Book contents
- David Foster Wallace in Context
- David Foster Wallace in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Chapter 1 David Foster Wallace and Narratology
- Chapter 2 A Meeting of Minds
- Chapter 3 Writing in a Material World
- Chapter 4 Confidence Man
- Chapter 5 David Foster Wallace and European Literature
- Chapter 6 David Foster Wallace and Poetry
- Chapter 7 David Foster Wallace’s “Non”-Fiction
- Chapter 8 “Thanks Everybody and I Hope You Like It”
- Chapter 9 David Foster Wallace and Visual Culture
- Part II Ideas
- Part III Bodies
- Part IV Systems
- Works by David Foster Wallace
- Bibliography of Secondary Sources
- Index
Chapter 7 - David Foster Wallace’s “Non”-Fiction
from Part I - Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2022
- David Foster Wallace in Context
- David Foster Wallace in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Chapter 1 David Foster Wallace and Narratology
- Chapter 2 A Meeting of Minds
- Chapter 3 Writing in a Material World
- Chapter 4 Confidence Man
- Chapter 5 David Foster Wallace and European Literature
- Chapter 6 David Foster Wallace and Poetry
- Chapter 7 David Foster Wallace’s “Non”-Fiction
- Chapter 8 “Thanks Everybody and I Hope You Like It”
- Chapter 9 David Foster Wallace and Visual Culture
- Part II Ideas
- Part III Bodies
- Part IV Systems
- Works by David Foster Wallace
- Bibliography of Secondary Sources
- Index
Summary
Though primarily known and studied as a writer of fiction, Wallace was an avid reader and writer of nonfiction. This chapter explores the ways in which his nonfiction attempts to direct and sometimes complicates a reading of his fiction, as well as appraising the nonfiction in its own cultural context. The essay offers a taxonomy of Wallace’s nonfictional forms, connecting the work with his broader representational project for life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The chapter works to interrogate Wallace’s creation of an authorial persona that created, sought to control and often undermined the extratextual persona of its author. Framing the essays as both complementing and challenging the fiction, this chapter assesses the “impervious sun” of the nonfiction as an important voice of the contemporary period in its own right.
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- David Foster Wallace in Context , pp. 76 - 85Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022