schweblog

Infinite Jest is one of those books that I’ve always struggled with. During life as an undergrad, there never seemed to be enough time to fit it in with my other required readings over the course of the summer. It would always get started and, a few hundred pages in, abandoned in lieu of the required reading for classes as the fall semester began. Having graduated, there’s not a single good reason why I can’t finish it. With no required reading on the horizon in the near future, I can spend as much or as little of my free time with it and expect to finish it.

Or can I? I’m a little worried.

Let’s start with a simple diagram from Amazon:

Clearly, it has a lot of words. And characters. And sentences. Outside of having to read that many words, a book containing this many words poses some interesting logistical challenges:

1. Mobility: The first edition has 1079 pages. The book is huge. There are so many pages that I imagine I could get away with calling it a “tome”. This makes carrying it around with you a it of a chore. Reading in bed is difficult, also, as the book’s spine will carve into your zyphoid as you try to get your bedtime reading in.
2. Footnotes: 98 of the aforementioned 1079 pages contain the book’s footnotes, some of which are totally useless and others that are key to understanding the plot. Flipping back and forth between the two is difficult (I personally use two bookmarks) and it can be discouraging when you’re just about to wrap up a section of the book and conclude a particularly long sitting when you flip back to check a footnote, only to find that you need to get through another 8 pages’ worth of footnotes before you’re really “finished” with the section.
3. No Chapters: Along with the footnotes, the novel defies narrative structures by arranging itself in a non-linear fashion. There are frequent flashbacks to prior years. Only you can’t really tell whether the flashback precedes or proceeds the last section because, in the fictitious world of Infinite Jest, time is subsidized. Each year is sold off to the highest bidder, giving them the choice of what the year will be referred to in posterity. (Resulting in names like “Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar” or “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment”–with no suggestion of how they are arranged.)
4. Other people: Outside of said mobility issues, the book elicits responses from people. Taking it out in public is just asking to be bothered by some stranger interested in what it’s about. I’m considering writing the publisher asking them to include dust jackets with the book that make it look like a very thick harlequin romance novel, so as to detract curious bystanders from interrupting my valuable reading time.
5. Non-words: Perhaps in hopes of avoiding repitition or simply because of the deficiencies of the English language, Wallace makes up words or uses incredibly colloquial or outdated or foreign phrases. (Explained quite well in this blog I found via Google.)

In spite of all these barriers, I’m managing to get through it. And quite quickly, I might add.