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Home News by Category Conferences Footnotes Sessions 4 and 5

Footnotes Sessions 4 and 5

Sorry! Lost the wi-fi. Back now. Quick updates now. (Sorry for any typos)


1:30 PM – 2:30 PM—Panel Four: “The Biographical Question”

Moderator: Nick Maniatis, Melba Copland Secondary School, Canberra, Australia; Webmaster, The Howling Fantods

Erin Lee Mock, CUNY Graduate Center

“The Biography of Madness by Assemblage: The Case of David Foster Wallace” (Title has changed)

Very interesting analysis of the obituary biography. Many notes, more later.



Matt Bucher, Independent Scholar

Fantods: David Foster Wallace, wallace-l, and Literary Fandom Online

Matt was nothing short of fantastic. Engaging, entertaining, everything I'd hoped he would be. I'll have to hit my notes for select quotes. (Edit: A link the keynote, above, is even better!)
 
Christine Harkin, Independent Scholar


“Taboos, Discourse, and New Media: Blogging the Death of David Foster Wallace”

Christine's paper was a very interesting take on the language and social obligations of blogs with regard to how DFW's death was reported, discussed, and policed by the online community. Very interesting stuff.



2:40 PM – 3:40 PM—Panel Five: “Language, Communication, and the Project of Wallace’s Fiction”

Moderator: Gerhard Joseph, CUNY-Lehman College and the Graduate Center

Mary Holland, SUNY New Paltz

 “‘To be a [. . .] human being’: Mediated Immediacy in David Foster Wallace”


Mary's description of Octet as amplifying the effect of Barth's Lost in the Funhouse was paticularly engaging as well as her description of the use of language to express what it is to be a human being. (This is a horrid oversimplification of Mary's paper, I was so engaged I forgot to take notes.)


Jon Udelson, The City College of New York

“Inconclusive Endings: DFW’s Search for the Right Word(s): ‘Planet Trillaphon,’ Broom, and “Good Old Neon’”

Jon juxtaposed three of DFW's pieces, Trillaphon, Broom of the System, and Good Old Neon. He considered the way the three end. In the first two Wallace takes the final word and hands it to the reader, but in Good Old Neon, acknowledges that the solution (of self) is not in finding the missing word, but in acknowledging there is no word to describe it (my words, horrid notes, sorry).



Timothy Jacobs, York University

“Infinite Geist: Lexical Investigation, Mediation, and the Ghost of the  Author”

Is the narrator of IJ the wraith? Amazing wealth of evidence supporting this assertion. Wow. Why is all speech in single quotes? Is the whole novel reported. More on this later.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 November 2009 03:59  

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