Afraid of a big book, not I…

I’ve read Ulysses three times. I’ve read Gravity’s Rainbow twice. I read Underworld and Mason & Dixon in the same year. Hell, I read Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl, and The Ambassadors in a single summer. Admittedly, I was studying for my comps and it sucked.

Enough literary muscle flexing though. Let’s just say that big books aren’t necessarily difficult books. Take Moby Dick, for example. Sure there is a lot of symbolism and such, but you can read it as a glorified fishing story (Melville thought the whale was a fish, just read the cytology chapter).

So why is it that everyone cites the length of the work when they talk about the challenge of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest? Sure, it is long, but that shouldn’t be an issue unless you are working on your bucket list. When you see it, it is what Lori Anderson would call a “book thick enough to stun an ox,” but I am reading it on my Kindle, so all I have to remind me of my prolonged commitment is a progress bar that is slow to, well, progress.

I suspect the real anxiety is over the nature of the work. It is well known for its convoluted form, endnotes with endnotes, and prankster-like conventions. It is, to use a term coined by Espen Aarseth, ergodic literature. It requires work and commitment, two things that people either have too much of already, or are not very good at anyway.

Frankly, I can’t believe I haven’t read this book yet. I love difficult books. I almost (before sanity struck) dedicated my life to reading and teaching such books. This one has been on my ‘to do’ list for years (just like finishing the built-in seating in the kitchen). Perhaps Pynchon and Delillo distracted me by releasing their big books the following year, or maybe it is just that I read a hell of a lot more non-fiction these days. You know what they say, excuses are like…

So, this summer, the fates have conspired for me to read Infinite Jest. Amazon keeps recommending the book as a Kindle read for me. I need a long book for my trip to Australia this week, and I am intrigued by the group reading project over at Infinite Summer (more on that in a future post).

The book is on my Kindle; I am on my way to Australia. I have publicly stated my commitment to do this.

Bring it on

tags: Books | david foster wallace | infinite jest | Infinite Summer | reading