Infinite Jest
After working at it on-and-off all summer long, I’m finally done with Infinite Jest and I feel . . . well, I don’t quite know how I feel. I was determined not to let reading this difficult book become a “difficult” process and just resolved to read a page then turn the page then read the next page (modified, as necessary, for footnotes and such) and not spend too much time worrying about whether or not I was understanding everything that’s going on. Consequently, I enjoyed myself reading the book—it’s funny, clever, etc., has some great set pieces, blah blah. Also some weak points. But by the end this has added up to . . . what, exactly? I don’t really know. A sprawling meditation on addiction and the over-entertained American, I guess.
But in a fundamental sense it struck me as very unsatisfying. Not just in terms of the weird ending, but in terms of definitely not feeling like I got more out of reading it than I could have gotten out of reading three books that were one third the length. That in turn is really making me glad that I was made to read Anna Karenina and Moby Dick in high school. I really loved both those giant honking books, but does it really make sense for a busy person in the modern world who maybe doesn’t care to dedicate all that much time to classic novels to read them? Seems like it might make more sense to read some short Tolstoy like “Family Happiness” and “Hadji Murat” and then move on to other things.
Adding new possible ways to entertain ourselves naturally starts to squeeze out the viability of some old ways. And maybe the long novel is among the squeezed. Which seems in some ways regrettable (which I take it is part of the point of Infinite Jest) but at the same time to really be a feature of the world.
127 Responses to “Infinite Jest”
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September 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
Oh, God. You did not just say that. Proof that the Onion is in fact our finest news source. (Although they were off by a couple of days.)
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nadir_of_western_civilization_to
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Can’t say anything to Infinite Jest but I love long novels. To me, anything less than 500 pages seems like a waste of time… just as I start getting into them they’re over! Give me 10 thousand page Steve Erikson books and I’m a happy man.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
Here’s my pet theory: you’re supposed to feel unsatisfied.
The book is about a bunch of recovering addicts who are unable to indulge their deep desire for their Substance; the only solace consists in getting together at these meetings and talking to other people with the same powerful sense of unsatisfied desire.
After 1000 pages of Infinite Jest, you’re in the same basic position. You want to find out what happened. But you can’t satisfy that desire, because there *is* no “what happened.” So the only thing you can do is talk to other people about the book.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:43 am
So DFW is the equivalent of a drug dealer selling you stuff that you shouldn’t get involved with in the first place? Sounds like the rational response to _Infinite Jest_ is to “Just Say No.”
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:47 am
Jeez….look man, I think you’re a great writer and a real asset to the national discourse who will go on to even greater things….but I cringe when I read shit like this (same with Ezra.)
Just because someone “doesn’t really care” is not an excuse or a justification for anything. Plenty of people “don’t really care” about national politics. That’s life, but it’s not to be commended. Same with people wo “don’t really care” about good literature. If they don’t, they should. And they should make if more a priority. You don’t get Tolstoy by just reading a short-story. It doesn’t work like that.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:48 am
Contrary to his reputation, David Foster Wallace was neither a great writer, a great thinker, nor a great empath. He was a try-hard. A guy so desperate to have something to say, but who plainly wasn’t up to the task. Utterly juvenile sensibilities. So much of his writing is just flat-out embarrassing. That people fall for the hype just shows how shallow they are. It’s not suprising that most of his fans are young people.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:52 am
I’m not sure how being disappointed with Infinite Jest means that it’s not worthwhile to read Anna Karenina or Moby-Dick.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:53 am
This being one of my very favoritest books, and one I’ve read 3 times, and once I pick it up I pretty much can’t put it down, I feel I just have to weigh in here.
Yes, the book is about addiction, appetitive behavior, and a peculiarly American sense of desperation. But what it is above all else is an intensely moral book, in the tradition of great sprawling moral novels of, especially, the 19th Century. All the focus on its postmodern elements, its style, and its humor tend to ignore this point, but it’s very much about the necessity, and also the difficulty and rarity, of getting beyond our selves – our intensely and perptually needing selves – and living for once goddamnit in the world. This moral imperative is realized (or idealized) in the character of Mario Incandenza, but the theme runs throughout the novel. It’s what gives Infinite Jest its urgency, and it’s what makes it, in the end, great, and also intensely sad (as we see what happens to people when they recoil from the moral challenge to go beyond themselves).
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:54 am
Vollmann did it better (and shorter) twenty years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Bright_and_Risen_Angels
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:57 am
I’m not sure how being disappointed with Infinite Jest means that it’s not worthwhile to read Anna Karenina or Moby-Dick.
Because you can read *more* short books than you can long books. Get it? It’s like turning the amp up to 11, or drinking Miller Lite because it’s less filling.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:58 am
Considering your comparisons–tolstoy, melville–is it possible that the real problem here is just that Infinite Jest, or its author, is just not great enough to justify imposing such a burden of time and energy, such an opportunity cost, on its readers? that maybe it was an act of arrogance or at least disrespect for DFW to think himself equally worth the time as are those giants?
we should also remember that there were thousands of novels in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it is not accidental that only a few of the giant tomes are still read. most were not, in fact, worth the effort, just as most published today will not continue to attract readers in a century or two.
but a thousand pages of twain or tolstoy or dostoyevsky? or of course melville? now THAT’s a pleasure.
after finishing Moby Dick does anyone sit there wondering: “why did i just DO that?”
DFW may turn out to be in that class, but so far the evidence is weak.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:59 am
Hats off to Matt for not falling into the trap of making excuses for a work because it’s supposed to be good. Too often, people assume that if there’s a certain level of skill involved, it automatically means the product is worthwhile (I’m lookin’ at you, MAD MEN). But smart, skilled people can make crap just like anyone else.
Mike
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Because you can read *more* short books than you can long books. Get it? It’s like turning the amp up to 11, or drinking Miller Lite because it’s less filling.
