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In his essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and
U.S. Fiction" David Foster Wallace investigates the problems and possibilities
of fiction-writing in a culture dominated by TV-watching. His perception
that he is part of a generation of people who have spent their whole conscious
lives being part of TV's audience leads him to a reconsideration of literary
strategies. If television indeed has become so natural and "built in",
then new literary ways must be found to make it visible again. Thus, he
believes, "younger writers owe themselves a richer account of just why
TV's become such a dominating force on people's consciousness."(17)
In reflecting upon the effects and techniques of television in his fictions,
Wallace sees them as part of a subgenre which he calls "image-fiction".
This kind of fiction, "uses the transient received myths of popular culture
as a world in which to imagine fictions about 'real,' albeit pop-mediated,
public characters."(18) But, as I will
show, it achieves much more than this: it can be a means to explore all
the ways in which TV and other mass media influence the ways in which subjects
perceive themselves and the world. Image-fiction is deeply concerned with
the media-saturated consciousness of people and traces profound sociological
and psychological changes in a TV-culture.
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