Jason Kottke has written the weblog kottke.org since March of 1998. The archive of his Infinite Jest commentary can be found here.
Is everyone in here yet? Yes? Ok.
I’m thrilled to kick off Infinite Summer with this here Forward. Before we get started, I have a disclaimer to offer. Well, actually several related disclaimers which, taken together, should convince you that I am not at all qualified to speak to you about the literary or cultural impact of Infinite Jest and its author on contemporary American society. Apologies if that’s what you’re here for; in that case I can refer you to Dave Eggers’ foreword in the new paperback copy of IJ.
Now, the first disclaimer: I was not an English major. In fact, I don’t even read that much fiction. In the past five years, I have read The Corrections, Infinite Jest (for the second time), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Pride and Prejudice, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, nearly half of 2666, and that’s about it, give or take some Lord of the Rings. I will be of little assistance in helping you to understand how Infinite Jest fits into the canon of American literature, past or present.
Writing is something I don’t know a great deal about either. I earn my keep as a blogger, which profession most people assume is synonymous with writing but really isn’t, in the same way that basketball players run but aren’t runners and architects draw but aren’t, uh, drawers. I love Wallace’s writing in IJ and elsewhere but beyond that, I can’t tell you why it’s good, who his writing was influenced by, who he influences, or what the purpose of his complex sentence structure and grammatical tics is. (Or should that be “are”? (See what I’m talking about?))
Furthermore, I do not play tennis, haven’t suffered from depression, have never been addicted to anything (except perhaps Tetris on the original Game Boy), don’t know the Boston area that well, haven’t attended an _______ Anonymous meeting, and did not go to a small college in New England, all things that Wallace pulled from his life experience and wove together in the IJ narrative. Does Wallace accurately convey to the reader the pressures felt by the exceptional junior tennis player? Does the AA stuff ring true? What about the addiction aspects of the novel? I can help you with none of those questions.
But what I am qualified to tell you — as a two-time reader and lover of Infinite Jest — is that you don’t need to be an expert in much of anything to read and enjoy this novel. It isn’t just for English majors or people who love fiction or tennis players or recovering drug addicts or those with astronomical IQs. Don’t sweat all the Hamlet stuff; you can worry about those references on the second time through if you actually like it enough to read it a second time. Leave your dictionary at home; let Wallace’s grammatical gymnastics and extensive vocabulary wash right over you; you’ll get the gist and the gist is more than enough. Is the novel postmodern or not? Who f’ing cares…the story stands on its own. You’re likely to miss at least 50% of what’s going on in IJ the first time though and it doesn’t matter.
And and and! It is a fact that Infinite Jest is a long book with almost a hundred pages of endnotes, one of which lists the complete (and fictional) filmography of a prolific (and fictional) filmmaker and runs for more than eight pages and itself has six footnotes, and all of which you have to read because they are important. So sure, it’s a lengthy book that’s heavy to carry and impossible to read in bed, but Christ, how many hours of American Idol have you sat through on your uncomfortable POS couch? The entire run of The West Wing was 111 hours and 56 minutes; ER was twice as long, and in the later seasons, twice as painful. I guarantee you that getting through Infinite Jest with a good understanding of what happened will take you a lot less time and energy than you expended getting your Mage to level 60 in World of Warcraft.
And so, readers: Forward. I wish you way more than luck.
this is my third reading – fun to do it this way. thanks for the forward.
Nice kickoff! I’m on page 82. Yeah! Using an elderly yellow highlighter (and yellow only) to prevent bleeds through the pages. Good reading to all!
“You’re likely to miss at least 50% of what’s going on in IJ the first time though and it doesn’t matter.” — For me,that’s the promise and the peril of the book. This is my 2nd reading; the first was 1997. I had the same feeling as I finished IJ that I had 20 years before as the closing credits to Star Wars ran up the screen … I’d just seen something world-changing (in its way) and I felt this empty sadness knowing I could never see that movie for the first time again. Taking up IJ again is like the next time I saw Star Wars … excitement about diving into something I knew and loved the first time and dread that it will somehow disappoint.
Yes! Good. After seeing all those links to commentaries and guides and dictionaries and etc, I was feeling kind of apprehensive. I just want to *read* IJ. The first time through. And then later go back and really dig in and stuff. But yes!
Most of my first time through IJ was either (1) in bed or (2) over the course of a cross-country round-trip airline flight. But I’m the sort of jerk who likes to be seen carrying an unreasonably large book through airport terminals enough to actually carry said book through said terminals.
Never heard of DF-W or this book until the interwebs started talking about the #infsum challenge. I was an English/Drama major so how could I resist this one? So far I’m loving the linguistic pyrotechnics – and the narrative? It’s like being in a crowded party getting snatches of conversation as I move through, but it’s a helluva party and I’m not going home yet! (p 68)
If you dig the party thing, you should read Gaddis!
