Issue number 2 of the Irish Journal of American Studies has just published Adam Kelly's fantastic article, David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline.

 

I've been anticipating this article's release ever since Adam shared an early version of it with me many months ago, and as the title suggests, it is a look at the blossoming discipline of "Wallace Studies":

 

...with the critical reception of Wallace now into its third decade, it seems an opportune time to offer an initial map of the territory of what might be termed “Wallace Studies,” the network of interest in David Foster Wallace’s oeuvre that ranges through but also well beyond the traditional academic channels. The essay that follows is intended both for the general reader of Wallace who may be interested in a survey and analysis of the academic criticism his work has produced to date, and for professional scholars concerned with how Wallace criticism connects to wider trends in contemporary literary scholarship. I want to explore here some of the challenges and opportunities Wallace’s writing offers to the reception and critical study of literature in the twenty-first century, and how these have been approached in the criticism already published and currently emerging. In doing so, I will examine what Wallace Studies looks like at present, what directions it may be taking in the immediate future, and what lessons might be learned for the academic study of literature more broadly.

 

In addition, I hope this will give you a taste for type of critical work soon to be found in Consider David Foster Wallace, in which Adam Kelly has a much longer paper.

 

BTW, it's worth checking out the rest of the Irish Journal of American Studies content online, it looks like there are some great pieces in there.

Brian Kim is in the process of reading Infinite Jest for the first time. He's also attempting to condense each 'chapter' into a single tweet. The current one for Chapter 19 is gold. Follow his progress on twtiter (spoiler warning if you have not read Infinite Jest).

Check out Richard Rayner's review of The Broom of the System (audiobook too) for the L.A. Times, Paperback Writers: Brush up on your Wallace:

 

The gut of Wallace's writing, beyond the fevered intellectual bells and whistles, is romantic. He's fascinated by stuff, by the warp and woof of reality, and the seeming impossibility of language ever getting at the essence of it. That was the project: to find new ways to unpack the radiance and ache of life, and he continued this through a second novel, the massive (and even more splintered) "Infinite Jest," through a bunch of marvelous short stories and through the taut yet rambling essays, principally published in Harper's. Those essays showcased his reportorial gifts, and disgust with, and reverence for, and delight in baton-twirling, porn expos, the life and times of Dostoevsky, cruise ships and much more.

David Lipsky was interviewed about Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace on the Leonard Lopate last week listen to it here.

 

Wyatt Mason's review, Smarter than You Think, from the New York Review of Books is a worthwhile read. It is a review of the book that also considers how DFW's book were reviewed. Too difficult to pick a choice quote, have a read.

 

Finally, David Lipsky will be appearing TODAY (26/6 5pm) as part of his book tour at BookPeople 603 N Lamar Blvd Austin, Texas 78703-5413.

 

There is a giveway for the audiobook version of The Broom of the System over at Simply Stacie. Only open to the US and Canada. Thus I'm not able to enter... but if you are eligible it might be worth having a go.

Yesterday I received a galley copy of Sideshow Media Group's David Foster Wallace paper collection edited by David Hering, Consider David Foster Wallace. (Available for pre-order now at Amazon.com).

 

The collection stems from the papers delivered at the Liverpool DFW conference organised by David Hering last year.

 

It opens with a preface by David Hering and leads into an updated version of Greg Carlisle's (author of Sideshow Media Group's IJ guide Elegant Complexity) Liverpool Keynote (which you can read the original version of by scrolling down, here).

 

David has ordered the papers broadly chronologically in relation to DFW's output, so of course I jumped around the collection and read what caught my eye.

 

Highlights so far:

 

Adam Kelly's —David Foster Wallace and the New Sincerity in American Fiction. A fantastic paper that considers DFW's place in the current movement of American Fiction.

 

David Hering's —Infinite Jest: Triangles, Cycles, Choices, & Chases. David Hering literally maps the movements of Poor Tony Krause's and Randy Lenz's movements from a pivotal moment in Infinite Jest, with surprising results.

 

Clare Hayes-Bradys's - The Book, the Broom and the Ladder: Philosophical Groundings in the Work of David Foster Wallace. This paper is a great overview and introduction to the philosophical underpinnings of DFW's first novel, The Broom of the System, as well as some of his short fiction. As I don't have a particularly broad understanding of the philosophy in this novel I found this paper particularly engaging.

 

Gregory Phipps'—The Ideal Athlete: John Wayne in Infinite Jest. This paper is dedicated to the most detailed (and only) analysis I've read of the character of John Wayne from Infinite Jest. It is amazing.

 

[Big thanks to Matt Bucher of Sideshow Media Group Press and wallace-l. Also a big hello to David and Adam, both of whom I had the pleasure to meet at the NY conference last year.]

 

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