Understanding David Foster Wallace

by Marshall Boswell

In Understanding David Foster Wallace, Marshall Boswell examines the four major works of fiction Wallace has published thus the novels The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest and the story collections Girl with Curious Hair and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. In his readings of these works, Boswell affirms that Wallace, though still young, compels our attention not only for the singular excellence of his work but, perhaps more important, for his groundbreaking effort to chart a fruitful and affirmative new direction for the literary novel at a time of bleak prospects. In addition to providing self-contained readings of each text, Boswell places Wallace within a trajectory of literary innovation that begins with James Joyce and continues through Wallace's most important postmodern forebears, John Barth and Thomas Pynchon. Although Wallace is sometimes labeled a postmodern writer, Boswell argues that he should be regarded as the nervous leader of some still unnamed--and perhaps unnameable--third wave of modernism. Boswell contends that in charting an innovative course for literary practice, Wallace does not seek merely to overturn postmodernism, nor simply to return to modernism. Instead he moves resolutely forward as his writing hoists the baggage of modernism and postmodernism heavily, but respectfully, on its back.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, Biography, Reference

208 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 2003

About the author

Marshall Boswell is the T. K. Young Professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he has taught since 1996. A scholar of contemporary American literature and a fiction writer, he is the author of Trouble with Girls, a short story collection, and the novel Alternative Atlanta. His scholarly work includes Understanding David Foster Wallace and John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy, as well as The Wallace Effect. His fiction has appeared in Playboy, Shenandoah, The Missouri Review, and New Stories from the South. Boswell has received the Clarence Day Awards for both teaching and research at Rhodes. He earned degrees from Washington & Lee, Washington University in St. Louis, and Emory University, and has taught at several institutions including the University of Miami. He also served as editor and contributor to the final volume of the Encyclopedia of American Literature. A musician in his spare time, Boswell once opened for Uncle Tupelo and Alex Chilton.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with Boswell's book can be summed up in this quote:

"Therefore, in the same way that a coherent reading of The Broom of the System first demands a familiarity with Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, a cogent interpretation of Infinite Jest first entails a brief encounter with Lacanian theory."

EXACTLY the kind of high-academic pretension that puts people off reading DFW. If I'd thought I first had to read Wittgenstein, and whatever supplemental material needed to help me understand Wittgenstein, I'd have never gotten around to Wallace. And Lacan, the man Boswell describes as having "bewilderingly difficult theories about desire, pleasure, subjectivity, and infantile preoccupations with mothers"? Would a "brief encounter" even be enough? And why does he make it sound like an unfortunate office party incident?

Otherwise, Boswell's arguments -- though often dry as parchment -- are generally sound and he offers a decent primer for anyone interested in the deep theory stuff Wallace was into. Just know it's not mandatory to have a PhD to enjoy Wallace: the guy knew fiction's real frisson happens on a relatable human gut level.

P.S. Understanding DFW is riddled with typos and errors; it's as though there wasn't even a cursory proofreading. Editorial sloppiness on this scale is weird in a professor's work. Pray his students don't have it on hand at term paper time.

[Schuyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read David Foster Wallace for many reasons, really too many to name here. But chief among them is how his work challenges me as a reader, making me feel smarter and actually making me smarter, and by smarter I mean both in the traditional sense but also smarter as in more aware, of the world around me, of the people in this world. His ability, through his language, to make me feel a little bit less alone in this modern world.

Marshall Boswell has done DFW fans like me a great service. Just when I think I am starting to figure out the many, many complexities of DFW's fiction, Boswell comes along and says, "You think you know but you have no idea." Ok, maybe that was the tag line for MTV's Diary, but still, it applies.

