Kaltenbeck, Franz <br/><br/>
The Violence of Melancholy According to David Foster Wallace, or the Limits of Ciphering 

 -  2015.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 48 
<br/><br/> In his novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace differentiates two types of severe depressions, anhedonia and melancholy or psychotic depression. The narrator calls the latter “the great white shark” because of the violent suffering that drives people to suicide. It is most likely that the author experienced this type of depression and ultimately died of it. This essay addresses the question of why narrating stories—that is, telling the truth of fiction—failed to heal him. In other words, why did he never manage to build what Lacan calls a “sinthome,” which ties literary creation to a structure that shields the subject from the abyss of psychosis?