It’s like those callow assholes who prefer Citizen Kane to Berlin Alexanderplatz. Man up, and do your time.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
“a peculiarly American sense of desperation”
What a precious load of crap. These kind of pseudo-sensitive insights are the hallmark of DFW’s try-hard earnestness.
“an intensely moral book”
Barf. DFW wasn’t an intensely moral person. This was a guy who thought John Mccain was a voice of authenticity. For all his pretense as a polymath, he just wasn’t that smart.
“It’s style”
His writing is sloppily conversational. It’s the antithesis of good style. And his humor is corny (wheelchair assasin seperatists, etc.)
“but it’s very much about the necessity, and also the difficulty and rarity, of getting beyond our selves – our intensely and perptually needing selves – and living for once goddamnit in the world.”
I bet you wrote this with tears in your eyes, you deep, tender, sensitive, empath you.
which isn’t to say that there aren’t impressive and admirable qualities about the book, but it and it’s author are extremely over-hyped.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I have a great deal of sympathy for this position on long novels. With a job, kids, SOCCER, it’s possible to read a really long book from time to time, but it had better be really effing good. It took Matt an entire summer to get through Infinite Jest. I’d be pissed too if I thought it was largely a waste of time.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Well, you can watch a lot of movies in the time that it would take to watch the four seasons of The Wire (the “fifth season” being non-canon and, frankly, non-Wire – if anything, The Corner is more Wire than the “fifth season”). But you watch The Wire because it does so much more than a movie could ever do.
But as has been said, if it’s not worth it to you, it’s not worth it. Personally I didn’t read Anna Karenina until after college, and it is now my favorite book. The length was an issue only to the extent that it was difficult to read when I don’t get a seat on the subway (not an issue with the Kindle I take it).
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Vollmann did it better (and shorter) twenty years ago.
Vollman is a sick puppy. I think it might be an age thing. I’m a little younger than DFW and a decade older than MY. When Infinite Jest was written things were changing, post Cold War, etc. and DFW is of an older generation than MY so many things younger folks take as a given were new developments at the time DFW experienced them. What I liked about it is that it covers things these other books mentioned don’t, because they were written in an earlier time. And I agree with his politics which makes me more sympathetic.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Question for anyone who has read IJ: did you read the endnotes? I started out reading them – flipping back and forth from the text – and decided I would never finish the book if I continued. So then I stopped reading the endnotes – and still gave up on the damn book.
Updike’s Ghost – DFW was a “try-hard” – that seems about right to me.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Don’t listen to Updike’s Ghost. He’s just pissed off because Wallace took him to the woodshed.
Oh, and it might help your enjoyment of Infinite Jest to know that it’s shaped like a parabola. Read the passage in the exact middle of the book, pagewise, to find the focus.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Updikes ghost:
Barf. DFW wasn’t an intensely moral person. This was a guy who thought John Mccain was a voice of authenticity. For all his pretense as a polymath, he just wasn’t that smart.
Where did he say that about McCain? You’re one of those Politcally Correct fucks aren’t you? Enforcing the Party Line. The type who post anonymously b/c they’re chickenshit.
DFW was pretty smart relative to the average person and inspired a lot of people, a lot of young people. He was different in that way.
He got in the arena and mixed it up and you have to give him credit. What have you done? Jack shit. Bitch anonymously on the Internet.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
after finishing Moby Dick does anyone sit there wondering: “why did i just DO that?”
Ummm, yes? I enjoyed Infinite Jest much more than I enjoyed Moby Dick. And I wasn’t terribly satisfied with either.
Although if I had to reread one, I’d go for Moby Dick precisely because I didn’t feel that I really got it the first time around. And it’s so universally praised that I’m confident the problem is in me rather than the book. (If a head and book collide and a hollow sound ensues, must the problem always lie with the book? –Anton Kuh) With IJ, I’m far less certain I’d feel more edified with a second reading.
Tolstoy, on the other hand, is just a fantastically great author. And while I’d never discourage anyone from reading War and Peace, his novellas are so great as well I’m not sure I’d disagree with Matt’s idea that you’d get more out of reading all of those than reading War and Peace. The best answer would be to read them all, but that can be tough depending on time commitments. (Work and family, that is. I’m not giving anyone a pass for spending an hour a day reading twitter posts instead of Tolstoy.)
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
DFW wrote a huge piece in Rolling Stone about the awesomeness of McCain.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
David Sedaris is a lot more fun covering some of the same ground.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Poptarts,
Get some therapy, man. No need to throw tantrums because someone disagrees with you.
I think DFW was overrated, but my problem is less with him than with the people who fall for it.
As far as inspiring people, so what? Televangelists inspire people too. DFW’s appeal is similar to that of a church. His themes are grand ones — meaning, alienation, suffering, etc. No matter how poor his actual ideas or writing, if an author covers those themes, they will resonate with a certain subset of people. It’s no different than feeling majestic in a church, despite the obvious bullshit of the content of the sermon.
As I said, he wasn’t without some talent. There are some impressive things about Infinte Jest, but he was still an incredibly immature writer.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
It’s clear that editors in the the science fiction/fantasy subgenre think that people have the patience to read thousands of pages of story, because it seems as if the vast majority of SF/F published nowadays comes in the form of a 500-page book in a 3-book series. When I complained about this to an acquaintance of mine in the field she shrugged and said “that’s what sells”.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
DFW wrote a huge piece in Rolling Stone about the awesomeness of McCain.
Link?
