The Anti-Empathic Aftermath of Linguistic Disillusionment in David Foster Wallace’s “The Depressed Person"
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Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
info
- Lourdes López Ropero (coord.)
- Sara Prieto García-Cañedo (coord.)
- José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo (coord.)
Editorial: Universidad de Alicante / Universitat d'Alacant
ISBN: 978-84-1302-079-2
Ano de publicación: 2020
Páxinas: 129-138
Congreso: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos. Congreso (43. 2020. Valencia)
Tipo: Achega congreso
Resumo
David Foster Wallace’s “The Depressed Person” (1998) offers a carefully weaved reflection on mental illness. As it does so, it also succeeds in interrogating the difficulties that depressed subjects encounter when they attempt to care about, listen to, or feel for others. The impairment of interpersonal understanding and the much questioned possibility that one may truly convey the self in language are both central concerns of Wallace’s work, and their appearance in the story serves, I will contend, not only to speak of human character in the face of mental disorder, as it does on a superficial level, but also to reflect on the very nature of fiction and the insurmountable d