In Understanding David Foster Wallace, Boswell goes through all of Wallace's published fiction (The Broom of the System, Girl With Curious Hair, Infinite Jest, and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men) and pretty much dissects the narrative, all without boring the reader. Well, he didn't bore me anyway. But seriously, if you've ever read any of Wallace and thought to yourself, "There's something here I'm not quite getting, I know there's more behind this, etc," then Boswell is the man for you. He explores Wittgenstein's language games in Broom, he highlights the many parodies, criticisms, and declarations of Girl With Curious Hair (Did you know 'Little Expressionless Animals' had to do with John Ashbery's 'Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror'?).

Of course the best chapter is on Infinite Jest, and the more I read about that massive "novel" (I use quotes because it's more than a novel), the more I want to go back for a second reading. Wallace was responding to French psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan's "bewilderingly difficult theories about desire, pleasure, subjectivity, and infantile preoccupations with mothers"? But that's also another great thing about Wallace, is that he does all this stuff below (and not so below) the surface, but you can enjoy his fiction just as good story telling, or amazing use of language, or or or or. You don't have to know Lacan's theories to enjoy Infinite Jest. Hell, I didn't even know who Lacan was let alone that Wallace was responding to his theories.

This is all to say that Boswell does an amazing job adding to the growing realm of Wallace Studies, and we've got to give him credit for being one of, if not the first to recognize Wallace's depth.

astronaughtcaveat.blogspot.com

[Chris Via]

Fantastic treatment of Infinite Jest.

[Kevin Hinman · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always nice to look at Wallace through a different lens, and it's especially relieving to read an earlier criticism of his work, and one which hasn't been through the obligatory suicide ringer of modern DFW appraisals. That being said, Boswell's strong, and for the most part, interesting, focus on Wallace's linguistic aims also largely diminishes the very thesis Boswell attempts to get across, which is the ultimate end-point of DFWs language games is real human connection.
Additionally, Boswell's dismissive reading of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men as a static work in the author's oeuvre, and his inability to dig deeper into stories that may not have grabbed him in the manner of Infinite Jest, stories as rich and convoluted and full of essential humanity as anything in the great Jest, reveals him as unwilling to confront the cruelty of Wallace's work, which he lauds as one of Wallace's chief gifts, head-on.
And for Christ's sake, Boswell, learn how to use the phrase "begs the question."

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boswell gets a little too bogged down in his [imo] slanted and often tangential take on things. I mean, certainly we can understand Infinite Jest without talking about Lacan. No doubt it's an interesting aside, but to make it the central theme of the whole chapter on IJ is unfortunate. And the amount of time spent talking about Barth is trying. Sure, DFW had to wrestle with/undo some of Barth's stuff, but clearly there's a lot more going on in Wallace's fiction than patricide of his postmodern predecessors.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well that's just like, your opinion, man. This book kind of paints Wallace as a two-dimensional axe grinder, which he isn't. However, even though it is sloppily written at times, I did enjoy his arguments and it was fun to relive the stories.

[Lisastrawberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boswell does an excellent job of providing a context of how DFW's work fits into the history of literary criticism, as well as a good overview of some themes in IJ. He explains jargon well, without being in love with it or overusing it. Not an easy feat!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is great reference for writing about/researching Wallace. It's hard to find, but totally worth the search.

