Brief Interviews with Liminality: The Case of David Foster Wallace
Brief Interviews with Liminality: The Case of David Foster Wallace

Author(s): Katarzyna Więckowska
Subject(s): British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: brief interviews with liminality;the case of David Foster Wallace
Summary/Abstract: The beginning of the twenty first century can be described as a liminal period of discarding old interests and preoccupations in preparation for the arrival of something new. This feeling of standing on a threshold is also visible in literature where the growing impatience with the postmodern technique of formal play may result in the creation of a new kind of fiction. David Foster Wallace’s collection of short stories Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) is a critique of the postmodern society and its representative literary form which not only convincingly argues that the formula of metafiction has been exhausted but also points to a possible way out of the postmodern impasse and to a different kind of writing. This essay outlines the major points of the critique of metafiction as presented by Wallace and analyses his work as an example of “new” metafiction. The new form – which both embodies and departs from the “old” metafictional devices – may be best approached via reference to the mechanism of trauma, particularly to its compulsive desire to repeat the “painful” metafictional event.

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