The Funhouse Architect DivestedDavid Foster Wallace’s “The Planet Trillaphon as It Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing” and the Aporia of the Autobiographical Short Story

  1. Sergio López-Sande 1
  1. 1 Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
    info

    Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

    Santiago de Compostela, España

    ROR https://ror.org/030eybx10

Libro:
Thresholds and Ways Forward in English Studies
  1. Lourdes López Ropero (coord.)
  2. Sara Prieto García-Cañedo (coord.)
  3. José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo (coord.)

Editorial: Universidad de Alicante / Universitat d'Alacant

ISBN: 978-84-1302-079-2

Ano de publicación: 2020

Páxinas: 139-145

Congreso: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos. Congreso (43. 2020. Valencia)

Tipo: Achega congreso

Resumo

This paper examines David Foster Wallace’s earliest story: “The Planet Trillaphon as It Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing,” in search of the deceptively autobiographical elements of it that condition the experience of the reader. It will be argued that the life-narrative of authors inadvertently imposes on their reception an affective response, and one that is deeply conditioned by the knowledge of it that readers may have. Approaching Wallace from a post-authorialist perspective, this piece attempts to dilucidate what manner of significance academia should be expected to attribute to writers in late postmodernism, where the author, now long dead, has become not only a market force, but also a much fabricated, guiding superstructure which might discursively restrain the imaginative possibilities of reconstruction at the reader’s disposal.