Fact of the Cage

Karl A. Plank is the J.W. Cannon Professor of Religious Studies at Davidson College, USA. The author of Paul and the Irony of Affliction and Mother of the Wire Fence: Inside and Outside the Holocaust, he has published studies in journals such as Religion and Literature, Literature and Theology, Anglican Theological Review, and Cistercian Studies.

• Introduction: In Praise of One Good Reading1. Reading to Become Better: An Approach to Infinite Jest2. The Predicament of Encagement3. Contending with the Cage: Abiding and Breaking Through4. The Redemption of Boneless Christs5. The Redemption of the Reader

"This is a book that celebrates and educates us in the art of good reading of good texts. It is a joy to read and its scholarship is superlative." David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow."In The Fact of the Cage, Karl A. Plank interprets Wallace as he wanted to be interpreted: with critical passion and with a very keen eye for ethical concerns. This eloquent book offers sharp close-readings, new philosophical contexts, and well-grounded answers to whether and how time spent with Infinite Jest can help make us better people." Jeffrey Severs, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia, and author of David Foster Wallace’s Balancing Books: Fictions of Value."Can reading well help make you a better person? Numerous writers and critics have intimated that it can — perhaps none with more passion and more sorrow than David Foster Wallace. In The Fact of the Cage, Karl Plank explores with both curiosity and care the possibilities that wrestling with Wallace’s own writing might open up. The result is a powerful volume that is attentive both to the literary condition and to the human condition, both to the opportunities for ethical reflection that the novel may be uniquely able to facilitate as well as to the difficult work asked of the reader who seeks in reading a form of redemption." Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English, Michigan State University