Ralph Clare

“Whereas both Prisoner’s Dilemma and The Twenty-Seventh City explore the limitations of neoliberalism in the context of real political change, Wallace’s early work is conspicuously apolitical, and in this aspect he can also be seen to embody a uniquely Gen X ethos. In the context of our current hyperpartisan, thoroughly politicized era, it is easy to overlook the fact that Wallace’s ascent to the top ranks of the US literary establishment took place during a rare, brief, and, as these kinds of things always turn out to be, false period of relative historical complacency. The collapse of the Soviet Union occurred two years after the 1987 appearance of The Broom of the System; by September 11, 2001, Wallace had published Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997), and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999). Beginning with his Rolling Stone essay on the 9/11 attacks, “The View from Mrs. Thompsons,’” and continuing through to his blistering portrait of right-wing radio host John Ziegler and, of course, his unfinished novel The Pale King (2011), Wallace’s work became more political, and more pointed, the political partisanship of the new century replacing pop-culture irony in his work as the source of our isolation and failure to find real meaning and purpose in our life.”
― Ralph Clare, The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace