I have completed the first week’s worth of reading in the Infinite Summer read-a-thon of Infinite Jest. I must confess that I have a small bit of a problem getting myself connected to any of the characters in it, with the possible exception of Mario Incandenza. I was never any good at either tennis or recreational drugs, so personal experience is not much of a help here.

The constant switching of voices — and these voices are very different from one another — also adds a bit of choppiness to the reading experience. It is a very well-done switching, I want to emphasize, but distracting to me in this process of reading the first part of an admittedly difficult novel.

I have gotten through the notorious footnote #24 and the introductory Erdedy chapter. Now I head off in expectation of soon encountering a character referred to in all the blogs as “Madame Psychosis.” This should be good.

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