Global Wallace: David Foster Wallace and World Literature

Lucas Thompson argues that David Foster Wallace's investments in international literary traditions are central to his artistic practice and critique of US culture. He shows how Wallace's fiction draws on a diverse range of global texts, appropriating various forms of world literature to critique US culture from unexpected vantage points. Thompson's book "Global Wallace" reassesses Wallace's body of work in relation to five geographic territories, revealing the mechanisms with which he played literary traditions off one another and reconceptualizing contemporary American fiction as embedded within a global exchange of texts and ideas.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 28 June 2018
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

David Foster Wallace is often perceived as a quintessentially American figure, but Lucas Thompson challenges this notion by asserting that Wallace's engagement with diverse international literary traditions is integral to both his artistic practice and his critical perspective on US culture. Thompson demonstrates how Wallace's fiction consistently draws upon a wide array of global texts, appropriating various forms of world literature to offer unique and unexpected critiques of US society. Through a series of comparative case studies and extensive archival research, Global Wallace unveils David Foster Wallace's significant debts to a range of unexpected figures, including Jamaica Kincaid, Julio Cortázar, Jean Rhys, Octavio Paz, Leo Tolstoy, Zbigniew Herbert, and Albert Camus, among many others. The book also provides a more comprehensive account of the key influences that Wallace scholars have recognized, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Manuel Puig. By reevaluating Wallace's body of work in relation to five broadly defined geographic territories—Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe, France, and Africa—Global Wallace reveals the intricate mechanisms through which Wallace played particular literary traditions off one another, showcasing how he seamlessly incorporated vastly different global texts within his own fiction. By expanding the geographic coordinates of Wallace's work in this manner, Global Wallace reconceptualizes contemporary American fiction as deeply embedded within a global exchange of texts and ideas.

Weight: 382g
Dimension: 140 x 215 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501342707