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[...] By eliminating the distance between symbols and meaning, Bruce eliminates the entire structure of signification made possible by a post-structuralist understanding of language, and enlisted by Wallace in all of his fiction. By eliminating the dependence of language on context and association,…

[...] Thus women's misandry and misanthropy become the products of misogynistic male attempts to escape the despair that is the human condition. [...]

[...] Frequently Wallace depicts that anxiety about sincerity as bound up in problems of language and communication, and often from the point of view of the author himself: how does an author convince a reader he is being authentic ("Octet"), or create a persona for himself that seems real to the r…

[...] by using a feminist criticism of Markson's Kate to contemplate problems of the masculine self that exclude (or absorb) the feminine, Wallace appropriates Kate for a meditation on masculinity just as he accuses Markson of appropriating her for his meditation on solipsism. Both acts of appropri…

[...] By offering her sexual betrayal of men as possible explanation of her condition, Markson--Wallace is right--converts profound universal suffering into the particularity and niggardliness of secular sin. But by reading her struggle to create self out of language as inherently masculine, Wallac…