David Foster Wallace and the Body

David Foster Wallace and the Body is the first full-length study to focus on Wallaces career-long fascination with the human body and the textual representation of the body. The book provides engaging, accessible close readings that highlight the importance of the overlooked, and yet central theme of all of this major American authors works: having a body. Wallace repeatedly made clear that good fiction is about what it means to be a human being. A large part of what that means is having a body, and being conscious of the conflicts that arise, morally and physically, as a result; a fact with which, as Wallace forcefully and convincingly argues, we all desire to be reconciled. Given the ubiquity of the themes of embodiment in Wallaces work, this study is an important addition to an expanding field. The book also opens up the themes addressed to interrogate aspects of contemporary literature, culture, and society more generally, placing Wallaces works in the history of literary and philosophical engagements with the brute fact of embodiment.