Back in April, when I set out to recruit three more Guides, I decided to start with the folks I thought would be best suited for the role and then move down the list as I accumulated rejections (of which I expected plenty). Instead, to my great fortune, the first three people I asked accepted. I’m a little unclear on how that happened, but I could not be more appreciative.
The Guides agreed to do all they did this summer on a volunteer basis. If you believe that awesome and generous people deserve reward, please support them in their current and future endeavors.
Eden M. Kennedy’s most recent project is Let’s Panic About Babies (co-authored by Alice Bradley), and was called “a hilarious Onion-style website about parenting” by Redbook magazine. Eden also writes yogabeans! (where her son’s action figures demonstrate the intricacies of ashtanga yoga) and Fussy (where she writes angry open letters to Justin Timberlake and chronicles her daily life).
Kevin Guilfoile’s bestselling debut novel Cast of Shadows–called “gripping” by the New York Times and one of the Best Books of 2005 by the Chicago Tribune and Kansas City Star–has been translated into more than 15 languages. He was the co-author (with John Warner) and illustrator of the #1 bestseller My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush. Kevin is a co-founder and commissioner of The Morning News Tournament of Books, and his essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Salon, and McSweeney’s. His second novel, The Thousand, will be published next year by Alfred A. Knopf.
Avery Edison is a student of Comedy Writing at a university in England. She writes a few web–comics, maintains a a tumblog, and has one of the most hilarious Twitter streams on the series of tubes.
While not official Guides, Matt Bucher (of the wallace-l listserv) and Nick Maniatis (of The Howling Fantods) were tireless in their promotion and encouragement. And John Hodgman’s perfect summation of the event–“a noble and crazy enterprise”–is responsible for no small share of the attention and participants we received.
Many people volunteered their time and talent to write essays and commentary for us. Infinite Summer wouldn’t have been half as successful without the contributions of our guests.
- Andrew Womack is a founding editor of The Morning News.
- Brittney Gilbert blogs for San Francisco’s CBS 5, and on her own site, Sparkwood & 21.
- Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter for the band The Decemberists. Their most recent album is The Hazards of Love.
- Greg Carlisle is the author of Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and an instructor of theater at Morehead State University.
- infinitedetox has been drug-free for close to 90 days and counting, thanks in part to David Foster Wallace.
- Jason Kottke has written the weblog kottke.org since March of 1998. His archive of his Infinite Jest commentary can be found here.
- John Green is the Michael L. Printz Award-winning author of Paper Towns (which was just released in paperback) , Looking for Alaska, and An Abundance of Katherines. He is also the co-creator (with his brother, Hank) of the popular vlogbrothers channel on youtube, which spawned the nerdfighter community, a tight-knit group of a hundred thousand nerds who use the internet to celebrate intellectualism and nerd culture.
- John Moe is a writer and public radio host now living in St Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of the book Conservatize Me and his short humor pieces appear in several anthologies as well as on McSweeneys.net
- John Warner is the author of the leading volume of fake writing advice, Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice From a Published Author to the Writerly Aspirant. He teaches at Clemson University.
- Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Associate Professor of English and Media Studies at Pomona College; she’s the author of The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television, and co-coordinating editor of MediaCommons. She blogs there and at Planned Obsolescence.
- Marcus Sakey is the bestselling author of four novels. His latest, The Amateurs, was called “genius” by the Chicago Tribune, and his three previous books are currently in development as feature films. He has ridden with gang cops, gone shooting with Special Forces, toured the morgue, and learned to pick a deadbolt. He claims it was all for research.
- Maria Bustillos is the author of the newly released Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman, as well as Dorkismo: the Macho of the Dork (in which Wallace fans may read the author’s favorite chapter, “David Foster Wallace: the Dork Lord of American Letters.” You can find her on Twitter at @mariabustillos.
- Matt Bucher is the administrator of the David Foster Wallace mailing list and publisher of Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. He is an editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, runs a weblog about writer Roberto Bolaño and the novel 2666, and can be found at mattbucher.com.
- Matt Earp lives in San Francisco and creates electronic music under the name Kid Kameleon.
- Michael Pietsch is Executive Vice President and Publisher of Little, Brown and Company and was David Foster Wallace’s editor.
