“The Overlit Bathroom Mirror”: Self-Construction Through Technology And Media In The Work Of David Foster Wallace

This thesis evaluates the role of technology and media in the development of the authentic self within David Foster Wallace’s oeuvre. From his earliest college work to his final, unfinished novel, Wallace’s writing remains interested in the omnipresence of technology and its effects on contemporary life. This preoccupation extends into his nonfictional essays as well, which investigate topics that range from the state of the pornography industry to the relationship between television and American fiction. He pays particular attention to broadcast media such as television, which he describes as “a disseminator and a definer of the cultural atmosphere we breathe.” Wallace also describes himself as a character-centered writer; as he once explained, he tends “to think of fiction as being mainly about characters and human beings and inner experience.” The vast majority of his writing is rooted in the existential crises of the lonely, solipsistic self. This project is intended to unite the theme of technological media, omnipresent in his work, with his narrative focus on selfhood.

The following work is divided into three chapters. Chapter I elucidates Wallace’s definition of the self and how it interacts with technology and language. It will also demonstrate how the language used to describe and formulate identity in Wallace’s work is fundamentally technological. Chapter II explains how technology interacts with self-conception in his work, examining the various ways that the self is reinterpreted within the information age’s proliferation of technological representations and digital networks. Finally, Chapter III ascertains the role of digital media in the construction of the narrative self, ultimately exploring technology’s function as an anesthetic, a mirror, and ultimately a grave.