14 July 2009

Infinite Jest

I'm not sure why David Foster Wallace, one of America's preeminent novelists, killed himself last year.

Hell, I'm not entirely sure why
anybody kills themselves...life just seems way too precious, no matter how shitty it can get sometimes.

I've read that he suffered from severe depression and my sincere hope, even though I didn't know the man, is that he found some kind of peace in death.



He wrote a novel called Infinite Jest that is, apparently, very difficult to finish.

Now that I'm a man of leisure (hopefully not for long...I do love that paycheck), I've decided to take the Infinite Jest challenge. I've tried reading difficult novels (Foucault's Pendulum, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake) with very little success. I have a feeling that getting through Wallace's 1079-page tome is going to be difficult, but I need to do this.

Who's comin' with me?

2 comments:

KT said...

I have committed myself to reading Foucault on the beach in a couple weeks. I will be in between finishing ALL my course work and starting the hell of studying for comps.

As for Infinite Jest, sell me on it as you go. :)

KT said...

Also, in case you hadn't seen this:

http://infinitesummer.org/