- Michael Wendling is a writer and producer. He is currently producing From Our Own Correspondent for the BBC World Service, and is working on a novel.
- Nick Douglas is the editor of Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less. In 2006, he was the founding editor of Valleywag.com.
- Mimi Smartypants is a Chicago writer and editor, as well as the eponymous author of a long-running weblog. A portion of her early online writing is collected in The World According to Mimi Smartypants.
- 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.
And rounding out the trifecta was the amazing community that flourished around us. Among those who chronicled their reading of the novel was our blogroll:
- Infinite Zombies
- Infinite Detox
- A Supposed Fun Blog
- Infinite Tasks
- Gerry Canavan
- I Just Read About That
- Love, Your Copyeditor
- Sarah's Books
- The Feminist Texican
- Conversational Reading
- Journeyman
- Repat Blues
- Chris Forster
- Brain Hammer
- Naptime Writing
- Infinite Jestation
You can find many more posts and commentary in the weekly roundup archives.
There was also the Infinite Summer Facebook Page, the Infinite Summer goodreads page, the Infinite Summer LiveJournal Community, the Infinite Summer Shelfari group, and Ravelry.
And I am enormously grateful to everyone who visited the site, participated in the forums, merrily tweeted along on Twitter #infsum channel, and otherwise worked to make this the incredible event it became
Finally, a shout-out to David Foster Wallace. We owe you way more than thanks.
And many thanks to you, Matthew Baldwin! Without you, this would never have happened at all. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you created Infinite Summer, which spurred me on to finally tackle this daunting and ever-so-rewarding book.
Yes, I have to say thanks to you as well, Mr. Baldwin. I’ve had this book on my shelf for 13 years and attempted it a few times. Without your organization I’m not sure when I would have been able to check it off my “Do this before I die” list.
Thank you so much, Matthew, for bringing your idea to fruition on this website. It’s amazing to see how far “Infinite Summer” reached and how many people were exposed to Wallace’s story for the first time. Also thanks to all the guides, guests, bloggers, forum contributors, and tweeters. You all helped me understand IJ so much more than if I had read it alone. The many links provided on the #infsum site alone were amazing, and I loved seeing all the twitpics.
Thanks again, and best to you all in your future reading endeavors.
Jean
That’s What The Web Is For. Grazie, Matteo and friends of DFW.
Matthew: many, many thanks to you as well for your hard work and dedication. I stumbled across Infinite Summer in mid June — never even having heard of DFW — and thought, “ah, what the hell: sure.” (After reading Tolstoy, Dumas, and Dostoevsky, the 1000 pages didn’t seem as intimidating.)
But reading Infinite Jest unexpectedly became one of the most extraordinary reading experiences I’ve ever had. Unable to put it down, I finished the novel way ahead of schedule and am still contemplating its contents on almost a daily basis, more than two months and several other books later. Needless to say, Infinite Jest has affected me profoundly. Who knows how long it would have taken me to encounter Wallace on my own, and how much poorer the experience would have been without you and the many others who contributed to this project.
We owe you greatly.
–Todeswalzer.
Matthew, thank so much. This has been so interesting, elightening, and fun!!! And guides, appreciate all! What a spectacular experience! On to Dracula!
Matthew, thank you. I’m an old guy now, I reviewed books for the Chicago Tribune for ten years back in the 80s/90s but I’m way behind the curve. This has been my first experience doing anything “digital,” anything I mean in and among the Internet community, and I’ve been amazed at how interesting, intelligent, generous, patient and basically sane you and your co-Guides and commentators have been. I’ve nosed around in many of the fellow-traveling websites and blogs and always found good things. As for Infinite Jest, it’s simply amazing — maybe the last great book of the 20th century.
Congratulations to all and gratitude for sharing this adventure with us.
I set a goal for myself at the beginning of 2009 to finally complete Infinite Jest. Little did I know there would be a massive online book club to help me along the way! Thanks to everyone for creating this great community. Infinite Summer contributed enormously to my understanding and enjoyment of Infinite Jest.
