Spatial Modeling in David Foster Wallace's Short Stories

"The author's remarkably perceptive analysis of the complex, demanding story "Here and There" is a true tour de force: first, it carefully disentangles the hierarchically organized worlds and narrative levels, then it masterfully weaves them back together like a skilled prestidigitator."
- Dr. hab. Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga

"With commendable insight and rigor, the author not only delivers a detailed analysis of spatial modeling techniques, conducted using carefully selected research tools and illustrative story examples, but also illuminates their functions and situates them within a rich literary and social context."
- Dr. hab. Grzegorz Maziarczyk, prof. KUL

This book examines David Foster Wallace's short stories through the lens of spatiality, which it identifies as their semantic core. The analysis focuses on vertical and horizontal segmentation, functional zones, boundaries, strange loops, tangled hierarchies of narrative levels, and multimodality. It demonstrates how these elements evoke the sense of alienation and existential unease that pervade Wallace's fiction, while also enabling transformative reader participation. Through close readings, this volume identifies recurring spatial modeling techniques and shows how Wallace integrates theoretical discourses, especially mathematics, to create fiction that transcends postmodernist limitations and allows readers to co-create and experience complex cognitive patterns rather than merely understand or imagine them.

Maja Wojdyło is a literary scholar, translator, and lecturer specialising in Anglo-American literature, utopian studies, online disinformation and new media. She is a member of the Utopian Studies Society Europe. Dr Wojdyło earned her PhD with distinction for research on David Foster Wallace.