First impressions of Infinite Jest

(c) NYT.

Last I checked, I’ve read about 380 pages of Infinite Jest. And I am enjoying it, making myself move slowly. Overall, it’s far funnier than I thought it was going to be. Funny in that perhaps predictably dark, self-referential way. (Thanks to friends, notably Elizabeth P. and Nick, who were encouraging and helpful in allaying my fears.)

First thoughts and impressions:

• Since starting Infinite Jest, I have experienced a strange conflation of topics with those in IJ and those in the other books I’m reading, including: characters named Avril, life with alcoholic parents, frequent use of the verb “whinge,” and characters praying at the foot of an image of a grotesque female saint. I find this fascinating, especially since coming across such specific similarities in such different works strikes me as unusual.
• I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was written in the 1990s. (OK, this is probably not true, but really. No one talks about literature from the 1990s. I can’t even say what might define art from that phase of my early life, except to make some passing comments on primary-color sitcoms and patterned pop music.)
• I have been thinking about the mental effects of reading a heavily annotated novel. Flipping back and forth from the text to the endnotes produces a curious state in the reader, or at least in this reader; it makes me hesitant, almost shy, because I am constantly waiting for the next interruption. I haven’t thought deeply on the purpose of this stylistic choice, except to say that, a.) David Foster Wallace (DFW) has an abundance of information that he’d like to share, and b.) endnotes give him greater comic license.
• Other things I don’t know about, deeper meaning-wise: DFW’s love of sharing the proper chemical names of drugs and DFW’s love of acronyms.
• Resisting the impulse to read too much into these characters and subjects as commentary on DFW’s own life.
• “James O. Incandenza” is really fun to say out loud; so melodic!

And here is a shortened list of the words I have learned in these mere 380 pages:

aegis
aleatory
analects
anfractuous
apical
apocope
argot
attar
augend
calenture
deliquesce
dipsomania
elision
ephebe
estival
flange
fulgurant
incunabular
nonpareil
phylogenic
prandial
priapistic
quincux
quondam
recondite
strabismic
tympana
wen

Preparing for Infinite Jest

2013 is going to be my Year of Big Books. I hope to read Infinite Jest, re-read Anna Karenina and The Sound and the Fury, and read Time Regained, the final volume of In Search of Lost Time.

I have scheduled Infinite Jest for February and March. And I am frankly terrified.

I am terrified because I don’t want it to be a waste. I don’t want to skim over everything, get bogged down, fail to comprehend it. I bought the latest edition of the American Heritage Dictionary in preparation. I have read several articles about HOW to read Infinite Jest, pages to bookmark for reference, things to recall along the way. But I still don’t feel ready. Maybe I am taking it too seriously? I certainly didn’t start Proust with this kind of dread.

So. Have you read it? Do you have any advice?

Side note: There is a band in town called “Infinite Jets” and I think it is the very best pun ever. THAT’S A LOT OF JETS.

Weekend heat

My new reading spot.

We had a wonderfully productive and busy weekend. We spend too much money at Lowe’s, now that we have this prodigious garden, but it always feels justified somehow. (More things need to be grown! Grow all the things!) We bought those bright red chairs on Saturday and they were worth every penny; that’s my new summer reading spot. Pyrrha seems to like the chairs, too, even though they look suspiciously tasty.

We went to this event with Pyrrha’s rescue at a local vineyard on Sunday and sat under a hot tent and sweated with a pack of 10 or more German shepherds. What is it about seeing a bunch of dogs of the same breed together that is so thrilling? I don’t know, but it was fun and Pyrrha seemed to recognize her former foster pack.

P. is also starting to fall in love with Guion, too. It took her some time, but I think they will be inseparable very soon. (Just so long as he doesn’t replace me in her hierarchy of affections, I’m cool with it.)

Cuties. Guion and Pyrrha at Keswick Vineyards.

In my annual summer tradition, I’ve started the fifth and sixth volumes of Proust, The Captive and The Fugitive. It’s a little hard to believe that this is my fifth year with Proust and that I shall nobly lay him aside next year. (What will happen in years seven and eight? Infinite Jest and then The Pale King. Why, yes, I do like to plan ahead.) I like to talk about Proust a lot, especially in the summers when he is thick in my brain, but I shouldn’t. He’s easily the most pretentious author to name-drop. He’s almost never appropriate conversational fodder. Poor Prousty. (Meanwhile, I think “Marcel” would be a nice name for a bi-color or all-black German shepherd. Next dog?)

Top 10 books I’d want on a desert island

Screenshot from "LOST."

