The Howling Fantods

David Foster Wallace News and Resources Since March 97

  • Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size
Home News by Category Critical Analysis Infinite vocabulary: the language of David Foster Wallace

Infinite vocabulary: the language of David Foster Wallace

From Oxford Dictionaries: Language Matters, Infinite vocabulary: the language of David Foster Wallace:

Though the late David Foster Wallace was an internationally renowned author of fiction and non-fiction, many of his readers and even some of his most ardent fans may not know about Wallace’s love of language and the work he contributed to the modern American English lexicon. Wallace could take even the most unassuming or simple topic and turn it into something mind-blowing and entertaining, and the English language is no exception. Wallace not only wrote about language and usage, he brought strange and unknown words out of obscurity and even helped invent a few of his own.

[...]

Among the most well-known of these is the phrase the howling fantods, which refers to an intense feeling of fear of or repulsion for something. This is an extension of the original meaning of fantods as “a state of uneasiness or unreasonableness”. While Wallace did not coin the phrase entirely, as the term fantods already had a similar meaning, Wallace took the word and made it his own; indeed, the phrase “the howling fantods” is perhaps the closest thing Wallace has to a catchphrase.

Ironically, Wallace often used this phrase to describe members of the main characters’ family in Infinite Jest: one of the members of the fictional “Incandenza” family featured in the novel refuses to go to parts of the Boston Metro infested with bugs because roaches “give him the howling fantods”.

[...]

...continue reading here.

Share
Last Updated on Monday, 14 July 2014 21:39  

The Howling Fantods