Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace, The: Language, Identity, and Resistance

by Clare Hayes-Brady

This book examines the writing of David Foster Wallace, hailed as the voice of a generation on his death. Critics have identified horror of solipsism, obsession with sincerity and a corresponding ambivalence regarding postmodern irony, and detailed attention to contemporary culture as the central elements of Wallace's writing. Clare Hayes-Brady draws on the evolving discourses of Wallace studies, focusing on the unifying anti-teleology of his writing, arguing that that position is a fundamentally political response to the condition of neo-liberal America.

She argues that Wallace's work is most unified by its resistance to closure, which pervades the structural, narrative and stylistic elements of his writing. Taking a broadly thematic approach to the numerous types of 'failure', or lack of completion, visible throughout his work, the book offers a framework within which to read Wallace's work as a coherent whole, rather than split along the lines of fiction versus non-fiction, or pre- and post- Infinite Jest , two critical positions that have become dominant over the last five years. While demonstrating the centrality of 'failure', the book also explores Wallace's approach to sincere communication as a recurring response to what he saw as the inane, self-absorbed commodification of language and society, along with less explored themes such as gender, naming and heroism.

Situating Wallace as both a product of his time and an artist sui generis , Hayes-Brady details his abiding interest in philosophy, language and the struggle for an authentic self in late-twentieth-century America.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

234 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2016

Reviews

[Paul H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Publication requirements for tenure are really something else. This book includes unironic citations of De la grammatologie (apparently it's still 1972 in some English programs?) and is 90% jargon, 10% analysis of anything of note. I guess you would have to say that it's technically about DFW, sort of? He comes up occasionally as a launching-pad for interminable passages of half-coherent post-structuralist blah blah (no need to read any of it, the pomo generator has got you covered). Books like Unspeakable Failures are literally everything that is wrong with literary criticism.

[E. C. Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to what sounded to my ears like condemnation coded into its title, I thought this book was going to be mostly about the areas of Wallace’s work that were either undeveloped, lacking, or offensive. Inasmuch as it’s now pretty much universally recognized that postmodern literature is built of modes and discourses and novels that laud the work of white guys, and simultaneously marginalize everyone else, Wallace’s legacy comes packed with an added sensitivity to how white- and male-centric his stuff is, and Wallace’s adoption of racialized voices, comments about Standard Black English, and pretty much all of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (and especially “Brief Interview #20”) have all won due criticism. And indeed, Hayes-Brady is keen on these problems too (addressing them at some length in one of her later chapters) but this is, ultimately, not what The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace is about. The unspeakable failures of Hayes-Brady’s title refers to the term, “failure,” that she theorizes and expands on here, a concept that she sees unifying Wallace’s oeuvre. Failure, then, is the central, controlling idea animating Hayes-Brady’s discussion. But failure for Hayes-Brady is not what it is for Merriam Webster; it’s the fundamental incompleteness of the communication Wallace attempts to accomplish with his work. No matter how innovative the techniques or immediate the themes or sincere the writing, Wallace never reached the goal he set for himself. And because this failure is both preordained (no communication can ever be perfect (or proven to be perfect)) and necessary in order to continue the process of communication (which is itself crucial to Wallace’s humanist project), failure is a good thing. So what Hayes-Brady is arguing in her book is really how Wallace’s writing – both fiction and non-fiction – is essentially open, incomplete, and anti-teleological, and so allows for the continuation of the work of cooperative meaning-making and connection. Hayes-Brady, to my surprise and delight, made a big deal out of Wallace’s conception of sincerity (she worked with Adam Kelly), and even though she rejects Kelly’s arguments, Hayes-Brady also ultimately comes to the conclusion of the sincerity thesis: the literature of the current period is about reducing human freedom and will to the point of a single choice between believing in the sincerity of others and trusting that they believe in yours, or not. I think that attempting to house ALL of Wallace’s work within a single theoretical concept is both ambitious and more than anyone could reasonably ask of a single theoretical concept, so there are lines of argumentation throughout this book (I’m thinking especially of the discussions of Wallace’s non-fiction) that demand too much from “failure” and leave me unconvinced. Too, the chapters seem too short, as do the respective chapters’ subsections, while Hayes-Brady tends to over-rely on Wittgenstein and Rorty (and Wallace via his interviews, for that matter), and to concentrate too much attention of Wallace’s early work. Her greatest sin, though, is siting Wallace within postmodernism, which is a position I just can’t get down with. All my criticisms notwithstanding, Hayes-Brady provides a comprehensive vision of Wallace’s work, and even while I might disagree with some of it, her conception of failure in relation to communication sets us up to see what is otherwise invisible, namely the catalyst of faith that is so crucial to understanding any literature of the New Sincerity.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Be forewarned - this is an academic book and all that entails, meaning it is a mix of interesting insights, thought-provoking theses, questionable analysis, high jargon and the author’s projections onto Wallace’s work. But a nice change of pace from your standard book review. See what I did there with the metafictional angle...

[Mugren Ohaly · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title is misleading, and it would’ve been so much better if the writing wasn’t so academic and dense.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. I live for this kind of stuff but at parts even I was like "we may be overthinking things here."