fiction files redux discussion

Reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

With the approach of winter, the holidays and year’s end, now might be a good time to pick up David Foster Wallace’s novel on family, addiction and depression: Infinite Jest. (Again.) Interested?

I don’t recommend IJ to too many people. It’s long; the endnotes can be a pain; and the sheer number of plots and characters can make it a frustrating first read.

But I also agree with Nabokov: “One cannot read a book; one can only reread it.” The first time through involves getting a lay of the land, figuring out which characters are which and who relates to whom. Doing this as a GROUP, perhaps we can help each other find our way through.

Here’s what we propose:

Friday, November 23rd is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving. Let's officially kick off the conversation of the first 65 pages of this novel about our consumptive society that Friday. (Including Endnote#24 – James’ Incandenza’s filmography, which includes the film “Infinite Jest”.)

This should allow folks three weeks to get a copy of the book from their library or Abebooks.com or a friend who has “been meaning to get to it.” Then talk yourself into it, and get ALL your friends to join us (save for the one whose book you took.) Starting November 1, that’s just 20 pages a week to get us started.

Betwixt now and then, I’ll post a few introductory notes which (might) help put things in a bit of context. (Don’t worry; with this book it’s pretty hard to have any note be “a spoiler” save for a few key plot points. (“Time” is usually an issue on first read, because the author shuttles back-and-forth in time and the years themselves are now sponsored by consumer goods’ companies: Year of the Whopper, Year of the Dairy Products from the American Heartland, Year of Glad, etc. (But as I say, we’ll get to all of that.)))

We’ll also be posting milestones for further reading; I’m looking forward to talking about these first 65 pages, starting on that Friday, November 23rd.

In the meantime, here is what we would ask:

a) If you’re interested, raise your hand, let us know you’ll be joining in. (It’s really painless once you get going…. Honest.) If you’ve read it before, let us know that too. If you have issues/questions/recommendations/suggestions, ditto.

b) If you’ve read the book and hated it, or tried to read the book and put it down because you hated it, we understand. It’s not for everyone. But the purpose of this thread is to talk about the discontents this novel touches on in our society, in literature, and in our lives. If you’re unhappy with the book itself, the author, friends of the author, this moderator, MY friends, please move on. (We're just looking to INCREASE the information-to-noise ratio, the more time we spend on why folks hate the book, the less time we'll be talking about what draws us in, excites us and makes (some of) us consider it a great American novel. Besides, nobody likes whiners on a long hike.)

c) In the spirit of the one who brought us to the Fiction Files (was it in the Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken?), remember: “This is a literary love-in, baby…” Relax. Enjoy.

You've laid out such an excellent plan, Hugh! How could I possibly say no? Count me in. This seems like the ideal scenario for my 2nd reading of IJ.

Oh, man. I want to so badly say yes, but don't know how I can read the book again this year.

The good news is I've got a few ancillary books that I am slowly making my way through, so I will definitely be a part of this even if only reading bits and pieces of the primary text.

I'm with Patty - I can't say no to such a well-thought out plan. And the first 65 pages makes it seem a little less overwhelming. :)

I just closed on my house so over the next few weeks I'll be tackling home improvements in preparation for actually moving in, which ultimately means I don't have a shred of time to tackle IJ for the FIRST TIME, but I can't resist the enthusiasm. I have purchased a copy. I'll see what I can do.

Excuses, excuses. ;) We better at least hear some updates about your home library during that time! :) eeek I'm so excited for you!!!!

I'm in. :)

I'll need to get my dogeared copy back from Sarah fille, though, as it has got all my notes in the margins!

Whoa. Great news and now I am completely intimidated! First Patty (which is like setting the bar at 30 feet for starters) steps up, (maybe, Deadeye Dan (c'mon Dan!)), then Leslie, Kerry, AND Michael -- this is gonna be some kinda discussion. Good news is: I can sit back and let the smart folks talk. Very much looking forward to this.

How sweet of you to be intimidated by me, Hugh! Just continue showering me with unwarrented praise and everything will be fine. :)

Thoughts on “Time” in IJ

One of the things that’s a bit disorienting at the outset is that the novel opens with a Tarantino-like flash-forward; our hero, Hal Incandenza, is being interviewed for college admission (in the Year of Glad). Most of the rest of the novel (again this is not a “Spoiler”, as much as it is “helpful hint”) will take place earlier at Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA) where Hal is younger and a tennis prodigy, making his way through high school.

As mentioned earlier, DFW gives us historical (hysterical?) context with his use of “Subsidized Time”, where years are sponsored by corporations. If you would like to figure out for yourself what years correspond to what sponsorships, ignore this next bit, but according to others whose math is better than mine:

Infinite Jest was published in 1996; its actions are set in the (soon-to-come) 21st century
2002: Year of the Whopper
2003: Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
2004: Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar
2005: Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken
2006: Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag
2007: Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-Wife-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade for Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems for Home, Office, or Mobile (sic)
2008: Year of the Dairy Products from the American Heartland
2009: Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
2010: Year of Glad

After really enjoying anything, everything and everyone connected with the fiction files, this is officially what I came here for.

I'm clearing my dance card for this one.

This will be my second reading of the novel as it was presented. Some of the ideas in Elegant Complexity brought me back to specific sections.

This is very exciting. Perfect timing, Hugh. What a nice way to launch a great discussion!

I'm getting more and more excited as the posts keep rolling in. I don't know how I am going to stop myself from reading the whole thing for a third time. But I definitely want to make my way through Elegant Complexity, and again through Burn's David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest especially as there is a new edition out.

I'm in. I tried reading Infinite Jest last spring and gave up, thus rating it 1 star which really isn't fair since I hadn't actually finish the darn thing! My step daughter raves about this book so I'd like to at least give it some degree of real effort. I'll pick up Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace from the library, so that will get me primed, and I have Infinite Jest on hold (plus my step-daughter has a copy) so I'm good to go!

Thoughtful way to approach the book.

IN.

I have trusted friends with very mixed reviews of this behemoth. Seems like I need to decide for myself. Copy procured and hope to be joining. When you break it down over a long haul this seems do-able. No better time to read this than with a group of super dorks. Thank you, Hugh!

Are people familiar with this site?:
http://infinitesummer.org/index

Leslie wrote: "Excuses, excuses. ;) We better at least hear some updates about your home library during that time! :) eeek I'm so excited for you!!!!"

Thanks Leslie! Right now it's all about paint and flooring. Library will come later!

Guys! My boyfriend Manny has decided to join the IJ discussion! He just joined Goodreads and Fiction Files! We both got our copies yesterday. It's going to be fun to read it together.

Thank you for invite, Kerry! I'm excited and humbled to be a part of this group.

Manuel wrote: "Thank you for invite, Kerry! I'm excited and humbled to be a part of this group."

Yay! I'm happy you're here!

I don't approve of this low-brow pulp fiction, but I suppose nothing will stop you reckless people.

I was wandering lonely as a cloud through cyberspace when I saw this item:

In the D.F.W. Archives: An Unfinished Story About the Internet

Awesome, welcome to the group and to the IJ read, Manny! Will this be your first read of the tome?

So excited about the great group that's shaping up for this, and although Hugh has already set the well-thought out ground rules (it's a love-in, baby) I do hope that you will continue to heckle us, Adrian.

Manny: Welcome. Looking forward to hearing what you think of IJ. Have you read it before?

Yes, Les... I should admit my choice of Infinite Winter came in part from the inspiration of folks at the Infinite Summer read and well, the Shakespeare connections in the novel.

And Adrian: Hope you'll join us for a Words worth (or two) of amicable conversation.

Manny and I are both Infinite Jest virgins so we will be relying on this group's knowledge and insight. Be gentle with us!

;-)

Also an IJ virgin, Kerry. Seems like a good mix.

Kerry wrote: "Manny and I are both Infinite Jest virgins so we will be relying on this group's knowledge and insight. Be gentle with us!

;-)"

With a book this big, it's new every time. In that spirit, I thought I'd offer a bit of a set up:

A Few UpFront, Plot-Related Literary References for Your Consideration:
Hamlet and The Brothers Karamazov

It’s not too surprising that a novel that takes its title from Act 5, Scene 1 of Hamlet has “Hal” Incandenza as a central character.

Like Hamlet, the novel opens with Hal’s father (James) dead. His mother (“the Moms”) may (or may not) be sleeping with Hal’s uncle (her half brother) Charles. James Incandenza is both Hal’s problematic, paternal influence but also, like Yorick, an “entertainer”, a filmmaker whose short films (Infinite Jest I through IV) will ultimately prove to, uh, have a life beyond James. (‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!’)

As a bookend to these connections to Hamlet, there are certain filial connections to The Brothers Karamazov.

We’ll get into various Dostoevskian influences later (DFW wrote a glowing essay on the encyclopedic biography of Fyodor by Joseph Frank), but for the purposes of understanding the plot, Hal has two brothers:

Older brother Orin is a punter for the Phoenix Cardinals, who like the eldest Karamazov, Dmitri is a “sensualist”. (Orin particularly enjoys sleeping with single mothers (as biographer D.T. Max tells us, DFW did as well.)) Also like Dmitri, he has an earlier complicated relationship with a woman that continues to affect him; his former fiancé, Joelle Van Dyne, who was featured in his father’s short films.

