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karen's Reviews > Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest
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this book...
i think it is time to write a proper review for this book, as it is one of my all-time favorites and deserves way more than two words. back when i was a junior in college, i was at the nyu bookstore, trying to sell back some textbooks before going away for winter break. the person in line in front of me was trying to sell back infinite jest (where was i when this class was being offered?? ) and of course, they weren't taking it back because nyu is a stingy fucking school. she turned around to me and said "you want this??" and i said "yes,"cuz i don't say no to free, and she said "merry christmas,"and kinda just thrust it at me. and it was the best present i ever got. a true christmas miracle. i was on my way to see my then-boyfriend in italy for the start of a european jaunt, and i missed out on a lot of european cities because i could not put this book down. i read it on planes and trains and a gondola, in restaurants and bars, by canals and in a cafe on top of the alps. fuck cathedrals, i had this book. i am a truly bad traveler, but i am a committed reader. as soon as i finished the book, i started right over. and since then i have read it a total of seven times. it is the most glorious collection of words that has ever been published. it is everything - it is funny and sad and creepy and disturbing and completely absorbing and brilliant. and he was just a gem of a man. the first time i got to meet him, i dropped this book in front of him - by now all tattered and smooshed, and he seem surprised that "someone has actually read their copy." and then i gave him a card that had been a thank you card, but i crossed out "thank" and wrote "fuck" in its place and said "fuck you for writing the great american novel before i got the chance to." this is the kind of thing i think is charming because i am deeply flawed. but it worked, and he called me and it was really nice - he was a great man who was truly kind and courteous to his fans. i ended up getting a proper thank you card from him because he is more traditionally charming. and now i am sad just thinking about this. so the review ends here because it has served its cathartic purpose for me and i guess if anyone is reading this you just got a free glimpse into the softer side of karen. it happens.
come to my blog!
i think it is time to write a proper review for this book, as it is one of my all-time favorites and deserves way more than two words. back when i was a junior in college, i was at the nyu bookstore, trying to sell back some textbooks before going away for winter break. the person in line in front of me was trying to sell back infinite jest (where was i when this class was being offered?? ) and of course, they weren't taking it back because nyu is a stingy fucking school. she turned around to me and said "you want this??" and i said "yes,"cuz i don't say no to free, and she said "merry christmas,"and kinda just thrust it at me. and it was the best present i ever got. a true christmas miracle. i was on my way to see my then-boyfriend in italy for the start of a european jaunt, and i missed out on a lot of european cities because i could not put this book down. i read it on planes and trains and a gondola, in restaurants and bars, by canals and in a cafe on top of the alps. fuck cathedrals, i had this book. i am a truly bad traveler, but i am a committed reader. as soon as i finished the book, i started right over. and since then i have read it a total of seven times. it is the most glorious collection of words that has ever been published. it is everything - it is funny and sad and creepy and disturbing and completely absorbing and brilliant. and he was just a gem of a man. the first time i got to meet him, i dropped this book in front of him - by now all tattered and smooshed, and he seem surprised that "someone has actually read their copy." and then i gave him a card that had been a thank you card, but i crossed out "thank" and wrote "fuck" in its place and said "fuck you for writing the great american novel before i got the chance to." this is the kind of thing i think is charming because i am deeply flawed. but it worked, and he called me and it was really nice - he was a great man who was truly kind and courteous to his fans. i ended up getting a proper thank you card from him because he is more traditionally charming. and now i am sad just thinking about this. so the review ends here because it has served its cathartic purpose for me and i guess if anyone is reading this you just got a free glimpse into the softer side of karen. it happens.
come to my blog!
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
May 8, 2008
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Comments Showing 1-50 of 244 (244 new)
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The Crimson Fucker
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rated it 4 stars
Aug 16, 2008 02:33AM
This book… this book has: 1079 pages… 483,201 words…(and I’m sure that approximately 200 of them I will never use on conversation) and 388 foot notes… this book made me walk with a dictionary on my pocket for 3 months… this book gave me countless nightmares… this book made me make the oath that if I ever see Mr. Wallace walking inside my house, in the middle of the night, without my permission… I will shoot him!!! This book made me be the subject of countless jokes by Atiba… this book made me read a freaking medicine dictionary, Latin dictionary, French dictionary, and an atlas… this book made me write an angry letter to a person that I didn’t even knew at the time, this book made in several occasions expend more than 20 minutes of my sad life checking dictionaries… and the web just so I could understand a single page, this book traumatized me!!!!!!!
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oh stop whining - you gave it 4 stars. i count that as a successful recommendation on my part. you want another orc book?
