Gesturing Toward Reality: David Foster Wallace and Philosophy

by Bolger, Robert K.; Korb, Scott

• ISBN13: 9781441128355
• ISBN10: 1441128352
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-06-19
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

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.

Author Biography

ROBERT BOLGER (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University) is the author of Kneeling at the Altar of Science: The Mistaken Path of Contemporary Religious Scientism
Scott Korb is Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, USA. He is the associate editor of The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers (University of North Carolina Press, 2008); co-author of The Faith Between Us (Bloomsbury, 2007); and author of Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine (Riverhead, 2010)

Table of Contents

1. The Magic of the Mundane: Wallace and the Pragmatics of Belief, Robert Bolger / 2. Love and Then What You Will Do: Teaching Wallace, Scott Korb / 3.
How Sentences are Used: Late Wittgenstein and Wallace's The Broom of the System, Alexis Burgess / 4. The Danger of Theories: Wallace's Philosophies and the Allure of Fiction, Randy Ramal / 5.
Wallace's Mind/Body Problem, Peter Mandik / 6. Wallace Thought to Himself That: How Representation Works, Douglas Patterson / 7. Being Human is Good Enough: Inside Wallace's Self-Help Library, Maria Bustillos / 8. This is Water' and Religious Self-Deception, Kevin Timpe / 9. Always Before One's Eyes: Wallace and the Question of Noticing, Patrick Horn / Bibliography / Index