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Countdown

• Preparation

  Battening Down the Hatches

  06.20.09 | Permalink | 13 Comments

• Advocacy, Guests

  Colin Meloy: Why I am Reading Infinite Jest

  06.19.09 | Permalink | 24 Comments

  Colin 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 Again? Probably. […]

• Countdown, Guests

  How to Read Infinite Jest

  06.17.09 | Permalink | 75 Comments

  The 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 […]

• Countdown

  The Schedule

  06.15.09 | Permalink | 72 Comments

  Clip ‘n’ Save: it’s your summer syllabus. Note that “location” refers to the Kindle. Date Page Location Percent Complete Fri, Jun 26 63 1522 6% Mon, Jun 29 94 2233 9% Fri, Jul 03 137 3236 13% Mon, Jul 06 168 3900 17% Fri, Jul 10 210 4844 21% Mon, Jul 13 242 5561 24% […]

• Advocacy, Guests

  Matt Bucher: Why Read Infinite Jest?

  06.11.09 | Permalink | 20 Comments

  Matt 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 Comments

  If 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 to […]

• Countdown, Preparation

  Warming Up

  06.09.09 | Permalink | 12 Comments

  You 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 Collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (1998) Consider the Lobster: […]

• Advocacy, Guests

  Mimi Smartypants: Why Read Infinite Jest?

  06.08.09 | Permalink | 22 Comments

  Mimi 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 […]

• Countdown

  The Community

  06.04.09 | Permalink | 82 Comments

  We 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 comes […]

• Countdown

  The Guides

  06.03.09 | Permalink | 7 Comments

  So 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 […]

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The Book

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 endnotes^a.
a. A lot of them.

The Search

The Last 10 Posts

• Infinite Index
• 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

The Last 10 Comments

• Pemulis' Yachting Cap on Mission Improbable: Ooh, I’m thinking maybe Gately’s ginormous head has to do...
• Pemulis' Yachting Cap on I Got This Fire In My Heart, Won’t Let Me Sleep, Can’t Concentrate…: Nucks...
• Pemulis' Yachting Cap on Summer’s End Roundtable, Part III: I just realized that Mario reminds me a bit of Owen...
• Pemulis' Yachting Cap on Summer’s End Roundtable, Part III: I’m finished! I’d started last summer...
• 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!!

The Directory