Triple Whammy III: Infinte Jest

Infinite Jest is just about the biggest whammy possible. Coming in at just over a thousand pages, it's a bonerfied giant tome. As Lenz would say.

And those pages are just packed--packed, I say--with content and ideas and six-course meals for thought. So much so that now the book relates to just about everything I read or hear about. For example, BOTH the other books I finished this weekend reminded me in their wildly different ways of Infinite Jest. (Then We Came to the End: group membership vs isolation, and the redemptive or map-eliminating aspects of each; The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (!): pretty much just unasked-for descriptions of chemistry.)

Finishing the book was a mixed pleasure, as I was tired and pressed for time. For several days I had been referring back to the beginning of the book, eying the dwindling number of pages remaining at the end, and wondering how we were going to pack everything in that would apparently need to happen. The answer is: we don't. We don't do that. We leave it as a bizarre puzzle for the reader to figure out. (Or, alternatively, a puzzle for the reader to say "Oh for god's sake" about and look up quickly on the internet.)

Reading this book was work, but a satisfying and gratifying kind of work. I had, like, equipment. There was my pen and special notebook for jotting down notes, questions, & timelines*, plus also I needed the Dictionary app on my iPhone. So much so that I booted the Phone app out of my iPhone's dock to make room for the Dictionary app, the social implications of which are somewhat disturbing.

If you love to read, don't be put off by the book's length or its esoteric vocabulary or its postmodern (post-postmodern? what does that even mean?) sensibilities.** I'm here to tell you: I've read the book and it is good. Dive in!


* Apparently there are good reader's guides available, which probably take care of the note-jotting and question-noting aspects.

** I took a seminar in college on postmodern lit. On the first day of class, the professor asked us for our conceptions of postmodernism. "Oh shit," I thought. "I thought SHE was going to tell US." I had no idea. However, a more prepared classmate offered his idea of postmodernism: "elitist crap." Those two words have really stuck with me. Even the professor acknowledged he was onto something.