I ain’t whining!! I’m ranting me darling… and I did gave this book 4 stars but only because it has some of the most fuck up sense of humor that I’ve ever read on my life… And no… I don’t want another Orc book!!! Go to my review on it and pick any of the top 10 things that I rather do than read that piece of crap… and then you do it… I personally recommend #1, #5 and #6… go ahead have fun!
since I can't click that I like your review because i had thought your two word review had been right on the mark too, I'll just have to write here that you're review is very nice, and it's nice to see the soft side of Karen sometimes.
There's something neat about the fact that you read such an "American book" in Europe and your personal meeting story is great. I'm sad now, too. I'm afraid to start writing a review on this book because it'll be redundant and feel incomplete no matter what, but maybe someday I'll write a more personalized one like this.
i still have to write a review of the "new" one. i just havent been able to do it - it makes me too sad. thats pretty stupid, right?
Nah, not stupid. Wait, have you read The Pale King already? Advanced copy or something? I'm confused.
no i meant "this is water". i read that on the old internet so long ago, but i havent rated or reviewed it in book form because of sad. and then i figured if im going to properly review something, it should be this.
Ah, I see. I kept my review of that very surface level, probably due to The Sad. I was reading articles about him a few weeks ago and went to new sad depths. It's sad. That's really all there is to keep saying about it.
MyFleshSingsOut, by any chance in your reading of DFW's articles have you come across the book review he wrote for the magazine Rain Taxi on some poetry book? I used to have the issue it was in, but now I can't even find the text of the review anywhere.
Here's the book review (it's a PDF file) you're looking for:http://www.theknowe.net/dfwfiles/pdfs...
I found it within this DFW goldmine at the Howling Fantods site:
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/...
I'm still working my way through some of this stuff. Sort of dragging it out, making it last.
Thank you!! I should have re-check Howling Fantods, I couldn't find this in any of the library databases I was playing around with at school though. Karen, you should read this!!
Glad to help. Just clicked on this and it made me smile:
"100-word statement". Rolling Stone No. 830/831; Dec. 30, 1999-January 6, 2000; p. 125. [NOTES: In their "Party 2000" issue, Rolling Stone asked several notable types to comment on the then-coming 'millennium'. DFW's contribution is available here and is actually 209 words long.]
We're all—especially those of us who are educated and have read a lot and have watched TV critically—in a very self-conscious and sort of worldly and sophisticated time, but also a time when we seem terribly afraid of other people's reactions to us and very desperate to control how people interpret us. Everyone is extremely conscious of manipulating how they come off in the media; they want to structure what they say so that the reader or audience will interpret it in the way that is most favorable to them. What's interesting to me is that this isn't all that new. This was the project of the Sophists in Athens, and this is what Socrates and Plato thought was so completely evil. The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want."
wheres my journal thingie, greg??
what journal thingie?
the thing you ordered for us... the literary journal... there was a "c" involved...
no, i haven't gotten it yet. now i know what you are talking about. I'll have to look for the email about it and ask them when it's coming. Connor had said that it was already out.
is the book that Wallace was writing when he died being printed? some customer came in to buy it on sunday and got angry when I didn't know anything about it.
Jasmine wrote: "is the book that Wallace was writing when he died being printed? some customer came in to buy it on sunday and got angry when I didn't know anything about it. "http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....
and i you, faraway...
Thanks for your story about how you obtained Infinite Jest. I have been afraid to start it, due to the size, as I'm reading some other works right now. But your enthusiasm has gotten me to pull it down from my bookshelf, and give it a go.
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing.
its not scary at all - let me know how you fare! is there a gondola near you??
Alfonso gave me his copy of this. It's all messed up and taped and there are little sticky notes in it with sloppy Spanish that I will have to decipher as I go.
It is nice that your softer side says "Fuck you" too. Sweet.
its as soft as i get, i suppose...oh jeez - you are going to read alfonsos footnotes as well as dfws?? thats too much!! take it slow...
Alfonso wrote: "This book… this book has: 1079 pages… 483,201 words…(and I’m sure that approximately 200 of them I will never use on conversation) and 388 foot notes… this book made me walk with a dictionary on m..."needing a dictionary is tre lame. just wanted to get that out there.
to be fair, dfw is hard enough for native-english speakers... for others, i cant even imagine... but i am no polyglot computer genius nerd.
fuck cathedrals, i had this book.Hell yeah! Great review.
its a very absorbing read. even in the shadow of great architecture.
That's quite moving in a very DFW-ish way. Great story!
Great story, Karen. This book burrowed itself so deeply into my brain that my dreams each night were vivid scenes from what I had read that day. I also woke up at 5:00 or 6:00 am every Saturday and Sunday morning for the month I read this book so I could get some reading in. I was addicted to Infinite Jest.
no matter how many times i read it, i am entrenched.
