There is this thing they do on the first day of medical school orientation to help the students understand what to expect. They gather all the first-years into an auditorium and the dean or whoever comes out and he says to them, “Turn and look at the person on your left. Now turn and look at the person on your right. Because in just a few years, both of those dudes are going to be doctors.” Then everyone high-fives and they all make out with each other.
Don’t let your girlfriend go to med school, is all I’m saying. She will totally dump you for one of those guys.
On an unrelated note, I wonder how many of our fellow infsumalians have dropped out already. I was thinking about them as I read my friend Marcus Sakey’s guest essay on Friday.
Like Matt Bucher and Jason Kottke, Marcus stressed the importance of trusting David Foster Wallace as you read Infinite Jest, and this touches on the most important important connections between writer and reader. When I teach writing workshops I tell students that one of the biggest mistakes I think writers make, even some experienced writers, is not doing enough from the start to build the trust of the reader. Many writers seem to expect people will read their novel just because they wrote it, which is insane. Reading a novel of any kind requires a commitment and in a marketplace of infinite choices a novelist needs to convince the reader that he not only has a great story to tell but that he can be relied on to tell it well. And he has to do that immediately. He has to promise.
Having written a book like Infinite Jest Wallace is something like a science fair partner who says to you, “Forget about that corn still you were planning to make with some other writer on your shelf. Let’s build a cold-fusion reactor.” And you’re suspicious because you’ve been burned by ambitious partners before, ones who tell you they want to build a cold-fusion reactor, thus requiring that you do more work than you really wanted to do, but halfway through they’ve blown you off to get high with the Spanish club and left you with a lot of indecipherable notes and not a clue how they’re supposed to go together.
How do you know Wallace can deliver before you’ve already blown the whole summer?
We have a number of reasons to trust Wallace. We have the word of smart people who have read the book, like Marcus, Jason, and Matt. We have almost 15 years of people reading and rereading, mining the book for its pleasures. We have the place to which this book has rapidly ascended in my generation’s unconscious.
But best of all we have the first ten pages.
The first ten pages of this book are remarkable. The first 100 pages are very good (if sometimes frustrating) but the first ten are amazing, and he deliberately put them there, right at the front, in order to make you a promise.
‘I’m not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you’d let me, talk and talk. Let’s talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,’ I say. ‘I’m not just a creatus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for a function.’
I open my eyes. ‘Please don’t think I don’t care.’
I look out. Directed my way is horror. I rise from the chair. I see jowls sagging, eyebrows high on trembling foreheads, cheeks bright-white. The chair recedes below me.
‘Sweet mother of Christ,’ the Director says.
He could have just said this: Listen up. I have a freaking great story to tell you.
If you feel yourself getting frustrated in parts, or lost. If you feel Wallace has lost your trust, stop, go back and read the first ten pages. You’ll find a promise.
I’m re-posting this from the last comment section so it doesn’t get missed:
I have a question:
what does TP stand for? I’ve been searching all over the book to figure it out, thinking I’ve missed it. Or, maybe he hasn’t revealed what it means yet? Obviously it’s some sort of Television/Cartridge viewing device, but what does it stand for?
Thanks.
Tele-puter, i.e. a computer
TelePuter?
Teleputer
http://russillosm.com/ijndx.html#T
and I know it doesn’t stand for toilet paper, you jokey mcjokersons
I reluctantly answer this here as it is more fit for the Forums. I think TP stands for TelePuter. Interesting name for a computer. Not sure though. Try the forums. Im sure you will find your answer there.
Thanks for the explanation Kevin. I really felt like the book grabbed hold of me in the first 10 pages and it has slowly loosened its grip as of late. There is definately a promise in those first pages and I intend to keep my promise to finish this book in hopes that DFW keeps his in the end.
It’s combination television and computer and sounds a bit like the on-demand features of so many cable providers these days (in being able to call up old movies and the like from off the InterLace grid).
