If you read to the very bottom of yesterday's post about DFW2015 you would have found a link to, A Few Trends in DFW Studies by Matt Bucher (of SSMG Press, list owner of wallace-l, Simple Ranger and generally all around DFW fan/expert and nice guy).
Matt also presented a paper at the DFW 2015 conference, The Fogle Novella: Catalysts in the Conversion Narrative, and it's pretty great.
It's no secret that The Fogle Novella is one of the standout sections, §22, of The Pale King and can stand alone as a novella. In fact Madras Press sell it separately as, The Awakening of My Interest in Advanced Tax, with proceeds going to Granada House.
[...]This essay discusses the structure of Fogle’s conversion narrative, the catalysts that force a change in his story, and the similarities his story shares with early American Puritan conversion narratives. Fogle’s Section 22 is long enough and self-contained enough to stand on its own and so I refer to it in places as “the Fogle novella” or just “the novella.” Throughout Fogle’s narrative, there are three main catalysts that instigate change within his life: 1) his father’s “Ozymandias” statement, 2) hearing the As The World Turns tagline, and 3) the Jesuit substitute’s speech at DePaul. As a literary construct, Fogle’s narrative mirrors the structure of Puritan conversion narratives, which Patricia Caldwell’s work has shown to be a primarily literary form masked as a religious element. Fogle’s story arc follows a surprisingly similar pattern and still adheres to the greater project of The Pale King: boredom as religious experience.[...]Click here to continue reading, The Fogle Novella: Catalysts in the Conversion Narrative.
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