I suppose I should finally read this. I bought it in 2000 and have been putting it off ever since. 
karen wrote: "no matter how many times i read it, i am entrenched. "i guess i am just a reactionary old lady and too obtuse to get wallace. infinite jest is one of the few books i am sure i will never finish and i've read war and peace over and over. i did love st. aubyn's phenomenal book detailing his drug binging, so it's not that that i couldn't handle, but the total lack of development. i don't like sketches, short stories, collections of anecdotes...
Ahhhh, I feel like I'm being stabbed in the eyes.... To reduce the novel to a collection of 'sketches, short stories, collections of anecdotes'. The traditional linear structure of the novel is broken apart, and it takes some work to bring together all of the pieces of the novel but it's does have a coherence to it, granted you need to read about 300 pages to maybe notice that. But after the first time reading the novel those first few hundred pages do show to have a lot of development going on in them.
I was in love with the book long before even seeing the larger narrative coherence. But I can see how the book's subject matter and/or structure simply wouldn't line up with everyone's taste as well.
Greg wrote: "Ahhhh, I feel like I'm being stabbed in the eyes.... To reduce the novel to a collection of 'sketches, short stories, collections of anecdotes'. The traditional linear structure of the novel is br..."I am sorry to have stabbed you in the eyes. I give every book 100 pages and I did flip through to see if he referred back to the opening scenarios and it didn't seem so, and I admit I'm not avant garde and I am definitely old but not, I hope senile, maybe just out of date. Sorry, but we can't all love the same things. Have you read my 5 star reviews? Do you like those books?
I don't mind people not liking the book, I just hate to hear it reduced to sketches, short stories and anecdotes.Spoiler coming up...... close your eyes if you aren't Elaine, I'm going to give away something here......
ready................
He doesn't ever refer back to that opening scene (ok, that is a little infuriating, I'll admit, but it makes it fun to debate what could have happened).......
Ah, the ol' "Did he take the DMZ?" debate, I'm guessing?
Elaine, we do have a few five star books in common, and I promise I'm not calling into question your reading taste, anyone who read and liked The Testament of Yves Gundron is certainly ok with me!!
That would be the one. I don't think it matters if he did, it's all about the fungus he ate as a kid, or that he watched the movie, or his withdraw from pot was that bad, or......
It truly doesn't matter either way to me either. Now that's the mark of a good book, wouldn't you say? Holy Zoroaster, I love that book.
For no reason really: I love that short bit where Hal is calculating how many rooms would be filled with all of the chicken patties he's eaten in his life, other foods, the subsequent fecal matter, etc. That part always put me on edge in a somewhat inexplicable way. Something about the inevitability of mortality was resonating through it. That sounds a little pretentious but so what. It's true.So many great "sketches" really. The scene in the garage between Himself as a nerd-child and his father getting sauced and being weird and mean. Or the one with the two of them taking apart the bed, with Himself's dad in the trashbag commericial outfit (powdered wig and orangeish make-up melting from all the sweat). I almost think that I'd have loved the book just as much had it truly been totally disconnected sketches. Ok, reminiscence aborted.
so many comments while i have been at work!! i am not a fan of short stories, generally, either. but i think this works differently. even though there are characters who are only given a few pages and then either never returned to, or only mentioned tangentially in other peoples narratives, its not the individual stories that are always important. its the facets, the commonality, the human nuances that bind them. so their stories arent individual, they are layers... he is amazing (sez me) at writing distinct voices that never sound like his own voice. you never get characters mixed up, which is important in a book like this where there are so many. im going to plug evan dara here, because he can do what wallace does, on a smaller scale, and if you like infinite jest, you will probably love either of daras books. unplug.
Thanks Karen. I am impressed both by your breadth and depth of reading, your perception, your sensitivity to words, and I take notice of your recommendations. For whatever reason, and it's not Wallace's failing as a writer -- rather his brilliance-- I couldn't hack this one. Such, I hate to say wasted, in all its meanings, lives with so little, if any, hope of giving back, of development or change and yes of productivity -- I reveal my personal ethos here, I know, and I don't always have to have a happy ending, but I do need change. Anyways, have you read St. Aubyn's trilogy Some Hope? The second "book" is an even nore graphic and lengthy drug binge than the opener of Wallace's IJ -- and I loved that book and will reread it often. I will try to reread Wallace, but I can't guarantee I'll make it further than 100 pages again. I really look either for character development or disintegration, not stasis.
i havent read them - its on my list of "things that are out of print that i mean to get my hands on sometime" - im bad at library, i like to own, and im buying books at an increasingly insane rate. someone must stop me, but im so stubborn...
Stop. The red panda propagation fund needs you.
right. another project.... how to make them horny?? i mean, they are so cute i dont know why they wont mate!! if i were a red panda, i would be hitting all that red panda ass...