Teleputer. Basically it’s 1995 and you’re imagining what the internet and computers would be able to do in ten years in terms of video entertainment.
Completely agree. The first ten pages were absolutely astonishing and as a result I’m now ready to follow the book pretty much anywhere.
TP == teleputer
yes.
Amen!
The other day I encouraged readers who are having some trust issues with our Fearless Author to have a look at “Consider the Lobster” for proof that Mr. Wallace is an absolute master of control, and that even if you can’t see it working, his prose is quietly leading you juuust where he wants you to go.
Your proof for trust is even more compelling.
To whomever at Infinite Summer fixed my code goof: many thanks!
I think it didn’t hurt that I read Lobster first. Because, any guy who can write that well, think that clearly, be that honest, I can certainly trust. That isn’t to say I’m guaranteed to like his fiction (though, so far, so amazing) as not all great essayists are good at fiction (and vice versa), but it certainly increases the odds that I might.
It was Wallace’s essays (including “Consider the Lobster”) that first turned me onto his writing. I am (and usually am) slower to gravitate to the fiction side of things.
Having said that, I’m at page 227 and determined not to turn back, despite some of the challenges of the text. However, there is so much great stuff juxtaposed with the difficult that I’m compelled forward.
Thank you for that insightful post, Kevin.
As someone who’s almost done with her first read, and rereading from the beginning along with everyone else, I have to say, hanging in there is well worth it.
For those of you falling behind on the schedule, please don’t give up. I started reading this on 1/1/09, so just read and enjoy the ride, even if your own personal Infinite Summer becomes Fall or Winter.
Pushing myself back from the TP and picking up IJ
Just starting today. Found a paperback edition at the local Hastings. I appreciate the insight I am able to gather about this endeavor from you and my teleputer.
It helps to maintain my interest level that I am a Québécoise who works in a halfway house and two blocks down the hill (yes, the hill) there is a tennis club I pass every day I work. I try not to sweat the big words, the sentence structure and the constant switching from one character to another and just enjoy what I read slowly.
really?? what a coincidence…
I was actually afraid I would give up early on since this seemed like such a commitment, but I’m up to page 144 and every day I look forward to reading more. I got frustrated during pages 128-135 (if you haven’t gotten there yet you’ll quickly see what I mean when you do), but I never thought of stopping. I can’t wait to see where things go from here.
That’s tomorrow’s reading. I’m scared now.
I don’t remember that from med school At All. this is my third start of IJ and the advice to trust is so good. I got bogged down in trying to unravel it all while reading the first time….no need. It’s just a fun book to read!
While dedicating myself to this book, I’ve basically had to give up beer. I do the majority of my reading at night and after just one pint, the text become so indecipherable that I wake up the next morning having no idea what I read the night before. So, reluctantly, I’ve upped my caffeine intake during the day and taken to Chamomile at night. I’m in it to win it and glad to have everyone here to share it with. I have a feeling it’d be a lonely book otherwise.
The med school legend, as I’ve heard it, is “look to the left and look to the right and neither of those humans will be here when you graduate because most people can’t hack this.”
But let’s not play up that angle for this endeavor, mmmmkay?
@ JULIE: I’m still a little shocked by what you wrote. You’ve got to be some kind of unique demographic-of-one perfect audience for this book. Absolutely amazing. Next you’ll be writing to tell us you host an avant-garde midnight radio show with the on-air name of Madam Physics.
@ KEVIN: I thoroughly enjoyed the analysis. Spot on, as always. Also: now I know why Kari, my ex, now a doctor, used to get all hot-and-bothered during episodes of early-ER we’d watch together back in the 90s. I feel … dirty.
Amazing, isn’t it? Once I learned what the book was about, I just HAD to be part of this challenge. I don’t host a midnight show with the name of Madam Physics but you know what, I would love to.
