Infinite Summer

If you expect to be on the site or in the forums throughout the summer, why not take a moment to introduce yourself here?

Matthew

Dave Dawson in Memphis, TN. Writer, editor. I have reviewed -- not criticized! -- books for a bunch of publications, including the NY Times Book Review, the local paper, several city magazines. I first encountered DFW through the Harper's version of "A Supposedly Fun Thing ...." and have been a huge fan ever since. I've owned Infinite Jest since the paperback first appeared, but have never made an attempt to read it. Thanks to this Infinite Summer project, I've got the perfect motivation at the perfect time.

i'm elisabeth. i live in south philadelphia and i am almost 30. as i mentioned in other posts, i am on my 2nd reading of infinite jest.

i am a teacher in the embattled school district of philadelphia, where i teach high school english (and, in the fall, i'll also be teaching social studies).

my hobbies include vegetarian cooking, running, socializing, and of course READING.

my big question/topic of interest in this reading is to explore the similarities and parallels between IJ and another fave of mine, ulysses.

i would absolutely love to meet up with folks at a local watering-hole to discuss!

James "Wheat" Martin, 39, software trainer by day, online adjunct English instructor by night. By day, I put together training classes, web-based and otherwise, for employees at a technical college (and field a lot of Excel and Access questions). By night, I teach an American lit. class for a different technical college. I've never taught anything by DFW, though I was sorely tempted to put "Authority and American Usage" (from Consider the Lobster) on the syllabus. Might do that for the fall.

That's the work stuff. As far as the rest of life goes, I mostly hanging out with my and wife. I'm a bass guitarist. When I'm not reading, I work on and a bit. Lately, I've mostly been reading and enjoying it. This is my first time reading Infinite Jest. I'm not, in general, afraid of long and/or demanding novels. But I've been keeping pretty good notes on this one, as I expect it to spiral out of control pretty soon (I'm on page 83 at the moment).

Hi there! I'm Lauren. I can be found throughout the innertubez as bibliogrrl.

I'm one of the maintainers of the Infsum Livejournal Community.

When I am not indulging in my terrible, terrible internet habit, I am paid to work in a used bookstore. I love telling people about books; I've been doing it for about 8 years. I am also a part time college student and a really old Freshman, someday I will be a librarian. I am also a huge bike dork and crafty person. I like video games a lot but am not very good at them unless they are Tetris.

There is more,but I'll STFU. I also talk too much.

_________________
"more than a firecracker, less than a neutron bomb."

I'm Bill, almost 31, from the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. East-coast transplant (CT) who's lived in the Midwest longer now, though I still miss the east coast sometimes. Married, no kids yet. I'm depressed at the lack of book reading I've been doing these days. I read a lot on Google Reader and whatnot. When I do read books, I've been reading mostly non-fiction of a business oriented nature since I work in financial services and I'm a finance nerd. I'd barely ever heard of DFW when he died - I may have possibly read an essay or two, but I can't recall. A few of my friends introduced me to the infinite summer concept. I think it's a good fit for me - I find his style easy to get into, and other than the sheer page count, I think reading this will be an enjoyable experience. IS has been just what I needed to start reading more books. I have a drawer full of books to read, and it's been growing. I need to do some work on that. I've never been of the literary type, I tend to read a lot of what I call "trashy men's novels", the counterpart to women's romance novels that my wife reads - usually involving militaristic themes and stuff blowing up (think Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn).

At any rate, I'm quite looking forward to this endeavor.

Melissa, 27, Los Angeles. I work at UCLA as a postdoc doing numerical work on virology stuff, but my training is as a mechanical engineer. After reading about the three people above, who all work in some way with literature, I just got really intimidated! I'm thoroughly enjoying the book, but fear I won't be able to add a lot of insights about the book and its meanings. But I suppose by reading the forums, a lot will be revealed to me!

This is my first introduction to both Infinite Jest and David Foster Wallace. I love reading, sort of got out of the habit during grad school, but have read a lot in the past year. I am really looking forward to this summer of IJ, and so far, I feel that this book will be one that I love, and will come back to re-read at other points in my life.

Hey! I'm Kim, 23, from Pittsburgh PA. I haven't read Infinite Jest or David Foster Wallace before, so this will all be new to me. I do a lot of reading but most of it is social science non-fiction. My undergraduate studies are in psychology, and I'm working in a restaurant while I try to figure out how to return to my true love, animal welfare work, in a way that won't keep me so poor.

I must admit I'm intimidated by the length of IJ, as well as everything I've heard about its extensive vocabulary and crazy plotlines and massive footnotes, but I'm looking forward to it as well. I don't know anyone who has read it, so I'm eager to discuss it with all of you.

Hi, guys! Lydia here, known various places as Gleemonex (on ) or P. Fossil (boards & whatnot). I'm 35, married, and have a 20-month-old daughter. I'm a web editor and company blogger by day, unstoppable reader in general. I've been a DFW fan since I stumbled across A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, sometime in ... 1997? Anyway, it was while I worked at a bookstore in grad school. I've given that book as a gift to all of the readers in my life -- some more than once, probably -- and it's one of those books that just stays with me, always somewhere in my thoughts (in the best possible way). During the Olympics, I was going to write a post on the inanity of athlete interviews ("How great was it to win gold, Michael?"), and use excerpts from the Michael Joyce essay to back my argument that maybe we don't need to interview these people at all, considering that they've spent their lives developing one gift and we don't really need to see their lack in other areas (like insightful on-camera interviews), but I got distracted by reading the titular essay, then flipped to the David Lynch piece, then the one on the state fair ... and etc. etc. etc. I never did write the post.

As for IJ, I'm one of three people I know IRL who have actually read the whole thing; it's the strangest and best book I never wanted to read again. Eleven years since the fine, unemployed summer I devoured it, and phrases, passages, images, whole chapters are lodged permanently in my brain -- some so vile I wish I could forget them, some so funny they make me laugh randomly in the supermarket or on the street, and many so brilliant they just humble me, as a person, a reader, a would-be writer. So ... here I am, not much of a joiner, but doing this because it seems like the right time to do it and the right bunch of people to do it with.

Paula, 26, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which means my beloved copy of Infinite Jest - a first edition bought years back on a trip to L.A. - has been lugged around intercontinentally (if that's even a word). Every time I travel abroad, at least one third of my suitcase comes back stuffed with books. Luckily, my best friend (currently residing in Sweden) also suffers from the same literature compulsive disorder, so we're rejoicing at this opportunity to put our well-traveled copies to use. Finally a book club worth joining that laughs in the face of geographical barriers! Thank you, Team InfSum, for making this happen.