i n f i n i t e    s u m m e r

How do you know he made up the name?

Q: What was the last thing you wrote before starting Infinite Jest?

DFW: I did an essay for Harper's about playing tennis when I was a little boy. Originally I [wrote it] for a book of essays about the midwest. That was in October or November of '91. I hadn't written any fiction for publication for, like, four years before I started that. Harper's always fucks with my titles. The thing at Harper's was called "Tennis, Trigonometry, and Tornadoes." It's funny because Sven [Birkerts, who reviewed Jest in The Atlantic Monthly] saw that essay for all these autobiographical references in the book. It was actually kind of naive of him, when in fact, the names I was using were names that were already in my head 'cause I was starting to think about the book. There was some fiction in that essay.

Q: So the reference to Antitoi being your best friend?

DFW: There was no such person. I needed a fake name for this poor guy. It's also really sloppy of me — "Oh, I'll just use this name again in a book, no one will notice..." But it was an odd moment of naivetë on Sven's part — Sven's usually very cunning.