The ol’ desert island conundrum! Ten books is pretty lavish. If my husband and a dog were a given, here are the top 10 books I’d request that Charles Widmore send me on the island:

1. The Bible. Naturally.
2. In Search of Lost Time–all of it! You could read it for the rest of your life. (Marcel Proust)
3. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy).
4. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf). It will always be new to me.
5. Complete short stories of Anton Chekhov. Meditations on the human spirit when I am isolated from humans?
6. Complete works of Shakespeare. We could perform on the beach!
7. Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace). I haven’t read it yet, but I know it’s a magnificent tome, so it suits the other members of this list.
8. Middlemarch (George Eliot).
9. The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen).
10. East of Eden (John Steinbeck).

You?

Monday Snax

My family + our surrogate dog, Dublin.

Girls of Thanksgiving. L to R: me, Dana, Grace, Emily, Kelsey, and Nicole.

Pratt siblings on our best behavior. Win is so stoic.

Ah, Thanksgiving. It was so ideal. The weather was divine; the food, miraculous; the company, perfect. As always, it is difficult to get back into the weekly routine, but I feel sufficiently rested and hopeful. I left ineffably thankful for our families. And I got to spend plenty of time with dogs, which was naturally another thing to be grateful for. Photos from the holiday weekend on my Flickr.

Snax with leftover turkey and cranberry sauce:

The Extraordinary Syllabi of David Foster Wallace. Kind of thankful I’m not taking a lit class with DFW. Although I think it is totally wonderful that he assigned The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (Slate)

Women Who Write Like Men and Men Who Write Like Women. A somewhat interesting corollary to my thoughts on this matter? So, it turns out that men and women do actually use pronouns differently, and so we can overgeneralize and say that there are some “men who write like women” and some “women who write like men.” Haven’t processed the implications of this, but it’s still interesting. (Full Stop)

Joan Didion on Stage. More Didion (because I’m reading The Year of Magical Thinking right now, probably). And because she is snarky and cool. (The New Yorker’s Book Bench)

Living with (Millions) of Books. Houses without books look soulless. (English Muse)

Jonathan Lethem’s Alphabetical Absolutism: How Writers Keep Their Books. Photographs of contemporary writers’ bookshelves. I liked Junot Diaz’s thoughts on the matter of buying more books than one can read in a year. (The New Yorker’s Book Bench)

Peter Jellitsch Draws the Wind. Now that’s a crazy endeavor. But how cool is this? Very. (Fox Is Black)

Bicycle Portraits, Part III. This looks like a beautiful book. Would make a gorgeous gift for the avid cyclist in one’s life. (Miss Moss)

30 Tech Gifts Under $100. It seems all people want these days are gadgets, so this is a small but helpful gift guide for design-friendly digital-age presents. [Side note: Can I talk about how much I hate the asterisk in the Design*Sponge title? I always want to leave it out, even though copy editor rules tell me you're supposed to punctuate a title the way a firm punctuates it. Still. I think it is stupid, Bonney. Even though your gift guides and your general website are great.] (Design*Sponge)

Constellation Calendar. Ooh, love. Even though I can’t identify a constellation to save my life (except probably Orion’s belt). (Unruly Things)

The Class Comforter. The sweetest. I would like to have that job/get someone else in my office to have that job. (Sweet Fine Day)

Books I have not read that I am supposed to have read

A List of Books I Should Have Read by Now, But I Am Either Too Lazy to Remember or Their Statute of Limitations of Interestingness Has Expired, and My Pertinent Excuses.

1. Beowulf, Anon. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I’m strong enough to wade back into the swamp that is pre-medieval literature to me. But Guion has Seamus Heaney’s translation, so maybe I will read it one day. Only for Heaney.
2. Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, all those English history plays with the names of kings, Shakespeare. See also: Laziness.
3. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes. Supposedly it’s 1,000 pages long. Who has that kind of stamina anymore? I’ve exhausted mine with Proust and the Russians.
4. Vanity Fair, William Thackeray. It looks… so… long. Plus, Reese Witherspoon already ruined it for me. Boo.
5. The Stranger, Albert Camus. I’m not really into existentialism right now.
6. The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu. There are about 596 reasons why I should have already read this book. First novel ever recorded! By a woman! A Japanese woman! But… why? I don’t have any legitimate excuses. I even own it. I just haven’t read it.
7. Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton. A hundred people have told me to read this. That means I probably never will.
8. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut has never sparked my curiosity, but I have no good reason why.
9. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace. I’m actually planning on reading this after I finish all of In Search of Lost Time, so, three summers from now.
10. Harry Potter. I know. This is a “statute of limitations” one. Just not interested.

How about you? Any books you “should” have read but probably won’t?