And so he must be completely written off, because his politics weren’t in agreement with smarmy all-knowing fucks.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I haven’t the time to get into an extended discussion, but I will simply note that Wallace wrote probably the best essay on the subject of sports in the history of man.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
This post really pissed me off, but the demands of my modern lifestyle does not afford me the time to sit down and figure out why. Adding new possible blogs to entertain myself naturally starts to squeeze out the viability of some old feeds. And maybe Matt’s blog is among the squeezed. Which seems in some ways regrettable (which I take it is part of the point of Matt’s post) but at the same time ought to really be a feature of my Reader.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I don’t consume that much fiction, but I get what comment #2 is saying about novels over/under 500 pages.
A really giant novel scares me off sometimes, but those books often stay with you much longer.
I read Infinite Jest a few years ago and loved it. I can’t remember specific passages so well, but the characters and overall feel of the book are still with me.
Sure, I could’ve read three shorter novels in the same amount of time, but I probably would’ve forgotten them all by now.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Why are you finishing books you don’t enjoy? Being decades older than you, I can’t afford to read for duty or to impress myself. Whether a long or short book, it should be relished from the first chapter. If it doesn’t, I return it to the library without further ado.
Try Trollope. I would suggest The Way we Live Now (864 pgs). The story of Bernie Madoff writtten nearly 150 years ago. You won’t be reading a page at a time.
Reading should be fun, not an obligation. Trust yourself.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Perhaps the ironically named Updike’s ghost will note that there’s some tension between, on the one hand, telling somebody to chill out because there’s “No need to throw tantrums because someone disagrees with you,” and on the other hand clarifying that “my problem is less with [DFW] than with the people who fall for it”.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Oh, and it might help your enjoyment of Infinite Jest to know that it’s shaped like a parabola. Read the passage in the exact middle of the book, pagewise, to find the focus.
I haven’t read IJ, but why would that help anyone’s enjoyment of the book? Most people’s enjoyment stems from the actual content and not some arcane structural gimmick.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Get some therapy, man. No need to throw tantrums because someone disagrees with you.
I’m not throwing a tantrum, just trying to articulate the utter contempt I have for people like you. What I liked about DFW is that he knows what people like you will say and did say and he didn’t care.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“Adding new possible ways to entertain ourselves naturally starts to squeeze out the viability of some old ways. And maybe the long novel is among the squeezed.”
This is unlikely. The long novel has been around for centuries and doesn’t seem to be going away. (I guess it could move online.) The length of Infinite Jest probably helped its sales and notoriety, as it would not have made the same splash if it was of average length.
Of course not everyone has time to read every long book, but that’s neither here nor there; it has nothing to do with how good it is.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
poptarts:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18420304/the_weasel_twelve_monkeys_and_the_shrub/1
I never said anything about writing him off. Just adding a little information. Jeez.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
“And so he must be completely written off, because his politics weren’t in agreement with smarmy all-knowing fucks.”
That’s not why he’s written off. The John Mccain example is just one piece of a larger pattern of sloppy thinking and writing. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if DFW wasn’t consistently praised as some sort of genius.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I haven’t read Infinite Jest, but DFW’s two collections of essays, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster, are totally brilliant, and much easier to slide into a busy schedule. My guess is that he’ll ultimately be remembered more for his essays than for his fiction.
The McCain essay, in my opinion, was a bit of a mis-fire, but so what? DFW wasn’t perfect, but he was great an awful lot of the time.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Isn’t it important to note that the McCain piece was written at the time of the 2000 election? Whether or not you as a person have always known that McCain was a fraud and a charlatan, his public persona at that time was much different than it is now because he actually seemed to conduct himself in a different way. I think most of us agree McCain 2000>>>>McCain 2008 (even if you don’t like the guy, that statement is probably true for most), so maybe that makes DFW a dupe in your estimation, but he was far from the only one.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I have a great deal of sympathy for this position on long novels. With a job, kids, SOCCER, it’s possible to read a really long book from time to time, but it had better be really effing good.
Well sure–I start and put down long novels all the time. But that’s not what Matt said. He said that “I really loved both those giant honking books, but does it really make sense for a busy person in the modern world who maybe doesn’t care to dedicate all that much time to classic novels to read them?”
You can’t read classic novels without dedicating the time to read them. If you don’t think you’ll like it, don’t bother. But don’t blame the size of the book.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
“What I liked about DFW is that he knows what people like you will say and did say and he didn’t care.”
Are you kidding? The guy was EXTREMELY insecure (not knocking him for that, either). He desperately cared what people thought. His self-esteem was dependent on having something important to say, hence his overwhelming propensity to try way too hard. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the worship he received only made him hate himself more. Deep down he was probably aware that he reputation as a super-genius was unwarranted.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Sorry to be a pedant here. You read great books in high school, and you’re lucky to have been assigned them. I’ll bet one of your teachers told you, though, that short stories get quotation marks placed around title, and novels are underlined or italicized. If you had to choose between reading great works and learning correct punctuation, you made the right choice, but I don’t see why you can’t do both. There’s a reason for prescriptive grammar. Less jarring to read, nothing to slow you down. And, if you’re going to read two novellas of Tolstoy, they should be Master and Man and The Death of Ivan Ilych.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Matt: Your next long novel should be “Against the Day” by Pynchon.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Speaking of DFW and prescriptive grammar, here’s an example of DFW pretending to knowledge he doesn’t have and getting his ass handed to him.