Hal is the middle child and like Wikipedia's description of middle-child Ivan Karamazov, he is: “a rationalist, disturbed especially by the apparently senseless suffering of the world, [and is] depicted as highly intelligent.” In fact, Hal has an eidetic/photographic memory and has memorized the Oxford English Dictionary.

Hal’s younger brother, Mario, is both physically and mentally challenged; he's an echo of Alexei (Alyosha) Karamazov, an innocent – loving and kind. The dialogues between Hal and Mario are some of the most touching (and, in their own way, revelatory) in the book.

I hope I haven't given too much away and this overview of the Incandenzas helps.

Thanks, Hugh!

Patty and Hugh, thank you for the welcomes.
As Kerry so eloquently stated, I have not read IJ. It has however, been on my radar for a year now. I look forward to the shared journey with Kerry, and the lot of you.

On my 2nd read through of this massive work, I am going to pay attention for any reference to 1. Parabola, 2. Circle, 3. Ellipse, or 4. Hyperbola.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conic_se...

DFW was quite the math head too. Please refer to his excellent book on Georg Cantor's Set Theory, _Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity_

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-More...

Looking forward to rejoining this group after an extended absence. I note that I am still officially a "moderator", and suspect I still retain "Old Dad" status unless someone has caught up with me in age while I've been gone. ;)

Thanks, Michael. I will admit I gave "Everything and More" a shot and found myself stumped by a good bit of the math, so am glad to hear we've got you on board as resident mathematician and all-around sage.

Has anyone read this on an old-school kindle reader? This book's been on my list for a long time, (keeps getting passed over for less daunting works) but I loooove DFW as an essayist and am excited about diving in, espeially with a group that seems pretty darn smart to talk about it with. But with my old dinosaur of a tablet I'm concerned with fussing with the myriad footnotes, which is generally a chore, and living in Turkey, can't be sure I can pick up a hard copy anywhere. So's anyone tried out the .mobi version? How's the formatting.

Hi Sarahlizp, I don't e-read, but I have talked to a few people while they were in the middle of e-reading IJ ('cause I'm nosey). Two different people told me they preferred the e-footnotes, one of them was reading it on a kindle. So I'm thinking you'll probably be fine, and you won't have to lug that tome around!

Funny story, a friend who doesn't read much gave me my first copy of IJ, I flipped through it, wasn't interested, and used it as a door stop for almost a year before I got rid of it.

Being able to jump to the endnotes is definitely one of the advantages! I had/have IJ on an old-school Kindle and loved that it was three pounds lighter when traveling. (But as with all e-books, I miss the physical experience of knowing where I'm at in 3D space. (Something to do with a lifelong addiction to bookmarks too, I think.))

The first time I read Infinite Jest I did so in paperback and I traveled with it which was a bit of a struggle. The second time I read it I did so on a Kindle and found the built in dictionary invaluable. Jumping back and forth between the text and footnotes was also a breeze. I can say that I had a better than expected experience with the Kindle.

By the time I go to the end of the paperback it was in pretty rough shape and ended up dying. I replaced it with a hardcover edition which should hold up better. The question remains whether I read the hardback or the ebook this time around.

As Michael has mentioned, from the opening scene, DFW introduces mathematical language: “My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair.” “…reading directly out of the sheaf inside his arms’ ellipse…”

You’ll also notice the acronym O.N.A.N.C.A.A. in this opening… which, for our sports fans IS related to the N.C.A.A. insofar, as – throughout this novel (more or less ten years in the future) – the U.S.A. is now part of O.N.A.N., a significant enough plot-point to introduce this:

Geopolitics in the Year of the Trial-Sized Dove Bar

O.N.A.N. stands for Organization of North American Nations – the single country that will include: the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Bible Buffs will recognize good ole Onan, from the Book of Genesis, who, while in the midst of intercourse, intentionally “spilled his seed on the ground”. For that sin, he was considered wicked in the Yahweh’s eyes and has spent the rest of history as the name associated with masturbation and the rationale some folks now deem the act (masturbation) a sin “according to the Bible”. (For DFW, Onan is the perfect Patron Saint for a novel about the narcissistic and addictive natures of pleasure and consumption.)

So what’s the relevance of O.N.A.N. or ANY geopolitical situation to this novel’s plot?

Turns out the creation of this state of O.N.A.N. was unhappy news for a number of folks, including the Québécois. These historically separatist-leaning Canadians are especially hacked off about what is called “The Great Convexity” (or as it is called from the former U.S. side of the border, “The Great Concavity”), a region north of Buffalo, designated for waste disposal. The U.S. President positioned it as a “gift” to Canada but it is where U.S. garbage – radioactive and non- -- is routinely launched via catapult.

