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We Like David Foster Wallace Because of ... Evolutionary Psychology?

Filed under: The Katharine Wheel: On Fiction Tagged: Benjamin Chambers, David Foster Wallace, Italo Calvino, James Wood, Philip Burke, Steven Millhauser, newyorker.com

Benjamin Chambers writes:

A spate of actual work has kept me from commenting on the recent Steven Millhauser and Italo Calvino stories in The New Yorker, let alone the new excerpt from David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel that appears in the March 9, 2009 issue. But it hasn't stopped me from running across this breathless announcement that Wallace's novel will be published next year, along with the surprising (and not entirely reliable) announcement that his first novel, Infinite Jest, is among the 10 longest novels ever written. (Here's the complete list.)

Why do we humans like narrative, anyway? Professor William Flesch tackled this question in his 2008 book, Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components in Fiction, which was apparently one of James Wood's favorite books of 2008. According to Flesch, his book uses "ideas of evolutionary psychology and particularly evolutionary game theory to explain why narratives work."

Wallace, I suspect, would've been intrigued.

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Emdashes, founded in 2004 by Emily Gordon, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.

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Some writing by Emily Gordon

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