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000510.php
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Brendan:
There’s so much wrong with your comment that I don’t even know where to begin. But just a cursory understanding the trajectory of Melville’s popularity over time (his first novel was quite popular, his later major novels were reviled, he spent most of his life writing poetry, and his work was resuscitated by symbolist poets in the 1920s, starting not with Moby-Dick but with Billy Budd), reveals that the greatest books (whatever that means) don’t necessarily rise to the top over time. The canon we have is a product of the taste of a few influential critics and luck. Artistic merit is not a constant, it is socially and historically constructed. And there can be intellectual value in reading a wide range of texts, from the serious elite ones to the pulp fiction.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Not letting yourself get confused and trying to resolve the confusion was your mistake here. Whatever else you think about Infinite Jest, it’s intended to be an interactive experience (in the same way that, say, a work of philosophy is an interactive experience). If you don’t try to think about the point of it, about what’s going on, about why certain things happen and what they mean, it’s just a very long collection of sort-of-connected short stories and vignettes.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Thank you! I thought I was the only one who didn’t get it. I read Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster and I thought there must be something wrong with me because I just didn’t see the Brilliance and the Insight at all.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
The McCain piece was written in 2000. It was not really about McCain’s politics. In fact, he frequently notes that what McCain has to say is scarily right wing and that the media has seemed to be ignoring this. Most of the essay was a typical Wallacian descriptive “meta” account of the weird minutia involved in being on a campaign trail, as well as a meditation on McCain’s appeal for people who were generally alienated from politics. He also notes the ways that persona could be wielded to exploit that alienation rather than answering it.
But I’m sure Updike’s Ghost is a very careful reader, and not just a guy spitting bile on the internet.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Not long into it, I became convinced that the book itself was an Infinite Jest. Much as I admire Wallace, I don’t think much of the book.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Oh, come on. I didn’t particularly care for the newspaper storyline, and the Omar and McNulty/Freamon subplots may be divisive, but all the Marlo/Prop Joe stuff, the Bubbles stuff, the Herc and Carver stuff, the Daniels stuff, the Kima stuff, etc, was great as usual. And even though I didn’t like it much, I think the newspaper subplot fit in just fine with what the show was doing over its five seasons.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I loved Infinite Jest (as messy and imperfect as it is) and I think that “big” novels serve an interesting purpose underserved by other kinds of fiction. Whether it is in the form of a novel of ideas (like Pynchon or Neal Stephenson) or in the form of a meditation (like Don Delillo’s Underworld, or Joseph McElroy’s Women and Men) these large canvas works permit a writer to explore the world on an entirely different level. Moby Dick is so great because it tries to get its unwieldy arms around the entirety of the American soul. Not something so easily done on a smaller scale (though possible, as in Huck Finn). While we can say that the big novel is going out of style, they’ve been saying that since modernism started, and it hasn’t happened yet.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I’ve never read anything by Wallace, but the blog post Updike’s Ghost links to is about what I would have expected. I’m suspicious of proudly, self-consciously artistic or literary stuff. Occasionally it’s worth reading pretentious stuff despite that (I’m glad I finished Middlesex), and very occasionally it’s not pretentious at all and is genuinely just that smart, but for the most part would-be writers of the great American novel just need to get over themselves.
This discussion prompted me to check out the Wikipedia page for Infinite Jest, where I learned one premise of the story is the unification of North America into one country, the Organization of North American Nations. Either this is the perfect illustration of what bugs me – if the acronym is an overly-clever gibe at pop culture – or it’s a self-deprecating confession of exactly what I’m complaining about, which makes my criticism unfair in the first place. I guess I’d have to read Infinite Jest to find out. Also, I have a soft spot for Quebec separatists, so…
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
“Don’t listen to Updike’s Ghost. He’s just pissed off because Wallace took him to the woodshed.”
Michael, I somehow missed this comment. That essay is just one more example of DFW being a complete douchebag. God forbid there are writers out there who don’t get their self-esteem from pretending to be oh-so-sensitive-and-tender. DFW is the kind of guy who calls other guys jerks because they get laid more than he does. Not only that, but the essay, besides being poorly writter (as usual), is fundamentally dishonest, as anyone familar with Updike (who, btw, was a much better writer than DFW) beyond the sterotypes can attest.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
51 comments with folks throwing flame bombs at each each over literature?
I’m stoked!
Seriously. On a day when a co-worker called my masculinity into question because I dare question the desirability of Megan Fox (attractive, yes, but her edginess is contrived and there is evidence that she is about as pleasant as passing a kidney stone), it’s nice to find that some folks care enough about literature to insult each other through 51 posts.
Thanks guys!
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I’d rather read Donald E. Westlake, Elmore Leonard, and Charles Portis than the recent high art muckety-mucks.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
“but in terms of definitely not feeling like I got more out of reading it than I could have gotten out of reading three books that were one third the length”
“I really loved both those giant honking books, but does it really make sense for a busy person in the modern world who maybe doesn’t care to dedicate all that much time to classic novels to read them?”
I thought that only weird professors at Chicago School (and Mankiw) really believe that people could think like this: do I prefer to read one 1000 pages, deep, dense novel, with no clear ending or purpose, or 3 novels of 333 pages, lighter, that you can summarize in one line, and apply the lesson in your everyday life?
Homo economicus really exists! And is American!
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Look up some library circulation statistics sometime. I know my local library has a Fiction/Literature department with incredibly high circulation statistics right now. Just because you don’t like to read novels doesn’t mean that others don’t. During recessions, library usage tend to shoot up, my local library is breaking it’s own previous circulation records.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Two more thoughts:
One: I meant to include this link in the first paragraph of my last comment. In many things the mark of quality, and skill by the craftman, is that “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” Obviously, this is difficult if not impossible to do completely, but reveling in it the way so many people do is just, well, onanism.
And two: another thing I learned from the Wikipedia page is that Infinite Jest is yet another of those books written recently and set in the near future, which by now is about a week away. That’s always funny, which isn’t necessarily bad but for me at least inevitably changes the reading experience. Someone mentioned Neal Stephenson upthread – another good example is Snow Crash. Published in early 1990s, and set about 15 to 20 years in the future or so, which if you do the math means it is set around now. It was jarring to read about a world very different from our own that is supposedly almost here. The future ain’t what it used to be.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
@41
Actually, this isn’t a hard and fast rule of composition; formatting works of art vary according to the style manual that you follow (cf. the AP style guide).
