Chamblee54

PG is 192 pages into Infinite Jest. This is on the 11th day of the second time checking it out, which is the max at the chamblee library. There are 981 pages in the main text, not counting the footnotes. This is a book not to be finished, at least by the reader with any life other than digesting this work. As publishers weekly said, on the Amazon review page, “few others will have the stamina for it.”
IJ is set in a future, estimated by some to be 2011. It was written in the early nineties, and published in 1996. There are some quaint, and confusing, terms for what we now know as the internet and computers. In this world, North American is one country, and years are sponsored by products ( like the Year of Depends Adult Undergarments, or YDAU). This cowardly new world takes a bit of getting used to.
So far, PG has been reading this like a long poem. The wordplay, and pedantic pessimism, flow out of the pages like fire hydrant dispensing endless Indian soup, with all the flavors fighting for attention in your tongue. There is no way you can get all of it in one reading, and PG is not going to try.
The Author, the late David Foster Wallace, has a style described as maximalist. At one point he channels William Burroughs, in a monolog about junkie life in Boston on Christmas Eve. In a latter segment, we learn that a trans ho has stolen the Jarvik heart out of the expensive handbag the lady carried it in. When she screamed, he stole my heart, a yankee passerby told her she had listened to too many romantic songs, get a life lady.
The junkie monolog eventually got skipped over, as did some other parts. The plot is not apparent by page 192, with 789 pages to be read in 10 days. The good news is, after 24 hours, if no one checks it out, PG can take it out for another 6 weeks. With densely written text, that one amazon reader said made her break out in sweat, it may take the rest of 2010 to finish this work.
It should be noted that this book may have been what killed the author. He committed suicide, while trying to come down off antidepressants. He felt that the legal drugs were interfering with his ability to write. New Yorker has a lengthy piece on this. The father of several of the key figures in IJ offed himself by putting his head in a microwave. Don’t try this at home. Pictures for this post are from the Library of Congress