Throughout the course of this thesis, I argue that the prose of David Foster Wallace, specifically his posthumously published novel The Pale King, inhabits a middle ground between universal sincerity and the particularized authenticity of postmodern irony. I examine Lionel Trilling's definitions of sincerity and authenticity before moving toward an examination of the diverging critical response to Wallace's work, which, I argue, suggests that because so many critics have read his work as either inherently sincere or inherently authentic, his work inhabits a communal middle ground somewhere in between. To explain, I analyze Wallace's so-called manifesto of sincerity, "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction," as well as other instances in interviews and conversations to develop a clearer understanding of what this middle ground consists of. Further, I analyze two passages in The Pale King in which characters seek to communicate moments of profound revelation. Though these characters finally fail to truly communicate these revelations, I argue that it is the communication itself that allows both communicator and listener, and thus both reader and writer, to experience a moment of, as Wallace puts it in The Pale King, "value for both sides, both people in the relation" (227). / Graduation date: 2012
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/30341 |
| Date | 25 May 2012 |
| Creators | Randlemon, Daniel E. |
| Contributors | Malewitz, Raymond J. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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