Anyway, I agree that Pynchon rules the roost in terms of big novels.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I don’t know, I felt the same way after reading Grapes of Wrath. It doesn’t really end so much as it just stops. But that’s Steinbeck’s point: there is no resolution to the problem.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I have no problem with people who don’t like DFW’s work and there are plenty. James Wood (who is older) makes a persuasive case.
I do have a problem with Internet Assholes like “Updike’s Ghost.”
Updike’s Ghost brings up McCain @ post 14:
Barf. DFW wasn’t an intensely moral person. This was a guy who thought John Mccain was a voice of authenticity. For all his pretense as a polymath, he just wasn’t that smart.
and later
That’s not why he’s written off. The John Mccain example is just one piece of a larger pattern of sloppy thinking and writing.
Speeking of sloppy thinking.
As far as inspiring people, so what? Televangelists inspire people too. DFW’s appeal is similar to that of a church.
Perhaps I should have been more specific and said “inspire people in a good way”? Or perhaps you were misreading on purpose and being an asshole?
And in any event wasn’t it Marx who said “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”?
DFW was basically a middle of the road liberal. I knew no one who worshipped him or thought he was a supergenious. Maybe you did. Sure after he died people said nice things. Big deal. You just created a straw man just to vent your spleen.
He wrote about McCain??? HOW DARE HE! THE NERVE!
I liked his piece about the insanity of rightwing radio:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200504/wallace
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
one premise of the story is the unification of North America into one country, the Organization of North American Nations. Either this is the perfect illustration of what bugs me – if the acronym is an overly-clever gibe at pop culture – or it’s a self-deprecating confession of exactly what I’m complaining about
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
What Criminally Bulgur said. This:
This was a guy who thought John Mccain was a voice of authenticity.
is an incredibly facile reading of DFW’s McCain piece. McCain’s actual politics aside, which Wallace disagreed with, his point about McCain is that his personal history gives him an extra boost of some sort, and trying to figure out what exactly that boost is or means, and whether it’s warranted or not.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
one premise of the story is the unification of North America into one country, the Organization of North American Nations. Either this is the perfect illustration of what bugs me – if the acronym is an overly-clever gibe at pop culture – or it’s a self-deprecating confession of exactly what I’m complaining about…
FYI: It’s both. Being self-conscious about one’s excessive cleverness is a vastly overused device of contemporary writing, although most writers who use it filter it through the voice of a narrating character (pick up virtually any chick-lit novel or indie comic for an example) rather than serving it straight up in the style of DFW.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Nothing like a big-great book or books. “The Baroque Cycle” was like a great meal that lasted months. Finished off with “Cryptonomicon” Not science fiction, but fiction about science. ‘Underworld’ and ‘Ulysses’ also. I don’t think you can read a lot of great literature over a long period and then start on DFW. He just doesn’t measure up. However, if it’s some of the first serious reading you’ve done you could get hooked.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Re: And, if you’re going to read two novellas of Tolstoy, they should be Master and Man and The Death of Ivan Ilych.
‘Master and Man’ is pretty awesome. Haven’t read ‘Ivan Ilich’. I like some of his short stories too, esp. “How Much Land does a Man Need?”
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Infinite Jest = monumentally overrated. DFW = perfect emblem of the grade-inflated generation.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
jimmy = perfect example of the pretentious, garden-variety, tough-talking Online hard guy
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
“Tough-talking”? “Hard guy”? How is his comment either of those? Are you actually aware of what you’re saying?
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Whether it is in the form of a novel of ideas (like Pynchon or Neal Stephenson)
Oh, no you didn’t!
I could never figure out why a group of seemingly intelligent, cultured folks were so gulled by Stephenson’s shtick. Every time I hear someone gush about Snow Crash, it makes me want to slap ‘em with anything by Richard Powers.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Okay, okay, Poptarts: Stop crying, I’ll give you an A.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
IP Guy:
If you haven’t already, read McElroy’s Lookout Cartridge.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
It’s annoying how much of this thread has been wasted on Updike’s Ghost trying to prove how smart he is. Talk about trying too hard.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Sayeth Updike’s Ghost:
Uh huh. Well, I must say, your name-calling, ad hominem, and unsupported assertions have certainly convinced me! I was especially impressed by your insider knowledge of the late DFW’s sex life, and the bizarre typo was a particularly nice touch. Congratulations, you’ve won the thread!
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm
ibc — folks often slag Stephenson based on Snow Crash and the Diamond Age (which are very genre-specifc, and turn some people off on that basis). However, Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle are astounding achievements, and warrant the comparisons to Pynchon (in Cryptonomicon) and Barth (in the Baroque Cycle).
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
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September 23rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I’m not a fan of DFW, but Matt’s statement about length does bother me a bit. There’s no intrinsic value when you’re talking about a book’s length. You may prefer shorter books, but that’s not a judgment on quality. All that matters is how well a writer is achieving the desired effects of the novel. Sure the book is long, but does it need to be long? Yeah, your punctuation is exotic, but why? To me, DFW–like Pynchon–doesn’t have a real justification for his length and stylistic choices. There’s no filter between the writer’s overactive imagination and the reader.
I do agree that DFW will probably be known for his essays rather than his fiction. The man is clearly better when he’s working with a strong editor. If you’re interested, you might want to check out the magazine version of his article on David Lynch (you can find it on the Web), then compare it to the version in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:22 pm
@IP Guy:
Different strokes and all, but I came away agreeing (in retrospect) with most of this review:
Right now I’m about a hundred pages in, and I’m wondering whether I should keep reading. The prose is flat. Stephenson keeps lathering-in in chunks of his background reading. Much of that material is interesting, but it’s applied with a trowel. Most of all, a strong whiff of Mary-Sue wish-fulfillment pervades the whole thing.
