Infinite Jest

why? what are you supposed to read after Brothers of Karamazov?

War and Peace

Thank you

It was a joke

you'll learn to love it. dont worry if you dont understand everything right now. your brian will learn to read his prose after a while and around page 100-200 it'll click and you'll be in.

It’s a lovely book. I don’t know what to tell you. The only really tedious parts are the tennis games and the fucking made up international war game they play. Eschaton it may be called. Perhaps to someone really into that sort of thing it’d be fun. I bet Chomsky would find it hilarious.

I enjoyed Infinite Jest for the emotional content and the characters. Maybe the prose is a bit much, but to say he is a bad writer would be very unfair. He has a lot of things to say, and sometimes he doesn’t know how to put them simply. But he did understand a lot about human nature. Every one of his characters make sense.

It definitely speaks to a certain type of person.

I feel dirty reading a novel under 200 pages

>The only really tedious parts are the tennis games and the fucking made up international war game they play
Yeah, eschaton. Couldn't agree more with this, and your post in general. IJ is definitely for a certain type of person, and I was definitely one of those people.

If you don't enjoy it and feel compelled to keep going by like page 200, I would say give up

it clicked with me around when hal and orin are talking on the telephone while hal is clipping his toenails
it's a fun book, just read it without thinking about it like a huge masterspice million page superbook

Neither, but moreso you being stupid for making the judgement right at the beginning. Stick with it and meanings will become less ambiguous about 200-400 pages in, like anything that starts in the middle. You might enjoy rereading the chapter by the time you've figured out who is who. Most scenes you are not going to be as clueless as in the first scene, but you'll often find plot or relationships that are spoken about before they're properly introduced (Madame Psychosis, what is that a band?; Who the heck is narrating this chapter!?; What's up with ONAN and Quebec?) It is just part of reading it, don't worry, Dave mostly knows what he's doing.

most people I know who've read it gave up once or twice and waited a few weeks before starting and finishing it
all of them now reread it at least once a year because of how well-built and concentrated the universe is and the pure comfiness factor

It's a masturbatory exercise in verbosity and erudition with little to no literary value. A tiresomely prolix puzzle for the reader to unravel for no other reward but the pseud bragging rights. If that process doesn't bring you any pleasure itself, then there's really no reason to continue or expect some epiphanic intellectual payoff. Save yourself some time and drop it.

i'm on page 400 after a month of reading, but i was ready to quit after the first 30 or so. If you can push through it gets easier, in both context and interpretation, but it's a huge commitment.

>most people I know now reread it at least once a year

>the eschaton was tedious
I would tell you to kill yourself but man, you're already dead.

Yeah a lot of the first bit is rough (like that black woman passage, forget her name), but after reading the bit on Erdedy waiting for pot, I knew I had to keep going. Love that part

>I'm at the beginning of the book, the college admission interview, and I am constantly rereading paragraphs to understand what's going on.

It does have shit prose but not for the reasons you think.

Better to read The Recognitions if you want a mawkish, long satire of America where the author hasn't figured out what he was good at yet (at least Gaddis discovered that he should stick only to dialogue).

WARDINE BE CRY
THEN DA WHITE MAN COME TO US AND SAY WE BE BLACKS BUT WE DIN DOO NUFFIN NO SIR
WARDINE BE CRY

I hated that shit with passion. I always hate when some stupid fucking author tries to convey accent through stupid spelling. Only the baddies to this.

it least that was readable, the irish guy in aa waxing poetic about his solid bowl movement broke me, i imaged that was how finnegans wake read.

American fiction is either commercial and sentimental garbage or cartoonish wikipedia recitations that were probably funny and interesting for fifteen years. I really am not sure if anything good has been written by an American born since Eliot. Maybe the later works of Gaddis and DeLillo. I guess McCarthy. I don't see the fascination with writing really sleek kitsch.

i take it you don't read scifi

It seems like you have trouble reading for fun. Feel bad for you

Cool book, liked it a lot. I don't get why Hal had speech problems initially that were never addressed later in the book?

I'm only a few hundred pages into the book but the first chapter takes place after Hal's years at E.T.A, so his 'impediment' manifested later.

The only good part of IJ is the racist bixnood passage. The rest was a bit much.

Please don't bother with the rest it is a wastenof your time please please this isn't a good book you're being memed the title is the punchline and you're the victim DFW was a legit manchild narcissist and the only reason his "opus" (which opened to poor reviews before his suicide made sentimental reconsideration necessary) is so highly regarded is becuase of his cult of personality please user save yourself

>what does this U.S.A. expression wish it mean? This bixnood?

I caught myself talking like Rèmy in conversation in public the other day.

what DID the first scene mean. just finished my first reading last night and don't get what happened to the Peemster or Hal