Foreword: 'Love Me till My Heart Stops'

(the quote is from some graffiti he sees on Valencia Street)

about sincerity, and community, and love, and how that's found in the novels of Wallace, Eggers, and Foer

Introduction

DFW as leading the vanguard of discontent with the endless irony of American culture, and Eggers and Foer as following in his footsteps

Hyperreflexivity

hyperreflexivity as emblematic of contemporary Western life. some factors, acc. to Anthony Giddens in Modernity and Self-Identity:

• living in a post-traditional order
• pluralisation of life-worlds (being exposed to different cultures)
• contextual nature of warranted beliefs (can no longer intuitively trust authorities)
• prevalence of mediated experience (TV, newspapers, etc)
• transformation of intimacy (esp sexual, since people have more choices)

Sartre's view of consciousness: transcendence and facticity, becoming a self, the alienation of self-reflection, solipsism

Endless Irony

mostly about Kierkegaard's theories on irony and how they're echoed in Wallace/Eggers. also how verbal irony is different from existential irony

Postmodernist Metafiction: John Barth

about Barth's problematic metafiction, analysed in light of Derrida's strategy of deconstruction

Postmodernist Minimialism: Bret Easton Ellis

on why Bret Easton Ellis' work is empty and pointless (just the ironic-aesthetic attitude wrought on paper); American Psycho is compared to 'The Seducer's Diary' in Kierkegaard's Either/Or

Wittgenstein and Wallace: The Meaning of Fiction

now we get into an explanation of Wittgenstein's views on language (which ofc DFW agreed with, at least the later views). on ostensive definitions, and private languages, and communal language structures as a cure for solipsism, and fiction as a source of paradigmatic cases for infusing language with meaning

Sincerity

using the Sartrean concept of sincerity. the problem with the word 'authenticity' is that it implies one has a real self, which existentialism vehemently opposes (one has to create it, moment by moment). sincerity in literature as a way of being vulnerable, of trying to convey some meaning

Reality-Commitment

overcoming irony and committing to reality through sincerity, examined in light of Kierkegaard's philosophy (the ethical life view, of responsibility and choice and transcendence)

Community

mostly drawing from Camus in this chapter, though Sartre and Kierkegaard play a small role again. on rebellion and community

Concluding Remarks

the overlap between literature and philosophy (note that the philosophers mentioned are all literary philosophers). the value of sincere, solution-offering, irony-rejecting literary works like those by Wallace/Eggers/Foer as paradigmatic cases to help one deal with the challenges of contemporary existence.