"Put the Book Down and Slowly Walk Away": Irony and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest

The first OA liberated article from my Leverhulme Prize: The Critique of Metamodernism

“…Many critical appraisals of Infinite Jest consider Wallace to have failed in his post-postmodernist mission, or at least only partially succeeded. Mary K. Holland believes that in his attempt to solve the problem of his antecedent postmodern legacy, 'Wallace has managed in Infinite Jest the patricidal liberation of eliminating one key purveyor of self-reflexive schlock, Jim Incandenza, but has left in his place through Incandenza's final film an ill-guided and failed attempt at healing whose clean-up attempt only begets more solipsistic mess' (Holland, 2006), while Iannis Goerlandt is able to rescue the work only 'on the level of the novel's superstructure' where the reader experiences a 'nonironic 'infinite jest' by slowly walking away after putting the book down' (Goerlandt, 2006).…”

“…In Wallace's work, the 388 endnotes perform a deeper function than merely necessitating a second bookmark. In Infinite Jest -building upon the 'textual waste', reader-annoyance and distancing effects noted in Wallace's shorter works (Goerlandt, 2010) -the notes are a parody of academic discourse, elaborating upon the street names of the drugs listed throughout the text ('1. Metamphetamine hydrochloride, a.k.a.…”