I've been sitting on this for a while so I was glad to hear (thanks, Matt) that the word is starting to get out about Maureen Eckert and Steven M. Cahn's co-edited publication, Fate, Logic and Language: David Foster Wallace's Essay on Fatalism Fate, Logic and Language by David Foster Wallace (due 2010).

 

I have been looking forward to this as I found DFW's thesis very difficult and am happy to admit I gave up when the going got tough. I just don't have the philosphy background to understand it. I know Maureen is very excited about the importance of Wallace's thesis, and I am looking forward to the commentary and other materials in this volume.

 

Maureen will deliver a paper at the Footnotes Conference, “Where the Conversation Lapses…Understanding DFW’s Philosophy Thesis”. I simply can't wait.

 

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Fate, Logic and Language: David Foster Wallace's Essay on Fatalism, book co-edited with Steven M. Cahn, forthcoming Fall 2010 from Columbia University Press

Contents will include David Foster Wallace’s philosophy thesis, “Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality,” Richard Taylor's essay "Fatalism," responses to and defenses of Taylor's argument, explanatory essays regarding David Foster Wallace's work and essays on the philosophical material. An essay by me [Maureen Eckert], "Renewing the Conversation on Fatalism," will address the changes in philosophy that occurred between the debate on Taylor's argument and Wallace's thesis that enabled him to respond to the argument in a novel way.