This was, by far, one of the greatest posts I’ve read on here yet. 😀
I agree, after the first ten, no- the first THREE- pages DFW had my undivided attention. And it just gets better. I’m a little ahead (err, just broke 200th page mark?) so I can’t say what’s cracking me up at the moment on here, but I’m so happy I took up the challenge.
There are times when it overwhelms me (after a solid chunk of reading, for example), so I go do something else for a while and come back to it ready to go.
This is funny because that paragraph you quote annoyed the hell out of me. Hobbes is not Rousseau in a dark mirror. What does that even mean? And I have no idea what he is talking about with Hegel. Where is Hegel does he talk about transcendence or absorption? Is Hegel some kind of EST guru and no one told me about this? Also, everything he says here is vague and ultimately says nothing and that bugged me.
Also, I don’t think people underestimate the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus. Everyone knows existentialism has its roots in Kierkegaard. And why does it even matter if people underestimate the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus? It’s just a throwaway intellectual line.
Although I guess I did wonder after that if Camus read Kierkegaard.
The paragraph you quote is the part where the book almost lost me. Right there, with that paragraph I was like ‘oh God know not a bunch of intellectual platitudes that don’t tell you anything. Not a ‘wise child’ character who exposes the hypocrisy of everyone around him through his Good Will Hunting-type preternatural abilities.’ That’s a type of character I can’t handle. But then, over time, the character of Hal becomes more real.
For the first 100 or so pages I was both skimming and editing the book. I could not stop from mentally rewriting the book. But I got my comeuppance around page 200…some things at the start do not ring true if you are like me but then over time there is a kind of cumulative effect where what seemed to be throwaway bits of cleverness turn out to have a kind of meaning in relation to the whole.
So that is a good thing to learn from reading this book. I’m full of it. I keep learning this but I seem to forget.
So I guess I would say that if the first 10 pages annoy you or even the first 100 pages annoy you then stick with it, suspend judgment, kind of let it wash over you. Like trying a new food or something. You start to know how its supposed to taste.
In my case, it was the Erdedy chapter (17-27), which is flawless. Or, really, it was the fact that he could write the first chapter–which is odd and interesting–and then shift gears so suddenly in the Erdedy chapter. I like novels narrated from multiple point of view. And these are so jarringly different that I was totally sucked in.
I’m obsessing about Hal’s saying that he believes “with Hegel,that transcendence is absorption.” Ok, I’m still behind the group in my reading having reached p. 109. Not too bad. At this point note 304 has been referred to twice and I’ve just read it for the second time. Struck is now attempting to “absorb” huge amounts of information for his termpaper in “History of Canadian Unpleasantness.” This book is hilarious. I don’t even have a point in my comment here except that this amazing work of Wallace’s keeps introducing a concept and then coming back around to the same concept over and over again. Like someone else said this footnote is partly Wallace laughing at his own sometimes impossibly confusing prose style. He writes about Hal transcending through absorbing, Struck trying to absorb the most lurid stuff he can find; meanwhile we are supposed to absorb (understand?) what Wallace is writing. I love this book.
I think that this is something Wallace missed – he totally misjudged which content delivery technologies would be ascendent. The TP was based on the idea of the TV and computer and physical media merging together – when in fact, the Internets rose up and swamped them all. It’s kind of funny to see futurism in a relatively recent book that is already behind the times.
Totally agree…there’s nothing in there about interactive media like this right here, and how it would change people’s lives. I would have loved to see him address it as he did the videophony arc, though.
Also, since I just found about Infinite Summer and I don’t know where else to put this: I tend now to only read the book by following a character all the way through…..sometimes I’ll just read the Erdedy bits, or the Hal bits, or (if I’m really in a weird mood) the Orin bits……It’s been a while since I read the book straight through – I don’t know if I could, even if I wanted to. It’s sucks me too far under.
