Clip ‘n’ Save: it’s your summer syllabus. Note that “location” refers to the Kindle.
| Date | Page | Location | Percent Complete |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fri, Jun 26 | 63 | 1522 | 6% |
| Mon, Jun 29 | 94 | 2233 | 9% |
| Fri, Jul 03 | 137 | 3236 | 13% |
| Mon, Jul 06 | 168 | 3900 | 17% |
| Fri, Jul 10 | 210 | 4844 | 21% |
| Mon, Jul 13 | 242 | 5561 | 24% |
| Fri, Jul 17 | 284 | 6545 | 28% |
| Mon, Jul 20 | 316 | 7250 | 32% |
| Fri, Jul 24 | 358 | 8174 | 36% |
| Mon, Jul 27 | 390 | 8869 | 39% |
| Fri, Jul 31 | 432 | 9832 | 44% |
| Mon, Aug 03 | 464 | 10556 | 47% |
| Fri, Aug 07 | 506 | 11510 | 51% |
| Mon, Aug 10 | 537 | 12243 | 54% |
| Fri, Aug 14 | 580 | 13233 | 59% |
| Mon, Aug 17 | 611 | 13925 | 62% |
| Fri, Aug 21 | 653 | 14900 | 66% |
| Mon, Aug 24 | 685 | 15628 | 69% |
| Fri, Aug 28 | 727 | 16554 | 74% |
| Mon, Aug 31 | 759 | 17293 | 77% |
| Fri, Sep 04 | 801 | 18315 | 81% |
| Mon, Sep 07 | 833 | 19021 | 84% |
| Fri, Sep 11 | 875 | 19972 | 89% |
| Mon, Sep 14 | 907 | 20767 | 92% |
| Fri, Sep 18 | 949 | 21708 | 96% |
| Mon, Sep 21 | 981 | 22403 | 100% |
At the end of each specified day, you should be at or past the given page number or location.
Question! If, as we’ve said, we don’t care when people start, when they finish, or how fast they go in the meantime, why even have a schedule? Two reason. First, some folks just operate better with milestones. Second, the schedule denotes the Spoiler Line for any given day. For instance, on July 6th we ask that you confine your discussion to only those events that transpire on page 168 of the novel and earlier; on August 17th anything past page 653 is verboten; and so forth. The Spoiler Line will hold both on the posts here and in the Daily Discussion forum. If you find yourself ahead of the pack and eager to chat with like-minded overachievers, or if you’re already read Infinite Jest and wish to talk about the novel in its entirety, what we ask that you do so in the Infinite Jest General Discussion Forum, where there are no spoiler restrictions whatsoever.
A note about the endnotes: The above schedule does not take the endnotes into account. And as some endnotes are long (like, 14 pages worth of long), that means the actual amount of weekly reading will vary. But, you know, it’s like agreeing to always divide the check up evenly when dining with friends: you may have to chip in a bit more occasionally, but it’s better than haggling over the math.
A note about editions: As it turns out, all (physical) edition of Infinite Jest have 981 pages: the one from 1996, the one from 2004, the paperback, the hardcover, etc. A big thank you to the men and women in the publishing industry who were kind and/or lazy enough to keep things consistent. A note about the Kindle: At first we thought that we could simply take the 22260 locations in Infinite Jest and divide them by 93 days, as we did with the number of pages, to compute the number of locations one would need to read daily. In practice, however, our location milestones wound up pretty discrepant from our page milestones, and we wanted to ensure that all Infinite Summer participants were on the same page, figuratively and literally, during our discussions. So what we finally wound up doing was compiling a list of 26 unique phrases–one from the bottom of page 21, one from the bottom of page 63, one from the bottom of page 94, etc.–and sending them to Friend of Infinite Summer and Swell Guy Tarun who looked up each on his Kindle and reported back with all of the corresponding locations. Thanks Tarun! You can find the list of unique phrases here.
Comments
72 responses to “The Schedule”
I’m in. Started it once before but I’m afraid I need a motivating force behind me. This is a brilliant idea. Mr. David Foster Wallace would be pleased. I think he is
look forward to interacting in the future
I have a pdf copy of the book with 421 pages… not sure how I’m going to figure out where I should be… :o/ Suggestions?
You could search the unique phrases, just like the Kindle technique.
Thanks! Feeling rather “duh, why didn’t I think of that?” now 😉
Break out the high school math and figure out the ratio:
x/984 = y/421
Where “x” is milestone listed above and solve for “y”. 🙂
MellissaD
Please please e mail me the PDF. I know it’s not proper but I am an Irish man Living in Northern Peru working for an NGO Charity and although life is fulfilling I am starved of books. I have read of the reading experiment and am desperate to join but cann ot for love nor money get the text my sister is shipping it from Ireland so with the system here I might receive it sometime in December if lucky. so please if you can
Thanks
Garrett
Any one have a public Google calendar of the schedule set up?
I will do so, great idea.
Oohh, please. Wonderful idea!
