Critical AnalysisTHE WALLACE CRITICISM PAGE:THESES, PAPERS, ESSAYS, THOUGHTS, BOOKS and COLLECTIONS.
Critical Analysis News Update Archive
This used to be a page to collect the various theses about Infinite Jest that had been submitted by readers after being published elsewhere. But as there is so much to read about Wallace from a critical perspective, this page now includes links to printed collections of Wallace related critical papers and/or essays, as well as web-based articles that either I, or wider members of the Wallace reader community, think are worth reading (some of my personal faves are in BOLD). The plan is to move over all the hidden gems from daily posts to this page.
In addition, I'll slowly be adding links to Wallace related articles in journals, many of which can be accessed online via subscriptions to services like Project Muse (if you are an Australian resident you can get this for free through the National Library of Australia - US / UK / EURO residents, anyone know of similar services you can access for free if you're not a university student or academic?)
Referencing format will be unified as the page overhaul nears completion.
Have I missed anything significant, or do you have a submission? Let me know.
Update 21/12/16:
The crazy explosion in Wallace Studies of the past few years means that this page is not being maintained any more. What I do know is that there will be more resources like this on the horizon very soon. The first of which is
- The David Foster Wallace Bibliography of Secondary Criticism by Stephen J. Burn and the DFW Research Group (Dec 2016)
Newest/Latest Addition(s):
- Alexander Chambers, 2001, The Crowd and the Individual: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Don DeLillo's Mao II on the Place of the Novel in the Age of Television. University of Michigan.
2013
- COLLECTION: Stephen J. Burn (Editor), Marshall Boswell (Editor) , March 2013, A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies (American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century). Palgrave Macmillan.
2012
- COLLECTION: Dec 2012, David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series). Melville House.
- BOOK: Stephen J. Burn, April 2012, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Second Edition: A Reader's Guide. Continuum.
- COLLECTION: Samuel Cohen (Editor), Lee Konstantinou (Editor), April 2012, The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. University Of Iowa Press.
- COLLECTION: Stephen J. Burn (Ed.), March 2012, Conversations with David Foster Wallace (Literary Conversations Series). University Press of Mississippi.
- Studies in the Novel, David Foster Wallace Special Issue Part 1 Volume 44, Numbers 3 Fall 2012
- Blythe Roberson, Oct 2012, David Foster Wallace and the Comedy Nerd. SplitSider.
- Sancrucensis, Oct 2012, Freedom is Overrated: Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace.
- Ryan Blanck, Oct 2012, What the Hell is Water? Priming, Epiphany, and David Foster Wallace’s Roadmap to Freedom from the Default Setting. Letters to DFW.
- Christopher Schaberg, April 2012, The Work of Literature in the Age of the Office.
- Viz. - Visual Rhetoric - Visual Culture - Pedagogy. Wallace Week
- Childishness and Despair in The Decemberists "Calamity Song" Video. Infinite Jest (1/4/12)
- "Hacking, Tapping, Jacking, Hiding, Faking .. and more!" The Pale King (2/4/12)
- "This is Water"-- Remediating David Foster Wallace's Kenyon Commencement Speech. This is Water (3/4/12)
- Play Ball. (4/4/12)
- The visual (after)life of Infinite Jest. (5/4/12)
- Wallace as Visual Experience (6/4/12)
- Algis Valiunas, Feb 2012, The King of Pain. The Claremont Institute. [Excellent except for the brief, almost flippant and insensitive, discussion of the lead up to Wallace's death in the closing paragraph.]
- Jon Baskin, Spring 2012, Coming to Terms, The Point, Issue 5.
2011
- David Hering, Sep 2011, Theorising David Foster Wallace's Toxic Postmodern Spaces. British Association for American Studies. Issue 18, Spring 2011: Article 2.
- Ed Finn, Sep 2011, Becoming Yourself: The Afterlife of Reception. Literary lab.
- Jon McGregor, July 2011, Excessive Innovation and the Anxiety of Influence: A Footnote to the David Foster Wallace Tribute Issue #10. Issue #20.
- June 2011 The Quarterly Conversation 7 articles devoted to David Foster Wallace - Symposium: Who was David Foster Wallace.
- John Jeremiah Sullivan, May 2011, Too Much Information. GQ.
- Tom McCarthy, April 2011, David Foster Wallace: The Last Audit. NYT Sunday Book Review.
- Maria Bustillos, April 2011 Inside David Foster Wallace's Private Self-Help Library. The Awl.
- Agri Ismail, Feb 2011, The Consciousness of David Foster Wallace's Oblivion. Abstract modem.
- Rebekah Frumkin, Jan 2011, Our Psychic Living Room: Why It's Particularly Important to Read David Foster Wallace. The Common Review.
