IJ study archive

Becoming the New Man in Post-PostModernist Fiction: Portrayals of Masculinities in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

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TL;DR

A 2007 Georgia State M.A. thesis that reads Infinite Jest (paired with Fight Club) as a study of the turn-of-the-century "masculinity crisis," using Calvin Thomas's abjection theory (Male Matters) and Arthur Flannigan-Saint-Aubin's phallic/testicular metaphor. Its governing claim is a SPECTRUM reading of the novel's three principal men: Orin is hyperbolic normative masculinity (a "libertine jock" whose compulsive sex marks women as "receptacles" to fend off the abjection a strong mother threatens him with), Hal is the "sexually repressed intellectual" stuck between poles, and Donald Gately is the redemptive "new man" who "incorporates strong, phallic masculinity and nurturing, testicular masculinity, creating a balanced gender." Gately's one act of overt violence — the Lenz-rescue fight — is read as "his most phallic moment" occurring "in the service of his testicular, nurturing side", and his AA practice of "Identify" (vs "Compare") makes him not just the "new masculine man" but "a new post-postmodernist storyteller". That is the thesis's second, braided engine: post-postmodernist fiction = an irony+sincerity synthesis that mirrors the phallic+ testicular masculine synthesis, with James Incandenza as the emotionally-frozen postmodernist (his films' "lexical rape" of the audience; the "professional conversationalist" scene) and Wallace/Gately reaching for connection. Delfino concedes Wallace only half-succeeds — the withheld Hal–Gately meeting is read (via Goerlandt/Holland) as a residual postmodern "withholding". A scholarly masculinity reading, downstream of Nichols's carnival/abject article (which it cites throughout) and citing Theuwis — both already in the archive. NOT a misogyny indictment: Delfino finds IJ's gender project constructive, which places him as a distinctive counter-voice inside the gender/reception cluster.

Key claims

  • The three principal men map a spectrum of masculinities; Gately is the goal. "Both novels have male characters that ran the gamut of masculinities, but those that are the most successful at avoiding gender stereotypes (Donald Gately in Infinite Jest, and the narrator in Fight Club) develop a masculinity which incorporates strong, phallic masculinity and nurturing, testicular masculinity, creating a balanced gender." Orin = "libertine jock," Hal = "sexually repressed intellectual," Gately = "nurturing tough guy".
  • Male bodies are invisible-until-weapon, and become visible = weak. All three "begin the novel in the standard position of male sexuality as described in Calvin Thomas' Male Matters, where the male body remains invisible unless it is used in sports or warfare." Extending Nichols, IJ's "male bodies are both invisible and deformed"; when the narrator makes them visible, the deformity "signal[s] a disturbed sense of each man's masculinity."
  • Orin: hyperbolic normative sexuality as a defense against maternal abjection. His conquests mark women as "receptacles" (the idle-sideways-8s on coeds' flanks read as production/abjection management); punting is described in feminized/abject terms ("empty swinging sack where his balls ought to be"; "the sound of the womb"); watching himself on film = "an infinite loop of solipsism." Cause traced to "strong maternal authority" (Avril) + an absent alcoholic father — "men associate strong maternal authority with production (like ejaculation) and, therefore, abjectness."
  • Hal: the in-between man, paralyzed by the pain of living. Hal wants the emotional connection Orin avoids but overshoots into "hyper-nonsexual" ("lifetime virginity is a conscious goal"); his near-loss to Stice and his drug-withdrawal collapse leave him "paralyzed by the pain of living" on the ETA floor. At the chronological end he claims feeling ("not a machine. I feel and believe") but "cannot communicate" it — he "remains stuck between the two… masculinities."
  • Gately: the "new man" — phallic in the service of testicular. Growing up under the violent "MP," Gately channels rage into football then addiction, then becomes the "nurturing mother of the Ennet House drug treatment program". His Lenz-rescue fight is "his most phallic moment comes in the service of his testicular, nurturing side"; the narrator borrows the very feminized dance vocabulary used for Orin ("pirouette," "Rockette kick"), so "Gately becomes an artist, gracefully producing pain." He "still remains able to unleash his" violence but no longer for its own sake — "his synthesis of the two sides of the dialectical masculinity represents a new postmodern masculinity, one that breaks free of normative, emotionally-closed stereotypes."
  • Gately's AA "Identify" is post-postmodernist storytelling. Faced with the wraith-James forcing "the term Pirouette, in caps… a sort of lexical rape," Gately "Identifies" rather than "Compares," doing "what many postmodernist authors cannot, which is to make an emotional connection with another person." "The difference between Identify and Compare is essential to Gately's A.A. experience"; the Identifier "becomes stronger, not weaker."
  • Post-postmodernism = irony+sincerity synthesis, parallel to the gender synthesis. "Wallace's post-postmodernist fiction similarly synthesizes the dialectic of ironic posing and naïve-but-real emotions"; "the emotionally open post-postmodern author lies somewhere in between" the ironic-distant and the melodramatic. James "embodies ironic, emotionally distanced postmodernist storytelling"; Wallace should "become the new father of post-postmodernism" (glossing McCaffery), aligning with McLaughlin's "sea change" to "reconnect language to the social sphere".
  • The reading is itself male-centered — women exist as maternal threat / receptacle / approving witness. Avril is the "very powerful, forceful" mother whose maiden name yields (in Delfino's footnote) "a aggressive, 'toothed vagina'"; Joelle functions as the gaze-object of Orin's films and the tender witness who accepts Gately's abjection ("'And Lo,' she says softly"). No woman is a subject of her own gender arc — an asymmetry Delfino reproduces without critique (see THEORY 2 Notes: a datum bearing on silenced-feminine).
  • Wallace only half-breaks with postmodernism (the withheld scene). The absent Hal–Gately grave-dig meeting is "the most significant example of this common withholding in postmodernist fiction"; via Goerlandt, whether the reader spots the buried cross-reference (p. 934 / p. 17) decides whether "Wallace both fails and succeeds at trying not to be too ironic"; via Holland, Wallace may fail to escape "pathological narcissism". Delfino still judges the project largely successful.

