July 2016
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8 Reads
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1 Citation
Calvin Thomas explores the differing roles of the abject as a theme in the writings of the contemporary authors Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. For Thomas, Wallace’s novella ‘The Suffering Channel’, which features an artist who claims to excrete fully-modelled figurative sculptures, demonstrates how literature provides a crucial means to convey abject suffering. Wallace’s faecal theme provides the means by which the author analyses abjected masculinity in contemporary America and also art’s claim to use stories to reveal truths.