2009

The Archives

Matthew Baldwin
Acknowledgements
09.26.09 | Permalink | 30 Comments

Back in April, when I set out to recruit three more Guides, I decided to start with the folks I thought would be best suited for the role and then move down the list as I accumulated rejections (of which I expected plenty). Instead, to my great fortune, the first three people I asked accepted. […]
Guides, Rountables
Summer’s End Roundtable, Part IV
09.25.09 | Permalink | 22 Comments

This is the last of a four-part roundtable discussion with the Infinite Summer Guides. Infinite Summer: Did Infinite Jest change your life? Avery Edison: It’s definitely got me reading books again, which is marvelous. I hadn’t realized how much the internet had affected my ability to just sit down and read a book, and — […]
Guides, Rountables
Summer’s End Roundtable, Part III
09.24.09 | Permalink | 12 Comments

This is the third of a four-part roundtable discussion with the Infinite Summer Guides. Infinite Summer: Looking back, do parts of the novel that seemed superfluous at the time now make sense? Eden M Kennedy: Yes and no. The joke about “never try to pull more than your own weight” came back a few times […]
Guides, Rountables
Summer’s End Roundtable, Part II
09.23.09 | Permalink | 43 Comments

This is the second of a four-part roundtable discussion with the Infinite Summer Guides. Infinite Summer: What do you think happened to Hal? Avery Edison: I think it was the withdrawal from Bob Hope that did him in — all that mold stuff has to be a red herring, since we never got a 14-page […]
Guides, Rountables
Summer’s End Roundtable, Part I
09.22.09 | Permalink | 39 Comments

This is the first of a four-part roundtable discussion with the Infinite Summer Guides. Infinite Summer: How about that ending, huh? Matthew Baldwin: I found the ending to be incredible. Literally quote “incredible”, as in straining credulity, as in: despite the vast expanse of white space between the final sentence and the “981”, I was […]
Miscellaneous
The End
09.21.09 | Permalink | 6 Comments

Early in Infinite Summer, we received an email from a participant (who requested anonymity): I went to a David Foster Wallace talk/autograph signing in Boston years ago. I asked him to write a message of congratulations to the reader on the final page. I thought this would motivate me to re-read IJ, since his congratulatory […]