Subject: re: infinite jest, laughing man, and too much joy. . .
From: i'd trade it all (asandley@sun.iwu.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 17 1997 - 20:43:40 GMT
> Has anyone read "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace yet? Any
> thoughts about it? I'm planning to buy it next week after I finish
Hi Susan... I read Infinite Jest last summer and became a huge Wallace
fan. It's kind of hard to describe in a nutshell (although lots of
people have tried), but the basic deal is that it's a real fun read.
> within a week or so I'm thinking of allowing myself to buy it but I've
> never read anything by DFW before. Would it be better to start with
> another of his works (like many suggest if reading Pynchon's
I would have to say definitely not, unless you wanted to pick up a copy
of his non-fiction essay collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never
Do Again. His first novel, Broom of the System, is "okay", but not
anywhere near as good as Infinite Jest. A lot of people have a hard
time getting through the whole thing, but if you don't have anything
against really long books, and aren't too married to the concept of
complete plot resolution, I'd definitely recommend picking up Infinite
Jest.
I've got a DFW fan page up at http://www.iwu.edu/~asandley/dfw if you,
or anyone else, are interested... I've got links to a bunch of reviews
if you're interested in finding out more.
andrew
p.s. I read the Esquire Salinger piece when it came out... and didn't
think it was all that bad. It's kind of a little over the top, but I
enjoyed reading it nonetheless. But then, of course, I liked Hamilton's
"biography" too, so...
p.p.s. Hmmm.. my Salinger/text ratio is still a little low, so, to those
who have read some David Foster Wallace, would you agree that he really
doesn't resemble Salinger in the slightest? I mean, it's all good, but
they've taken completely different approaches. It even seems kind of
hard to compare the compact brilliance of a story like Franny to a book
that has footnotes roughly the same length.. :)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Oct 09 2000 - 15:02:01 GMT