I bought Infinite Jest when published and have attempted to read it maybe four times without success. Made an agreement with a friend to read it this summer and we were both pleasantly surprised with Infinite Summer. I cannot express how thankful I am for how generous you have been with your time and support. It will forever be one of my favorite reading experiences.
Hey, Thanks Matthew.
An absolutely amazing cast of characters, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to play a little background music along the way. Thanks for the regular shout-outs, and the amazing organizational work. Infinite Summer was the literary highlight of 2009.
And if anyone is interested, I placed a complete Index of Posts on my page, an easy way to navigate the 27 IJ Posts I wrote over the last three months. Drop by and enjoy it.
And way more than thanks to Matthew and all of the Guides and guests – this has been a fantastic experience. Through your work and the offerings of the IS community I have found a new favorite author and book. I was a first-time reader and had not even attempted IJ before. I know I will be re-reading it for the rest of my life. Thank you.
I haven’t participated in the comments or forum, but I’ve been here all along and I wanted to thank you all. Infinite Jest was such a fun and rewarding book and I don’t think I would have read it without this site.
Lastly, this summer has exposed me to the real David Foster Wallace. I knew only of his reputation and suicide, and thought of him as a troubled soul. I know now that he was a funny, caring, sincere, brave, and immensely talented human being. The severe depression that took him was a tragic end, but should not be his legacy. You all have made 2009 incredible ongoing tribute to the real David Foster Wallace.
Thank you
Gracias
thanks to everybody! infinite summer is a beautiful place.
Many thanks to everyone for an awesome summer!
Now, on to Dracula. . .
My Mom’s main objection to Twitter, Facebook and the numerous other Entertainments the web has to offer is that groups of people coalescing around little electronic campfires doesn’t count as community. “I like seeing real people.” she says with a note of finality. Thanks to you all for helping me prove to my mother that the concept of “online community” actually exists.
FWIW, I’ll always remember InfiniteSummer as the summer I re-read IJ and actually got it and the summer I learned how to make better photographs.
See you all over at Dracula.
What a gift Infinite Summer was. Thank you, guides. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you people who read, who stopped, who finished, who loved it, who didn’t. Thank you for giving a huge group of open-minded people a reason to try this book, my favorite for over a decade but the one I could never get people to read.
But you did. And for that the world of letters owes you a very large beverage of your choice.
Cheers.
[…] Summer has wrapped up, and I am still reading Infinite Jest. In fact, I’m only about halfway through (currently on […]
[…] Over but the Crying Infinite Summer has wrapped up, and I am still reading Infinite Jest. In fact, I’m only about halfway through (currently on […]
I already said a big ‘thank you’ elsewhere on the site, but it bears repeating. The Infinite Summer reading of Infinite Jest was a fantastically enjoyable event, and Infinite Jest an amazing, life changing book, which I would not have read without all you guys. Thank you so much!
Thank you to Matt and everybody for a definitely fun thing.
Hello there, I didn’t post any comments throughout the entire enterprise, mainly because I was always trailing a week or two behind.
But (now having finished) I thought it’d be rude not to give my thanks to everybody involved, reading all the blogs while trying to digest the book has made for a highly rewarding few months. I’m sure there’s also many more out there who haven’t made their voices heard but also appreciated the amazing quality of contributions. Anyway, thanks!
Does anyone else who discovered this brilliant website too late to join in wish that they had another chance? I know the site is still going, but will Infinite Jest be re-running in summer 2010, or will be have to organise it ourselves? I would really love to do this, and I’m sure there are others who missed out the first time who would, too.
Thank you all so much for keeping the Infinite Summer going. Finished I.J. and Dracula on schedule and probably would not have done so without your inspired blogs….. Looking forward to 2666, and the novel you choose to read before 2666 … maybe Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt’s “Dracula, The Un-Dead ?”
RIP Infinite Summer. It was great while it lasted.
When will we start the new book?
Peer – if you are interested in 2666, check out bolanobolano.com. A group read is starting on January 25th. Many Infinite Summer expats are on board.
Thanks for the link. I will check it out.
I was just hoping for some announcements here – Matthew and I seem to have a similar taste in books (thanks to him I learned about Cloud Atlas, Oracle night, House of leaves…) and then its nice to read his take on the book.