What do I need to know before reading this, Veeky Forums? Any specific previous knolwdge?

Do you mean 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men', or interviews with DFW?

Who's the author of 'Television'? I'm sorry, but I'm new in Veeky Forums.

The latter, friend. His other books like 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men' are also good; I recommend 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.'

I mean the medium. I recommend 'Friends', 'Seinfeld', 'Frasier', 'Married... With Children', 'Law & Order', 'Cheers', 'ALF', 'Roseanne'. 'M*A*S*H', 'The Simpsons', 'The Love Boat', 'Golden Girls', 'Happy Days', and 'Fraggle Rock.'

Commence with the Kazakhs

nope. just read it

you mean Hamlet?

Shakespeare has really nothing to do with Infinite Jest

cosmoetica.com/B1349-JH1.htm

It's not worth your time. Terrible book.

I haven't actually read IJ so I wouldn't know

Continue with the Kangz

The obvious ones are Hamlet and The Brothers Karamazov. You can understand everything without them, but they're referenced and the relationships between most of the main characters are based off of those two works.

His E. Unibus Pluram would also be good but he's pretty explicit about what he's doing in Infinite Jest so I wouldn't consider that necessary.

>WE memeposts
>spells continue with a c and not a k
You had one job

It's very funny, very sad, and very very good.

You need to know it's a piece of shit propped up by marketing, academia, and pseuds. Wallace is a fucking terrible writer who had some really bad ideas.

A lot of previous knowledge is required to read this book. Only tackle it if you've had ample literary experience. I feel sorry for the beginners who come onto Veeky Forums looking for recommendations and fall for the IJ meme.

Why is it important to get the references? Be specific.

I think he may be pulling your leg, mate.

And if he isn't, he's a pleb.

It's a very long and arduous book and asks a tremendous amount from the reader at times (there are random drug sections written in ebonics and it is constantly going on long tangents) but I would hardly say it's difficult to understand or that it alludes to anything all too obscure.

But the footnotes can be absurdly long and frequent so you may want to use two bookmarks.

Find a printing that doesn't have horrendously small text and tiny borders

big text is for babies and senile people

are you enjoying those picture books?

Update: just read a chapter that was entirely stream-of-consciousness. Why did DFW purposely make his book hard to read?

Just get the version with pic related cover. The text isn't that small.

I just checked my copy and the text isn't as small as I thought. The borders are just v small unlike penguin + wordsworth etc
I have the cover w/ stickynote sorta cover thingo for reference

why blue velvet?

serves you right for not buying the meme edition

cause it changed his life

tfw store doesnt stock meme edition any more

I've read plenty of his interviews desu but missed that one, what exactly did he say about it?

I'm aware he loved Lynch, but how BV specifically?

youtube.com/watch?v=wie8uPgQOYE

cosmoetica.com/B1349-JH1.htm