What is Peoria for? (I): Postindustrial Life and the Language of Place in The Pale King | The Geographies of David Foster Wallace's Novels: Spatial History and Literary Practice | Edinburgh Scholarship Online (2024)

The Geographies of David Foster Wallace's Novels: Spatial History and Literary Practice

Laurie McRae Andrew

Published:

2022

Online ISBN:

9781474497565

Print ISBN:

9781474497541

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The Geographies of David Foster Wallace's Novels: Spatial History and Literary Practice

Laurie McRae Andrew

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Laurie McRae Andrew

Laurie McRae Andrew

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Pages

142–180

  • Published:

    December 2022

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McRae Andrew, Laurie, 'What is Peoria for? (I): Postindustrial Life and the Language of Place in The Pale King', The Geographies of David Foster Wallace's Novels: Spatial History and Literary Practice (Edinburgh, 2022; online edn, Edinburgh Scholarship Online, 23 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474497541.003.0005, accessed 29 June 2024.

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Abstract

This chapter approaches The Pale King through the connected discourses of ‘postindustrial’ society and of ‘place’ and its supposed decline in post-Fordist America, drawing more heavily on archival material to establish connections between work and space as a major theme in the novel’s early period of composition. It explores the development of Toni Ware’s story, showing how Wallace both develops and disrupts relationships between characters and place in a way that is closely connected to changing geographies of postindustrial labour. It then follows the composition of the text’s opening scene, tracing the careful balancing of pastoral and postindustrial registers in this section. Finally, through the construction of the story of Claude Sylvanshine, the chapter demonstrates how Wallace’s initial interest in the possibilities of place-writing developed into a larger concern about the nature and efficacy of literary practice in this ‘postindustrial’ context.

Keywords: postindustrial, place, work, pastoral, composition

Subject

Literary Theory and Cultural Studies

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