His untimely and genuinely heart-wrenching death accelerated his stature to something a bit more messianic. Wallace managed to use experimentation and other weird stuff to get a genuine emotional response (though he may be held accountable for inspiring many terrible graduate writing workshop pieces that did not), and the fact that he had a certain rock star celebrity among American literature’s tweedy dweebs is not insignificant. There is plenty of justification in the fear that technical experimentation or unrealism or fragmented narratives or other innovations are just bait to leave us with an indulgent, gimmicky, poorly structured piece of fiction snapped painfully around our wrists. Where the former is constantly rewarding and celebrating the new and experimental, the latter tends to sniff with distrust around anything different. Since Wallace’s suicide in 2008, the standard Kurt Cobain/Jimi Hendrix/Jeff Buckley Death of a Promising Young Artist dynamic has been at work, but magnified by the differences between the music and literature worlds. What’s even more interesting is how these impressions branch and flower when you dive truly in. What’s interesting is that these are only the outward impressions, the understanding of the book that you can get from just looking at it on the shelf, or flipping through the 388 endnotes, or biting off just one sentence, much less the entire book. The almost universal response, whether you love or hate the book, is awe.Īwe at its length, awe at Wallace’s skill, awe at the pages and pages and pages of endnotes, awe that any single human brain - especially such a young one (Wallace was just 34 when the book was published) - could produce such a thing. Of the last few decades, it is the one piece of literature regarded as unimpeachably genius, a game changer, a generation-definer, an Urtext of whatever they’re calling fiction after post-modernism, an event, a whatever else you can think of. “INFINITE JEST” IS A BIG BOOK in so many more ways than just the one. Something is Rotten in the State of Enfield, pgs 666-682/1052. Getting Chewed by Something Huge and Tireless and Patient, pgs 567-619/1044-1045 Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed, pgs 530-538/1036-1037 I Saw a Vision of Your Facetime, pgs 144-156Īn Anticipated Retraction Regarding Dave Eggers or DO Read the Introduction Two Addicts, an Attache and a German who Kicks it Altschule, pgs 68-87Ĭloak and Dagger/Towels and Banter, pgs 87-127 JUMP TO THE LATEST ENTRY IN THE INFINITE JEST LIVEBLOG