Theories & evidence

THEORY: Infinite Jest is a study of the masculinity crisis, with its three principal men on a phallic↔testicular spectrum whose redemptive pole is Gately's "new man" — a constructive gender reading, NOT a misogyny charge

  • Crux: ij-boys-book (the gender/reception cluster anchor — here occupied from the constructive/thematic side); gately-salvation / salvation-spectrum (the Lenz-rescue redemptive climax, gender-framed); PROPOSED ij-masculinity-crisis / gately-new-man (watch)
  • Stance: advances (the masculinity-crisis/spectrum reading itself; keyed to ij-boys-book as the cluster's anchor, NOT as advancing the boys'-book/misogyny charge — verdict-neutral on the charge, per the reception-fight convention)
  • Evidence:
    • [text] Abstract thesis statement: the successful men "develop a masculinity which incorporates strong, phallic masculinity and nurturing, testicular masculinity, creating a balanced gender." [abstract]
    • [secondary] The abjection apparatus: "the male body remains invisible unless it is used in sports or warfare" (Calvin Thomas, Male Matters, via Delfino); the "money shot" and receptacle-logic as the model for normative male sexuality. [Ch. 2]
    • [text] Gately as balanced pole: "his most phallic moment comes in the service of his testicular, nurturing side"; in the Lenz-rescue "Gately becomes an artist, gracefully producing pain"; "he still remains able to unleash his" violence but only as protector — "his synthesis of the two sides of the dialectical masculinity represents a new postmodern masculinity, one that breaks free of normative, emotionally-closed stereotypes." [Ch. 2, IJ fight scene p. 613 via Delfino]
    • [inference] The novel's diagnosis is that the crisis's binary framing is the crisis: Gately (and Fight Club's narrator) "show us we can think of genders as spectrums along which we can exist in whatever blended ratio we desire." [Ch. 4]
  • Notes: Routes to the gender/reception cluster's theory record anchor ij-boys-book (in the archive's theory record the gender/reception fight's anchor, with wallace-misogyny … and silenced-feminine … alongside) — but Delfino occupies it from a DISTINCTIVE angle: he neither dismisses IJ as a "boys' book" nor advances the misogyny charge; he takes the overwhelmingly-male cast and the masculinity theme as the novel's serious constructive subject and finds a redemptive arc (Gately). That is genuinely not covered by the existing reception-fight slugs, which are about whether the misogyny/boys'-book CHARGE is right — hence the proposed thematic watch slug. ADJUDICATED: the anchor TOLERATES a thematic occupant — precedent is Medvetz, already keyed to ij-boys-book while explicitly neither affirming nor rebutting the charge (medvetz-transcendence-fast-slow); keying Delfino to the anchor with an explicit not-the-charge stance is consistent with the bi-title-cycle audit's ruling that ij-boys-book is the reception anchor with wallace-misogyny/silenced-feminine alongside. The proposed slugs stay watch-only. The Lenz-rescue material overlaps gately-salvation/salvation-spectrum (the theory record's "Gately's Lenz-rescue as conversion-by-action" reading) but Delfino's frame is GENDER (phallic-in-service-of-testicular), not soteriology — log as an adjacent gender-coded restatement, not a new salvation sighting. Hal's ETA-floor collapse ("paralyzed by the pain of living") is a clean catatonic-hero support — see THEORY 3 Notes.

