At the conclusion of the last chapter, I noted the effect that the drug Obetrol has on Chris Fogle in The Pale King. He calls it 'doubling', a state of
heightened 'self-awareness' rather than 'self-consciousness'. (p. 181) This mental state allows Fogle to be hyper-aware not only of the information he is absorbing, but also of the conditions and process of that information
absorption. (p. 183) I argue that the structures and forms of David Foster Wallace's prose present us with a similar doubling.
'Doubling' means presenting information and the context for that information at the same time. It also means an awareness of the deep irony of post-postmodernism that I have referred to occasionally in this thesis, as a correction to the idea that Wallace's prose formulates a kind of 'meta-irony': 'doubling' creates an awareness that meaning is not just unstable, as in descriptions of postmodernism, but paradoxical.162 This awareness of the absorption of information as process distinguishes it from metafiction's presentation of the production of information. In this chapter I will relate this intensification of metafiction to the trope of Zeno's paradox.
I will primarily discuss the use of footnotes and endnotes. Alongside long and digressive sentences, these have become seen as a hallmark of Wallace's writing. Footnoting primarily allows the stratification of information,
162 'Meta-irony': Scott, p. 40; Boswell, p. 15. 'Unstable meaning': see the importance of 'indeterminacy' to postmodernist critique, e.g. Hassan, p. 92. One might also note Derrida's (1997: 159) conception of the 'supplement' as a formulation of the concept of 'doubling': ' 'there have never been anything but supplements, substitutive significations, which could only come forth in a chain of differential references, the “real” supervening, and being added only while taking on meaning from a trace and from an invocation of the supplement, etc'. Just as post-postmodernism reflects the experience of the lived experience of
postmodernism, 'doubling', reflected through the conscious experience of Fogle, represents the lived experience of the 'supplement'. This experience is heightened by the
pharmacological, educational, and cultural position Fogle finds himself in; in other words, it is the totalized experience of the post-postmodern.
classifying different kinds of knowledge. They comment or expand upon the main body of the text, so highlighting a digressive form of narrative
expansion. The same qualities that define Wallace's sentences therefore define his most readily apparent formal technique. His many pages of footnotes present visible evidence of the insignificance of narrative thrust in the face of the multiple qualifications, expansions and references that post- postmodernist narratives incorporate.
I will also examine other techniques that mirror the effects of footnoting. This means examining devices that produce parallel levels of information within or alongside the central narrative. This comparison will allow me to determine why such formal qualities are essential to the construction of a post-postmodernist text.163
This discussion will approach a broader spread of Wallace's corpus than my other chapters. I will consider different kinds of text in order to develop a confluent reading of how Wallace produces 'doubling' across styles, genres, formats and topics.
I will begin with a discussion of his 'academic writing', pieces written with a specific technical audience in mind. I will then discuss Infinite Jest's endnoting at length, before examining the mutation of non-fictional footnotes in the essay 'Host'. After this, I will discuss the relative absence of footnoting in Oblivion: Stories, and then briefly discuss the self-referential application of the technique in The Pale King. I will use this analysis to build on my idea that these late texts form a kind of self-parody.
163 My reading draws upon other critics' discussion of Wallace's footnoting: Ira B. Nadel provides a history of their use in Wallace's writing, seeing them 'opening unexpected angles and “proofs”' for the reader. Iannis Goerlandt's reading of shorter writing is closer to my own, finding a shift from a focus on 'self-referentiality' to 'intransparency' across his career. My more negative interpretation of the explanation and effects of Wallace's footnotes, while acknowledging the work these critics have done, is distinguishable from their ideas. Ira B. Nadel, 'Consider the Footnote', in The Legacy of David Foster Wallace, ed. by Samuel Cohen and Lee Konstantinou (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012), p. 236; Iannis Goerlandt, '”That Is Not Wholly True”: Notes on Annotation in David Foster Wallace's Shorter Fiction (and Non-Fiction)', in Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays, ed. by David Hering (Los Angeles, CA; Austin, TX: Sideshow Media Group Press, 2010), p. 170.
Overall in this chapter I will demonstrate the operation of digressive and framing networks on the level of the transmission of information. This will enhance my depiction of Wallace's writing as influenced by the structure of Zeno's paradox, as it shows the necessity for the transmission of meaning to be always relayed within a context of deeper or broader sets of meanings. These notes ask who is relaying the information, to what purpose, what information is missing from their narrative, and why, for example. Answering each of these questions is as much a necessity for the 'correct' transfer of information as reaching endless halfway points is to Zeno's Paradox.
Wallace's techniques allow him to reproduce the proliferation of information necessary for meaning, but also demonstrate the ways that post-
postmodernist fiction relies on paradox to demonstrate the anxious effects of intensified differences.