Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace discussion

I don't know how many rookies vs vets of reading this book there are, but I have read it twice now, and there are several ways to approach reading it. Even another category might be readers who have started IJ previously and put it down, because it is admittedly difficult.so here goes... I will reserve my first few tips for a day or 2 to see what pops up here. Veterans, let's go!

I've never read DFW, but I've read PoMo.

So, because its a week or so before the scheduled start of this project, if there is anyone who is a DFW total newbie, I would recommend reading a few of his essays, just to get an idea of his style, where his head is, and his glorious sense of humor. A couple that come to mind are... A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again, Getting Away From Pretty Much Being Away From It All, Consider the Lobster. I think these are all available as $.99 downloads from the play store, or iTunes. There are also elements of all three in IJ and you will see them as they occur.

Bird Brian wrote: "I don't know whether this is exactly a tip, but I took more than the usual amount of notes when I read it, and I was glad I did. IJ starts off with several separate story lines, and it was sometime..."

All of my notes are in the margins and underlined, so on subsequent readings I can revisit my thoughts.

I am nervous about starting... thanks for these tips

Mary wrote: "I am nervous about starting... thanks for these tips"

you and me, too. :)

i have a kindle version but now i'm seriously thinking of getting my own paper copy as well.

I highly reccomend a paperback... Mine is covered on mamy pages with notes, heavily underlined in places. I guess because i wanted to remind myself of what i was thinking for future reads...

i can make notes in the kindle version and never run out of margin space and even search them, which is actually easier than paper. but the footnote issue, for example...

Marieke wrote: "Mary wrote: "I am nervous about starting... thanks for these tips"

you and me, too. :)

i have a kindle version but now i'm seriously thinking of getting my own paper copy as well."

No need too be nervous.... If you can stick with it through the first 250 or so pages, the rewards will be there. If you aren't familiar with DFW, his verbose sentence structure can be intimidating, but it's nothing that can't be overcome.

Verbose. Ha! I'm getting used to huge block paragraphs with barely a spacing.

One of the hardest things about reading IJ is the endless amount of footnotes. They are PART of the story, and occur at seemingly, at first random places... And in my opinion should be visited as soon as possible after you come to them. Some are informative, add to the story, and some are simply hilarious, but all are there for a reason. They help make the story flow in many places, and set up future action. There are several that you will refer back to several times throughout the book. I have read reviews by several people who say they didn't read them as they occur, and I feel that sometimes they may have missed a point. But maybe that's just me... My recommendation is to read them as they occur, as soon as possible along with the regular text. WARNING... Footnote 304 gets refered to early in the book as part of another footnote, and this was confusing to me, I vacillated back and forth as to whether to read it. It becomes apparent later on why, but save it for when it occurs as a regular part of the story... Just saying...if someone disagrees, I would be interested as to why you think so.

Yep. I know about footnotes, too. I read House of Leaves. the book that introduced me to PoMo.

Aloha wrote: "Yep. I know about footnotes, too. I read House of Leaves. the book that introduced me to PoMo."

Ok inhale to plead "clueless" ... PoMo? This is the second time I have come across a reference to tthis, and I feel like I should know.... Duh? Fill me in!

i think it's postmodernism, but i might be mistaken...those in the know fill me in, too! :)

Marieke wrote: "i think it's postmodernism, but i might be mistaken...those in the know fill me in, too! :)"

Yep.... Hey makes sense too!

Aloha wrote: "Yep. I know about footnotes, too. I read House of Leaves. the book that introduced me to PoMo."


Ok inhale to plead "clueless" ... PoMo? This is the second time I have come across a reference to tthis, and I feel like I should know.... Duh? Fill me in!

Although heavy footnotes aren't necessarily a feature... Thanks for the vernacular update.... We early seniors dont get on the first try all the time!

I'm relatively a newbie to postmodernism or PoMo or pomo (all small caps). The pomo veterans say it in small caps. I happen to like the big cap/small cap combo. "pomo" looks to me like "porno" at first glance. For people addicted to the genre, it is pomo porno. Boy, have I turbo charged myself to the top of the pomo list with Women and Men, though. Give that a try after IJ.

Then there are the special category of encyclopedic novels, which some pomo novels fall under.

Aloha wrote: "I'm relatively a newbie to postmodernism or PoMo or pomo (all small caps). The pomo veterans say it in small caps. I happen to like the big cap/small cap combo. "pomo" looks to me like "porno" a..."

wow you just made me laugh. my problem is that i just keep thinking of po boys. can we throw some food porn in there? Consider the Lobster...

Lobster, yum!!! You know, in the DFW biography, Wallace was disturbed by the sight of a bunch of people stuffing their faces with the poor lobster. He wrote something about that.

Po boys! Didn't get enuf porno pomo...