The problem is there’s a sort of Stockholm syndrome possibility here. Anyone who has dedicated the time to reading this book is very likely to not want to call that time wasted, and will come up with all kinds of justifications for their actions – in the same way someone who spends their life selling bad mortgages might, on their deathbed, insist that it was a noble calling, and they have no regrets.
I’m enjoying the book – but I have no confidence at all that somewhere on the downward side of the page count he’s going to do something that totally justifies the time spent reading it.
And that’s the big challenge for me – for as much as I’m enjoying the reading I look down at the little progress scrollbar every now and then and thing “seriously? Only 10 percent of the way through? What in the world could be so difficult to express that it requires this damn many pages?”
It might give some hope to those of us on this hike for the first time for somebody to make a bold statement about where this is going other than “trust us, the sunset is beautiful.”
Jimmy, I’m afraid based on the tone of your comment that you’re destined to be disappointed with this book. Not because I’m assuming you’re an insensitive reader — on the contrary, you seem to be the sort of person who appreciates a story well-told, as you noted, and I have no reason to believe that you have some sort of defect-of-perception that would prevent you from basking in the more ethereal pleasures of Wallace’s writing — but because I tend to believe you are the sort of writer who finds value, and aesthetic beauty, in economical prose, and that quite simply ain’t what Wallace is about. Not here, not elsewhere in his fiction and nonfiction (although the excerpts I’ve read to date from THE PALE KING seem to indicate that he was making a conscious effort in the months before his death to scale back his more outsized sentence- and story-constructive tendencies), but ESPECIALLY not here.
IJ is, quite simply, not so much a “tale” with a “point”, as it is a free-associative deconstruction of an entire generation’s fascination with maximalism, with the idea that every single thought that occurs to one, is a thought that deserves expression in some form or another. And I suspect that that’s why it’s gained such successful traction among the blog- and social-network-obsessed adherents of a certain generational mindset, because it justifies to them, on some core emotional level, the idea that, under the right circumstances, a bottomless sense of navel-gazy narcissism can not only be justified, but is a virtue unto itself.
I don’t mean to sound like I’m ragging on Wallace’s work. He’s my favorite author, hands-down, and IJ is my favorite novel. But be forewarned: if you want “payoff”, if you want “justification”, if you want a novel which explicates its length and sprawl through providing the reader with some magical sun-breaking-through-the-clouds apotheosis when all is said and done, you’re looking in the wrong place. Because that is not, simply stated, the particular variety of fish that Wallace has come to fry, with INFINITE JEST.
@ jimmydare,
what would ‘justify’ the time you spend reading IJ? Considering a lifetime, you’re not actually spending that much time, comparatively speaking. I bet your time spent watching 99% of the TV shows you watch isn’t as worthwhile. I do get your Stockholm Syndrome point though, but the opposite position you’re taking is really lazy, because virtually no big book would be worth your precious and scarce time.
I read both the jimmydare’s comment and the replies, finding them all interesting. I don’t think we should rush to judgement though, on jimmydare’s part. His comment made me think – it IS actually difficult to be objective about a piece of work you have spent so much time, energy and active attention on. The sunset metaphor may make it seem like he has big expectations about where his IJ experience is heading, but on the other hand he also stated right away that he’s enjoying the book, so he’s not necessarily just suffering the uphill climb in hope of a “sun-breaking-through-the-clouds apotheosis”.
I suppose that when reading a 1000+ page book one might just as well relax and accept that it is that long and stop worrying about the fact (which doesn’t mean forcing yourself to read it, but dedicating in advance a certain portion of your life to it so you can relax and enjoy it, instead of dedicating it a bit and then a bit more, if it proves worth it.)
I’m reading, due to circumstances, a lot of short stories, recently, in addition to IJ and other books, and I appreciate how a longer piece of fiction lets you adjust to it’s pace, feel, logic. It makes you or allows you make a different type of shift, and it’s an interesting experience.
I guess some of the reactions are part of a larger argument that goes much beyond this comment.
