Den Dulk, Allard. Existentialist Engagement in Wallace, Eggers, and Foer

I’d been familiar with the work of Allard den Dulk for a while before diving into his latest book. Existentialist Engagement in Wallace, Eggers and Foer stems from all of the work the man has done in his years as an academic. Taking a look at his previous publications1 will give you a notion of den Dulk’s determined focus in literary (and most specifically Wallace) studies. Focus and specialization always come with their pros and cons, and this book is no exception. For the sake of clarity, and because the pros outnumber the cons, I will postpone the cons to the end. Den Dulk’s focus is by no means narrow, he himself defines the book as a “philosophical work” in which “the philosophical dimension of the novels of Wallace, Eggers and Foer” will be analysed in the light of “the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Wittgenstein and Camus.” Den Dulk is dedicated to the stuff that matters, his work on Wallace (and contemporaries) is committed to the analysis of its ethics as related to contemporary Western existence, and even though it might seem as the most obvious topic for discussion, I argue that it nonetheless is the most important, and that any argument that deviates from focusing on the ethical implications of these novels risks losing the point. Plus, this book is interdisciplinary; it introduces its readers to three different novelists and four different philosophers and thereby retains the capacity of inspiring its audience to further reading.