1. I recommend using two bookmarks, so you can easily flip back and forth between the endnotes and where you are in the story.

2. Keep a dictionary handy there is great vocab to pick up.

3. This book is very detailed and dense, so slow down and really absorb everything.

4. Most of all enjoy this amazing piece of work! Honestly no book I have ever read before, or since reading this has ever lived up to it. It is truly the best book I have ever read.

Michael wrote: "1. I recommend using two bookmarks, so you can easily flip back and forth between the endnotes and where you are in the story.

2. Keep a dictionary handy there is great vocab to pick up.

3. This..."

Thank you, Michael.:)

Now that we're on the pomo bandwagon, i STILL cannot figure out the difference between a lot of modernist and pomo novels, although i've figured out that the latter tend to be more playful and metafictional. But somewhere in the middle between the periods they blur for me...

Traveller wrote: "Now that we're on the pomo bandwagon, i STILL cannot figure out the difference between a lot of modernist and pomo novels, although i've figured out that the latter tend to be more playful and meta..."

Wallace didn't really think of his work as post-modern. I don't remember his exact quote, but something along the lines of his work not having the same concerns as Pynchon, Coover, etc. I'll see if I can find that quote?

Do most of the members think of IJ as post-modern? And if so, what exactly does post-modern mean to you?

Jim wrote: "Wallace didn't really think of his work as post-modern.."

I personally didn't think of it as pomo, more as a sort of Bizarro, but i think that DFW was supposed to have been part the group that contains De Lillo, Gaddis, Franzen and Mitchell. What is it called again... -it's at the tip of my tongue... (I mean something besides pomo- one of them did coin a phrase for the group, but i can't remember it now)

Though i must tell you, that those authors are, most of them, and including Wallace, also classed 'officially' as pomo authors, by many "authorities". Wikipedia also puts them in there.

From one of my fave lit. periods textbooks:

I hope we're not hijacking this thread too much, but anyway, from The Postmodern,:
Jameson argues, however, the postmodern ‘is not just another word for the description of a particular style. It is also . . . a periodising concept whose function is to correlate the emergence of new formal features in culture with the emergence of a new type of social life and a new economic order.

--Simon Malpas The Postmodern (Kindle Locations 624-626). Kindle Edition.

But the characteristics of that style would seem to be many; here is a useful list: http://postmodernblog.tumblr.com/post...

Jim wrote: "Wallace didn't really think of his work as post-modern."

Ah, this might help a bit, though it's still not what i was looking for:

According to Wallace, his goal had been to show readers how to live a fulfilled, meaningful life. “Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being,” he once said. Good writing should help readers to “become less alone inside.” Wallace’s desire to write “morally passionate, passionately moral fiction,” as he put it in a 1996 essay on Dostoyevsky, presented him with a number of problems. For one thing, he did not feel comfortable with any of the dominant literary styles. He could not be a realist. The approach was “too familiar and anesthetic,” he once explained. Anything comforting put him on guard. “It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most ‘familiarity’ is mediated and delusive,” he said in a long 1991 interview with Larry McCaffery, an English professor at San Diego State.

quoted from here: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Fo...

Traveller wrote: "I personally didn't think of it as pomo, more as a sort of Bizarro, but i think that DFW was supposed to have been part the group that contains De Lillo, Gaddis, Franzen and Mitchell. What is it called again... -it's at the tip of my tongue... (I mean something besides pomo- one of them did coin a phrase for the group, but i can't remember it now) "

I think you're thinking of encyclopedic novels, which I'm starting to get into. I've accumulated a bunch of hardbacks that I'm going to hit after Proust, or as breathers between Proust. Knowing myself, I'm probably going to read all 7 parts of In Search of Lost Time as one novel without interruptions.

Traveller wrote: "Now that we're on the pomo bandwagon, i STILL cannot figure out the difference between a lot of modernist and pomo novels, although i've figured out that the latter tend to be more playful and meta..."

It's an ambiguous term for me too and gets all the more confused whenever I try to understand it. Going by this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...

I'm mostly reading post-modern literature but now Mitchell doesn't feature in it so there! more confusion.Wallace comes under the literary movements like Postmodern literature, hysterical realism, metamodernism i.e post-postmodernism which can be applied to his essays and since I'm yet to read a huge part of IJ, I really can't say how 'modern' it is.

Ah, i do think that hysterical realism might have been one of the terms i was looking for. I've heard him classed under that before as well.

Postmodernism is a huge term, though, which spans the arts through from literature to architecture.

..and yes, one of the distinguishing features in literature, does seem to be it's self-referential or "meta" character.

I went with the nieces and nephews to see the Nutcracker yesterday. I was struck by how meta-meta it is! Never thought about it that way before.

Apologies, carry on...I'm learning a lot...mostly that discussions about literary genre in the contemporary age is above my head. :/

LOL, Marieke, hysterical realism sounds just hysterical to me as well!

