Life Inside the Spectacle: David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, and Storytelling in the Age of Entertainment

This project explores George Saunders\u27s In Persuasion Nation and David Foster Wallace\u27s Infinite Jest as interventionary literature. The thesis asserts that the two works confront the problems of isolation and dehumanization created by entertainment-based consumerism; they do so by depicting satirically exaggerated consumer societies and placing well-developed, sympathetic characters in those settings. The thesis includes a consideration of Jameson and deBord\u27s theories of spectacle and Wallace\u27s stated concerns with postmodern irony as an ineffective form of critique