THEORY: The reading's women are maternal threat, receptacle, and approving witness — Avril as devouring "toothed vagina" mother — an asymmetry Delfino reproduces uncritically (data for avril-devouring-mother and silenced-feminine)

  • Crux: avril-devouring-mother (support); silenced-feminine (the reading's own male-centeredness as reception-data)
  • Stance: endorses avril-devouring-mother (normalized supports→endorses); bears on silenced-feminine as a datum (see Notes — NOT Delfino advancing that critique)
  • Evidence:
    • [text] Avril as the overshadowing maternal force: her strength "overshadows his weaker father"; "men associate strong maternal authority with production (like ejaculation) and, therefore, abjectness" (Thomas via Delfino). [Ch. 2]
    • [text] The footnote gloss on the maiden name: reading "Mon-" as mons venus and "–Dragon as, well…Dragon," "we see that Avril possess a aggressive, 'toothed vagina.'" [Ch. 2, footnote 4 — cite-as-written "possess a aggressive"]
    • [text] Women as gaze-object / receptacle: Orin marks conquests' flanks with "idle little sideways 8's on the postcoital" thighs (IJ p. 289 via Delfino); Joelle as the tender witness who accepts Gately's abjection — "'And Lo,' she says softly" (IJ p. 619 via Delfino). [Ch. 2]
  • Notes: The Avril material is a clean SUPPORT sighting for the archive's avril-devouring-mother crux ("Avril as devouring-mother archetype; her smothering + JOI's remoteness as the sons' damage"): Delfino's whole Orin etiology is "strong maternal authority → abjection → hyper-masculine overcompensation," with the Oedipal note (Joelle's Thanksgiving memory, IJ p. 747) explicit. On silenced-feminine: Delfino himself does NOT make the feminist critique — but his abjection frame is structurally male-centered (every woman is defined by her function in a man's gender drama; no woman gets an arc), which is precisely the pattern the silenced-feminine reading names. Log this as RECEPTION-DATA for that axis (an academic instance of the male-centric frame), NOT as Delfino advancing silenced-feminine. ADJUDICATED: the distinction HOLDS — the theory registry's silenced-feminine is the Hayes-Brady critique (gc-ep021-CHB [S]: women unnamed/ventriloquized/denied voice), and Delfino's thesis never makes it (he flags at the outset that he examines "masculinity without using feminist theory"); this note keys him only as a datum the critique can point at. Do not over-key it to wallace-misogyny (Delfino is a counter-voice there).

THEORY: Post-postmodernist fiction is an irony+sincerity synthesis braided to the masculinity synthesis — James is the frozen postmodernist, Gately/Wallace reach for connection, and the withheld Hal–Gately scene marks Wallace's residual postmodern "withholding"

  • Crux: register-only genre-placement (post-postmodernism / New Sincerity as a lens, cf. Theuwis's encyclopedic-design handling); catatonic-hero (Hal-on-the-floor, support); sincerity-definition noted but differently scoped (see Notes)
  • Stance: advances (as genre-placement / thematic reading, not a plot-bearing crux)
  • Evidence:
    • [text] The braid: "Wallace's post-postmodernist fiction similarly synthesizes the dialectic of ironic posing and naïve-but-real emotions"; "the emotionally open post-postmodern author lies somewhere in between." [Ch. 2]
    • [text] James as the cold postmodernist: he "embodies ironic, emotionally distanced postmodernist storytelling"; the wraith forces "the term Pirouette, in caps… a sort of lexical rape" (IJ p. 832 via Delfino), so "James uses phallic power to force Gately into a position of abjection." [Ch. 2]
    • [text] Gately's AA answer: "By 'identifying' with James… Gately does what many postmodernist authors cannot, which is to make an emotional connection with another person"; the Identifier "becomes stronger, not weaker." Gately is "not just the new masculine man, but he is also a new post-postmodernist storyteller." [Ch. 2, IJ pp. 833/365 via Delfino]
    • [secondary] The genre frame: Wallace should "become the new father of post-postmodernism" (glossing McCaffery p. 150); McLaughlin's "sea change" to "reconnect language to the social sphere or, to put it another way, to reenergize literature's social" mission. [Ch. 4]
    • [inference] The half-failure: the withheld Hal–Gately meeting is Wallace's own "withholding in postmodernist fiction" (via Goerlandt/Holland). [Ch. 2/4]
  • Notes: REGISTER-ONLY. Delfino's post-postmodernism is a canon-position / aesthetic-placement lens (like Theuwis's encyclopedic-genre reading, which the archive keeps register-only per adjudication #13) — there is no separable textual-likelihood proposition to adjudicate, so it does NOT mint a crux. It is NOT sincerity-definition: that crux slug is the specific Hayes- Brady/Boswell technical claim ("sincerity = coherence not authenticity"); Delfino is doing broad New-Sincerity/post-postmodernism genre-placement, a different and looser thing. The Hal-on-the-floor "paralyzed by the pain of living" collapse IS a clean catatonic-hero support — Delfino reads Hal's end-state as bodily paralysis, adjacent to but not identical with the archive's DMZ/damage mechanisms (he offers no mechanism; it is emotional/gender collapse).