(http://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/29/cryptonomicon/)
Not wanting to start a fight, just thought it was funny and apropos…
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Matthew seems to be a very well adjusted person, not wracked by constant self doubt. DFW wasn’t. He obviously couldn’t stand living with himself. DFW can’t write Moby Dick because in DFW’s mind, it’s all been done before, it’s all on some level chicanery…prescriptive grammar changes over time, etc. Also, DFW was hip enough to get pussy, but too educated to fit in with hipsters. He’s the guy in the book who buys a bag of weed and locks himself in his apartment for a week, ignoring all phone calls, etc. I liked the book. I like Gogol, Dostoevsky, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Bukowski. I can’t get into Ulysses or Pynchon.
Updike’s Ghost- Your criticisms of DFW would be true if he were Eggers. DFW >>> Eggers. DFW got a MacArthur Grant. By all appearances, well above your average above-average intellect. Give him some props.
Re: The Wire- season 5 was in-line with the rest of the show, which was great.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
jimmy:
Okay, okay, Poptarts: Stop crying, I’ll give you an A.
I was insulting you, not crying.
It reminds me of the Purist fans of Punk music. Everyone’s a sellout. Everyone’s shit. Extremely high standards. Impossibly high standards.
Matt said he didn’t like the book. Some commenters say they really like DFW. Different strokes for different folks. And then guys like Updike’s Ghost and jimmy start pissing all over the place. They’re the Guardians of the Canon, High Priests of Literature with a capital L, because they’re so fuckin’ knowledgable and well-read. It makes you want to punch them in the face repeatedly.
Maybe the mere fact that Matt would even dare to compare DFW with Melville and Tolstoy, however negatively, set them off.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I felt unsatified when I finished it, as well. But I did think the ending was kinda neat; how the whole book is essentially a Mobius strip.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Doh! I coulda read Gravity’s Rainbow!
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
The Fool –
While I love Infinite Jest, I will agree — if you have only one preposterously long, complex, post-War book to read, it should be Gravity’s Rainbow. One of those books with so much depth that you can never reach the bottom. Followed by The Public Burning and The Sot-Weed Factor if you need more (enjoyable and rewarding) abuse.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Infinite Jest happened to be my summer project too–in my case, length was a significant factor in choosing the book, since I was going to spend 2 months in semi-rural Russia with spotty net access and a lot of free time. I’m actually still not entirely sure how I feel about the book and the experience of reading it, but that in itself is a good sign that it was worth reading. I’ve always felt that (for me, anyway) one essential attribute of worthwhile art of any kind is that it requires a little bit of struggle to understand, that its meanings and pleasures are not all immediate and obvious. I enjoy the experience of having to work a bit, mentally and perhaps emotionally, to interpret a piece of art.
So in that respect, I feel perfectly comfortable putting IJ on the shelf next to Crime and Punishment (ok, I prefer Dostoevsky to Tolstoy)–not because it is necessarily a Work Of Genius, but because I engaged with it. A novel doesn’t have to be a flawless, indisputable piece of perfection to be worthwhile reading.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
It seems to me you are arguing in favor of not reading bad books, rather than not reading long books.
There is a difference between long INCREDIBLY WONDERFUL books, like George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, or Lord of the Rings, or the like, and long difficult or seriously flawed books.
The pleasure of sinking into a world and its characters for a long stay, and dipping in briefly, is like the difference between snorkeling and scuba diving. If you find a good story, you want to stay there as long as possible before coming up for air.
The evolutionary pressure here, in memetic terms, is that with all the forms of entertainment and information out there for us to enjoy, we are less willing to settle for mediocre long works.
Imo, ymmv, usw.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
When I am in the mood for fiction, I come to this blog for Yglesias’s posts and the comments.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm
@Francisco The Man:
If liberally-inclined people don’t care about politics, millions of Americans go without healthcare, the Earth will warm at a disastrous rate, weapons of mass destruction will spread, etc.
But if people don’t care about literature and art . . . so what? Nobody dies.
A bit of a difference there, don’t ya think?
For what it’s worth, I’m saying this as a guy who majored in English and subsequently came to feel that the whole idea of spending a small fortune (and opportunity costs) to learn about “the great books” was a really dumb idea. So yeah, I’m a little bitter.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Having made my rant against literature, I will add: Matt and all y’all out there in blogoland, if you want to read a really great long novel, go read Underworld by DeLillo.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I came to the same conclusion about painting, Blago. I enjoy art and crafts on a personal level, but the arts are as atomized as we are. Art that can cause a mental shift in a significant population in Western culture is unlikely, and beauty has been out of style for a long time. I have an aversion to “shock value” and the forces that make having a stylistic tic a financial necessity.
Since I am compelled to read novels all the way through without interruption, I have limited myself to non-fiction for the last twenty years. “The Golden Notebook” was the last honking huge novel I read. Sounds like “Infinite Jest” might make a good screenplay. I can wait for it to come out on DVD.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Sounds like “Infinite Jest” might make a good screenplay. I can wait for it to come out on DVD.
I suspect you will be waiting a long time.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I’ll get over it.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Sounds like “Infinite Jest” might make a good screenplay. I can wait for it to come out on DVD.
I suspect you will be waiting a long time.
I haven’t read Infinite Jest yet, but I really liked Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, John Krasinski just made that into a movie.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I read IJ when it first came out — I thought it an incredibly compelling journey that really didn’t leave you in a satisfying destination. I both loved it and thought it deeply flawed. I saw DFW give a reading at the time it came out and had a very different impression of him than some of his critics here. He seemed very bright, sensitive, not at all full of himself — he was sweating profusely and seemed a litle uncomfortable in his own skin, but very human. I agree that his essays may be his most satisfying work.
I think the long novel, done well, is an incredibly satisfying art form, but that our reaction to these things is very quirky and indvidual. I am currently reading 2666, which is a monster of a book, but amazing. I loved reading DFW but find that Pynchon and DeLillo both leave me really cold. (On the other hand, I loved Updike’s Rabbit books even if DFW was right about the man’s myriad flaws.)
