Infinite Wallace Day Two: A Glimpse Into the Future of Wallace Studies?
-Tony McMahon.
After two gruelling 14 plus hour days of nothing but Wallace, Wallace and more Wallace, with still one more to come, please spare a thought for your humble correspondent. The decidedly First World Problem status of the thing notwithstanding, he's still feeling somewhat overwhelmed, so please excuse any inappropriateness, slander, misinterpretations and spelling mistakes that might hitherto ensue…
The dominant reading this scribe takes away from day two of Infinite Wallace is that academic thinking surrounding our fave writer is suddenly in a state of great flux. What I’ll call – with no disrespect whatsoever – ‘old school’ Wallace scholarship (best exemplified by what has recently been called by Kelly ‘the essay-interview nexus’ [interpretations of Wallace’s work revolving around ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’ and his interview with McCaffery]) seems today to be in wildly interesting conversation with possible new directions.
Some of these potential new pathways include: Wallace and Buddhism, Wallace and music (even if I do say so myself), paratext surrounding Wallace’s work and – possibly most excitingly in my opinion, Wallace and Situationism.
And your fearless reporter can now reveal exclusively for THF that top secret discussions are already under way for a possible volume on this last subject. At least three of the speakers so far have referenced Wallace’s debt to the French ‘ratbag intellectuals’ of the 1950s and 1960s, and two more not in attendance have done the same.
Exciting developments indeed.
Kocela, Ford, Fisher Panel - Post-secular Wallace? I. Photo - T. McMahon
Two or Three Things You Might Not Have Known About the World’s Leading Wallace Scholars
G.W.S.O.A.T (Greatest Wallace Scholar Of All Time) Marshall Boswell is a bit of a vinyl junkie, gave this reporter a high five when told he (this reporter) was blogging for this site and is just about the nicest bloke you could ever hope to meet.
David Hering has the smoothest, most calming voice in all of academia, not to mention one of the biggest and most interesting brains.
Mary K. Holland is the author of probably your correspondent’s two fave Wallace essays, ‘Art’s Heart’s Purpose: Braving the Narcissistic Loop of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest’ and ‘Mediated Immediacy in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men’. As such, insufficient saliva, so to speak, has been summoned to approach her, and nothing too interesting can really be reported. Maybe tomorrow.
Adam Kelly plays a lot with that cloth thing in journals that you use to mark what page you’re up to and asks a real lot of super interesting, wildly inspiring questions.
The first thing that Kostas Kaltsas does every morning when he wakes up is, wait for it, checks The Howling Fantods. This is true. This is, like, a direct quote thingo.
Lee Konstantinou, Adam Kelly and David Hering, "Cheers, Nick!" Photo - T. McMahon
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