links for 2009-12-25

• The Panic of Influence – The New York Review of Books
  On whether or not Wallace himself is actually an anti-rebel, Scott concludes that he "is less anti-ironic than (forgive me) meta-ironic. That is, his gambit is to turn irony back on itself, to make his fiction relentlessly conscious of its own self-consciousness, and thus to produce work that will be at once unassailably sophisticated and doggedly down to earth. Janus-faced, he demands to be taken at face value. 'Single-entendre principles' is a cleverly tossed off phrase, but Wallace is temperamentally committed to multiplicity—to a quality he has called, with reference to the filmmaker David Lynch, 'bothness.'"
  (tags: dfw literature writing culture davidfosterwallace fiction media aoscott newyorkreviewofbooks)

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