Gesturing Toward Reality: David Foster Wallace and Philosophy

Robert K. Bolger, Scott Korb

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781441164087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Asked in 2006 about the philosophical nature of his fiction, the late American writer David Foster Wallace replied, "If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be." Gesturing Toward Reality looks into this quality of Wallace's work-when the writer dons the philosopher's cap-and sees something else. With essays offering a careful perusal of Wallace's extensive and heavily annotated self-help library, re-considerations of Wittgenstein's influence on his fiction, and serious explorations into the moral and spiritual landscape where Wallace lived and wrote, this collection offers a perspective on Wallace that even he was not always ready to see. Since so much has been said in specifically literary circles about Wallace's philosophical acumen, it seems natural to have those with an interest in both philosophy and Wallace's writing address how these two areas come together.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Love, and What You Will, Do: An Introduction
• Chapter 1 How We Ought To Do Things with Words1
• Chapter 2 The Subsurface Unity of All Things, or David Foster Wallace’s Free Will1
• Chapter 3 A Less “Bullshitty” Way To Live: The Pragmatic Spirituality of David Foster Wallace
• Chapter 4 This Is Water and Religious Self-Deception
• Chapter 5 Inside David Foster Wallace’s Head: Attention, Loneliness, Suicide, and the Other Side of Boredom
• Chapter 6 The Lobster Considered
• Chapter 7 The Terrible Master: David Foster Wallace and the Suffering of Consciousness (with guest Arthur Schopenhauer)
• Chapter 8 Philosophy, Self-Help, and the Death of David Wallace1
• Chapter 9 Untrendy Problems: The Pale King’s Philosophical Inspirations
• Chapter 10 The Formative Years: David Foster Wallace’s Philosophical Influences and The Broom of the System
• Chapter 11 Beyond Philosophy: David Foster Wallace on Literature, Wittgenstein, and the Dangers of Theorizing*
• Chapter 12 Good Faith and Sincerity: Sartrean Virtues of Self-Becoming in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest1
• Chapter 13 Theories of Everything and More: Infinity is Not the End
• Chapter 14 Does Language Fail Us? Wallace’s Struggle with Solipsism
• Index