[...] "The Soul is Not a Smithy", in its invocation of Joyce's artistic credo, seems also to resist ideas of the capacity of literature to formulate and maintain a coherent identity. [...]
[...] "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature," explicitly invokes Rortian philosophy, taking its title from Rorty's 1979 book of the same name. [...]
While he tended to elide the "American" from his discussion of what it meant to be an American human being, Wallace was explicitly, exhaustingly conscious of writing from an American perspective, and repeatedly articulated his struggles with taking a perspective outside of his own. Lee Konstantinou…
mirrors processes of adolescent self-definition, functioning as an anodyne of sorts to infantile narcisissm, refusing to look beyond the borders of its own importance
on DFW's relationship (i.e., where he places himself in the panthen) with other American postmodernist fiction writers
