Infinite Jest Gets Infinite Summer Reading Event
David Foster Wallace's Modern Fiction Classic Sees Revived Interest
Jun 22, 2009
It is the brainchild of reading/writing "event" creator Matthew Baldwin who on his website created for the 90-day event called for readers across the world to pick up the 1,079 page book with this challenge:
"Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat," Baldwin urged visitors to the event site.
“That’s a little tongue in cheek,” Baldwin told Canada's National Post. “75 pages a week is no big deal if the novel is 150 pages long, sort of like running a six-minute mile is no big deal if you’re only running one mile. But I’m going to try and stick to that schedule.”
Make The Most of Infinite Summer
The Infinite Summer site offers a "how-to" approach on taking up Wallace's work, including:
- A "how-to-read" Infinite Jest guide
- A week-by-week schedule on how many pages readers will need to read to finish the book by the Sept. 22 deadline
- A list of events and activities by groups and people as part of the three-month event
- Essays, including one by Colin Meloy, lead singer and songwriter for the band The Decemberists, discussing why readers should readily dive into Wallace's masterwork
Facebook Drawing Thousands
There's no word yet on how many readers across the planet have taken the book bait, but plugs in the likes of Time magazine and on the social networking site Facebook, where more than 3,500 people have signed up for the group read, haven't hurt the buidling of a growing critical mass.
Published in 1996, Infinite Jest challenges even the most intrepid reader with its complex style and winding plot turns.
Never an easy book to simply "review," Publishers Weekly took a stab at simplicity with this: "Set in an absurd yet uncanny near-future, with a cast of hundreds and close to 400 footnotes, Wallace's story weaves between two surprisingly similar locales: Ennet House, a halfway-house in the Boston Suburbs, and the adjacent Enfield Tennis Academy."
Wikipedia offers a helpfully thorough guide to Infinite Jest's plot, and condensed to a list of the novel's key, and quite diverse, topics:" tennis; substance addiction and recovery programs; depression; child abuse; family relationships; advertising and popular entertainment, film theory; and Quebec separatism."
Wallace Wrote Award-Winning Novels, Essays
O'Henry Award winner Wallace wrote two other novels and published a number of non-fiction collections of essays, including :
- The Broom of the System (1987), novel, review
- The unfinished novel, The Pale King
- A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, essays, 1997
- Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, essays, 2003
- Consider The Lobster, essays, 2005
Back on Baldwin's Infinite Summer website, commentator Jason Kottke tried to to allay the doubts of those who might be hesitant to gobble up precious days of summer plowing through a 1,000-page plus novel: "... as a two-time reader and lover of Infinite Jest ... you don’t need to be an expert in much of anything to read and enjoy this novel," Kottke wrote. " It isn’t just for English majors or people who love fiction or tennis players or recovering drug addicts or those with astronomical IQs."
