![]() ![]() ![]() Wallace’s life and work invite us to use the institutional language of addiction and the inherent narrative structure of twelve-step programs to read his novels as a progression toward an open-ended and always-contingent recovery from literary theory. This reformed Wallace repurposed these sterile, theoretical paradoxes as models for understanding not just the crises of individual experience, but also of American culture more broadly. Wallace completed only two novels-the first of which is generally dismissed as the work of a young author enamored of his talent, and the second of which is not uncommonly hailed as “the voice of a generation.” Between these novels, he weaned himself off an addiction to the conspicuous narrative foregrounding of poststructuralist theory, progressing into a writer capable of bringing theory to life through narrative engagement with its application. My dissertation frames the evolution of David Foster Wallace’s writing ethic as a function of addiction recovery. ![]()
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