One particularly radical and violent fringe of the angry Québécois is Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (or A.F.R.), known to those in the former United States as the Wheelchair Assassins. We’ll get into how they all come to have a wheelchair in common later, but suffice it to say, they want Canada to secede from O.N.A.N.and are single-minded in wanting to find the secret weapon that they might use in a terrorist strike.

James Incandenza’s film Infinite Jest may be that weapon they need. And James’ wife, Avril (Hal’s mother, aka the Moms) happens to have been born in Quebec, a fact which raises more than a couple eyebrows.

More on them and O.N.A.N. later on in our program.

Count me in, too.

Thanks, gang. I'm in! I'll start it directly after I Claudius. And can we start a thread about e-readers vs physical books? I loooove books. If there was a perfume that smelled like an old book I'd wear it. But I also think the most important thing about reading is getting the words in your head, and that getting attached to the artifact is rather beside the point. But then, I'm also an ex-pat and can't afford to carry around nine thousand books with me, so my perspective might be skewed.

Wonderful . . . happy you are joining, Edwin!

@sarahlizp - here are links to the two threads I remember on ebooks:

ebook debate: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2...

An ebooks thread!: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2...

I'm so glad to see so many people joining in on this group read. And Hugh, thanks for the etymology lesson. I never knew where onanism came from, nor had I made the connection to the Organization of North American Nations acronym.

Manny and I started last night. As one who tends to lay down in bed holding her book above her to read, this HUGE novel is proving difficult! I think by the end my paperback copy, like Dan's, might be destroyed.

Hugh you are a wonderfully insightful moderator!

Les, I'd seen that you were reading the book and I was about to start, too. I went to send a message asking if you'd want to read it together and saw this group. Looking forward to it all.

I would have been honored with that request, Edwin. You are in luck though because this is an amazing group of people. Between them and you being a part of the group read, perhaps I will actually stick through one completely! Welcome to FFR too!

This is where I say something about still having to read Proust, but for once I will defer that. It does sound like a good plan, and I have been on a DFW tear of late. Thanks to Hugh for the suggestion.

Hugh wrote: "Hal is the middle child ..."


Hello Hugh, et al,

Just found your group this morning. I'm about 1/3 of the way through my first read and loving this book. I hope you won't mind me pointing out one small error. Hal is the youngest child and Mario is the second son. I don't think this will radically change anyone's experience of IJ, but just in case...

Jim, Thanks for the correction/clarification. I must admit I'd been going more on the relationship of Hal and Mario, but you are right: Hal is actually the youngest and Mario is the middle child. (Don't know if that blows the Brothers K comparison, but I'll let you all decide.)

I might be crazy, but I'm going to do this thing with you guys. I already read "Infinite Jest" this year in September, but Wallace is one of my absolute favorites and I'd love to spend some time talking with you awesome people about the guy's greatest book.

Ry wrote: "I might be crazy, but I'm going to do this thing with you guys. I already read "Infinite Jest" this year in September, but Wallace is one of my absolute favorites and I'd love to spend some time ta..."

Any pieces of information/advice I give here in this post can be discarded without fear of hurting my feelings. That being said...

-This last time reading the book, I found that the best and easiest way to read Infinite Jest is in little chunks of thirty minutes or so. Wallace said regarding the book that there are lots of little line breaks where "it's pretty obvious you're supposed to go out and have a smoke or something"--I suggest doing something like that every 30 minutes to an hour.
-Take advantage of ten minute breaks in your day where you can read two or three pages (seriously, even this much is enough to keep your ball rolling.
-Reading this book, it seems to me, relies heavily on momentum.
-Keep two bookmarks: one for the main text, one for the endnotes.
-Keep notes--write in the margins (please!). This one is actually for me...I love reading people's marginalia to see what they say.
-Have fun!

http://bookavore.tumblr.com/post/2833...

Just found this: it's an awesome resource for reading "Infinite Jest." Someone actually did all this.

http://infiniteatlas.com/

Ry! Good to see you, buddy. Looking forward to your contributions and thanks for the reading tips. (I'm all about the marginalia, too.)

So nice to see everyone here. If any first timers are annoyed and want graphic support, I can send some pics of a few key diagrams in a Goodreads message.

Posting them here would be one way to do it, but I thought it was more fun to read the book the first time without study guides.

Welcome to everyone who is new to the group. Many of us know some of us. A very few people know almost all of us. Happy to get to know you too!

Special welcome to Manuel. Will this be the first book you and Kerry will be reading together? You'll have things to joke about for a long time... :)

Love that Boston site, Ry. Nice find.