[E. C. Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

If DFW Studies texts could be split into phases, this would resolutely fall into the first phase. Indeed, at the time Boswell was writing this Wallace was still alive and hadn’t yet come out with Oblivion, meaning Boswell wrote this without the glut of critical work on Wallace to refine-slash-impede his analysis and without Wallace’s complete oeuvre as we know it today, both of which absences make for sort of strange reading. Too, what this actually is is not a critical text so much as it is a reading guide disguised as analysis, or a reading guide with some preliminary analysis thrown in. And this is understandable, right? Forget about Wallace Studies, at the time this was written Postmodern Studies didn’t have a coherent body of core texts guiding anything like a consistent narrative; there was no methodology guiding readings of postmodern literature, to say nothing about what Wallace was doing. So what Boswell does is break some ground by asserting what he sees as consistent, central themes animating Wallace’s writing up to that point, while also providing analysis of that writing by employing lenses that to our eyes already look outmoded (specifically poststructuralism and psychoanalysis, and so Derrida and Lacan (and of course Wittgenstein)). The outmodedness of those lenses is, or course, only an effect of time—we’ve got a more codified sense of the postmodern methodology today, we’ve got a better sense of the postmodern break today, we’ve got a clearer idea of how Wallace meant to intervene with the postmodern dominant today. So this seems unsophisticated because it doesn’t employ a lot of academic references to other scholars of Wallace’s work (since they didn’t exist), and because the ones he does use look wrong (because we’ve moved on so much in the last twenty years), and because there are a lot of typos (as many others have mentioned (I lay the fault with the publisher, though, not Boswell)), and, for those reasons, it is. But despite all that, Boswell still hits on three points that (should) remain absolutely central to anyone working with Wallace or with contemporary lit.: Wallace inaugurated the entry into a new literary period (even if we can’t agree on a name), Wallace ignored what he knew about the New Critics (and the intentional fallacy) and the poststructuralists (and the Death of the Author (and Reader)) and intended to affect the real world through his work, and Wallace foregrounded the importance of faith in order to make the first two things happen. Knock Boswell for ignoring other trends in academic work on postmodernism, and for his tone tending too much toward admiration for a critical text; he still got there early, and saw pretty far.

[Avery Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75, i get the critiques of this book but it came out in the early aughts when 1) dfw was alive, pre-publishing oblivion (him being in the middle of his career, there was barely any scholarship on his writing, this is maybe the second book analyzing his ouevre ever published?) and 2) there was no scholarship on postmodernism in general. give marshall a little grace!!! so what he really likes lacan!!!! must forgive the typos too.... i dont think he had spell check back in those days but what do i know

[F · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps this book has a close "Understanding" of DFW--I'm not the biggest DFW fan; I wouldn't know. Some stuff sounds like it could be on the right track, but there are assertions/arguments riddled throughout that are specious at best. And how he undermines other artists and philosophers--Lacan, Nabokov--forced me to speculate whether or not Boswell really "understood" the works and ideas of the great minds he continually references.

I'm not an expert by any means; but this also means if I catch something that feels presumptuous and/or totally wrong, it really makes me call in to question everything as a whole.

[Matthew Balliro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a pretty good overview of DFW's career through "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," with special attention given to "Infinite Jest." It includes some excellent readings of very specific passages and themes, although the author certainly has an agenda running throughout. His main point is, astoundingly, that DFW is awesome. Not that I disagree, but when I got to his conclusion, and found that he ended on said point, I was underwhelmed. But the stuff in between the pages is pretty good. Lots of typos, though. Recommended for readers of DFW.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very well written look at some complex subject matter. boswell makes dfw seem pretty manageable, and in doing so makes wittgenstein, derrida and lacan seem rather palatable for me in a way that grad school couldn't.

[Rob]

I read the section about Girl With Curious Hair and found it really helpful in contextualizing the stories and expounding on their broader meanings. If I ever decide to take on Infinite Jest, I will probably consult this book again.

[Paul Huber · Rating 4 out of 5]

the analysis of infinite jest is fantastic and REALLY clears up a few of the vague plot lines and allusions and everything.

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Still on the early end of forty, Wallace, perhaps the most influential writer of his generation, still has a long and rich career ahead of him."
Ouch.

[Marco]

Clear and explicative, might put too much emphasis on Lacanian theory and not enough on Wittgenstein

[Lyn LeJeune · Rating 4 out of 5]

with a little help, you can divine David Foster Wallace

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really smart, precise stuff in here about what differentiates Wallace from the academic and literary postmodernists of the 60s.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only read the intro and the chapter on Infinite Jest. It was even harder to get through than IJ itself, but thankfully only 30 pages.