Issue number 2 of the Irish Journal of American Studies has just published Adam Kelly's fantastic article, David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline.
I've been anticipating this article's release ever since Adam shared an early version of it with me many months ago, and as the title suggests, it is a look at the blossoming discipline of "Wallace Studies":
...with the critical reception of Wallace now into its third decade, it seems an opportune time to offer an initial map of the territory of what might be termed “Wallace Studies,” the network of interest in David Foster Wallace’s oeuvre that ranges through but also well beyond the traditional academic channels. The essay that follows is intended both for the general reader of Wallace who may be interested in a survey and analysis of the academic criticism his work has produced to date, and for professional scholars concerned with how Wallace criticism connects to wider trends in contemporary literary scholarship. I want to explore here some of the challenges and opportunities Wallace’s writing offers to the reception and critical study of literature in the twenty-first century, and how these have been approached in the criticism already published and currently emerging. In doing so, I will examine what Wallace Studies looks like at present, what directions it may be taking in the immediate future, and what lessons might be learned for the academic study of literature more broadly.
In addition, I hope this will give you a taste for type of critical work soon to be found in Consider David Foster Wallace, in which Adam Kelly has a much longer paper.
BTW, it's worth checking out the rest of the Irish Journal of American Studies content online, it looks like there are some great pieces in there.
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