Ditto about Gaddis. The Recognitions is my all time favorite, and I’ve reread it several times over the past 30 years or so.
I read the entire book in bed. It can be done and I have the triceps to prove it. I agree with what Jason said. When I first started reading the book I was diligent about looking up words, but not too concerned about figuring it all out – including the timeline. I figured I could always go back and would only go back or look something up if I had an absolute obsessive desire to know more. And there were things that I became obsessed about. But after awhile, I just read the book and that was enough.
[…] Forward. […]
Totally agree with Jason… if it’s your first reading, don’t sweat the details. Plough through and expect to be confused occasionally, but just keep going, the scene will change and you’ll start to piece it together. This is my second time (well, third, but the first time I only got half way and started again a few months later) so I’m doing the full-on geekathon, complete with an initial run through Hamlet.
I’m in. This is just what I need. I need to read the thing instead of obsessively trying to milk it for everything it is worth.
This Forward left me less afraid. Thanks.
Very well said. Except, I personally think it’s kind of silly to read anything without a dictionary handy. If you don’t know a word, look it up.
I’m about to start IF for the second time. Let’s do this.
B.
I second Bobby B on the dictionary. I’m just getting started, but I’ve really enjoyed learning some new words and think it’s worth the effort to understand his word choice.
yay!! it’s my second time…i get to sweat the Hamlet stuff!
Ha! Dig the “This is Water” line. Check out a little essay I wrote about my IJ experience from the Las Vegas CityLife website: http://blogs.lasvegascitylife.com/cityblog/2009/06/15/infinite-blog
Wanted to chime in here. I won’t be participating because I read the book pretty recently. I was able to sweat it out in 2 months. Eggers said you can’t read this in a coffee shop, but the NYC subway worked for me. (And I don’t even live in Brooklyn.) My one piece of advice: if you find the endnotes to be distracting, or the flipping process to be too cumbersome, just ignore them. Better that than giving up. You can read them in occasional chunks, like whenever you pick the book up again for the day. Given the overall non-linearity of this book, it doesn’t really matter.
As a polite rebuttal here, about the only endnotes to avoid are the ones dealing with the pharmaceuticals (brand names, etc.), and even those you might as well read. Skipping anything else is just too risky, since there’s a lot of vital information/narrative placed there. These aren’t typical “endnotes” or “footnotes.” They’re more like additions and clarifications and necessary to the reading. And, plus, DFW meant them to be read, so why not spend the time flipping to the back?
For the notes, especially the notes that lay out crucial information like the time line, I used post-its for bookmarkers, making the process of referring back to the important notes a lot easier.
This will be my first time and I am really looking forward to having a schedule and a converstaion group to help attack this book.
ATTACK!!
I am excited – this is my first reading. Good intro!
That’s about as good as I can ever think of anyone recommending IJ to anyone.
I’ve fought through it twice, too. A mofo. But now, as I said over at Eschaton, I just pick it up, open it to a random page, and get a hard-on over the artful beauty of the well-written word.
I have read all of Wallace’s stuff, most a lot, and everyone should get through the essay “E Pluribus Unum” a few times just to have a remote clue on how much influence the Great Furniture of Learning has on our lives.
I miss him already.
OOPS!
E Unibus Pluram. In, “A supposedly fun thing…”
My bad.
Hey, I resemble that last remark! I’ve decided to put leveling my shaman to 80 on hold in order to participate in the Infinite Summer challenge. But what will I do with all the rest of this extra time on my hands?
Exactly. Don’t use a dictionary, even if you start out using one you’ll ditch that pretty soon. Read all of the foot notes (get two bookmarks, one for your main place and one for your footnote place). Read it with a friend if you can. There are parts of the book the beg to be read out loud to another human. But most of all just read!
I’m so excited by this project – I brought the book on a whim from Amazon, and then found out about this website. Looking forward to the reading!
[…] I understand it, your reading will be accompanied by encouraging blog pep-talks like this one from Kottke: So sure, it’s a lengthy book that’s heavy to carry and impossible to […]
Um, it’s Foreword. Just sayin’.
dan…
I took Forward as a play on Foreword and I’m 99% sure Jason intended it so. Just my $0.02.
definitely. it’s a long complicated book with a lot of characters and footnotes and words, but once you make it past the first 70 or so pages you don’t really need a battle plan or a reader’s guide, it’s just a somewhat confusing but thoroughly enjoyable read. “getting everything” the first time through seems like it would spoil the overwhelming experience.
