Corrections

Abstract

This paper examines the effect on contemporary American literature of a popular discourse on depression, looking at Rick Moody’s memoir The Black Veil, and two novels, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It argues that, despite their differences in style and genre, the three texts gesture towards a shared set of preoccupations regarding the culture of depression, associating it (either critically or inadvertently) with the absence of coherent forms of cultural authority and processes of formation, and with a threat to masculinity.