Infinite Summer

...now i feel like a schmuck. I had high test scores, fancy college, lots of degrees. It's so humbling to have DFW's brilliance shoved in your face. This forum also makes me feel humbled. There are so many members who have such great comprehension. This is such a masochistic endeavor. Anyone else feel stupid in the face of this book?

I don't think it's possible to read IJ and go "Oh, yeah. I get it" unless you're missing it entirely. We have to remember that, yes DFW is aggravatingly good at firing synapses and all that goes with being brilliant, but also that this book has a lot of DFW's experiences in it. IJ is full of his childhood, Iowa, tennis, and all sorts of things that are DFW. In that way, it's sort of a Proust book as well as a Joyce book and a Homer book and a Pynchon book and a Gaddis book and a DeLillo book, and a-- you get the point. He talks about Burl Ives, a name that meant nothing to me until I went looking and discovered that I know exactly who that rolley polley claymation snowman voice is. What makes it easier for me to slog through this thing for the X (x>2) time is that he didn't write it in a year or five, this thing took him a LONG time to put together. And while that doesn't change the fact that it's meticulous and deep and witty and maybe more human than I'll ever be, it gives me hope that DFW and I are part of the same species...

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like a dummy when reading IJ! Did DFW write with a thesarus at hand, or did he know all these words?

I got high scores on all the English tests I took, majored in English, yadayadayada. . .but, this book is making feel inadequate!

I really strongly recommend that everybody listen to some interviews with Wallace, if you haven't already. There are a whole bunch on kcrw.com from when he appeared on Michael Silverblatt's show, Bookworm. And then the Charlie Rose Interview, here: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/5639

It's fun to see the way he actually conversed.