In this episode we talk with Wallace scholar Clare Hayes-Brady about her new book The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-unspeakable-failures-of-david-foster-wallace-9781501313530/
She is Lecturer in American Literature at University College, Dublin.
We discuss a variety of issues in this episode including bad endings, DFW Studies, Ricoeur, love, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and assorted other things.
You can find her on Twitter https://twitter.com/ClareHayesBrady
Show notes
00:30 - Byzantine Erotica right off the bat
01:30 - Spelling of Quebecois
02:30 - UCD vs TCD
04:01 - The Unspeakable Failures
05:01 - Noncompletion, the lack of closure
05:45 - A Failed Entertainment
08:30 - Short Story Theory, resistance to closure
10:39 - We don’t have neat narratives
13:00 - How can you be done with something?
14:26 - Starting IJ again
15:20 - The peripheral stuff
16:27 - Was IJ/DFW narcissistic?
19:10 - The empathetic connection with readers
20:38 - Incoherent need to communicate
22:21 - The problem with romantic relationships--and Anne Geddes
25:21 - Misogyny from a place of fear
26:36 - The Granola Cruncher
30:53 - The silencing of female characters
31:02 - The Lionel Shriver issue
35:18 - A poorly disguised avatar
35:45 - Hungerford piece
37:02 - The Joycean Boys Club
39:59 - The C-word
44:42 - Inhabiting other minds
45:29 - Hurston not explaining things
47:26 - White male protagonists. . . groan
48:46 - VIDA count and the equivalent awareness
50:01 - Separating the artist from the art
51:29 - Ferrante & Knausgaard
55:36 - Writing beyond his own perspective
56:20 - Hardcore Theory Weenies
58:41 - Conflating a couple of paradoxes
59:59 - A fascinating disaster of a book
1:01:54 - The conclusions of the failures
1:04:40 - First attempt in Learning
1:05:08 - Post on Poor Yorick’s Summer
1:05:30 - Honest Ulsterman and motherhood
1:08:40 - Easter Egg