Instead, Wallace posits that we have abandoned any attempt to be desirous and given it to “fundamentalists whose pitiless rigidity and eagerness to judge show that they’re clueless about the ‘Christian values’ they would impose on others” (273). Wallace describes that the problem with our literature today is that postmodernism has imposed a “self-consciousness” (272) that has “severely constrain our own novelists’ ability to be ‘serious’” (272), for “our intelligentisia distrust strong belief, open conviction” (272). Wallace’s point is that in our day and age, if a fiction writer wrote in a modern day “Serious Novel” as Dostoevsky did, “people would either laugh or be embarrassed for ” (274). Dostoevsky’s characters talk seriously, openly, and earnestly about their convictions, ideologies, and beliefs. Wallace uses these passages to make a point about the state of fiction today vs. Throughout the essay, Wallace inserts paragraphs that set off from the rest of the text with asterisks that are in the first person and include what might be considered deep and serious questions, such as:“**Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to ‘’’seem’’ like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?**” (257) Themes/Motifs Sincerity and Irony in Fiction
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