Our reaction to art is incredibly subjective — I would never presume to tell people that they are wrong to love DeLillo or Pynchon — I can only say that they didn’t ultimately move me or interest me enough to invest in their work.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
I loved Infinite Jest, but it would make the worst screenplay imaginable.
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I loved it; it was an adventure, a project, it wasn’t just reading a book. I read it this summer as well, and there was such a deep respect for humanity, and a lack of cynicism, it seemed like the perfect antidote to, well, everything, right now.
To use a terrible cliche, it really isn’t about the destination here. I feel far more empathy and have more understanding for a lot of different kinds of folks after reading this book than I did before I started. And if a book does that, that’s pretty spectacular.
Also, his writing is STUNNING. And: there is nothing better than the Eschaton scene.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:16 am
I think that Infinite Jest is one of the few big novels that actually *does* justify its length, in a way that Gravity’s Rainbow, or even Anna Karenina, don’t (oy, those boring Levin speeches!).
What keeps the novel from getting slow is the way it constantly jets between characters, sometimes stopping the main storyline dead for a section from the point of view of one of the novel’s background characters (or ‘figurants’ for dedicated DFW fans). This isn’t just Wallace keeping things jazzy (though it’s that too)—the book is very much a portrait of a society, and it’s central to the book’s mission that it illustrates how the same kinds of problems get refracted through people of different classes, background, etc.
It’s actually a lot like Matt’s beloved The Wire that way—it makes a specific problem universal by showing how that problem plays out on a lot of different levels, and it needs enough time and space to make each of those levels vivid (unlike the movie Crash, which tried to do it all in under two hours and ended up with a lot of broad strokes and cliches as a result). It would be a much weaker book if it were shorter, and it’s to its credit that while I was sometimes baffled by it, I was never bored (except maybe during the Marathe-Steeply scenes), because I always knew someone else was going to grab my attention.
As for the discussion above: A person who thinks that Wallace is a hack and Updike is a genius is a person who has never, ever given their partner an orgasm. Ever.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Yeah. It’s absurd on its face to compare Infinite Jest with the other two.
Also, if you’ve only read Anna Karenina or Moby Dick (or other great books) in high school, then you’ve not read those books. Nothing against high school students or teens; I do think they generally rise to meet expectations academically. But I don’t think they have the context to get the most out of many great works of literature.
September 24th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Updike wrote some awful books, but at his best he was incredible. His opinions, like DFW’s, were often foolish. He was a Christian, a political reactionary, etc. But he was also extremely sensitive without being makwish or making much ado about it, as DFW was wont to do. And unlike DFW, Updike had a light touch, a subtle sense of humor, confidence, ease, and sexual mojo. DFW was the kind of guy who cries during sex, because anything else would somehow be a denial of his deep humanity.
September 24th, 2009 at 2:39 am
#86. Maybe no one will die from lack of books, but who wants to live in a world without them. Or as William Carlos Williams has it,
It is difficult to get the news from poems,
Yet men die miserably every day
For lack of what is found there.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:26 am
I so very much hated having to read this book for my doctoral qualifying exams, that I ripped it into 10 100-page chunks. I find his writing to be so preciously postmodern. I also hated that I wasted a whole summer and my vacation on it, when all I should have read was Professor Kate Hayles’ wonderfully readable essay on his work. Although she was the person likely responsible for putting it on my reading list, her essay taught me how to think about things too fine for a thought.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Re: or even Anna Karenina, don’t (oy, those boring Levin speeches!).
Fuzzy Bastard,
Don’t blaspheme. Those ‘boring Levin speeches’ as you put it are a good part of the reason Tolstoy wrote the book. They represent the conversion of a tortured and sensitive soul, the exposition of Tolstoy’s view of life, and the struggle of good and evil, the flesh and the spirit. The only boring thing about them is the inability of the typical Yglesian yahoo to understand them, because late-capitalist American society has caused the atrophy of our intellectual and spiritual faculties.
Re: He was a Christian
Of course, DFW. Nothing dumber than that.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Even Nabokov said it was fine to skip Levin’s boring speeches. Is he a typical “Yglesian yahoo”?
Tolstoy’s view of life was at times maddeningly superficial. Anna Karenina ended with something along the lines of “Of course God exists. Otherwise, what would we tell the children?”
September 24th, 2009 at 9:29 am
RE: “Of course God exists. Otherwise, what would we tell the children?”
No, it doesn’t. Read the book again. And don’t stop with book 7, either.
Re: Even Nabokov said it was fine to skip Levin’s boring speeches. Is he a typical “Yglesian yahoo”?
Trust me, I have rather stronger terms of abuse for Nabokov than ‘Yglesian yahoo’. You don’t want to get me started on Nabokov, and in a healthy society ‘Lolita’ would be confiscated and burned by the public hangman.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Anyone who thinks Lolita should be burned, isn’t fit to pontificate on literary matters.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:27 am
in a healthy society ‘Lolita’ would be confiscated and burned by the public hangman
“Burned by the public hangman”? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean? Why are your books being burned by a guy who’s in charge of hanging people? Can’t they be burned by anyone with some lighter fluid and a match? Shouldn’t your hangman be spending his valuable time hanging people, especially when he’s a public hangman, and thus being paid to hang people by taxpayer dollars? And what the fuck’s a public hangman anyway? Are there privately-contracted hangmen firms? Christ, you’re an embarrassment to fascists everywhere.
September 24th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Updike’s buddy:
Updike wrote some awful books, but at his best he was incredible. His opinions, like DFW’s, were often foolish. He was a Christian, a political reactionary, etc. But he was also extremely sensitive without being makwish or making much ado about it, as DFW was wont to do. And unlike DFW, Updike had a light touch, a subtle sense of humor, confidence, ease, and sexual mojo. DFW was the kind of guy who cries during sex, because anything else would somehow be a denial of his deep humanity.