(that’s what re-reads are for)
Looks like I found this site just in time to get started. I just downloaded this book on my Kindle for an upcoming trip to Australia. I will probably read well ahead, given that I have a lot of flight time coming up.
It is too bad that the reader guides are not available on the Kindle, but I have often given the same advice to new readers of Joyce’s Ulysses. Just power through and figure it all out later.
[…] Until today. When I saw this: […]
Best advice I ever received about reading Ulysses: don’t sweat the small stuff. If you want that level of detail, you’ll read it again. Don’t drain the pleasure out of the experience by stopping every three lines of text to check some reference.
Also, read aloud when you can. Breaks to magnitude/solitude of the experience and allows you to access the writing through new/different bodyholes.
Apply same to Infinite Jest.
Unless, I’d argue, that “pleasure-draining” stuff really gets you going. If at age 10 you were devouring technical guides to the vehicles in the Star Wars universe, at 15 dissecting the leitmotifs in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, if your Giffords and Ellmanns are as tattered as your Joyce, then like me you will want to slip into dictionaries, obscure references, footnotes and technical manuals as if into a warm DFW brain-bath.
I do prefer to read a section through without stopping first, before going back and dissecting, but I acknowledge that there are some readers, even more like me than me, who may find this impossible.
Sure…and I think it’s safe to assume that many of us get off on the obscure and picayune IJ has to offer. We’re here, aren’t we?
But there’s something to be said about narrative flow–illusory, magical world-creating that gets shattered by obsessive reader fits and referential (non)starts.
Probably this is just me publicly wrestling with my own IJ history…but this time I’ve decided against counting all of the stars in favor of seeing the whole sky.
I am also reading it for my 3rd time. Once in ’98 once in 2006 and i am currently reading on my kindle, so i have no idea what page i am on, only that i am 36% through it so far. It just gets better and better, but with the bittersweet feeling after losing DFW.
[…] those who haven’t already heard, allow me to direct your attention to the launching post of Infinite Summer, an organized effort to read through Infinite Jest this summer, endnotes and […]
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[…] it looks intimidating, but as Jason Kottke explains in his excellent forward to the project: It is a fact that Infinite Jest is a long book with almost a hundred pages of […]
I am still trying to get through Gravity’s Rainbow, after about 6 months. I cannot pickup any more such brilliant post-post-modern monsterous masterpieces until I finish GR. Does that make me a bad person?
No. GR is a lot of fun, but it makes little sense, and books should not make you feel bad about yourself. IJ is Danielle Steele compared to GR.
I am finishing the second volume of Proust (Within a budding grove), so I am hoping this will be some a nice change of scenery before I begin the third volume.
My first blog post on Infinite Summer and my favorite quote from Infinite Jest so far.
http://www.ivblogz.com/wedlocked
I’m loving this book.
Jason, it’s good to hear from you and, like many, I first heard of this project on kottke.org. Great forward, although it’s always troubling to see that folks need to be talked down from the ledge to read a book like this, that it’s even necessary to say something like, “You don’t have to be an English major to like this book.”
I’m a former English major and current English teacher who actually considers it the job of teachers to open students up to the idea of reading, rather than instructing students to pick up on Hamlet allusions or placing everything they read in the context of the American canon. That stuff is nice, and fun, and even pretty important, but my god people, just read stuff you like to read! I hate the toxic culture of high literacy that values being seen lugging a large book around an airport more than reading said large book. Read because you like to read. Read something that challenges you. If you don’t like it, or it’s too boring, or pretentious, or difficult, stop reading, man.
I’m here because I have tried several times and never succeeded in reading DFW’s fiction. I love his non-fiction, although he can be a little precious, mean-spirited, and performatively doe-eyed for my tastes. But whatever. His writing has a passion and hysteria that is normally only associated with children, a quality that is both the best and worst thing about DFW as a writer. A quality that DFW, I think, was very aware of and was a key to how he marketed himself.
Obviously, IJ made the splash it did and spawned projects like Infinite Summer because it inspires folks, like many of the commenters here. I’ve decided to give DFW the benefit of the doubt and give it a go.
[…] necessary to the seemingly dubious, as well as testimonials from participants like the blogger Jason Kottke and The Decemberists’ frontman Colin Meloy. I’ve never been one for book clubs, but the […]
[…] Kottke’s ‘Forward’ for Infinite Summer (infinitesummer.org) […]
[…] jason kottke starts us off right. […]
Love your advice. I find it to be true. Part of me wants to look up every new word and the rest of me just lets go and I read it and “understand” the word even though I don’t know the meaning of the word. I almost feel like I am absorbing some of the novel through my skin. Thanks for making this so much fun.
[…] Kottke’s forward for the InfiniteSummer.org book club, he states that you don’t have to be an english major to enjoy Infinite Jest and I […]