Kaiavo V.A.

A representative of the “unnamed third wave of modernism.” Criticism on David Foster Wallace’s place in contemporary American literature. Pp.125-134.

UDC 821.111(73).09″19″

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2025.87.2.012

 

Abstracts. The article attempts to determine the place of the writer David Foster Wallace in contemporary American literature. We review approaches of researchers to the concept of sincerity developed by the writer and his contradictory attitude to postmodern irony is considered as well. The novelty of the research is due to insufficient study of Wallace’s work in Russian criticism. Its relevance arises from the ambiguity of assessments of Wallace’s position in literature. The paper concludes that it would be more appropriate to call Wallace a forerunner of a certain new wave of modernism than a direct representative of it. This is due to the fact that in his program essay E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction, Wallace declared his intention to abandon irony and emphasized the importance of sincerity in literature, but continued to use postmodernist techniques in his fiction. There are various alternatives to postmodernism, such as post-postmodernism and metamodernism, into which Wallace’s desire for ‘bothness’ — to be both sincere and ironic — fits. However, they reaffirm their connection to postmodernism rather than abandoning it. The concept of ‘New Sincerity,’ with which the author’s name is associated, also does not seem exhaustive to some researchers. These contradictions lead to the need to analyze the concept of sincerity in postmodern writers’ fiction as well in general. Nevertheless, the fact that Wallace and his contemporaries (D. Franzen, D. Eggers, etc.) were uniting with each other in their desire to revise postmodern literature and its techniques suggests the beginning of a new direction.

 

Keywords: “New Sincerity,” David Foster Wallace, irony, metamodernism, post-postmodernism, postmodernism, “the anxiety of influence.”

 

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