The Guides have begun reading, but won’t begin commentary until the 29th. This week they will use this space to introduce themselves. Feel free to do likewise, in the comments or in the forums.
Way back awhile ago, Matthew e-mailed me and said, I’m thinking of doing this thing, would you like to do it, too? And I was all, HELL NO. Why don’t you ask mimi smartypants, she’s the secretary/treasurer of the David Foster Wallace Fan Club. It was my way of saying, thanks, but don’t you want a qualified literary opinion-giver along on this trek? I can barely parse Dr. Seuss.
Then I didn’t hear from Matthew for like three months, so I was all, WHEW! Now I can go back to knitting this sock. But then, of course, Matthew followed up4 and said that mimi had declined — having already read the book three times5 she wasn’t up for number four.
Then, sensing my reluctance to flaunt my intellectual weaknesses about the Internet, Matthew went on to say a bunch of wildly flattering things about me, like that mine was one of the first blogs he ever read, and that I gave him the idea upon which he built that Nobel Prize-winning physics thing he did about God.
My only qualification for being an Infinite Summer guide seems to be that I, too, once picked up Infinite Jest and failed to finish it. I didn’t even PAY for my copy, I was working in a bookstore at the time and got one free from the Little, Brown rep. Apart from my anxiety about committing to a Big Book at the time,6 what bothered me most about the book was the cheap advance-copy binding, the way the cover curled up and over itself when the humidity rose above 15%. I eventually donated it to the Planned Parenthood book sale.
I remember the book being about tennis, which is a sport I enjoy playing once or twice a year. I was varsity in high school, but the coach said that even though I had some talent, I just didn’t appear to want to work very hard.7
However, as your sherpa, I vow to come up with something moderately insightful to say each week.8
Comments
16 responses to “How Did I Get Here?”
Great idea. I’ve read it twice but the second time was a few years ago, so now might be just the moment for a third time through.
I meant to post this link this morning – any chance you could have the footnotes follow the Daring Fireball means of linking back to the original superscript? I know that the endnote superscript seems to link back to the original article’s page, but they don’t seem to link back to the location of the original article superscript.
Thanks – two days ago I dusted off my old copy of IJ (still with the main-text bookmark in it, which had worked its way to being at the start of the endnotes when I finished it some 8 or so years ago)
currently on page 23 and counting…
any chance you could have the footnotes follow the Daring Fireball means of linking back to the original superscript
Yeah, I was going to do that originally, but then got lazy. Thanks for not letting me get away with it.
Wikipedia does that too, right? Not a bad idea.
Pretty nice post. I just found your site and wanted to say
that I have really liked reading your blog posts. In any case
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
I hope all the posts here don’t continue this affected mimicking of DFW’s use of end notes.
wholeheartedly agreed.
If you’ve read any John Hodgman recently you might agree that the judicious use of footnotes and endnotes can be used to quite a humorous effect. So don’t fling your baggage at me! I’m just having fun.
I found Let’s Panic a couple days ago from a pregnant friend. Nothing in all the world has made me want to become a pregnant man more. Sadly, according to your site, this cannot happen. But I am glad to have your hilarious insights coming in, footnotes or no.
What is this physics of God thing? I’m curious.
[…] at Infinite Summer, the guides are telling us about where they got to Infinite Jest [IJ] (here, here). This post is about where IJ got […]
I purchased the book two months ago and I am just hanging on. I believe myself to be reasonably intelligent, yet I am having a difficult time getting through the book! I am fascinated by the novel: so many delightful, horrifying, raw, humorous and insightful characters but at the same time I am so frustrated by the complexity of the writing. And I keep picking it up and soldiering on. Amazing writer – yet tortuous! Would somebody please assure me that this arduous journey is worth the pain?
Please rest assured it is worth it.
For what it is worth, reading this novel a few years ago took me back to when my brain got stretched reading novels I was not quite ready for, the first of these brain stretching novels Crime and Punishment.
Now, prompted to re-read IJ so I can relive my college days through discussion here, this second time is much breezier. Granted it’s been a good five or six year since, but it is going so much easier this time.
With fiction, the feeling that my brain is being stretched, and the near orgasmic pleasure of sudden, hard earned realizations, it rarely happens anymore.
So happy to find out about this (through Let’s Panic About Babies)! I received a copy for Christmas, and have been avoiding it.
Of course, it’s going to be an Infinite Winter for me here in Sydney, but I figure that will help.
I was an English major at Chico State until I dropped out and I used to smoke a lot of pot.
Do I have a chance in hell of finishing this novel?
Matthew, I hope you continue to do the “words I looked up” part of your posts!
I happened to read “Shipping Out” when it was published in Harper’s a couple of years or so before Infinite Jest was published. (Shipping Out was later re-named A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again when it was republished in somewhat expanded form in the eponymous book of essays.) I remember it vividly. I had never read anything like it. I was flying home from a business trip & had picked up the Harper’s in the airport and I spent a good part of the flight literally laughing out loud as I read the essay, to the consternation of my fellow travelers. I immediately sent copies to my best friends, one of whom remembered well enough to follow up a couple of years later by sending me an LA Times interview with DFW shortly before IJ was published. I bought IJ on its release date, which happened to be during a very busy time in my work schedule, but even on days when I was working crazy hours, I would still get in some reading before I fell asleep at night and just when I arose in the morning. I remember I even dragged that massive hardcover with me on a plane when I was going to a deal closing, on the theory that I would have several uninterrupted hours for reading. I couldn’t get enough of it.
A few years later, at a time when I was very depressed, I picked it up again for a whole host of reasons. In large part, I remembered with how much gentleness the topic of addiction/depression is held by DFW.
I think it was Jay MacInerney who reviewed it for the NY Times on its release, saying you’ll hate DFW by the end for being a genius and for not letting you skip a single word. That’s definitely how I feel.
On this day when so many people are feeling overwhelmed by the loss of a generation’s icon, I’m still harboring great sadness for our loss last September. The world is a harder place to live in after DFW’s death.