Always on the verge of being found out : transitional phenomena and the re-emergence of the self in David Foster Wallace's fiction

Includes bibliographical references (pages 240-248).

The author of the book proposes a study on the first two novels by David Foster Wallace in the light of Donald W. Winnicott's psychoanalytic theories, entering the international debate on the paradoxical ambivalence of the contemporary American writer towards postmodernism. The study makes use of Winnicottian principles such as the essential paradox and transitional phenomena in order to appreciate the coexistence in Wallace's narrative of inherently postmodern techniques together with elements, such as the characters and the author's inner self, that seemed doomed to drown with postmodernism, but which instead re-emerge in this analysis of The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest. [Publisher's text]

D. F. Wallace (1962-2008), American writer.