A SUPPOSEDLY FUN BOOK

I am about a third of the way through the late David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest", as part of the Infinite Summer online book club. My feelings so far: brilliant, self-indulgent, tedious, funny-in-that-darkly-comic-way, clever, inconsistent. I both love and hate the fact that DFW pretty much makes up words when the occasion calls for it (1). Which gets rather confusing when he also happens to summon his rather prodigious vocabulary of not-made-up words in the same context.

I love his vision of a dystopic near future. Years named after sponsors (2009 would be the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment"). Quebecois Separatists fighting U.S. experialism. Apres-Garde cinema. Very funny, very sardonic, very cyberpunk (in the way that modern fiction writers overtly eschew SF, while ingratiating themselves to it at the same time).

At the same time, he could have really used an editor. I mean, all the ultra-detailed chemical and physiological descriptions of real and/or fictional drugs that you will pretty much forget right away? The pages upon pages of tennis scores interspersed with the occasionally interesting bit of information? And those sentences that last forever (some brilliant, some just plain long). I read somewhere that part of the motivation for the digressions and the footnotes was to control the pacing and flow. But seriously - you could have easily had a 700 page masterpiece instead of a 1000 page flawed work of genius.

What else - There is a strong element of the meta throughout the book, where many of the themes and elements play out in other unrelated parts of the book. His use of language mixes formalisms with, like, the causal patois of the 1990s twenty-something. I like this a lot.

Overall, my enjoyment of this book is similar to how I feel about a lot of experimental art/music. The process is just as important as the work. An indulgence that seems hit-or-miss, but is perhaps necessary to this process. Parts of it are very frustrating, parts of it are confusing, parts of it tickle the cerebrum and parts of it just flat-out blow your mind away.

I am very glad I am reading it as part of a book club, since it provides context and discussion for the overall process. It lets me get through the harder parts knowing that there will be some kind of payoff on the discussion boards - some little connection contained therein that makes you go a-ha. Keepin' on keepin' on for now.



1. "Experialism" isn't a word? Well - it should be. I mean how else would you describe the forced expulsion of territory into foreign hands.(a)

a. Sorry - I promised myself that I wouldn't use footnotes, but it is simply too tempting this far into the book.