Infinite Summer

Don't usually play music while reading IJ, but heard "Mother" from The Wall on the radio yesterday and thought that album touched on quite a few of the book's themes.

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"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." DFW

The Unique Urquids

I've found that if I listen to anything too catchy (say, Animal Collective) that I get distracted and have to reread bits several times. I'll nth the Tim Hecker and Fennesz recommendations and posit one of my own:

Philip Glass's Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack ()

I heard this performed very recently (slideshow + mp3 at ) and I was struck with how perfect it is for IJ. It works recursively while building on disparate themes, occasionally soothing and/or frantic. Plus, the title, Koyaanisqatsi, means "life out of balance" in Hopi, and don't that just tie right in to some themes in the book?

Loving that folks are so into Fennesz and Tim Hecker up in here. I'd also recommend Keith Fullerton Whitman: Playthroughs and the back half of Multiples are lovely and eerie in good ways for the book. (Also there is the pleasant coincidence that KFW lives in Boston.)

I'd also like to point out that the Mountain Goats have a song called Dilaudid to which I can't listen without thinking of Infinite Jest.

(I pulled an Orin on that sentence and restructured it in the middle of writing to keep from ending a clause with a preposition. The militant grammarians are getting inside my brain again.)

I second KFW and also recommend Chihei Hatakeyama as well. Fripp and Eno's No Pussyfooting is great IJ reading music as well.

I have been listening to Frightened Rabbit, but it can cause some rereading.