Your animosity towards DFW is bizarre and somewhat amusing. Your preoccupation with sex is creepy. I’d agree with you that he shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. And the shots he took at Updike, Mailer, etc were PC, but he admitted that.
September 24th, 2009 at 11:47 am
So admitting it is supposed to make it better? For such a sensitive guy, he took a lot of cheap shots. He had the nerve to call Updike, Mailer, and Roth narcissists. This coming from one of the most pretentious and least self-aware writers out there. A guy who wrote entire books which weren’t much more than long-winded attempts to show how clever he was. To use the AA-speak of Infinite Jest, he was the proverbial egomaniac with an inferiority complex. And unlike Mailer, he wasn’t the entertaining kind of egomaniac, either.
September 24th, 2009 at 11:50 am
My theory is that DFW banged Updike’s Ghost’s girlfriend.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
DFW had the sensibilities of a virgin, but that’s beside the point.
What matters is that his devoted fans react with hysteria to criticism of his writing. As I said above, his lofty themes of loneliness, alienation, suffering, etc., touched the tender souls of his beloved readers. For these types of readers, DFW’s writing wasn’t literature but therapy or a church sermon, a group hug and a circle jerk all at the same time.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
My theory is that DFW banged Updike’s Ghost’s girlfriend.
DFW said rude things about Updike’s buddy’s literary heroes.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Stras,
Ho hum. In case you didn’t recognize it, my ‘burned by the public hangman’ line is an allusion to George Orwell’s 1944 essay “Notes on Salvador Dali”.
“In the same way it should be possible to say, ‘This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.’”
The ‘hangman’ is a widely used symbol for the coercive power of the State in general.
Re: Your preoccupation with sex is creepy.
Just so, Poptarts. As is your preoccupation with spreading Western liberal political ideas to countries who don’t want them.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Just because a shitty line of writing happens to have been picked from one of Orwell’s shitty lines of writing does not make it any less shitty.
September 24th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Just so, Poptarts. As is your preoccupation with spreading Western liberal political ideas to countries who don’t want them.
I don’t think the ideas I favor – the one’s Obama discussed yesterday at the United Nations – are necessarily the property of the West.
If there’s a conflict in a society on our – our – globe, I’ll support the secular pluralists who believe in stuff like science and democracy and the rule of law. So later on we can work together on global things like climate change and poverty and women’s right and human rights.
You gotta love Qaddafi yesterday at the UN. He’s alloted 15 minutes and speaks for 90 minutes. At least he gave props to Obama!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113156215
September 24th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
The crazies are out in force today! Whooo!
And Updike’s Ghost… I am fascinated by your ideas about the sex lives of writers and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
September 24th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Updike’s Ghost says:
DFW wasn’t an intensely moral person. This was a guy who thought John Mccain was a voice of authenticity.
========================================================
MANY OF US THOUGHT THAT in 2000. Give me a break, you know-it-all, holier-than-thou, uber-liberal hypocrite. YOU probably voted for Nader.
========================================================
# jfm Says:
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I engaged with it. A novel doesn’t have to be a flawless, indisputable piece of perfection to be worthwhile reading.
=========================================================
THANK YOU! That about says it all.
September 24th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
To quote Mr. Dave Barry: “HAR!”
September 24th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
God I love it when Matt writes about books or movies. The comment threads are always unbelievable.
Calm down, people. Our cultural tastes aren’t that important to anyone but ourselves.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
@Updike’s Ghost
Your beef is a lot more about DFW’s personality and the attitude of his fans than his actual writing. The fallacy of your opinion is addressed in a notable essay by a guy named Roland Barthes. You should check it out.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
“Just because a shitty line of writing happens to have been picked from one of Orwell’s shitty lines of writing does not make it any less shitty.”
Someone actually wrote these words.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:57 am
“Your beef is a lot more about DFW’s personality and the attitude of his fans than his actual writing. The fallacy of your opinion is addressed in a notable essay by a guy named Roland Barthes. You should check it out.”
This isn’t true at all. If I thought his writing was any good, I wouldn’t care about his personality. But his writing is absolutely terrible. It’s immature, juvenile, neurotic, and pretentious, just like its author. The guy has never written a beautiful sentence in his life. Everything he wrote is conversational. He has zero ear for language. Putting aside the quality of his prose, the content is just as bad. Corny humor, bad philosophy, flat characters, terrible plots. He pretended to erudition that he just didn’t have. In his pretense, he managed to fool thousands of gullible readers.
September 25th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Yeah, well that’s like your opinion man.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Updike’s Ghost-
We get it. You’re smarter than everyone. Move on. DFW is beneath you, so stop wasting your internet breath and our time with your pithy opinions.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Botswana Meat Commission FC Says:
Matt: Your next long novel should be “Against the Day” by Pynchon.
Against the Day is maybe the only book these days I think about more than IJ, but my guess that it, too, would be lost on readers who like long books that adhere to plot and style conventions. Perhaps Pynchon’s noir romp “Inherent Vice” would be a more appropriate choice for readers like Updike’s Ghost & Mr. Yglesias who can tackle length but not complexity, and for some reason still want to read books by “difficult” writers.
J.W. Hamner Says:
Can’t say anything to Infinite Jest but I love long novels. To me, anything less than 500 pages seems like a waste of time… just as I start getting into them they’re over! Give me 10 thousand page Steve Erikson books and I’m a happy man.
If only there were 10 thousand-page Steve Erickson books! As far as I know, they all clock in far less than your 500 page cut-off. If there’s something I’m missing please let me know. I would rip off a mafia boss for a 1000-page Erikson book (yes, we all have our addictions).
September 25th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
worst. post. ever.
September 26th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
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