At the 10A hour with Professor Coleman
In this course we will read and discuss all of the published fiction, and most of the non-fiction, of acclaimed U.S. American author David Foster Wallace (1962-2008). Wallace is widely regarded as a major figure in the development of the novel over the past number of decades but his groundbreaking work as a writer of short prose works, including stories and essays, has also been acknowledged. Writers such as Dave Eggers, Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, and Richard Powers have all praised his work, which is compelling in its formal inventiveness as well as the encyclopaedic range of his engagement with themes and issues such as sport, adolescence, mental illness, communication, entertainment, drug addiction, boredom, the uses of a liberal education and the interface between politics and popular culture in the (post)modern era. To use the phrase he gave to his study of infinity, Wallace attempted to write about "everything and more," and the purpose of this course is to try and get a better understanding of how he did it. While the course will be focused on the published works of David Foster Wallace, which will be read in order of publication, it will also acknowledge and explore his readings of other figures including John Barth (Lost in the Funhouse), Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), William Gaddis (The Recognitions), Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49), and David Markson (Wittgenstein's Mistress). Dist: LIT: WCult: W. Course Group III. CA tags Genre-narrative, Period Study III.