stereosforgeeks wrote:As soon as I finished Infinite Jest I felt the need to discuss it.
This a book that begs to be deciphered.
Overall impression? I LOVED it.
Upon starting the book you will feel incredibly confused as you are thrust into a world that is incredibly dense and never gives the reader easy answers. What is ONAN? Why can't Hal talk? these are the questions you'll initially be asking as you begin your journey. On the way you'll deal with almost every facet of popular culture and economic status of person. From the drug addled Ennett House residents to the womanizing tactics of a pro football player and everyone in between are contained in the pages of the novel. The plot of the novel concerns a mysterious “entertainment” that is so incredibly pleasurable to watch you will do anything to see it again even if it ends in your own death. To describe anymore would be a disservice to the novel.
Spoilers
Anyway what are people’s theories?
How did Hal get dosed with DMZ? Was it the fungus he ate as a child? DMZ on a toothbrush?
Was JvD really deformed? Or so beautiful she needed to hide? Was she what caused the entertainments addictiveness?
What exactly were Avril’s connection to the Quebecois separatists?
How did Gately survive watching the entertainment?
Who found the Entertainment?
Did ONAN dissolve?
DeusExMalcontent wrote:If you haven't read Infinite Jest, you're missing out on one of the funniest, cleverest, most original and most challenging novels you're likely to ever come across.
Released in 1996, Jest -- along with its non-fiction follow-up, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again -- didn't make me dream of becoming a writer so much as it made me think that I shouldn't even bother, since I'd never have the kind of talent that David Foster Wallace did.
As a writer and an observer of culture and the human condition, few could touch him -- and he was always worthy of a certain amount of idolatry among those who would try.
I'm forced to say all of this in the past tense because two days ago David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home. He'd hanged himself.
Only Wallace himself will ever know what was going on inside his head and why it led him to take his own life. But thankfully, his sly musings on the way the larger world thinks and behaves will stay with us.
Their impact will be, literally, infinite.
Maui wrote:Infinite Jest still taunts me from my bookshelf. One of these days I'll tackle it.
Non Union Super Hero wrote:I decide a while ago that I wanted to dive into DFW's work. With that in mind I purchased, Infinite Jest, Girl with Curious Hair, and Brief Conversations with Hideous Men. I started Jest and have found myself stalled at page 40ish the most prevalent reason being, it feels really over my head, I have to reread sections quite a bit and I am just not really grasping the style of the work. That said 40 pages isn’t much but I was wondering if someone here who has read multiple books by the author could or would recommend starting with something less daunting to get a feel for the way DFW writes.
Any help is appreciated, and please feel free to recommend a book not listed if you feel as though it is a better introduction than Curious Hair or Brief Conversations.
Thanks
stereosforgeeks wrote:Non Union Super Hero wrote:I decide a while ago that I wanted to dive into DFW's work. With that in mind I purchased, Infinite Jest, Girl with Curious Hair, and Brief Conversations with Hideous Men. I started Jest and have found myself stalled at page 40ish the most prevalent reason being, it feels really over my head, I have to reread sections quite a bit and I am just not really grasping the style of the work. That said 40 pages isn’t much but I was wondering if someone here who has read multiple books by the author could or would recommend starting with something less daunting to get a feel for the way DFW writes.
Any help is appreciated, and please feel free to recommend a book not listed if you feel as though it is a better introduction than Curious Hair or Brief Conversations.
Thanks
You will feel lost especially at the beginning of Jest. It throws you into this world thats not explained and then messes up the time frame on you as well. It is daunting but stick with it as the pieces do come together.
so sorry wrote:stereosforgeeks wrote:Non Union Super Hero wrote:I decide a while ago that I wanted to dive into DFW's work. With that in mind I purchased, Infinite Jest, Girl with Curious Hair, and Brief Conversations with Hideous Men. I started Jest and have found myself stalled at page 40ish the most prevalent reason being, it feels really over my head, I have to reread sections quite a bit and I am just not really grasping the style of the work. That said 40 pages isn’t much but I was wondering if someone here who has read multiple books by the author could or would recommend starting with something less daunting to get a feel for the way DFW writes.
Any help is appreciated, and please feel free to recommend a book not listed if you feel as though it is a better introduction than Curious Hair or Brief Conversations.
Thanks
You will feel lost especially at the beginning of Jest. It throws you into this world thats not explained and then messes up the time frame on you as well. It is daunting but stick with it as the pieces do come together.
wow, that sounds complicated. But this guy seems to think its a breeze of a read!
Columbia University has had the bright idea of commissioning film-makers to realise the works of James Incandenza, hero of David Foster Wallace's magnum opus.
How surreally wonderful to discover that an entire exhibition devoted to the "works" of David Foster Wallace's fictional creation James Incandenza is set to open later this month. A cult filmmaker, Incandenza is the star of Wallace's seminal novel Infinite Jest (the 1,000-page book centres on the missing master copy of his film of the same name, so entertaining it renders spectators incapable of doing anything other than watch it).
As was his wont, Wallace included a footnote in the novel about the filmography of Incandenza, and now using the author's "detailed list of over 70 industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, and non-dramatic commercial works", Columbia University's Neiman Centre has commissioned artists and filmmakers to make the movies. They don't appear to be taking on the Infinite Jest movie itself – creating something that renders an audience catatonic with pleasure would be something of a challenge, I suppose.
Wallace is, of course, an author who inspires this sort of obsessive devotion – and his own extensive footnoting (Infinite Jest contains almost 400) means there's plenty of material to explore. But there must be lots of other fictional creations that deserve a life outside the page – David Barnett pointed last year to a trend for novels by fictional characters, but are there any other fictional filmmakers whose work you'd like to actually see? Artists? Musicians?
I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing the paintings of Elaine Risley, she of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, I'd love to read the children's stories of AS Byatt's Olive Wellwood from The Children's Book, and perhaps it's only because we saw him in the office on Monday, and got somewhat overexcited, but wouldn't it be great if an artist recreated the illuminations from Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red? Please share your own ideas – and maybe we can inspire someone to take the projects on.
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