David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is the second of my very long books I've finished this year, and unlike 2666 which I found pretty uneven, I found Infinite Jest quite enjoyable. I'm just having some difficulty trying to describe it. It's basically the story of both a tennis academy and a halfway home in Boston, and how the lives of the people in both places are heavily connected. But there's just so much more to it. I've tried reading a few more "experimental" novels and posted them here, and for the most part I've been pretty disappointed, but Infinite Jest seemed to have the perfect blend of style and substance. There was no readily discernible plot, but merely a lot of anecdotes about both youth tennis and recovery from addiction. Wallace pretty effortlessly switches up styles several times- narrating a little more rigidly and with a broader vocabulary when talking about the school, then relaxing and using slang when dealing with the former addicts. Some chapters are told as a series of letters, some as pages upon pages of newspaper headlines, one in the form of a play, or in one case narrated with a very thick Latino accent. Under normal circumstance I'd find this pretty pretentious and unnecessary, but Wallace pulls it off well enough for it all to work. Certain parts will definitely stick with me for a long time- a dissertation on how certain philosophies relate to singles tennis matches, the difficulties of being an atheist in alcoholics anonymous, and the bizarre effects PEDs can have on a children's game to name a few. Of course at many parts I found myself drifting, but that's on me. I just find it hard to keep focused, no matter how interesting the subject matter, when presented with long blocks of uninterrupted paragraphless text. Yeah, that's my fault. The truth is, this at times can be a very dense book, and shouldn't be rushed through (it took me nearly 2 months to get through). In his excellent foreword, Dave Eggers claims that the book contains "not one lazy sentence," and I think I agree. Every time I found myself drifting, I'd snap out of it really focus on wherever I left off, and realize "this is good stuff." I could easily see someone trying the book out and hating it though, and I know Trev picked this up long before I ever recommended it. I wouldn't recommend it for backlogging purposes- it's just so long and requires lots of attention, but anyone who does pick this up and isn't turned off within the first 50 pages or so will definitely find Infinite Jest pretty special.
Glad to see you knock this one off the list finally, but I can't begrudge you for taking your time; as you said, some books are just denser and richer than others, and occasionally you find yourself in the midst of a very long book but without any need to rush through or skim anything. At the moment, I'm about 100 pages into three separate books which combine for 2,500 total pages in length. So even if I devote all my time to just one of them for the time being, I doubt I'm posting any books for a while. But then there are some months where you can whizz through five or six two-hundred pagers. Anyway, I hope you can have one of those months soon now that you've knocked off a couple behemoths. What's your bookloggery status looking like anyway?
ReplyDeleteI shouldn't have too much left before I make the full transition to Kindle- Here's the Situation and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle are all that spring to mind, with WUBC being the only one of any noticable length. then of course there's plenty of books Gallagan has, but who knows if I'll use his or not.
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