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In using the IRS as representative of neoliberalism in general, The Pale King is able to connect neoliberalism back to boredom in an illuminating way. This becomes evident when David Wallace remarks that "[t]he real reason why US citizens were/are not aware of these conflicts, changes, and stakes is that the whole subject of tax policy and administration is dull. Massively, spectacularly dull" (83). Thus it is that boredom and apathy become a kind of political tool, or a sure bet to manufacture consent, since "if sensitive issues of governance can be made sufficiently dull and arcane, there will be no need for officials to hide or dissemble, because no one not directly involved will pay enough attention to cause trouble" (84). It would seem, then, that choosing not to pay attention to such "boring" things as political and economic issues does not mean one will lead a life "free" of constraint, but that one will pay off this debt with the freedoms that were granted long ago.
basically neoliberalism crept up on us under cover of boredom
[...] I believe that "Westward"'s fictional project should instead be read as, if not as accomplishing, then at least pointing toward a relationship to irony that is anti-eschatological, that acknowledges irony's fundamental "temporality that is not organic," and that it "allows for no end, for no totality." In other words, Wallace's mode of getting metafiction's Armageddon-explosion "over with," is based on an acknowlegment that not only can there not be such an explosion, but that the whole aesthetic approach that privileges such an eschatology is not only problematic, but threatening. [...]
The balance scale, I argue, was the image to which he kept returning for reconciliation of his varied ambitions, beginning from his naming of his first protagonist--an LB--after a standard unit of weight, money, and work (from the Latin libra, balance) and continuing through his romancing of IRS balance sheets.
this feels kinda BS to me
[...] Wallace also argues that literary texts are ideally engaged with proving existence: Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress should have been titled "I EXIST", which Wallace says is the "signal that throbs under most voluntary writing--& all good writing" [...]
why I write! see note 83
Unlike Pynchon, however, Wallace does not wish to dump the legacy of Calvinism; he seeks to build fictions around work and the fervent call to work, an activity he recurrently sees not just in terms of the labor theory of value but, through the lens of Hegel, as the only way of creating a fully viable self. Whether through an executive washroom attendant, diligent cruise-ship workers, or an actuary who dies prematurely of a heart attack, Wallace consistently makes work heroic and tragic, its lack, avoidance, or meaninglessness a sign of his most lost, and, in the realm of laborless capitalist value extraction, most evil figures. Absorption in work seems to be a reliable antidote to depression and feelings of worthlessness. Hegel's bondsman is a recurrent trope, as is metaphysical slavery in general.
need to think about this more FLAG
The denigration of work, the celebration of efficiency, and the worship of the market are all hallmarks of the ideology that has dominated the United States since the late 1970s, neoliberalism. [...] At his most political, Wallace chronicles the long-term infiltration of neoliberal ideology into the American and global scene. Reagan's union busting plays a role in my analysis of Broom, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) figures in Infinite Jest, which repeatedly makes ideas of freedom and trade, those neoliberal bywords, cross from political and economic spheres to the complexly interpersonal.
mildly interesting
Wallace weds to the perspective of Hardt and Negri a Wittgensteinian awareness that there can be no metaphor capacious enough to capture language's operations.
just thought this was a nice sentence
[...] the drug's use of "cattle-endocrine derivative" (B 149) suggests, via the etymological links between cattle and capital the making of humans themselves into pliable capital.
is it just me or is this total BS? not only is it probably unintentionally, it's hard to see it as anything more than a coincidence
Rick's R.V. initials [...] translate to random variable in mathematical parlance, whereas Lenore often has the qualities of a constant.
two questions. 1) did DFW intend this and 2) does it even MATTER (i.e., does it add to the extraction of meaning from the text in any way or is it all BS)
The Stonecipheco minion Neil Obstat Jr., meanwhile, is named for the phrase of papal censorship, nihil obstat ("nothing hinders"), in a corollary to legalistic control over language.
ok this is why I read lit crit shit like this. i wouldn't have caught this reference myself