Nick Maniatis is the owner/maintainer of the David Foster Wallace web resource The Howling Fantods as well as a high school English and Media teacher. Once he finished Infinite Jest for the fourth time he stopped counting.
The final 200 pages always make me feel like I’m sliding down an ultra fast slippery-dip. I can see the end, but I feel like I’m traveling way too quickly to stop in time. Is there firm ground to land on over the edge?
This is so much fun. Things are whizzing by so quickly. I wish I could slow time and savour every moment.
It does. I do.
One thing of which I am certain is that I don’t want this to end.
Ever.
So I run back and climb up the that steep, steep, ladder once more. Already forgetting what it was like to launch off the end and hoping that it continues to be as exhilerating as before.
It is.
More recently I’ve learned to look up and away from the slide. Sweep my eyes from side to side and take in the view. Enjoy the journey more than the destination. What I see is amazing.
There are slides all around me. More people. All engrossed. Worried. Entertained. Thoughtful. Crying. Laughing. Some of them are staring right back at me.
I would never have guessed Infinite Jest would become such a large part of my life. In fact, I rarely consider just how much time I have spent with this novel, because honestly, sometimes it scares me.
One thing I know for certain is that this book makes me feel connected to other people. I have conversed with fellow readers electronically for years, many of them through Wallace-L. Listers, journalists, bloggers, academics, fans, publishers, agents and friends. The experience of meeting other David Wallace readers at the Sydney Writers’ Festival earlier this year has me super excited about the November conference in New York. I can’t wait to meet some of you.
This book builds networks and facilitates relationships.
Mark and Matt, two friends, 10 or so years (has it been that long?) apart. I shared with both of them, in person, their first read of Infinite Jest.
Terrified. What if they don’t like it as much as me? Am I obsessed? A creepy fan? Addicted…? So, you like it? Don’t let them see how elated I am. Why play it down?
I’m sorry we’ve fallen out of touch, Mark. I miss you. Email me. I know you have my address.
Thank you Infinite Summer. I love reading all of your comments in the infinite summer forums, a couple of the threads in there have blown me away. I’m also loving the blogs: Infinite Detox, Infinite Zombies, Infinite Tasks, and Kul. Thank you.
I can’t help but hope David Wallace realised what he achieved with this novel.
This novel speaks to me.
It make me feel more connected to my family and friends.
More connected to other fans and readers.
More connected to my world.
I better understand my faults and misgivings.
I am more generous and open to differing points of view.
I watch tennis with eyes I never knew I had.
I no longer laugh at AA.
I understand that letting go, saying no, and not being a slave to my desires is real freedom.
Double binds only make you stronger.
Connecting with others is connecting with yourself.
I understand that one can, simultaneously, fall in love and choose to love.
Enjoy what is left. You only get one first read.
Comments
16 responses to “Nick Maniatis: In Search of Firm Ground”
Nick, your description of nearing the end of IJ captured exactly how I felt as I swept through the final pages of my first read. I didn’t encounter any “firm ground” at the end, but instead briskly turned that half-empty page 981, suddenly confronted by the beginning of the end-notes. I’m sure I let out a loud “NO!”
You can be sure I’ll begin climbing that ladder quite soon.
I put down my book yesterday getting a few pages ahead of the next milestone and I realized that I had read the last 35 pages almost twice as fast as I had read some of the more engrossing moments in the middle of the book. My head felt full, ruling out re-reading, but I felt a little distraught that I surely missed details of something I’ve grown to love so much.
That was when I realized I had no choice to reread this book at some point.
Nick,
That was wonderful to read. Thanks.
Thank you Nick. I am also looking forward to New York, New York – just got my invite from the organisers. Will you be going too, Greg?
Sadly, no. There’s just too much going on, including the purchase (and subsequent initiation of renovations) of our first house. I truly hate to miss it and to miss seeing friends from the Liverpool conference again (see how I’ve phrased that so that if you are not the Irish scholar I’ve assumed you to be it still works?!).
Your verbal dexterity is once again a joy, Greg 😉 It turns out I am that Irish scholar you suspect. It’ll be a shame not to see you in New York.
Beautifully stated. I have nothing to add.
