David Foster Wallace fills his book Oblivion: Stories (2004) with double-binds.
- A character wishes to be significant while working at a job that demands his insignificance.
- A child misses a teacher’s psychotic breakdown in the classroom, but only because a more horrific daydream transfixes him.
- A tribe’s magical child can only dispense wisdom to the extent that the child does not ponder the nature of its wisdom.
- A suicidally depressed man tries to render the truth that time makes representing anything truthfully impossible.
- A husband and wife argue about whether or not the man’s snoring wakes his wife up or whether the woman dreams that the man snores and wakes up.
- Because they are both asleep, they can neither confirm nor deny reality.
Several related questions animate these double-binds:
- What is the relationship between what we perceive and what is real?
- Can we know the truth?
- If we can, what truths about the world demand our attention?
- What is more significant: unity or diversity?
In covenantal terms, the stories ask these questions:
- Is there a reality that transcends human consciousness (i.e., God?)
- How do you truthfully represent the reality of the world and yourself?
- What ethical responsibility do we have to represent the world and ourselves truthfully?
- What are the consequences for failing to represent the world and ourselves truthfully?
- What is the legacy of truth or falsehood?
One more double-bind occurs to me. Wallace works through the nature of truth…in fiction.
I’ll write about the implications of his work over the next few weeks.
Experiments in Criticism 