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The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

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Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#41

Post by cf »

e40 wrote: post #31
arkaic wrote: post #26

I found Infinite Jest extraordinarily compelling, hilarious, and endlessly entertaining. I wouldn't go as far to say that it was "hard to put down". The book will fatigue you at points, as there is such a density of ideas within a single page that you need to just step back for the day and take it all in. But I was inevitably drawn back every time to sit down and open Infinite Jest again and again. Maybe it was the p…

I love the way DFW makes these small, minute observations of life that always seem to make me go "yeaaaah I can relate too!" We need a word for that, in English. I had a very close friend that had an uncanny ability to find things about any situation that I would gloss over, but when he pointed it out, I would realize that I had missed seeing it but I completely agreed with it. And, weirdly, this friend also committe…

The word is insightful.

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#42

Post by thatcat »

yarrel wrote: post #36
jraines wrote: post #9

If anyone is daunted by Infinite Jest but undaunted by the fad of hating DFW, definitely start with his books of essays & journalism. IMO they're a lot more rewarding and enjoyable than his novels. I think E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction is essential reading. (PDF link: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf )

"Besides frequently losing itself in superfluous and wildly tangential flights of lexical diarrhea, the book suffers under the sheer burden of its incredible length." http://www.edrants.com/the-infinite-jest-review-that-dave-eg...

The depth of the tangents and jargon in IJ are an aesthetic DFW adopted to counter the clever minimalism so popular in commercial speech of the late 90s. He called it maximalism.

The burden is to some extent intentionally constructed; the reader must flip back between 2 bookmarks to read it at all since there are over >10% of the 1000 pages are footnotes located at the end of the book. It seems to be a meta-satire of two voices always present in late 90s US anti-depressant ads and the fine print that was always read quickly at the end. This burden forces the reader to constantly consider the "fine print" reality of the authors voice behind the fictional nonlinear narrative he is presenting you through the voice of other characters.

The form of the novel reflects the content of the message it presents, this is feature not a flaw.

The paragraph after the one you quote reads... "if you can come to terms with his dense and labored style, the rewards are often tremendous. There’s no doubt that Wallace’s talent is immense and his imagination limitless. When he backs off and gives his narrative some breathing room, he emerges as a consistently innovative, sensitive and intelligent writer."

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#43

Post by laxatives »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #32
laxatives wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I didn't like it for the first 300-400 pages either. But it very quickly became one of my favorite books. Its worth sticking it out to the end.

>300-400 pages >very quickly How good can a book be if it starts off bad and stays that way for so long, most books would have already ended?

I never said it starts off bad. DFW just makes a point to make the book inaccessible. It isn't meant to attract a wide audience, but many good things are initially dismissed because they aren't easy.

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#44

Post by somethingsometh »

tannhauser23 wrote: post #17
jraines wrote: post #9

If anyone is daunted by Infinite Jest but undaunted by the fad of hating DFW, definitely start with his books of essays & journalism. IMO they're a lot more rewarding and enjoyable than his novels. I think E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction is essential reading. (PDF link: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf )

Wait, what fad of hating him?

I've heard a few people say that everyone has this on their bookshelf but hasn't read it. It always sounds like people think it's on the bookshelf to look impressive. I read it and it was probably the funniest book I've ever read.

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#45

Post by jackstraw- »

jraines wrote: post #24
tannhauser23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what fad of hating him?

Well, before my latest attempt to quit Twitter, it seemed like a widespread opinion among kool kids from both the left & right that liking DFW was middlebrow posing. Just my definitely skewed impression.

Well, there was the movie about him that came out a year or two ago. I'm sure that contibuted to the spike, but honestly 95% of the people I've seen reading Infinite Jest in public are somewhere in the first 20 pages, and that's been the case since the mid 2000s. I don't think reading literary fiction to look cool is anything new.

“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#46

Post by dwaltrip »

e40 wrote: post #31
arkaic wrote: post #26

I found Infinite Jest extraordinarily compelling, hilarious, and endlessly entertaining. I wouldn't go as far to say that it was "hard to put down". The book will fatigue you at points, as there is such a density of ideas within a single page that you need to just step back for the day and take it all in. But I was inevitably drawn back every time to sit down and open Infinite Jest again and again. Maybe it was the p…

I love the way DFW makes these small, minute observations of life that always seem to make me go "yeaaaah I can relate too!" We need a word for that, in English. I had a very close friend that had an uncanny ability to find things about any situation that I would gloss over, but when he pointed it out, I would realize that I had missed seeing it but I completely agreed with it. And, weirdly, this friend also committe…

I'm sorry about your friend. That is sad to here. It sounds like he was a bright light during his time here.

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#47

Post by praneshp »

sharkweek wrote: post #33
praneshp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also String Theory (which is a collection of essays about Tennis). Also, is there a fad of hating him? Do his books have controversial content (like Ayn Rand, for example, who divides people)?

It's people who look at a book that's 1100 pages long (1600 if you use standard font/page sizes), and call it pretentious. Is it? Sure, but that doesn't make it any less of an absolutely insane/enjoyable journey. There are parts of this novel that absolutely shook me (the parts on addiction/suicide, and the "that if..." part on the halfway home), while others had me in tears laughing (the parts on the insurance claim…

Thanks for replying! After I asked here I googled around and saw DFW had some mental issues resulting in odd behavior. I then wondered if that is why there was a hating fad.

About pages, one of my childhood experiences was a popular girl getting everyone to laugh when I checked out one of Asimov's foundation trilogy books from the school library. Unfortunately she and I are close friends today so there is no "what goes around comes around" story to report :)

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#48

Post by bebop22 »

IJ is really one of the most wonderful books ever written, it was a long read but extremely rewarding. I love how it comes full circle, you get to the end and want to read it again. But most amazingly the central event of the plot is completely absent and up to the reader to figure out. The digital version makes the footnotes much much easier.

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#49

Post by jhanschoo »

cf wrote: post #41
e40 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the way DFW makes these small, minute observations of life that always seem to make me go "yeaaaah I can relate too!" We need a word for that, in English. I had a very close friend that had an uncanny ability to find things about any situation that I would gloss over, but when he pointed it out, I would realize that I had missed seeing it but I completely agreed with it. And, weirdly, this friend also committe…

The word is insightful.

I think "empathizable" Igor "relatable" are better candidate, though they lack the sudden quality that parent post has.

Re: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest (2009)

#50

Post by gglitch »

andrewfromx wrote: post #2

show of hands, how many HN readers have tried to read Infinite Jest and never made it all the way thru?

I got 200-300 pages in twice before finally, on the third try, getting over the hump, after which I couldn't put it down, and in fact re-read it a couple years later. I think the key to enjoying it is thinking of it less as a singular linear story, and more as a large portfolio of short stories, many of which can be assembled more or less linearly to tell a mostly cohesive story (though many of the other stories are peripheral to the main thread). This might sound ridiculous, but DFW was a masterful composer of short stories, and once you adapt to enjoying each little section of IJ on its own terms, the whole becomes much, much more enjoyable. Thrilling, even - I frequently found that the more dull or challenging a given short story was, the more powerfully it ended. There's something almost musical about how he could slowly mount tension (as tedium, or difficulty, or obscurity) to an almost unbearable pitch, only to sublimate it in the end. My .02 anyway. I know many people find other people's enthusiasm for his work annoying, but I'm not totally sure why. They're just stories. There's nothing fundamentally toxic about it.
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