Infinite Summer

Not that I'm not thoroughly occupied with Infinite Jest for the remainder of the summer, but I'm always looking to add to my "Books/Authors I should read" list, and clearly, if you all have the taste for David Foster Wallace, your suggestions for additional reading are particularly valuable.

What book and/or author besides DFW and Infinite Jest appeals to you and why?

I'll start off with my suggestion: Letters, by John Barth.



Letters was Barth's seventh book and in essence provided a sequel for each of his previous six books by creating a chain of letters between characters featured in or inspired by those six books. Explore in any detail the narrative structure of this novel, (the dates of the letters, the particular correspondents, even the first letter of each missive are all predetermined by a schema) and you will either be wowed, like me, or turned off, like some critics. Barth has a reputation for featuring narrative trickery at the expense of empathetic characters and comprehensible story, but the reputation is undeserved. Barth himself used the term "passionate virtuosity" in referring to his writing, suggesting that yes indeed, he can play postmodern tricks with the best of them ("virtuosity"), but is passionate about many things (like DFW with tennis, Barth has a love for sailing that underpins many of his books) and people (his wife first and foremost, said passion also evident in much of his writing).

Wallace references Barth in his story "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way" in Girl with Curious Hair, enough of a reason for many of you to pick up a Barth novel or short story collection sometime.

Out on Amazon.com, besides a slew of other works by DFW, "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" actually states the following:

2666: A Novel - Bolano
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao - Diaz
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The White Tiger: A Novel - Adiga
Netherland - O'Neill
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Eggers

Jorge Luis Borges was an amazing writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He's all about investigating words, time, consciousness....oh such good stuff!

I have to say John Barth was the first writer that introduced me to post modern thought. I highly recommend "The End of the Road", "The Floating Opera" and "The Sod-Weed Factor" if you like DFW.

Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov.

Pale Fire is a much smaller book than Infinite Jest, but I found it to be similarly difficult my first time through - and just as rewarding. It often gets overlooked in favor of Lolita, but I've actually never read Lolita. I can't see how it could be better than Pale Fire.

Pale Fire is one of the best examples of metafiction that I'm aware of - up there with Infinite Jest itself. I would be shocked if DFW hadn't read it - it seems like it must've influenced Infinite Jest.

Pale Fire is an unfinished 999 line poem in four cantos, written by the fictitious John Shade - the novel takes place entirely in footnotes (as well as a Foreward and index) written about the poem by Charles Kinbote. K Kinbote believes the poem was written about a nation called Zembla that may or may not exist. Of course, the poem itself seems to be about John Shade, so you're never sure if Charles Kinbote is crazy or what.

It's a phenomenal book.

The other book I'd like to recommend is House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski.

Most of you have probably heard of this book. HoL does some very weird stuff - colored text, different fonts representing different characters, the layout of the text changing to reflect the narrative, etc. The book is fascinating just as an object - it's beautifully layed out, carefully put together, with full-color pictures and appendices, and that's disregarding the narrative, which is fascinating - to put it as simply as possible, the book takes the form of notes on a book about a movie which doesn't actually exist. There are at least four narrators, several different plotlines, etc. It's a complex book. It's wonderful.

HoL is sort of a horror story, but, well, it isn't really. It doesn't fit into any one genre.

It gets something of a bad reputation in some circles, because the book is kinda gimmicky, but it's well written enough to hold up, and it's something I think everyone should read at least once - I lost count of how many times I've read it.

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First-Time Reader
Started: 26 June 2009 | Finished: 25 July 2009

Cryptonomicon is one of my favorites.