Kevin Michael Bell, Thesis Supervisor Christopher Gervais Reed, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
postmodernism David Foster Wallace conservatism Barry Goldwater Cogntive behavior therapy American literature
Abstract:
This paper endeavors to explore David Foster Wallace’s body of work as it relates to American conservatism and American modes of thought. In investigating the relationship between American self-conception, the American individual, the American mind, and the struggles of mental illness in David Foster Wallace’s fiction, with supporting elements from his nonfiction work, an argument develops that his diagnosis of the American condition — in terms of both its shortcomings and the proffered solutions to those shortcomings — stems from an ethos of a kind of traditional American conservatism.
