The Infinite Summer people got me to start re-reading Infinite Jest, but I'm not really going to attempt to hold to their proposed reading schedule. Not because I find it hard to find time to read, but because I have trouble putting it down to go to sleep, let alone in order to keep pace with an online reading group.
I've been reading a bunch of the commentary that's already been posted (see here for an early round-up, and here for the thoughts of a bunch of political bloggers), and I have to admit, I find a lot of it baffling. There's a lot of hating on the footnotes, and while I will admit that the infamous filmography footnote is something that only really makes sense later, footnote 304 has also come in for a lot of derision. I find that incomprehensible, as footnote 304 is one of my favorite bits of the entire book-- it's an infodump presented in the form of an anecdote about a student plagiarizing a term paper from an overwrought academic article. This is one of many bits in this book that convince me I could never really make it as a novelist-- it's way better than anything I could hope to produce.
I'm also a little puzzled by the common complaints about the book starting slowly, and people feeling like they don't understand what's going on. This strikes me as kind of odd, as they're not even 100 pages into an 1100 page book-- you're not supposed to have a solid idea of the plot that early on.
Much as I hate fans-are-slans arguments, I wonder if this isn't an area where reading genre fiction helps-- I'm typing this in a room full of (mostly) SF books, many of them multi-volume epics running to thousands of pages. I'm not particularly intimidated by great big thick volumes whose plot arc isn't obvious early on-- I'm perfectly happy to roll with a book for a few hundred pages before I find out what the main plot is, provided it's entertaining along the way. And Infinite Jest is very good, right from the beginning.
Even the endnotes. I particularly recommend #304.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
It's like with music. Sometimes you listen to a song mainly for the lyrics, even for the story the lyrics tell. But often, the lyrics are secondary, and the music is what really transports you. For me, there are some books I read for plot, and I can't wait to find out what happens next, what the great answer is to the mystery that's been unfolding. But, much more often, I'm there for the "music": I want to know the characters, to see through their eyes, to experience the world of the book, to feel what they feel.
That said, there needs to be some sort of forward motion... I like for things to happen, and to see how these beautiful characters deal with their problems. But I think I'd miss a lot if I only read books that focused primarily on plot. Infinite Jest is a world deeper and wider than many I've experienced in fiction, and I'm enjoying exploring it for a while.
Posted by: Joel Bass | July 1, 2009 1:20 PM
Agreed. And nice to see someone sticking up for #304 and the notes in general, and offering a rebuke to the "I'm only 100 pages in and haven't figured it all out yet" comments. IJ is simply larger than me, the reader, so I want to accept that and embrace it.
Posted by: brc | July 1, 2009 5:05 PM
I'm just the opposite. I'm 2/3 through Moby Dick now on my Kindle, but I only made it past the fist couple hundred pages of mucking about Nantucket or whatever because I know what's coming (it involves a whale!)
My impatience for a story to show up is the reason I've made it 200+ pages into Stephenson's "Quicksilver" twice and have still never finished it.
Posted by: dr. d | July 2, 2009 12:30 AM
As someone who only recently finished Infinite Jest, I have no sympathy for the "hundred-pagers". The book does not start off at a rollicking pace, but it is also far from boring, and I like how DFW gives the reader a chance to get to know how things are going to go (style-wise) while introducing the first plot lines and characters. I expected from the start that things were going to take awhile to develop. As you point out, the book is over 1000 pages! It is certainly on a par with Pynchon's Against the Day in terms of the authors' writing prowess. And the footnotes are great. I found that they lent themselves to a greater sense of interacting with the "author" (who is... Hal? Don?).
I hope these people never try to tackle Gravity's Rainbow.
Posted by: James P. | July 2, 2009 10:04 PM