2009

The Archives

Summaries
Infinite Summary – Week 10
08.29.09 | Permalink | 10 Comments

And welcome to week 10. Milestone Reached: 738 (75%) Sections Read: Page 666 The Tunnel Club searches the catacombs under E.T.A. for rats. Page 673: Thierry Poutrincourt joins Steeply and deLint in watching the Hal Incandenza v. Ortho Stice match. Page 682 – 14 NOVEMBER / YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: Matty Pemulis, prostitute […]
Avery Edison
The Biblical Experience of Reading Infinite Jest
08.28.09 | Permalink | 33 Comments

Avery Edison is in transit today, so Nick Douglas is subbing in. Nick Douglas is the editor of Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less, a collection of witty tweets, which was released earlier this week. I’m an atheist – if I were in AA, I’d get on my knees with far less openness […]
Kevin Guilfoile
Irony, It Has Happened To Me
08.27.09 | Permalink | 37 Comments

Someone recently sent me an unpublished manuscript to read and while the book itself had many things to recommend it, there was one sentence that made me laugh. I won’t use the same context because I don’t want to embarrass the author, but the gist of it was something like, “It’s so ironic that you […]
Guests
Matt Bucher: The Anxiety of Influence
08.26.09 | Permalink | 28 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. Infinite Jest […]
Miscellaneous
Oops
08.26.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Two months ago Matthew Baldwin told the Guides that August 24-28 would be devoted to guest posts and Kevin Guilfoile, who is a professional, wrote this on a calendar, and Matthew Baldwin, who is not, did not, and, long story short, Kevin doesn’t have a post prepared, so we’re running the weekly guest post today […]
Eden M. Kennedy
It Didn’t Make Me Happy but I Couldn’t Stop Watching
08.25.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

As your least insightful and hands-down laziest guide, I fully admit that I’m 100 pages behind this week and I’m not even going to try to fake it. But I did spend a fruitful hour this morning browsing DFW reviews and interviews. This from Newsweek: NEWSWEEK: What’s your history with tennis? WALLACE: I played serious […]
Matthew Baldwin
Else { Default }
08.24.09 | Permalink | 32 Comments

As details emerge about The Pale King, it’s becoming clear that the 2005 commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College is something of a bridge between Infinite Jest and his final, unfinished novel. Michael Piesch, Wallace’s editor, goes so far as to call “This Is Water” (as the commencement speech is commonly known) […]