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… and sleeping too little, I think. I am just realizing how daunting the list is.

Infinite Jest (which you might have guessed already)
The Shadow of the Wind
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Children’s Book (by A. S. Byatt, not in print over here yet until September)

On the back burner:

War and Peace
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

So, I can’t really lay a claim to boredom at the moment.

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Gravity's Rainbow with first dinner
Image by qousqous via Flickr

I am still, as stated earlier, reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I have decided that it’s not a novel that I am continuing to read because I like it, though I do. I’ve given up on a lot of likeable novels. There is also the allure of actually finishing a “cool” and “important” novel, and therefore having a license to drone on about it to everyone within earshot. That’s not been a deciding factor ever since I gave up reading Gravity’s Rainbow when it came out when I was in high school. That book was immediately made cool by some sort of critical osmosis that I could never quite fathom. I chucked it after about 54 pages of humor (I think) that I simply didn’t get.

I have decided that, unlike most other books I read, Infinite Jest and the reading of it is a vocation. I can’t leave the book alone. I am quite behind in the reading schedule suggested on the Infinite Summer website — I have only today gotten through the big Eschaton section.

Eschaton, in IJ, is a group game, rather like Risk, where the players, who are students at a tennis academy in Boston, act out a global conquest and dominance sort of game out on some unused tennis courts. The students are divided up into assorted nations, and tennis balls are imaginary 5-megaton nuclear warheads. In this particular session of the game, things… go awry. Suddenly, the players of the game forget the difference between “game” and reality. It doesn’t end well.

There is no such game in real life as Eschaton, not that I know of. If it does exist, I will avoid it.

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infinite summer starts sunday
Image by the queen of subtle via Flickr

Ideally, in even a very large and sprawling novel, which David Foster Wallace‘s Infinite Jest certainly is, all the parts of the book are necessary to the whole. The sum of the whole is greater than the accumulation of its parts, etc. This is emphasized in the quote from Infinite Summer, below

So yes, I am glad that I read footnote #24, and all of the rest of them. Footnote #24 contains much useful knowledge about the characters in the story, but you have to dig through the seeming oddity of a filmography of a fictional character in order to get it.

Have patience.

Those digressions that don’t serve the plot (or at least provide a satisfying coincidence that may or may not serve the plot, such as Gately’s role in a separatist’s death or Steeply’s putative puff piece on Poor Tony’s heart-snatchery) serve the theme.

via Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » Nick Douglas: Skim is for Wimps.

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With regard to Infinite Jest, I would like to announce that I have actually read all the way through footnote #24.

This is a bigger deal than it sounds, if you have ever taken a look at that book. The book is almost 20% footnotes, written often in a dry, footnote-y tone. Sometimes they contain nothing more than “Ibid. page N” or somesuch. More than a few times, they spin off on their own, with footnotes of their own, as is the case with footnote #24.

Many readers use this as an instance of David Foster Wallace foreseeing the Internet, or at least the Web. Not so. The Web was already around, and at the time of the book’s publishing, I had already made and abandoned roughly five personal home pages and sites. It was not long after that I sat down and purchased this domain. So, being an intelligent, noticing sort of person, DFW simply had to infer a few things here and there.

Okay, back to reading the book.

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Infinite Jest
Image via Wikipedia

Following is one of the (many) websites that I have found that have to do with David Foster Wallace, and also his most famous work, Infinite Jest. This is a book that is, to say the very least, sprawling. Also huge. One that demands careful attention at all times due to quick changes of voice and viewpoint. I am certain that I can’t describe the plot.

There is, this summer, a massive literary occasion online in which willing individuals, such as myself, have promised themselves to sit around and read the whole of Infinite Jest by, I believe, September 22. I have no idea why the choice of that date was made. Perhaps it even has something to do with the book, or DFW.

This event sounds like the overwhelming, symbolic and not-entirely-meaningful event that I was looking for to occupy my days lately. I have no idea how this will turn out.

Quote

Infinite Summer

 

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I have to believe in something other than emptiness. I’ve been feeling the bite of emptiness here and there these past couple of days. That’s exactly it! The Bite of Emptiness, soon to be a major motion picture! Ripped from the pages of the best selling novel of the year! Novice writer Patti Niehoff pulls off a literary success of the kind that the publishing world of today rarely sees, much less wants to see!

First of all, I must congratulate Other Patti for writing down my official 2000th comment yesterday! As a celebration, I don’t know what she will do, but I’m going out to get more sushi at lunchtime.

I slept late this morning, so Buck has gone out to find me some fruit (yes, I know I can change the time zone settings on my blog, but the thing is, as Ruben hinted at a bunch of posts ago, I forget to change the time zone back). Fruit is the one thing I crave that doesn’t (necessarily) have added sugar in it. What I find truly amazing is the sheer amount and variety of foodstuffs that have added sugar in them.

I am haphazardly still trying to follow the advice in my new favorite book, “Anticancer: A New Way of Life” (David Servan-Schreiber). Yes, I like it very much. However, it advises against sugar or honey (except as an occasional treat), and Buck and I are finding right now just how many things have hidden sugar in them. Organic evaporated cane juice seems harmless, but is still sugar. On the brighter side, I walked way over a mile yesterday — the book recommends a lot of exercise and activity. Hope I can keep that up today.