Reading the Ghost in David Foster Wallace’s Fiction

Abstract

In this article I argue that the figure of the ghost, a surprisingly regular presence in David Foster Wallace’s fiction, represents an attempt to address problems of authorial presence, character autonomy, generational influence and monologism. I locate Wallace’s position within the critical debate over the effacement of authorial presence, before establishing a developmental theory of possession and ghostliness across Wallace’s body of fiction from his first novel The Broom of the System to his short story collection Oblivion. I subsequently argue, with reference to Bakhtin’s theory of polyphony and the drafts of Wallace’s work in the Harry Ransom Centre, that Wallace’s “apparitions” gradually effect a new mode of “ghostly” authorial presence in the text that seeks to move away from monologic approaches to narrative. The essay concludes by suggesting that a model of ghostly “co-authorship” can be discerned in the drafts of Wallace’s final novel, The Pale King.