My Infinite Summer: Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (Parts I & II)

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TL;DR

A two-part blog reading (Conversational Reading, 2009, part of Esposito's "Infinite Summer" IJ read-along) of Wallace's novella "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," from Girl with Curious Hair. The novella is a non-Infinite Jest text, but the whole argument is IJ-facing: Esposito reads Westward as Wallace's failed-but-revealing attempt to "take metafiction to Armageddon" (blowing up Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse" to reaffirm art as a "living transaction between humans"), and as "the best fictional text of Wallace's to prepare you for his masterpiece" — down to a character (Steelritter) he reads as a proto-J.O.-Incandenza. The most useful single account of the Girl with Curious Hair→Infinite Jest genetic line.

Key claims

Wallace's own verdict. Esposito opens with the McCaffery interview: Westward's "only real value'll be showing the kind of pretentious loops you fall into now if you fuck around with recursion." Wallace's aim was "to do with metafiction what" DeLillo's Libra "had done with other mediated myths" — "I wanted to get the Armageddon-explosion, the goal metafiction's always been about, I wanted to get it over with, and then out of the rubble reaffirm the idea of art being a living transaction between humans".
Barth as the target. "the text he holds responsible for the genesis of said metafiction is John Barth's short story" Lost in the Funhouse; "Barth is plainly embodied in creative writing professor Ambrose", whose funhouse is being franchised nationwide "much as Barth's metafiction was franchised out to a generation of young writers in creative writing programs."
The middle course, missed. Esposito's diagnosis: Wallace "wants a middle course between the giddy (but empty and inward-facing) novelty of metafiction and the empathetic (but already exhausted) substance of straight realism", but the novella collapses into "increasingly obscure games" and a "30-some pages of dense lecture." The anti-metafiction tirades ("Metafiction is untrue, as a lover. It cannot betray. It can only reveal. … Fucking themselves.") read as a man "really afraid of being thought a" metafictionist.
Prescience (part II). Westward, though set in the early 1980s, anticipates the concerns of Infinite Jest: quotes like "Turn your biggest fear into your one real desire" — "the one Wallace would essentially spend the rest of his career as a writer working out". Esposito ranks Infinite Jest with "other great American novels" (Invisible Man, Huckleberry Finn, Gatsby) as a diagnosis of the country.
The genetic fusion, and the proto-Incandenza. Where earlier work handled Wallace's ideas separately, Westward is the first to bring them together — "he's trying to work out how they're connected at the genetic level." Esposito's headline link: "Wallace would soften Steelritter (a father himself) from the capitalist run amuck to a much more Faustian character: the artist-father who loses his way, James Orin Incandenza" — who, Esposito adds, "himself does usher in a certain, related apocalypse of his own". In Jest the characters are "much more real … the cartoons and the sentimentality have been traded in for something that feels much more real." He points readers to "Understanding David Foster Wallace by Marshall Boswell, pp. 102 - 115."
Commenter observation (handle only). A commenter, "sam," flags the coda's autobiographical turn — Mark Nechtr will write a story in which "he's a character named Dave. He's dating L---. They fight." — notes the book is dedicated "To L----", and asks whether "L" is Mary Karr; Esposito replies (per Boswell) that it is not.

Theories & evidence

THEORY: "Westward" is Wallace's deliberate attempt to detonate metafiction (the Barth "Lost in the Funhouse" tradition) and clear ground for a fiction of genuine human transaction

Crux: westward-anti-entertainment
Stance: endorses
Evidence:
- [author] Wallace to McCaffery: he wanted "the Armageddon-explosion, the goal metafiction's always been about … and then out of the rubble reaffirm the idea of art being a living transaction between humans". [pt1]
- [text] Westward's anti-metafiction tirade ("Metafiction is untrue, as a lover…") and its self-interrupting "A Really Blatant and Intrusive Interruption". [pt1]
Notes: Counterevidence in-source (per the lens): Esposito judges the attempt a partial failure — the novella "veers off-target," and the constant inveighing reads as fear of being thought a metafictionist. Maps also to barth-influence (Ambrose = Barth; the Funhouse as the tradition being exorcised).

THEORY: "Westward" is the genetic seed of Infinite Jest — its ideas fused for the first time, and its capitalist-father Steelritter softened into the artist-father J.O. Incandenza

Crux: commercial-that-consumes
Stance: advances
Evidence:
- [secondary] Esposito's reading: Westward is where "he's trying to work out how they're connected at the genetic level"; Steelritter is softened "to a much more Faustian character: the artist-father who loses his way, James Orin Incandenza", who ushers in "a certain, related apocalypse of his own". [pt2]
- [secondary] The line "Turn your biggest fear into your one real desire", which Esposito calls the problem Wallace "would essentially spend the rest of his career … working out" (through the Entertainment/desire material of Jest). [pt2]
Notes: Esposito's genetic claim leans on Boswell's reading of Westward (pp. 102-115); no Infinite Jest passage is quoted, so no scene mapping is asserted. The Steelritter→Incandenza link is an interpretive inference, not a documented compositional fact.

Themes

Metafiction and its exorcism; the Barth inheritance; art as human transaction vs. recursive self-love; the Girl with Curious Hair→Infinite Jest development of Wallace's project; the artist-father figure; entertainment/desire ("biggest fear into your one real desire").

Cross-references

finn-becoming-yourself-reception — Finn quotes Wallace's related self-description of that Girl with Curious Hair dialogue with Barth as both homicidal and a fawning homage; both notes read Westward as the Barth-exorcism.
qc-symposium-who-was-dfw — Esposito's other IJ-as-masterpiece framing in the batch.
The proto-Incandenza / genetic-line reading pairs with the archive's J.O.I. and Entertainment material (offered as an early-work continuity, not an IJ claim).

Notable passages

Wallace (McCaffery): "out of the rubble reaffirm the idea of art being a living transaction between humans".
Westward: "Metafiction is untrue, as a lover. It cannot betray. It can only reveal."
Esposito on the line Wallace kept working: "Turn your biggest fear into your one real desire."
The genetic link: Steelritter softened into "the artist-father who loses his way, James Orin Incandenza".