckn

edging

e impo

ance of be

ef in our belie

f-b

ankrupt tim

ace

continu

es:

e be

ef, in whatever it is, is not for

mething b

for

ur own sake. If we

n't

neration find

at, we'

ith

er cr

h a

burn or come up with something

rea

y powerful and beautiful"

(42

). Wa

ace's concern with be

ef is often

ked to his

159

].T. Jacobs, PhD

Departme

of Eng

sh, McM

ter University

conce

with

erican cultural

lip

sism;

e notion

ef is essentia

in his vie

cons

ering

mething

at is lar

e immediate s

ubj

ect,

mething

at can

move

lf into an ackno

edgme

thin

g importa

al to

e o

lf-

rbed concerns of

e co

emporary individua

In this impo

nse,

belie

f-D

toevskean or Wa

ace

an-i

s essential to

hum

an condition.

Alth

ough

toevsky clearly held dee

ated re

gious convictions, it is, however, importa

recall

e Brothe

Karamazo

in Victor Terras

word

"a work of

cular

literature" (Reading Dostoevsky

. It is further impo

rtant

to note

st how inten

gious be

ef w

bound up with

e mo

practical nature of living in nineteenth-

century Ru

and

at re

gious be

ef informed politics and

cial policy. To advocate a

socia

st utopian

eal w

, in m

t case

to advocate

eistic belief syste

er words, re

gious expression in D

toevsky is al

political expre

ssi

on; religio

integra

y informed one's cultural views and actions to a much larger d

ree

an in our

time.

at we o

en associate

e re

gious be

ef of D

toevsk

y's

works with

e more

naive and fanatical re

gious be

ef of our time is o

en to misread D

toevsky and mi

on his importa

cultural comme

a comme

nta

at is

ost instructive to our own

age.

at Wa

ace chooses one of his e

graphs for "Feodor

Guide"

Tur

ev's Fa

ers and Sons (18

62)

eady mentione

is further significa

when we

cons

at Dostoevsky spe

much of his litera

career engaging

e litera

ry-

philosophical

eol

ogy

of his co

emporar

Tur

In tracing

e countl

ess

litera

ry,

160

J.T.

Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

mythical, and biblical intertextual quotations and echoes and allusions throughout

The

Brothers Karamazov, Victor Terras observes

that

"the figure

the Devil [Karamazov

11.9.634]

fits

the image

man

who, in one way or another, accompanied Dostoevsky

through virtually all

his adult

life,

Ivan Turgenev.

safe to say

that

no other living

man

occupied

important a place in Dostoevsky's mind

did Turgenev" (Reading 116).

Although Dostoevsky admired Turgenev's literary ability, he nevertheless personally

disliked Turgenev and rejected

both

his "pessimistic agnosticism" (118) and his

"attacking Russia in print and moving to Germany and declaring himself a German"

which "offended Dostoevsky's passionate nationalism" (Wallace, "Feodor's Guide" 2 7 n.

14).

a letter, Dostoevsky wrote ofTurgenev's short story, "Phantoms,"

that

"in

opinion, there

a great deal

trash in

that

piece: something pettily nasty, sickly, senile,

unbelievingfrom weakness, in a word, the whole Turgenev and his convictions.

(However, the poetry in it will redeem a great deal)" (qtd. in Terras 118, author's

emphasis). Interestingly, Turgenev's story was published in D

_:_.

stoevsky' journal, Epoch,

which, in conjunction with Dostoevsky's passing praise ofTurgenev's prose signifies a

perhaps modest respect for his contemporary. Turgenev,

for

his part, declared Dostoevsky

to be a "latter-day de Sade" and considered Dostoevsky's characters to be "bywords for

depravity and degeneration" (Avsey xi). As such, Turgenev's works are parodied and

challenged throughout much

The

Brothers Karamazov.

