Kunkel's Indecision

I finished an endearing first novel today, Indecision, by Benjamin Kunkel. I liked it very much. His hero, Dwight Wilmerding, is an overeducated, underemployed twenty-ish Manhattanite trying to figure out what to do with his life. The answer involves psychoanalysis from his sister, a trip to Ecuador and democratic socialism.
I love Dwight's voice -- it's complicated, ironic, sincere and funny. Sample passage:

The train pulled out of another quiet white-painted town and recovered that slack regular ratcheting sound of all trains. I was on my way to see dad, to play some golf, to sip some scotch, and then in the end, or somewhere in the middle, at an opportune moment, before it slipped past, or maybe, on the other hand, right away, the minute I saw him, first things being first, and just in order to get it over with -- anyway I was on my way to ask dad for some money. I had every intention of telling him I had lost my job, and in the context of my resulting penuriousness I would request a loan. Or ask him to take me in for a while once I got back from Ecuador. Or both things, actually. That would make the most sense from an economic point of view, at least if I could deal with the psychic cost of living with him for the first time in fourteen years, and without mom and Alice around to parry him and distribute throughout the household their various counterpointing moods. It would be interesting to see what I decided to do, always assuming I did decide, which I shouldn't necessarily do.

Kunkel reminds me somewhat of David Foster Wallace, or at least informed by some of the themes that Wallace tries to deal with in his writing -- the self-consciousness of art, the problem of nihilistic irony, and the possibility of sincere emotional connection between author and reader. For more on this topic, or if you have a passion for contemporary fiction, I strongly recommend Wallace's essay, "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction," from his collection of essays and journalism, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
But more than these emotive/aesthetic types of questions, "Indecision" is very much concerned with the inequalities of global capitalism and the appropriate response to the relative abundance of upper-class America. I'm very much looking forward to more books by Benjamin Kunkel.