Writing as going into what you don't want to see — the purge / truth-telling reading
echoes
From: The Nature of the Fun
- Early text: "writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside
yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don’t want to see or let
anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be
precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel";
"Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth
instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you
figure you will be maximally likable." [late essay] [e-text]
- IJ echo: The reading of IJ as an exposure/purge of Wallace's own
addiction, depression, and self-consciousness — the novel as the illumination
of the stuff you don't want to see, offered on the theory that the most
private material is the most shared. The essay is the authorial warrant for
the purge and new-sincerity readings the archive tracks.
- Weight: shared-preoccupation