The Nutcracker ballet? Oh, no i guess it would be the movie.

Marieke wrote: "i can make notes in the kindle version and never run out of margin space and even search them, which is actually easier than paper. but the footnote issue, for example..."

Here Is My Tale—The Trials of The E-Readers!—A Cautionary Tale!
I decided against the hardcopy, knowing my wrists would not survive the strain. My next decision was which e-reader to go with. They all have their own + & - and I weighed the many options available on my I-Pad. I could go w/Nook, Kobo, I-Books or Kindle. Even Sony onto my Bluefire which I do love.

But I went w/the Kobo (@$9.99) because of it's ability to track reading stats, which I like. In the meantime I discover on the Kindle you can go online & access all your notes & highlights, even c & p from there. Now this was a gift from the God's, a thing I had wished for from the very beginning. All that typing—out the window, a thing of the past. So...I go DL IJ samples into all my readers trying to figure out which one REALLY suits ME best. This was after I'd started reading & the book on Kobo was not impressing me. I would turn the page, to a page I've never been & there would be this huge chunk already highlighted—that I couldn't delete. A word that I had highlighted, say, murated, would be on a different page altogether.

The book looked & felt the best on I-Books. It also opens immediately where on Kobo and Kindle it takes forever. I like the notes in I-Book but nobody has a place like Kindle where you can just go copy them. By then I had pretty much decided to just order a hardcopy to go along w/my Kobo.

Then disaster struck. I never realized you can't access your Kobo books when offline. Now I was online last night when I went to open IJ to begin reading, but it wouldn't open! Kept saying DL failed! I went to their website & to My Library which acknowledged there was a problem, for me to contact CS at 8AM! In the help I found out if one were forced to resynch their book(s) all their notes & highlights would be lost! I'm only 100+ pages in & I already have over 100 notes/highlights! They are precious to me.

So off to Amazon I went & DL it (@$2.99) & out of curiosity went back to my Kobo & it was THEN my book decided to make it's appearance, as if by magic. Sorry, I need my book when I'm ready to read it. Also, they (Kobo) don't appear to be as forgiving as Amazon, who will allow you to return/exchange even e-books, at least from what I read on their (Kobo) help page. Major turn-off number two.

So I guess after I order the hardcopy I'll end up w/three copies. Just perfect for the three bookmarking system, ey?

Traveller--it was actually the ballet. It was a performance put on by a local ballet school so the dancers ranged in age from four or five (they were the cutest mice!!) to high schoolers (and some grown ups playing some of te guests at the party in the opening scene). I was pretty impressed. My 7-year old nephew was quite interested, briefly, in the toe shoes (or whatever they are called) but was disappointed that the seven-headed Mouse King was not played by seven people wearing one costume.

Wordsmith--wow...sorry to hear that things got so complicated!

Never stall looking-up an end-note by thinking I'll get to that after finishing this sentence. In some cases, it could take forever for the full stop to appear ;)

Sounds nice, Marieke. :)

LOL, Garima! Actually i've become quite used to the walls of text by now. But the story *cough, ok, what story?* ...but the text has not really drawn me in yet.

I complied a list of my favorite reviews of this book here: http://www.goodreads.com/user_status/...

Many of these helped me tremendously with reading the book.

Thanks, Stephen!

I earmarked whatever page I was on in the footnotes, but an extra bookmarker seems like a pretty good idea, particularly if you care about keeping your books in mint-y condition.

Traveller wrote: "Jim wrote: "Wallace didn't really think of his work as post-modern.."

I personally didn't think of it as pomo, more as a sort of Bizarro, but i think that DFW was supposed to have been part the gr..."
hysterical realism?

Jerry wrote: "So, because its a week or so before the scheduled start of this project, if there is anyone who is a DFW total newbie, I would recommend reading a few of his essays, just to get an idea of his styl..."

Great idea, Jerry. I'll be reading Girl With Curious Hair in preparation for an upcoming IJ buddy read. I'm definitely a newbie, guys!

Aloha wrote: "Lobster, yum!!! You know, in the DFW biography, Wallace was disturbed by the sight of a bunch of people stuffing their faces with the poor lobster. He wrote something about that."

Very interesting and insightful, Aloha!:)

Stephen M wrote: "I complied a list of my favorite reviews of this book here: http://www.goodreads.com/user_status/...

Many of these helped me tremendously with reading the book."

Thank you, Stephen.:)

Wordsmith wrote: "Marieke wrote: "i can make notes in the kindle version and never run out of margin space and even search them, which is actually easier than paper. but the footnote issue, for example..."

Here Is ..."

Interesting topic, Wordsmith. I feel for you and the less than positive experience you had.. I, for one, will be reading IJ on the Nook. Has anyone tried it via B&N? If so, what were your experiences?