Category
Countdown
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Advocacy, Guests
Colin Meloy: Why I am Reading Infinite Jest
06.19.09 | Permalink | 24 CommentsColin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter for the band The Decemberists. Their most recent album is The Hazards of Love.
I think I bought my copy of Infinite Jest in 1997. To be honest, I don’t know what inspired the purchase. Had I read A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do [...] -
Countdown, Guests
How to Read Infinite Jest
06.17.09 | Permalink | 75 CommentsThe following was drafted by Matt Bucher (maintainer of the wallace-l listserv and author of this post), and augmented by input from Nick Maniatis (administrator of The Howling Fantods, a site devoted to DFW), and Kathleen Fitzpatrick (professor at Pomona College, who teaches a course entitled David Foster Wallace).
There’s no wrong way to read Infinite [...] -
Countdown
The Schedule
06.15.09 | Permalink | 72 CommentsClip ‘n’ Save: it’s your summer syllabus. Note that “location” refers to the Kindle.
Date
Page
Location
Percent CompleteFri, Jun 26
63
15226%
Mon, Jun 29
94
22339%
Fri, Jul 03
137
323613%
Mon, Jul 06
168
390017%
Fri, Jul 10
210
484421%
Mon, Jul 13
242
556124%
Fri, Jul 17
284
654528%
Mon, Jul 20
316
725032%
Fri, Jul 24
358
817436%
Mon, Jul 27
390
886939%
Fri, Jul 31
432
983244%
Mon, Aug 03
464
1055647%
Fri, Aug 07
506
1151051%
Mon, Aug 10
537
1224354%
Fri, Aug 14
580
1323359%
Mon, Aug 17
611
1392562%
Fri, Aug 21
653
1490066%
Mon, Aug 24
685
1562869%
Fri, Aug 28
727
1655474%
Mon, Aug 31
759
1729377%
Fri, [...]
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Advocacy, Guests
Matt Bucher: Why Read Infinite Jest?
06.11.09 | Permalink | 20 CommentsMatt 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 has read Infinite Jest at least three times.
I first [...] -
Countdown
The Book Before
06.10.09 | Permalink | 42 CommentsIf Twitter is to be believed (and when has it ever done us wrong?), many of you have already begun reading your copy of Infinite Jest. And that’s okay. As we’ve said in the past, doing so is perfectly permissible under the rules. Ya big cheaters.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are frantically trying [...] -
Countdown, Preparation
Warming Up
06.09.09 | Permalink | 12 CommentsYou wouldn’t run a marathon without stretching beforehand. And perhaps the mammoth tome that is Infinite Jest ought not be your first exposure to David Foster Wallace.
DFW’s shorter works are collected into a number of bound volumes:
Non-Fiction CollectionsA Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (1998)
Consider the Lobster: And Other [...]
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Advocacy, Guests
Mimi Smartypants: Why Read Infinite Jest?
06.08.09 | Permalink | 22 CommentsMimi 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. She has read Infinite Jest thrice.
Yeah, it’s big.
No reviewer, blogger, or bookstore chitchatter can resist remarking on Infinite Jest’s size, so [...] -
Countdown
The Community
06.04.09 | Permalink | 82 CommentsWe here at the I.S.anctuary are happy to serve as the Infinite Summer hub. But we also know that the most interesting and insightful analysis will come from Out There, as participants provide updates on their own sites. Thus, for the duration of the event, we’ll be cheerfully providing links to any commentary that [...]
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Countdown
The Guides
06.03.09 | Permalink | 7 CommentsSo hey, what are you up to this summer?
Oh yeah? Enjoying a novel? Well crazy coincidence: that’s our plan as well.
Four writers who have never before read Infinite Jest will do so for the duration of Infinite Summer. And each will be posting here weekly, not only to report on their thoughts and progress, [...]
the challenge
Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat.1. Plus endnotesa.
a. A lot of them.
The Sponsors
The Queue
? 
In October we are reading Bram Stoker's Dracula in October. See the announcement.
In January & February of 2010 we are reading 2666, the paperback of which was just released.
At some point in between we are reading a novel TBD.
The Search
The Last 10 Posts
- Acknowledgements
- Summer’s End Roundtable, Part IV
- Summer’s End Roundtable, Part III
- Summer’s End Roundtable, Part II
- Summer’s End Roundtable, Part I
- The End
- Roundup
- Greg Carlisle: Reading Infinite Jest Changed My Life (and Now It Will Change Yours)
- Mission Improbable
- I Got This Fire In My Heart, Won’t Let Me Sleep, Can’t Concentrate…
The Last 10 Comments
- Peer on Acknowledgements: Thanks for the link. I will check it out. I was just hoping for some announcements here...
- Prolixian on Acknowledgements: Peer – if you are interested in 2666, check out bolanobolano.com. A group read...
- Peer on Acknowledgements: When will we start the new book?
- Todeswalzer on Acknowledgements: RIP Infinite Summer. It was great while it lasted.
- Medusa4303 on Join the Tunnel Club: Thanks. Scott! I have just joined the Bolano group, and I am looking forward to...
- ariel on Join the Tunnel Club: thank you scott!!
- Scott on Join the Tunnel Club: If not here, maybe as a group read on the Bolano Googl Group. See the discussion of...
- ariel on Join the Tunnel Club: hi! can we please revisit this? is there going to be a 2666 club in january?
- sarah klise on Maria Bustillos: The Wonder of Wallace-L: Ken- No immediate plans for repub. We shall see what the...
- redsock on Summer’s End Roundtable, Part II: Re Avril’s sexual affairs mentioned by Daryl: In the...
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