A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1997

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “Greatly Exaggerated”

In this essay, Wallace reviews Morte d’Author: An Autopsy, a book by H. L. Hix. The book discusses a literary theory by Roland Barthes known as the “Death of the Author,” which posits that a book’s meaning does not necessarily derive from the author’s original intent. Instead, the meaning varies according to what readers infer, entirely separately from the author and the author’s original intentions. Wallace’s essay title alludes to Mark Twain’s quote that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated, interpolating the quote to suggest that the Death of the Author has been greatly exaggerated.

Wallace begins with a discussion of 1960s literary critics such as Barthes, Foucault, De Man, and Derrida, crediting them with the “fertile miscegenation of criticism and philosophy” (138) that came to dominate late-20th century literary criticism. Hix’s book, Wallace explains, is a response to the Post-structuralist movement (as represented by the authors mentioned above), just as their theories were a response to earlier critics, who emphasized authorial intent over everything else in their criticisms.

Wallace credits Morte d’Author as a “tight piece of work” (141) but claims that Hix falls victim to the tendency toward scholarly over-analysis that affects many published PhD dissertations. Hix’s book dives into the debate around the Death of the Author, claiming that “all the debaters have oversimplified what ‘author’ really means” (142). The book attempts to redefine author in this context, thereby resolving the two sides of the debate. Per Wallace’s reading, Hix believes that a text requires an author, and he thus coins an “incredibly baroque definition” (143) of the word author itself. Wallace suggests that, ironically, Hix broadens the meaning of the word so much that in attempting to reassert the importance of the author in the context of literary criticism, Hix “essentially erases the author” (143) as having any meaningful effect. Wallace thus posits that “Hix destroys the author in order to save him” (144).

Chapter 4 Analysis

“Greatly Exaggerated” is perhaps the most academic essay in the collection yet is also (by some margin) its shortest entry. Using the form of a book review, the essay speculates on Wallace’s own cultural and literary theories. The central one is the idea of the Death of the Author. Wallace offers his own view on the author’s role in discussions of the author’s work. The theory and Wallace’s thoughts do not exist in isolation. At the time of writing, he had published a novel and was working on another. As an author, he addresses his own hypothetical role in the discussion of his work. Although the essay never explicitly refers to his own experiences, his desire to write on the topic hints at his character. Ahead of the publication of his second novel, Infinite Jest (1996), a complicated and dense novel that is greatly informed by Wallace’s own experiences (as are other essays in this collection), Wallace considers his ownership over the critical discourse surrounding his work. The essay should be understood in this context, since he is not a detached observer but has a stake in the discussion. Wallace wants readers to understand his work and fears critical misinterpretation (which he rallies against in the next essay). He may not give his final judgment on the merits of Barthes’s theory, but his decision to write on the topic suggests that he dwelled on such ideas while writing his most well-known novel.

Even in an essay in which Wallace has a personal stake, however, he drives at many of the same ideas that occupy the other essays. A recurring formal structure of these essays involves Wallace uncovering some innate and vital irony that recontextualizes each subject of focus, supporting the theme of Irony and Society. Here, he seizes on Hix’s attempts to synthesize both sides of the debate, in which (as Wallace posits) Hix tries to redefine the word author and, in doing so, stripped it of meaning. By attempting to assert the importance of the author, Wallace explains, Hix achieves the complete opposite. Wallace offers no counter definition to Hix’s assertion because this is not the point of the essay. Instead, the uncovering of the irony is Wallace’s primary goal. Irony and abstraction are essential elements of the society that Wallace is trying to define through these essays, so one critic’s attempts to define the identity of an author (an identity which Wallace ascribes to himself) speaks to an irony which Wallace relishes. The irony, rather than the discussion of the book, becomes the key point of the essay.