david foster wallace joseph frank's dostoevsky

Rather, the deal is simply for the reader to keep reading. In this respect, the reader is the bull and Wallace the guy with the red cape. The catch is that the deal he's closing has nothing to do with any forthcoming intellectual insight. lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?' 3 of the Dostoevsky essay) and Latin abbreviations like 'q.v.' Then, like a salesman closing the deal, he delivers charming setup lines such as this one: 'Did you know that U.S. He quickly establishes authority with vocabulary such as 'prolegomenous' (word No. He starts with something putatively dry (Dostoevsky, say, or grammar) or something putatively irrelevant (has-been tennis star Tracy Austin's ghostwritten memoir) or something genuinely obscure - the neuroanatomy of lobsters.

He's like an overly enthusiastic high school teacher trying to wow his kids with the idea that literature (or whatever else he's obsessed with) can be fun. It's a typical Wallace performance, at once highly entertaining and highly unsatisfying. He (Wallace) also writes about himself (and his literary peers) not writing about Important Questions, ramming his point home by interspersing throughout the essay said Important Questions, uncommented upon and tucked safely inside asterisks, in uneasy juxtaposition with long, digressive footnotes and words such as 'goopy' and 'icky.' 's Dostoevsky' appears near the end of David Foster Wallace's new collection, 'Consider the Lobster.' In it, Wallace is writing about someone (Joseph Frank) writing about someone (

David foster wallace joseph frank's dostoevsky