Here you go:
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=34jolk4k7nkutosffqos3qfqdc%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York
And here’s the iCal address:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/34jolk4k7nkutosffqos3qfqdc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
The schedule and the gmail calendar are great! Thank you!
I was going to ask about an iPhone app (j/k), but the iCal is perfect. Thank you!
Thank you for the iCal – that’s great!
I loved the idea of a google calendar, but I wanted a Kindle version, so I figured others would want one, too … here it is:
ICAL:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/7hiurva4dcbg1i4kfn7f4obck8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
HTML:
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=7hiurva4dcbg1i4kfn7f4obck8%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Los_Angeles
Awesome!
I replied on another post looking for this.
Thank you!
Thank you so much for the Kindle schedule. I started reading yesterday at lunch and was hooked by page 18, consequently late getting back from lunch and eager to finish work. I didn’t get the Kindle version initially because I really like books and thought it would be easier to flip to the footnotes with paper. However, it is much too big to carry in my bag for surreptitious reading at free times, coffee, etc. so I downloaded the Kindle edition as well last night. It’s been awhile since I had a book I truly “couldn’t put down”.
To which edition are the page numbers matched up?
Yes, it would be nice to have both hardback and paperback page numbers.
All editions of the book have 981 pages. I’ll mention this is the post.
Hey, that’s unusual, isn’t it? Thanks for checking.
I think it is normal with newer books.
I’m going to be reading on my Palm, and my page breaks don’t correspond to the Kindle’s. Any chance of posting the list of unique phrases so I don’t accidentally go past the Spoiler Line?
what ereader do you use for the palm? I would love to download it onto mine for when I don’t have my book along.
I use eReader, and bought Infinite Jest at http://www.fictionwise.com.
http://infinitesummer.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=63&start=0
Infinite Zombies is still looking for 1 or 2 more people for our knock-down-drag-out group blog. See the site for details.
And for those who still want to join the LiveJournal community, it is open, and there will be spoiler-allowed posts for those who want it!
We will also have prizes! YES, PRIZES. (note: we never said they will be nesc. good.)
0. Gearing up for IS down Mexico way. My last DFW re-read (which have been doing since mid-September……) was The Broom of the System. It is so abso-freaking-lutely genius. Logic, language, Wittgenstein… So now I will read IJ within IS, I give you my…
1. Am sooooo looking forward to IS that have started with tri-level training. I thought of beginning with the heavier-lifting and dwindle down to the easiest to get to Sunday fresh BUT sturdy.
a. Muscle training – DFW selbst. His Oblivion, the This is Water speech (which went well with my younger brother’s commencement), and the burning baby story (it made me silently weep in my office) in Esquire, which were all new reads for me.
b. Stretch trainig – Language. David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress, which is fantastic (and I bought because DFW praised it in the jacket) and because it is about language and logic and the mind and its limits… Also re-read Paul Auster’s City of Glass, but this time the graphic novel, in the spirit of focusing on language.
c. Cardio – Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, to put me in a mid-nineties mood.
And d. Massage – Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight in a delayed flight on Kindle, which might be a surprise but didn’t want to start something that would use up much brain muscle; that, plus I always get curious when things get all the rage (and I have to confess that it was a fun read).
2. I had my doubts about the 981 constant as I have a UK Picador trade paperback edition. But lo-and-behold, it is 981 pages! I guess one of the beauties of IJ is that. The IJ constant? We could use a little iota to signify 981, THE “IJ constant”. It also works because iota is a definite descriptor in formal logic. We could fomalize as “There is exactly one number of pages for IJ and it is 981” like “psi(iota ppIJ(ppIJ=981))” or something… We never know, maybe DFW wanted the consistency.
Let’s get it going!
Best to all other ISers,
TL
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Someone might find them handy, I’ve created a downloadable bookmark with a calendar and the schedule on them.
Any chance we can get an email update reminding us of the pages to be read that week? Pretty, pretty please?
I don’t know if I’m getting it wrong, but when you say that:
“For instance, on July 6th we ask that you confine your discussion to only those events that transpire on page 168 of the novel and earlier; on August 17th anything past page 653 is verboten; and so forth.”
Shouldn’t it be “on August 21th” or “anything past page 611”?
We’re in…with ‘we’ being my 19-year old son and myself. I’ll be promoting on my blog and expect to have a running conversation with my son. Great idea!
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Been thinking about this a long time. too long. started it a few weeks ago and put it down, my hachette rep friend got this email just in time and forwarded it. what a nice fellow!
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Now I see why they used to publish novels in three volumes–hard to hold the whole thing up at once, and I don’t have a kindle. But I’m ordering my own copy today so I can annotate and b/c I believe this project may take more than two weeks!
So weird – I hit page 63 on the nose and didn’t even know about this
IT’S A SIGN!!!!
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I am reading. My ear is becoming adjusted to his writing style. Have read portions out loud to my DH, to share, hoping he will join the ride.
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Eek, I should probably get started.
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I am one of those who was hooked by the recent article in the Louisville, Kentucky Courier Journal. I just started but I’m going to catch up to the schedule!
I can’t wait – I love a reading challenge.
J.
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