2010
- COLLECTION: David Foster Wallace (Author), Steven M. Cahn (Editor), Maureen Eckert (Editor), Jay Garfield (Epilogue), James Ryerson (Introduction) , Dec 2010, Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will. Columbia University Press.
- COLLECTION: David Hering (Author & Ed.), Aug 2010, Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays. SSMG Press.
- Blake Butler, Nov 2010, The Myth of the Human w/r/t David Foster Wallace’s “Mister Squishy”. HTML Giant.
- Adam Kelly, 2010, David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline. Irish Journal of American Studies no. 2, Summer 2010. (added June 2010)
- Kathleen Fitzpatrick's Comment Press draft essay about Infinite Summer, Infinite Summer: Reading in the Social Network. (Final version in The Legacy of David Foster Wallace).
- Alec Niedenthal, Jan 2010, David Foster Wallace and Imagining Moral Fiction, HTML Giant.
- Scott F. Parker, Jan 2010, The Real Question (About Good Old Neon), Fiction Writers Review.
- Five Dials #10 David Foster Wallace Tribute Issue. - Direct pdf link.
2009
- BOOK: Marshall Boswell, Aug 2009, Understanding David Foster Wallace. University of South Carolina Press.
- Kevin McMorrow's Infinite Jest MA Thesis. (2009)
- Scott Esposito, Conversational Reading's Two Part Essay: My Infinite Summer: Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, from Girl With Curious Hair Part 1 and Part 2.
- Zac Farber, 2009, ‘Neurotic and Obsessive’ but ‘Not too Intansigent or Defensive’: Editing David Foster Wallace (pdf)
- Joshua Roiland, 2009, Getting Away From It All: The Literary Journalism of David Foster Wallace and Nietzsche's Concept of Oblivion (.pdf), published in LITERARY JOURNALISM STUDIES, vol.1, no.2, Fall 2009.
- Timothy Henry, 2009, The Language of Landscape, Information, and Disturbance: An Existential Look at the Literary Techniques of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (pdf - April 2009)
2008
- Amanda Redinger, Spring 2008, Senior Honors Project, Diagnosing David Foster Wallace. University of Rhode Island.
- Tim Jacobs, Winter 2008, The Fight: Considering David Foster Wallace Considering You. Rain Taxi Review of Books.
2007
- BOOK: Greg Carlisle, Nov 2007, Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Sideshow Media Group.
- Andrew Steven Delfino's Becoming the New Man in Post-Postmodernist Fiction - Portrayals of Masculinities in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (pdf - May 3, 2007)
2003
- Steven Moore, The first draft of IJ and the published version. (added May 10, 2003)
- Jacobs, John Timothy, "The Eschatological Imagination: Mediating David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest" (2003). Open Access Dissertations and Theses. Paper 827.
2002
- Television and Literature: David Foster Wallace's Concept of Image-Fiction, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. Considers some of ASFT and 'Little Expressionless Animals'. (added August 8, 2002)
- Jan Harris, May 2002, Addiction and the Societies of Control: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest Draft of paper delivered at the 'Addiction and Consumption' Conference, University of Lancaster.
2001
- New Addition: Alexander Chambers, 2001, The Crowd and the Individual: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Don DeLillo's Mao II on the Place of the Novel in the Age of Television. University of Michigan.
- Brooks Daverman's Honours paper, The Limits of the Infinite: The Use of Alcoholics Anonymous in Infinite Jest as a Narrative Solution after Postmodernism. (April 25, 2001)
- Mike Strong, A discussion of Dubious Maths in IJ. (added April 17, 2001)
- Derek Edward (Teddy Wayne), Addiction To Itself: Self-Consciousness In David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. (March 14 2001)
2000
- Travis W. Stern's Thesis "I Am in Here": Fragmentation and the Individual in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. (Spring 2000 added Oct 24, 2000)
1999
- Noah Raizman's Thesis Call it Something I Ate: language-games, addiction, and dialogic possibility in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.1999
- Toon Theuwis' Thesis The Quest for Infinite Jest: An Inquiry into the Encyclopedic and Postmodernist Nature of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Click HERE for a picture of Toon. (May 1999)
1997
- Chris Hager's Thesis On Speculation: Infinite Jest and American Fiction After Postmodernism. (added 1997 -New intro by C. Hager added in Dec 2009)
Other Articles:
- Just a Little Taste by Matt Barry. (2/6/11)
Known Broken Links:
- Not really a thesis, but a shorter paper on IJ. Head over to Scott Eric Kaufman's page to read Demand and the Appearance of Freedom: The Role of Corporate Media in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. (Alternate Archive.org link)
Critical Analysis News Update Archive
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