The

significance

Wallace

choosing a T urgenev quotation to preface his discussion

Dostoevsky

itself

161

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

esis, Departme

of English, McM

ter University

int

ertextua

ace a

ckn

edges

-throu

gh a

Tur

nev quotation

at emph

zes

absolute cultural negation and nihilis

m-D

toevsky's

eological commitme

in his

ction, a

prov

es an example of

e type

litera

nihilislll

at Dostoevsky fought.

doing

, Wa

ace subtly su

ests

me kind of cultural nihilism of

Dostoevs

's time is a

are

in co

emporary

erican literature. Wa

ace, thus, closes

e circle of

int

ectual progr

ess

ion through Dostoevsk

e, and back to

emporary mome

: he picks up

e litera

mantle bequeathed by Dostoevsky to

engage "Niet

zsc

he's children, his

eolog

al heir

7 n.

, and empl

oys

Dostoevs

kyi

an me

odol

ogy

to en

anslator and scholar, !gnat Av

sey

, ca

lls

e Bro

ers Karamazov a "panorama of Dostoevsky's m

t p

ass

ionately he

efs and

eas"

iii

); we m

say,

en,

at D

toevsky's final novel is a

ovel of be

ef,

' and

ef in humani

first and forem

t and

hum

anity's necessar

:::~

bilit

to co

dark

pects of it

lf and redeem

thr

ough language.

Infinite J

t mirrors

e Bro

ers Karamazov in even

e m

t minute, sty

stic

ays

ough bo

novels resemble each o

er significantly in terms of

ot structur

of c

onol

ogy

, typ

narration, poly

onic voicin

engageme

with respective

eologies, elaborate characteri

tion and

aracter types, leng

and density,

inte

extuality, and

e u

of richly comic e

des within lar

r dark and heav

inte

ectual

es.

ese

o novels,

fir

st and forem

howeve

resemble each o

eir staggering and inventi

ses

of language. D

toevsky is now cons

ered to be a

162

J.T. Jacobs,

PhD

Thesis,

Department

English, McMaster University

master stylist. However,

Victor Terras writes, "a reputation

a poor stylist has

accompanied Dostoevsky since

the

publication

his first works" (Reading 10). Critics

have attacked Dostoevsky's style

"prolix, repetitious,

and

lacking

polish"; his works

have further

been

"found to lack balance, restraint,

and

good taste," and their "aesthetic

value [has been] found to be slight or nonexistent" ( 1 0). T err

observes

that

the

stain

the

initial critics' opinions was removed only

M.M. Bakhti:, 's insights

Dostoevsky

his Problems

Dostoevsky's Poetics (1984 [first published in 1929]) (Reading 10), where

Bakhtin observed

that

Dostoevsky's novels are intentionally fractured, nonlinear, and

constructed

a "polyphonic concert ofliving voices" (10). For Terras, a "controlled,

economical,

and

well-integrated narrative style

not

what

Dostoevsky pursues.

will

write elegantly only

when

the

voice in question demands it" (10). Terras concedes

that,

"if

one

disregards

the

'polyphony' argument,"

then

Dostoevsky's highly uneven narrative style, often distinctly colloquial,

often journalistic, sometimes chatty,

then

again lyrical, solemn, or

pathetic,

...

and

may be legitimately seen

aesthetic flaw. Today it

commonly seen

innovative trait, adopted by [Louis-Ferdinand]

line,

[William] Faulkner, [Gunter] Grass,

and

other

leading novelists

the

twentieth century. (10, emphasis added)

These stylistic traits

Dostoevsky's novels-and

The

Brothers Karamazov

particular-essentially marked a shift in

the

nineteenth-century

novel. Dostoevsky's

radical aesthetic

exploring characters'

inner

psychological turmoil and motives

opposed to

emphasis

external conditions has since

been

widely emulated

twentieth-century novelists.7 Accompanying this stylistic recognition, however, arises a

163

J.T. Jacobs, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University

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