Themes

Masculinity crisis (Pleck's "myth of masculinity"; Clare; Robert Bly's Iron John / mythopoetic men's movement; the Boy-Scouts framing; hyper-masculine overcompensation for absent fathers); abjection (Calvin Thomas's Male Matters — the money shot, the receptacle, bodily fluids = filth/death, "self-shattering"; Kristeva's abject via Nichols); the phallic/testicular metaphor (Flannigan-Saint- Aubin — nurturing testicles + forceful phallus as a gender spectrum against binary thinking); the gaze (Laura Mulvey — scopophilia, the mirror stage, Orin as self-watching object); AA and Identify-vs-Compare (Althusser's ideology-in-action; the "author"-less program); post-postmodernism / New Sincerity (McLaughlin's "sea change"; the McCaffery interview; irony+sincerity synthesis; Wallace as "new father"); football/sport as masculinity proving-ground (Messner; Dundes's homoerotic-football essay); the withheld ending as postmodern "withholding" (Goerlandt, Holland, LeClair).

Cross-references

  • nichols-dialogizing-postmodern-carnival — THE lineage. Delfino (2007) cites Catherine Nichols's 2001 "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival" 13× and builds directly on it: he takes her carnival/abject/grotesque reading (deformed-yet-invisible bodies; Orin's sexual addiction rooted in fear of emotional vulnerability; the mirror-monologue; James's films as Barth/Pynchon self-reflexive outtakes; Hal's move out of the "hip, empty mask, anhedonia") and re-tools it into a MASCULINITY reading via Calvin Thomas. Nichols's "radical act of dialogue" = Hal's and Gately's unmasked sober voices IS Delfino's post-postmodernist-storyteller Gately — same payoff, gender-recoded. Delfino's Works Cited entry for Nichols confirmed against her note, along with the 13× citation count.
  • hf-theuwis-quest-encyclopedic-postmodern — Delfino cites Theuwis's HF thesis in his Works Cited (raw lines 2465–2467: "Theuwis, Toon. 'The Quest for Infinite Jest'… Ghent University Press, 1999… http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/toon.html"), an intra-archive citation link. Both do genre-placement (Theuwis: encyclopedic/postmodernist; Delfino: post-postmodernist) and both are register-only on that axis.
  • medvetz-transcendence-fast-slow — the META-LEVEL of the same gender/reception cluster: Medvetz keyed to ij-boys-book (with wallace-misogyny/silenced-feminine alongside), explicitly "neither affirms nor rebuts" the misogyny charge — he explains the reception sociologically. Delfino sits one layer down: a primary academic READING inside that fight, taking the constructive/ thematic side. Complementary, not duplicative — and the occupancy precedent for this note's ij-boys-book keying (THEORY 1 Notes).
  • bi-title-cycle — the primary fiction of the wallace-misogyny crux. Delfino is the COUNTER-orientation: where the BI material is "the book-length staging of the gendered material the reception fight argues about," Delfino reads IJ's gender content as a constructive masculinity project. Same cluster, opposite valence — useful pairing on the wallace-misogyny / silenced-feminine axis.
  • The archive's theory theory record — routing homes: ij-boys-book (gender/reception anchor), wallace-misogyny, silenced-feminine, avril-devouring-mother, gately-salvation/salvation-spectrum, catatonic-hero, crossdressing-dysphoria (adjacent but differently scoped — NOT this).

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