David Foster Wallace and the Body

<p><em>David Foster Wallace and the Body</em> is the first full-length study to focus on Wallace’s career-long fascination with the human body and the textual representation of the body. The book provides engaging accessible close readings that highlight the importance of the overlooked and yet central theme of all of this major American author’s works: having a body. Wallace repeatedly made clear that good fiction is about what it means to be a ‘human being’. A large part of what that means is having a body and being conscious of the conflicts that arise morally and physically as a result; a fact with which as Wallace forcefully and convincingly argues we all desire ‘to be reconciled’. Given the ubiquity of the themes of embodiment in Wallace’s work this study is an important addition to an expanding field. The book also opens up the themes addressed to interrogate aspects of contemporary literature culture and society more generally placing Wallace’s works in the history of literary and philosophical engagements with the brute fact of embodiment.</p>