For my dear friend, Eichimus, et al., and whoever else might have read this mammoth DFW tome and is still interested, regardless.

Here is a detailed description of the first draft of David Foster Wallace’s monster novel, Infinite Jest.

I only know two or three people that I am sure have actually read this book. (Has CP read it more than once? Note to self: ring up.)

Makes me wonder if I would ever have the fortitude to actually persevere through anything longer than 20-30 pages. (Hell, there are six line poems that I’ve been revising for years now.)

And for something that’s actually more my speed: the Codex Seraphinianus, which I think that I’ve linked to in some deep distant past, but it seems worth linking to again.

Actually, this is the link to the actual book: too bad I don’t have the money to spend on this thing…

3 thoughts on “For my dear friend, Eichimus, et al., and whoever else might have read this mammoth DFW tome and is still interested, regardless.”

  1. I haven’t . . Haven’t looked at that stuff about David Foster Wallace; I’m not sure who he is. But I did just follow the linkies to the Codex Seraphinianus; I remember reading about that in Hofstadter. It would be a nifty thing to have sitting on myself. I DON’T MEAN

    Excuse. Sitting on my shelf; it would be even more fun to think that I might write my own something like that some year. There’s something else this reminds me of, if only I could. Could. Durnabbit.

    Oh ah. The Voynich Manuscript. It’s like exactly the same thing only completely different.

    Fiddlefaddle, too.

  2. Gobs. You know, I’ve lapsed on my no-caffeine-intake plan this week, and it has me spouting off at the keyboard. Just as I type that someone in the kitchen here at the office just shattered what sounded like a previously-perfectly-intact glass plate.

    I started reading a little about that Infinite Jest thingy. Now you’ve of course got me all wanting to read whatever the hell it is. In my jittery-quickness I haven’t read far enough to really know anything except that the original manuscript sounds cool as hell.

    I still feel like I’m walking in in the middle of someone else’s conversation when I come here. Did I previously said that? DID I DID? I don’t know or remember or even partially reconstructive surgery. Gads.

    At any rate, aside from the length, is this something worth somebody’s time reading? Or are you bungling up the airwaves with more of the noisery that makes things so semi-intractible?

    I have mumbled right off the edge of the page

  3. Infinite Jest is a ridiculously long book that makes some nice points about addiction; whether it’s televisual or neurochemickal or etc. Whether it’s worth slogging through all 1088 pages of it (paperback version) is questionable. (One could say, for example, that it collapses under its own weight. Of pages, that is.) I enjoyed it, but I have a compulsion to read fantastically long books that is, perhaps, not very healthy.

    I don’t like the book as much as my friends do (Eichimus, et al., one of whom has read the damn thing twice!), and I always hesitate to recommend books this long.

    If you want to get a feel for David Foster Wallace, I would recommend both: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

    If you like those, A LOT, then I’d recommend Infinite Jest.

    As for being someone else’s conversation: sometimes it feels like that to me. So, take it as you will.

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