my return from the infinite: week, ahem, sixteen? · Sep 30, 07:39 AM by j.
I know it’s been a while. I will save you from all excuses and distractions and simply say that at a certain point in my immersion of this novel, this huge and epic and downright beautiful novel, I found that I did not want to write about it anymore. I did not want to check in with infinitesummer.org. I did not want to talk it over with people who’d read it. And I certainly did not want to talk to the people on the subway who endlessly asked me with eyebrows raised: what’s that about? In short, the act of reading this particular book became a thing that was totally and completely mine, done mostly in the half-dark of my apartment after everyone had gone to sleep (like a drug, you might say) and frankly, I didn’t want to share it with anyone. In fact, there seemed to be an urge to do just the opposite, an inexplicable urge to hide.
Now that I’m finished with this behemoth, I think I’ve begun to understand why it has such a cult following, why, when I was in my first hundred pages and still rather opinionated, devoted IJ fans responded to my comments in ways that I thought were, frankly, a unique blend of condescending and unhinged. But now I think I’m starting to get it. Last week, when I had the tiniest pinch of pages left, when I was oh, oh, so close, I was riding the green line home in the early evening. (It might be worth noting that I actually let my students out of class twenty minutes early because I knew I would finish the book that night, and I just wanted to get on back to it already; of course, they were let out early on the pretense of having extra time to work on their looming papers.) Anyway, three college-aged guys, BC dude-types, sat down across from me, and one of them leaned forward and said: I just want you to know that it’s my life’s goal to read that book. In response, I smiled. You should, I said, then went back to reading. His friend asked him: What’s it about? And the guy launched into what was perhaps one of the most painful monologues I’ve ever been subjected to. Well, he began, David Foster Wallace killed himself last year, yeah, he hung himself, and it’s like this real shame because he was like this New Yorker writer, you know, all the good writers work at the New Yorker, it’s like the best, and so he wrote this amazing book of stories called Consider the Lobster, and wow, the characters are just really so accessible. It’s really much more approachable that what she’s reading. But she’s my hero. Did you hear that? You’re my hero. This time, I didn’t smile or nod. I completely fucking ignored. And his friend, who, kudos to him, belied his idiotic appearance by realizing that his friend had yet to answer the initial question, turned instead to me: Hey, so what’s it about? I looked him straight in the eye and said: Tennis. Tennis? he asked. Yeah, that’s right. Tennis. And the original asshole, the guy who’d probably never even read a New Yorker cartoon said: Umn, I don’t think so. You guys, I think she’s fucking with us.
Now of course the book is about much more than tennis. In fact, if I had to choose a single word that summed it all up I would probably say: addiction. It is probably the most beautiful and accurate account of addiction that has ever graced the face of American Literature, and is it wrong that there was just some part of me that wanted to hide such beauty from this idiot who wouldn’t know the difference between a story and an essay if it crawled into his ear and procreated? I don’t want this guy to read Infinite Jest. EVER. He doesn’t deserve to. Is that so wrong? In retrospect, I do realize how ridiculous this is; the English teacher/writer in me does believe that every person deserves access to every book, that, in fact, that guy probably needs it more than most. However, back on the green line, I’m still deeply despising this kid, and instead of thinking calmly and logically I simply disengage from reality and, in a very IJ-esque fantasy, see myself stand up and beat this kid over the head with this beautiful, hefty book, much in the same way that Gately beats the Canadians in the middle of the street. Gately just goes into protection mode, even if he doesn’t know why, and I found myself wanting to do the same for DFW. I wanted to smash that kid’s head in with my five-pound book while his friends watched in utter horror. I wanted to be escorted off the green line by MBTA Police. I wanted there to be small specks of blood left behind on those thousand pages. But of course that didn’t happen. Of course I just said: Well, when you have twenty pages left in the book and someone is keeping you from reading it, you can decide for yourself what it’s about. Ouch, his friend said, and when they got off on the next stop, leaving me to finish in solitude, I swear a certain someone mumbled a very derogatory term under his breath.
So yes, David Foster Wallace killed himself, and yes, it is pretty much the worst thing that has happened to American Literature in a long, long while, and yes, IJ devotees, of which I now count myself as one, might act a little psychotic every now and then in defense of our author, but it’s important to understand that something happens to you when you read this book. And I think even moreso now, after his tragic death. It’s like the stakes are raised in some way, and furthermore, like any a-hole on the street now thinks he knows something about DFW, just because he knows this gnarly fact. But here’s the thing: once you read this book, you don’t want him to be remembered for that. Or at least I don’t. It’s just not the point. This book gets inside you, lives with you long after you finish the last page, and in that sense, Wallace is the furthest thing from dead. I know it’s the most cliche, cheesy thing to say that his work lives on, but in this case, it’s just kind of true. I mean, the act of reading may recede like the sea, but you’ll always be on that freezing sand, still wet from where the water just was.
infinite grammar: week three the story of edgar sawtelle: an ode to costa rica and silence