Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think

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TL;DR

A short 1998 book review — of Updike's dystopian novel Toward the End of Time — that doubles as Wallace's plainest nonfiction statement of the solipsism critique that drives his own fiction. Wallace names Mailer, Updike, and Roth "the Great Male Narcissists" and diagnoses the reason his generation recoils from them: "these writers’ radical self-absorption, and with their uncritical celebration of this self-absorption both in themselves and in their characters." Updike's protagonists are "deeply alone, alone the way only an emotional solipsist can be alone" — "The very world around them, as gorgeously as they see and describe it, tends to exist for them only insofar as it evokes impressions and associations and emotions and desires inside the great self." Against them Wallace sets his own generation's horrors: "anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself." The review's verdict on the narrator's belief that sex cures despair — "It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole." — is the sincerity/anti-solipsism program of "E Unibus Pluram" delivered as a punchline. It says nothing about IJ (a post-IJ review), but it is the critique IJ dramatizes, stated in Wallace's own critical voice.

Key claims

The Great Male Narcissists and self-absorption. Mailer/Updike/Roth are "the Great Male Narcissists" (footnote: "Hereafter, GMNs.") "who’ve dominated postwar American fiction"; the younger generation's dislike is rooted in "these writers’ radical self-absorption, and with their uncritical celebration of this self-absorption both in themselves and in their characters." The opening states the stakes: "When a solipsist dies, after all, everything goes with him."
The emotional solipsist. Updike's interchangeable protagonists are "incorrigibly narcissistic, philandering, self-contemptuous, self-pitying … and deeply alone, alone the way only an emotional solipsist can be alone" (the ellipsis is the raw's own), for whom "The very world around them, as gorgeously as they see and describe it, tends to exist for them only insofar as it evokes impressions and associations and emotions and desires inside the great self."
The generational horror: dying unloving. Today's subforties' horrors are "anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself" — and Ben Turnbull "is sixty-six years old and heading for just such a death, and he’s shitlessly scared."
Sex-as-cure-for-despair is adolescent. Turnbull "persists in the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair" — and Wallace's closing diagnosis: "It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole."
The misogyny charge, quoted from readers. Wallace relays (from younger readers, "actual quotations") the verdicts "Just a penis with a thesaurus." and "Makes misogyny seem literary the same way Rush makes fascism seem funny." — and presses the charge himself: the protagonists "especially don’t love women." — footnoted with the acid "Unless, of course, you consider delivering long encomiums to a woman’s “sacred several-lipped gateway”" (the footnote continues) "to be the same as loving her." — a reception-side datum for the wallace-misogyny debate.

Theories & evidence

None — a book review, advancing no claim about IJ (it never names the novel; 1998, post-IJ). Its IJ-bearing signal is the solipsism critique in Wallace's own voice, carried in the CONNECTION blocks below. Locator: no print pagination in this edition; cite by essay-position descriptor.

CONNECTION: The emotional solipsist and the "great self" — the cage-of-the-self critique in Wallace's own voice

Crux: communication-solipsism
Early text: Updike's protagonists are "deeply alone, alone the way only an emotional solipsist can be alone"; "The very world around them, as gorgeously as they see and describe it, tends to exist for them only insofar as it evokes impressions and associations and emotions and desires inside the great self."; and the generational diagnosis — "anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself." [the GMN-diagnosis and subforties ¶¶] [e-text]
IJ echo: IJ's sealed interiority — Marathe's image of being "chained in a cage of the self" (digest, pp. 774–779); Hal's locked-in consciousness; the addicts' self-absorption the AA program and Mario's sincerity are set against. The "dying without even once having loved something more than yourself" line is the review's closest brush with the Marathe–Steeply attachment/worship debate — the novel's argument that a self with nothing larger to love is exactly what the Entertainment preys on.
Weight: restatement (oeuvre-scoped)
Notes: [author]-grade statement of the solipsism critique in critical prose. Post-IJ (1998), so restatement per the extended Weight vocabulary (house-form ruling), not prefiguration. The loneliness sentence was audit-added: it is the essay's most IJ-bearing line.

CONNECTION: The rejection of self-celebrating fiction — the anti-rebel / new-sincerity program stated as a verdict

Crux: eup-connection
Early text: the recoil from "these writers’ radical self-absorption, and with their uncritical celebration of this self-absorption both in themselves and in their characters"; the closing verdict on the sex-cures-despair belief — "It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole." [e-text]
IJ echo: The "E Unibus Pluram" program that IJ enacts — the turn away from self-regarding irony and self-celebration toward a fiction that treats loneliness as a problem to be solved rather than a pose to be admired. The Updike review is that program applied as literary judgment: self-absorption uncritically celebrated is the sickness; the sincere alternative is the cure.
Weight: shared-preoccupation
Notes: Close kin to the McCaffery interview and EUP's anti-rebels passage (redemption-over-diagnosis). The essay diagnoses in a rival what IJ tries to cure in itself.

Themes

Solipsism and narcissism (the "emotional solipsist"; the "great self") · loneliness as the condition of self-absorption (dying "without even once having loved something more than yourself") · despair mistaken for a problem sex can solve · the generational turn against self-celebrating fiction (the new-sincerity / anti-rebel stance) · a male novelist's treatment of women (the misogyny charge, relayed and pressed).

Cross-references

e-unibus-pluram and mccaffery-1993-interview — the anti-rebel / anti-solipsism program this review applies as judgment.
kelly-new-sincerity-reply — the new-sincerity lane the essay's verdict feeds.
IJ's cage-of-the-self material (Hal's sealed interiority; Mario's sincerity as the counter-figure; Marathe's "chained in a cage of the self," digest pp. 774–779) — the condition the review names in Updike.

Notable passages

Prose cited by essay-position. All [e-text].

"When a solipsist dies, after all, everything goes with him." [opening ¶]
"the Great Male Narcissists" [opening ¶; the raw's footnote asterisk sits before "who’ve dominated postwar American fiction"]
"Just a penis with a thesaurus." [the quoted reader-verdicts]
"Makes misogyny seem literary the same way Rush makes fascism seem funny." [same run]
"these writers’ radical self-absorption, and with their uncritical celebration of this self-absorption both in themselves and in their characters." [the GMN diagnosis]
"deeply alone, alone the way only an emotional solipsist can be alone." [the Updike-protagonist ¶]
"The very world around them, as gorgeously as they see and describe it, tends to exist for them only insofar as it evokes impressions and associations and emotions and desires inside the great self." [same ¶]
"anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself." [the subforties ¶]
"the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair." [the Turnbull verdict ¶]
"It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole." [closing line]