I finally finished Infinite Jest this afternoon, a mere 3 months after starting it. I’ve got a million and one thoughts about it, which I want to explore more over the weekend, but suffice it to say for now that it’s a brilliant book.
The writing is exquisitely crafted, and it was a joy to delve into that world every time I picked it up. Yes, it is daunting to look at, and I should’ve got through it a bit quicker, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Fact: Infinite Jest would be less of a bitch to read if DFW used footnotes instead of endnotes.
I’m a month into Infinite Jest now, and about halfway through. It was a bit of a slog at first, especially the constant flicking to endnotes, but after I started using a bookmark for that section of the book it made things a whole lot easier.
I sort of understand why he uses endnotes, but sometimes it’s ridiculously annoying to flick forward and discover a 3-word note. At other times, however, I love the massive asides and disconnects to the main text, especially when it gives you a much better view of the near-future in which the book is set. I’m thinking specifically of Hal and Orin’s phone conversation about the history of Quebecois separatism, for example.
The writing in the rest of the book is still magnificent. The lengthy passage detailing Gately’s thoughts on AA meetings is simply stunning, weaving tales of unbelievable substance-abuse lows with Gately’s experiences of being sober.
I remember reading Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk a few years back, and in the endnotes he tells how at live readings of one of the short stories therein (‘Guts’, if memory serves) people used to faint because it was so horrifying. To my mind, that story wasn’t so bad, but there’s one passage in Infinite Jest which is a lot worse.
This won’t spoil anything, but those who have read the book will remember the passage I’m talking about: it’s one of the attendees at the AA meeting telling how she had a stillborn baby because of doing a shitload of drugs during the pregnancy, but still carrying it round with her for months afterwards.
That was a truly fucked up story, but the writing was paced so well that you couldn’t just fly through it. You were forced to read it and absorb the horror.
And I think that’s the enjoyment factor of the book as a whole: you can’t skim it, you can’t read it quickly. It demands attention and focus, which the use of endnotes actually increases.
Now, only another 500 pages to go…
Reblogged from: mar-see-ah
Originally posted on: Marcia is Amused.
I started reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace last week, and am hooked. Yes, it’s daunting to look at (1,000+ pages, and the best part of another 100 pages of endnotes), and I’ve been warned (via InfiniteSummer.org that the language gets pretty dense in places too, but it really is some fantastic writing.
I’m about 170ish pages in, just about keeping track of the huge numbers of characters, and falling in love with the many different writing styles that Wallace employs. My edition contains a foreword by Dave Eggers in which he says that across the whole book there isn’t a single wasted word or sentence, and he’s right.
The passage I read yesterday is probably my favourite so far, a 10-page stream of consciousness as Hal’s grandfather tells Hal’s father (who is still a boy in this flashback) why he could grow up to be the world’s greatest tennis player, whilst trying to provide some life advice and also drinking a hip flask full of whiskey.
It’s utterly, utterly brilliant; poetic in a way that I can’t even begin to describe, and drags you completely into the scene. 10 pages go by in flash, but I get the feeling that this passage is going to be important later in the book, as it provides some kind of insight to the whole pushy parents theme.
I can’t wait to see what the next 800 pages are going to bring.
