IJ study archive

Where's Wallace? Infinite Jest's Return to Reality

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TL;DR

An undergraduate essay (Queen City Writers, U. Cincinnati's student journal, 2014) arguing that "David Wallace, himself, is the primary narrative voice throughout Infinite Jest" — that the novel's unnamed limited-omniscient narrator is a saturated authorial presence, and that recognizing this is "imperative to all readings of the text." Smilges assembles the case from biography (the three storylines mirror Wallace's life — tennis, drugs, depression, AA), from narratological "focalization" (opinion-laden diction like "creepy," "discouragingly," "clearly" betraying the "narrator-focalizer"), from James Wood's "free indirect style", and from Wallace's grammar-obsession markers (the mid-sentence sic). The title's payoff is elegiac: the pervasive authorial voice is a "one-way discussion, an internal panel of voices substituting for the voices Wallace truly wanted to speak with"; the reader's absence is "felt over and over and over again",Wallace's words "spoken to our absence, our ghosts." A student-tier reader-sighting of the author-as-narrator reading — useful for popularity, not authority.

Key claims

  • The thesis. "A host of direct textual references, combined with the physical structure, layout, order, and design of the book, as well as the thematic relevance of Alcoholics Anonymous, suggest that David Wallace, himself, is the primary narrative voice throughout Infinite Jest." "[W]ho speaks is just as important as what is spoken."
  • Biography as evidence. "[A]ll three of the primary storylines seem to reflect various components of the author’s own biography" — Hal's tennis and drug arc, the Ennet House residents mirroring Wallace's own addiction, Kate Gompert's depression echoing his. (Smilges leans on Charles Harris's memoir "That Distinct Singular Stamp of Himself" and D.T. Max.)
  • AA as authorial method. The frequency and intensity of the AA scenes lead to the conclusion that "Wallace, or at least the speaker of the novel, is attempting to build a community between himself and the reader" — "a circle of judgment in which no one feels judged because everyone is judged equally."
  • Narratological focalization. Opinion-words ("creepy," "apparently," "discouragingly," "clearly") mark a "narrator-focalizer" (Rimmon-Kenan). In the Orin passage on "the obliterating trinity of You and I into We" (567), the narrator's retracted "maybe" "stands out, screams perspective, then vanishes." Via James Wood, "omniscient narration is rarely as omniscient as it seems" — "free indirect style" places character, narrator, and author "all somehow together, but also apart".
  • The sic marker. "O. says he can only remember ( sic ) saying something caustic…" (11) — "an omniscient writer would have no reason [to] point out a squinting modifier"; the marker "captures the author and puts him on display", reflecting Wallace's documented grammar obsession.
  • The encyclopedic/endnote reading. Via David Letzler ("Encyclopedic Novels and The Cruft of Fiction"), the endnotes are Wallace's way of "mocking the conventional, non-literary encyclopedic format" — a pseudo-encyclopedic construction that lets Wallace "both use a genre dedicated to providing information and simultaneously satirize the reader".
  • The elegiac conclusion. IJ is a "jest" because the saturated authorial voice is "a one-way discussion, an internal panel of voices substituting for the voices Wallace truly wanted to speak with"; readers are "third-party observers", Wallace's diffusion "a reminding placeholder for the spot he wanted us … to fill" — the novel's words "spoken to our absence, our ghosts."

Theories & evidence

THEORY: The primary narrator of Infinite Jest is David Foster Wallace himself — a pervasive authorial presence saturating every page, not an impersonal omniscient voice

  • Crux: ij-narrator
  • Stance: advances
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary] Narratological "focalization" (Rimmon-Kenan): opinion-laden diction ("creepy," "clearly") marks a "narrator-focalizer"; James Wood's "free indirect style" placing author/narrator/character together-but-apart. [¶¶ focalization]
    • [text] The mid-sentence "( sic )" (IJ 11) as a marker of the author "on display", reflecting Wallace's grammar obsession. [¶ sic; cite-as-written]
    • [secondary] Adam Kelly ("Development Through Dialogue"): dialogue is "merely an offshoot of his own persona"; "every word of Infinite Jest is a reflection of its creator." [¶ Kelly]
  • Notes: A student-tier ij-narrator sighting on the author-as-narrator pole (distinct from the wraith-JOI-narrator pole Burn's thesis develops). Notably, the essay engages the wraith passages (the "apparently real nondream Joelle", 854; the Thing that "chased persons before," 721) as focalization evidence WITHOUT committing to the wraith as literal narrator — its narrator is the biographical author, not the ghost. In-source qualification: Smilges concedes it is "a bit of a stretch to compare James Incandenza's microwaveable self-murder to Wallace's own death".

THEORY: Infinite Jest is autobiographical to an extreme degree — the three storylines and the pervasive voice make the novel "ultimately … Wallace himself," a bid to build real community with the reader that the form's one-wayness defeats

  • Crux: ij-autobiographical
  • Stance: advances
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary] The three storylines "reflect various components of the author’s own biography" (tennis, drugs, depression, AA) — via Harris's memoir and D.T. Max. [¶¶ biography]
    • [text] The AA scenes as "Wallace, or at least the speaker of the novel," "attempting to build a community between himself and the reader"; "no judgement" (379). [¶ AA; cite-as-written]
    • [inference] The novel a "one-way discussion … spoken to our absence, our ghosts" — the desired reader-relationship "ultimately nonexistent." [¶ close]
  • Notes: Routes to ij-autobiographical / hal-dfw-surrogate (Hal and the Ennet residents as Wallace-surrogates). The essay's own hedge — that the biographical parallels are broad resemblances, a "stretch" — is recorded per the counterevidence clause.

Themes

The narrator and authorial presence (author-as-narrator); autobiography and surrogacy (Hal, the Ennet residents, Kate Gompert); communication and solipsism (the one-way discussion, the reader's "absence"); AA and community; the endnotes and the encyclopedic satire.

Cross-references

Notable passages

Verbatim from the essay (Smilges's prose; his IJ quotations are cite-as-written).

  • "David Wallace, himself, is the primary narrative voice throughout Infinite Jest."
  • "who speaks is just as important as what is spoken."
  • On autobiography: "each word, sentence, and chapter of the novel becomes a part of a grand series of mirrors, all blocks in the construction of a text that ultimately becomes Wallace himself."
  • The elegiac close: "an internal panel of voices substituting for the voices Wallace truly wanted to speak with."
  • "spoken to our absence, our ghosts."

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