A couple months ago I decided to pick up a mammoth book that had been sitting on a bookshelf, weighing down a bookshelf, in my apartment, to commit myself to this book fully, as full commitment is required before taking on such a task. This book, as mentioned in this post's title, is
Infinite Jest (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest) by the late great David Foster Wallace or, more intimately, DFW. And I have enjoyed it greatly ever since. For the most part. The beginnings were rocky for me as it takes place in a world set apart from our own, although based on our own. A world in which there is something called the O.N.A.N. (supposedly the Organization of North American Nations), Anti-O.N.A.N. Quebecois groups, a Great Convexity/Concavity (a great swath of land between Canada and the U.S. occupied by waste, both nuclear and domestic, which both sides try to claim is the other's, with the name variation dependent on which side one lives on), and years that are no longer numeral but nominal and subsidized (i.e. instead of 1998, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment or Year of the Tuck's Medicated Pad) among other things. To synthesize these and many many more pieces of information into an understandable whole was difficult, as the writing, though engaging, is dense and it took about two hundred of the thousand pages to grasp the world of
IJ. He also uses a variety of obscure words and numerous endnotes, with further endnotes and footnotes attached sometimes to the original endnotes. There is a website, I think there are many actually, that helps guide one through the reading of
Infinite Jest, in which each page is broken down with definitions of words and explanations of phrases or dialectical difficulties (i.e. the Brogue monologue at an AA meeting). It helps and I have come to see this book as an education. I am learning words and ideas which I didn't know before. There is homework.
Here is an image of the book that I will insert to break up the text of this post:
Ever since I began reading this monolithic book, many other people I know or have met have also starting reading David Foster Wallace works. I am on a mailing list now. I am part of the cult. We have a secret handshake. He is dead, but alive in this silent network. I was outside during my lunch some days ago, with my book open, seemingly unidentifiable, enjoying the sun, when a man walked by, stopped and came back to ask me if I was reading
IJ. We conversed and he confessed to being on page 108 very specifically, and we nodded to each other knowingly, holding special DFW knowledge. He walked away, stopped and turned, yelling something back to me. I couldn't hear him. He walked back to me and told me cryptically about the mailing list and how to find it. Now, I am on the mailing list. Involved in the cult, happily.
I am now on page 788 myself. Seven hundred and eighty eight Biblically-thin pages crammed to the margins with small text. And this doesn't even include the endnotes I have tackled. Even smaller text. I do love it though. Thinking about the book excites me. A central character in the book is something referred to throughout variably as "The Entertainment" or "
samizdat." It is a weapon of sorts. It is a film that is so addictive to watch that the viewer no longer wants anything but to watch it, and invariably they, the viewer, ends up dying from malnutrition or thirst or destruction of self (an act referred to in the book as obliteration of "one's own map" or their own personal "cartography"). This idea of the "entertainment" is so original and refreshing, as a literary idea, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it lately.
Wallace has an amazing voice throughout. It is one of total experience and depth. The novel's meat is primarily divided between characters at the hilltopped Enfield Tennis Academy (a place of grooming teenagers to go to "The Show," i.e. professional tennis) and those of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House which sits at the bottom of said hill in Enfield, MA, a suburb of Boston. Wallace's ability to dive into the psychological minutiae of both the teenagers of the tennis academy and the dark and addicted husks of people at the Ennet House was surprising and emotional, involving a large amount of personal investment. He seems to know so well the internal world of addiction, depression and abuse, as well as the whole realm of competitive tennis, mentally and technically. There are so many intricately laid out literary parallels between storylines of the separate locations and people, which gives the reader a seeming direct connection between themselves and the narrator, a little wink and nudge from the fifth wall where the audience and the writer both sit. There are numerous articles and message boards and dissertations and mailing lists that all deal with these intricacies and themes. They are too numerous to even begin to deal with inside of this post. The story is too vast to even outline in this post. I am doing injustice to it by even discussing only this much.
I would highly suggest this book, with a caveat. If one is interested in taking on such an adventure as this, they should first read some of DFW's essays and short stories (for David Lynch fans, read "David Lynch Keeps His Head" from
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again). This will allow one to get an idea of his writing style and his predilection for foot- and endnotes. He was a genius, as judged by the MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. One shouldn't feel bad about having to look up some words, but know that one is probably going to have to look up those words. Think of it as learning. Remember doing that? Crosswords aren't enough, despite what you think. Sudoku, the same. Then, seeing that you have a liking for his writing and his incisiveness and his big words and his sort of comedy, you should find resources for support during the reading. I will link to some at the end. Then, after reading it, and hopefully enjoying it, tell me about it. I would love to hear from a fellow cultist.
Resources:
http://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/inf.htm
http://infinitesummer.org/
David Foster Wallace himself had depression issues and, after bad luck with various anti-depressants, ended up "eliminating his own map." He hung himself on September 12th, 2008. RIP DFW.
