STUDENT ZONE (BenOrtiz.com/classes)

In "E Unibus Pluram," David Foster Wallace describes Mark Leyner's My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist:

"Leyner's fictional response to television is less a novel than a piece of witty, erudite, extremely high-quality prose television. Velocity and vividness replace development. People flicker in and out; events are garishly there and then gone and never referred to. There's a brashly irreverent rejection of 'outmoded' concepts like integrated plot or enduring character. Instead there's a series of dazzlingly creative parodic vignettes, designed to appeal to the 45 seconds of near-Zen concentration we call the TV attention span. ...after the manner of films, music videos, dreams, and television programs, there are recurring 'Key Images,' here exotic drugs, exotic technologies, exotic foods, exotic bowel dysfunctions. ...Leyner's work, the best Image-Fiction yet, is both amazing and forgettable, wonderful and oddly hollow. ...the ultimate union of U.S. television and fiction ... hilarious, upsetting, sophisticated, and extremely shallow... " (80-81).

Be sure to write a clear summary of the remainder of Ellis, the Leyner pieces, or the McInerney piece. Then, consider any of the following questions in your response:
1. Do you agree with Wallace's assessment of Leyner?
2. Do you think the criticism applies equally to Ellis and McInerney?
3. What are the "Key Images" in Ellis and McInerney, and how do they overlap/differ with those in Gastroenterologist?
4. Is American Psycho a more straightforward, slow-motion version of Gastroenterologist? Is the excerpt from McInerney likewise another variation on Image Fiction?

Posted by Benjamin at July 17, 2006 08:14 PM