I’ll add a quick comment (and I’m so glad you’ve been reading, Nick!). Today, I posted a bit on the Peemster, following an amazing bit of work on his apparent expulsion by Detox. I’ve been asked before about Mario, but before I knew what to say, Daryl@Zombies has an amazing post on his numerous recent conversations.
What I mean to say, really, is that the blogs are working in tandem, ideas from one deepen those in another. Daryl and Detox are researchers and creative minds extraordinaire; Paul (listed in the blogroll as Infinite Jestation) and Kul Aaron are ridiculously but amazingly comprehensive and insightful. Gerry, everyone knows, is brilliant. Naptime puts out tasty bits to chew on and pause over, and Repat, well, if you haven’t read Repat recently you better go. right. now.
And while I wish I knew more about my faults and misgivings, I do know better that connecting with others is connecting with myself. And I no longer laugh at AA, either (though the same cannot be said for II, the Inner Infant).
I too found that the last 2 or 300 pages felt very much like running (or rolling, perhaps) full speed down a very steep hill. It took me some seven months or so to get to p. 600 (due to work-related reading), but it took a couple of weeks to finish it out from there. So much is thrown at you so quickly, and I think that by the time you’re at that point, you have “learned” how to read IJ. You’ve picked up on Wallace’s linguistic nuances and quirks enough that you’re not spending two days dissecting a paragraph. And again, the beauty of the book is that, once you hit that last half page, you immediately return to the Year of Glad. What an excellent jest on the part of Mr. Wallace.
Get a life; the book -nay, any book- isn’t all that. That this book has that big an effect on your life says far more about your life, or lack thereof, than it says about the book. I’ve read Jest 2 and 1/3 times and would probably consider it my favorite book of all time, yet I would never consider it to be the life changer you describe.
And I still laugh at AA, especially because of IJ.
The fact that the book changes someone’s life says something about the book’s ability to heighten a reader’s empathy for other people, which I believe was Wallace’s intent. The fact that you can laugh at AA after reading the book says more about your life than about the book and is an example of the solipsism decried by Infinite Jest and This Is Water.
can we just stop even acknowledging the brian-warden-type posts? if someone can’t see the value in seriously investing in difficult literature (or even respecting the investment), only one of us is wasting time by engaging in an argument about it.
Thank you Nick for the work you’ve done in keeping up howling fantods. You are dead on with your description of the last 200 pages.
Well, I responded because I had such a complex reaction to what Brian said. First, knee-jerk anger. Then, wait, is he saying we should get our heads out of the book and focus on people? That sounds like what the book is trying to get us to do. Then, the extra tag about laughing at AA seemed to negate that again. And I should have posted what I just wrote instead of my earlier post with the high-snark factor. In our postmodern philosophy (Wallace’s too) of the book being completed in the reader, we have to consider anyone’s reaction valid, even knowing what Wallace said about his authorial intentions in interviews. Granted it’s hard to see how what Brian said relates to the book, but that makes sense b/c he downplays the importance of books, but then IJ is his favorite book and he posted here. I find this to be a complex situation.
I hesitate to jump in here for obvious reasons but I’ve got to say that I can’t help but feeling that the difference in opinion has to do with some people seeing the book as more comic than anything else while I and perhaps others see various very serious themes overshadowing the comical ones. I’d be interested to know which it is for Nick. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this, but for most of the bloggers on IJ that I’m starting to read more of now that I’ve had time to first formulate my own opinions, it seems to be more of a serious book. Since I personally think books are life (and they mostly *are* *my* life), I will always agree that they can be life-changing. Still, if Brian sees IJ as “wickedly comic” (as one blurb says on the back of my copy) overall, rather than how I’ve been mostly seeing it, I can sort of understand the complexity inherent in his seemingly solipsistic–as Greg Carlisle pointed out–even contradictory sentiments. (Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any sympathy for the way he put them.)
Apropos of this, I recently thought that I’m taking, as a for-instance, say, the description of Marathe’s over-the-top hideous wife way too seriously, and it’s not, as some have said in response to a post I made about it, primarily a serious instructive example of how love/self-sacrifice can transcend even aesthetics in a relationship, it’s main purpose is to be “wickedly funny”.
Thank you for your great post, Nick. (Please, though, elaborate sometime perhaps in your blog, how IJ teaches you that “double binds make you stronger”, I’m not sure I understand that.)
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