And I certainly hope that no one will consider the time spent reading IJ wasted. In any case we’ll have learned something about the book, the author, the contest, the readers, the society, the literature and it’s system(s), etc. Which is valuable, regardless of how much one likes the book in the end, I guess.
@ Dutchguy
I completely agree that 99% of my life and energy is wasted, but I rely on reading to fill in those part of it that aren’t, and within that sliver of time IJ does take quite a bit of reading time from the stack of books I’m hoping to get through in my life. Not much, you’re right, in the grand scheme, but enough that if by %10 I pretty much feel like I know what %80 is going to feel like, it’s not lazy to be tempted to look for something unexpected elsewhere.
@Dorfman
Very well put – I wasn’t expecting the cloud opening moment in the book, but it has been hinted to a bit by our infsum trail-guides in their efforts to motivate us, which is why I bring it up.
The idea of “trusting” the author seems a bit ingenuous to me – particularly when it seems (emphasis seems) clear from the first few hundred pages exactly what he is going to attempt. There’s nothing to trust – you’re getting what you paid for, so to speak.
But then below in @sanjays comment someone suggests exactly the sort of thing I’m hoping for – also hinted at in this video of the author, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsziSppMUS4 , so who knows, maybe the sun will come out.
And yes, I’m enjoying the book. Immensely. And I do think I’ll finish it, which is what I find most surprising about this exercise. It may also be that I’m reading it on an iphone — thinking of it in terms of percentages ingested and then reporting here on the symptoms adds something to the experience somehow.
@jimmydare
I just wanted to give you some support for a tough position. I finished reading IJ a few months back after bringing it on a beach vacation and then needing another few weeks to finish it. My wife had seen me working through it all that time and when I announced that I was done, she asked, “Was it worth it?”
I responded, “I’m not sure.”
I could say with some authority that I had just read an epic work of the most talented writer of his generation and that it was one of a handful of the best pieces of fiction I had ever read. I could say for certain that I enjoyed reading it immensely. But I couldn’t say for certain that it all was worth the hours of effort I put into it.
Ultimately IJ isn’t about satisfaction. It’s deep and funny and thought-provoking and wonderfully complex. But if IJ were a meal, it would be the kind that makes you hungrier the more you eat.
Well, the truth of the matter is that this is all totally subjective. For example, I actually find the whole introduction to the Erdedy character to be my least favorite part of the book, but most other people seem to love it. So, go fig.
It will be the same with the novel as a whole. Some people (dare I say most?) will come away from the experience of reading it having loved it. I know that I certainly did. (I’ve read it twice, and will read it again without a doubt.) It’s my favorite book, but a large margin. But some people will come to the end and wonder why the hell they bothered.
Er…. BY a large margin, that is
There is a lot of huh.what.now when I read these comments. Seriously, listening to your phenomenological recording of what you are thinking sentence to sentence is the definition of self-obsessed. Let go and either enjoy the book, or read something else.
Several thoughts – it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. I have already read (at 92) sections of the book that have been worthwhile in their own right, even as disembodied pieces of writing – Edred’s internal monologue – “Where was the woman who said she’d come” – the incredibly funny/horrifying Gately robbery which is three stories in one – come to mind right away. Second: I believe. No less a person that Duncan Black, one of the sharpest bloggers I have read says this:
“I’m a bad critic so I won’t try very hard to explain why it’s worth the long hard slog. But, short version is… an overly clever and confusing book slowly gives way to surprisingly powerful emotional resolutions. An elaborate word game becomes surprisingly sentimental, nonsensical PoMo gone wild becomes a meditation on contemporary need and desire. And in a way which makes sense. It isn’t a cheat. I think someone described Beethoven’s 9th as Beethoven chipping away at a bunch of stone until all that was left was the Ode to Joy. While not quite the same, the experience of reading Infinite Jest kind of reminded me of that.”
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009/07/infinite-jesting.html
So keep on truckin’
I found this post a bit odd. If the first 10 pages are a “promise” DFW makes with the reader, they are a promise that is simply and most definitely not kept, if we define “kept” as his eventually giving some sort of explanation as to what happened to Hal.
I’m not saying IJ is not worth reading and even re-reading. I am, however, saying that any “promise” the author makes comes eventually, by way of accretion, and for the first 100 or so pages IJ would in my humble opinion definitely qualify as the type of novel the author seems to think you should read merely because he wrote it. It is so obscure and confusing in the first 100 pages it almost dares you to continue reading it.
I see little point in not acknowledging this.
Obviously, I believe that if you do continue, you’ll be amply rewarded for it.
But I’m not seeing that promise in the first 10 pages read for the first time.
There is a decent A Clockwork Orange reference on page 118. Anyone else catch that? It’s minimal.
I,ve read 240 pages so far. He is keeping his promise…at least to me. Reading some of it was like swimming in a slushy. But, much of the text is so good it stops me in my tracks. Pages 200 to around 205 are perfect. So far this has been time well spent.
[…] Bonus word of the day from Infinite Summer: Infsumalians. Lovely, Kevin. […]
I actually didn’t very much like the first 10 pages. I didn’t really start enjoying the book until Erdedy.
@TG AND RE: DFW’S KEPT PROMISE
I recently read “The Empty Plenum,” DFW’s review of /Wittgenstein’s Mistress/ (from the late-80s or early-90s), and something he wrote there strikes me as pertinent here. The quote: “Rarely is our uncritical inheritance of early Wittgensteinian and Logical Positivist models so obvious as in our academic and aesthetic preference that successful fiction encloses rather than opens up, organizes facts rather than undermines them, diagnoses rather than genuflects” (pg. 234).
DFW’s stuff that I’ve read so far leads me to believe that he (as writer) embraced the idea that successful fiction should open up rather than constrict (as opposed to, say, narratives that end with an explanation and a wrap-up), undermine fact rather than organize it, and genuflect rather than diagnose. /IJ/’s ending definitely sends the reader back to the beginning to look for clues, opens up the narrative rather than closes it, etc. Either that, or the ending makes you scream and scream and search madly for some small and defenseless creature to kick … because that’s kind of person who doesn’t go back to the beginning and read again: a cowardly animal-abuser.
Again, I’m not sure what all the foregoing means (i.e., haven’t more than the merest shadow of the hell of an idea what early-Wittgenstein and Logical Positivist models even are), but it does seem germane to the question of what kind of implicit, writerly promise DFW is making with /IJ/’s first 10 pages.
That is, is DFW promising to tell us what ‘happens’ to Hal? In my opinion, no, because I don’t think that’s the kind of book he set out to write.
Rather, I think DFW’s promise to the reader is two-fold: First, there’s everything Kevin wrote about; i.e., the promise of excellent, well-crafted, entertaining, smart prose. Second, there’s the promise that the question asked of Hal at the end of the first 10 pages — “So, yo, man, what’s your story?” — will be answered in the story that follows.
In my opinion, then, myself falling lock-step into early-Wittgensteinian and Logical Positivist models of rhetoric and wrapping up this late-stage, little comment, DFW definitely keeps his latter fold of the two-fold promise in that (it seems to me, more and more) Hal is /IJ/’s narrator and the book in our hands is “his story” — as promised.
Prove it? I’d rather just make the bald assertion. Seriously.
I think any book as large as IJ contains a promise of some sort from the author, that it is worth treking through all those many pages or else the author wouldn’t have written them. Other large books I’ve read such as War & Peace and Les Miserables, have continued to gesticulate in my psyche years after I have read them and kept their promise in that respect. I suspect IJ will do the same. Every reader’s “sunset” will be different and change through the years. IJ is a bomb that will explode differently in every readers head and the shrapnel will shift in the cranium for years to follow.