Infinite Jest

So I finished Infinite Jest. Finally! Jeez. Y'all will see soon that I read about a book a week usually so devoting two whole months to DFW (David Foster Wallace for all you non-intelligentsia hipsters, who probably are better off not being intelligentsia hipsters...) took a whole heck of a lot of perseverance from me.

Anyway, it was amazing. I will confess that I'm fairly certain I only understood about 20% of all of it's nuances and the ending totally baffled me but it really was an amazing piece of work. I will have to read it a few more times before I would feel as if I understood any kind of majority of it but it's totally worth it as a read. DFW is an amazing writer and uses some unique, albeit occasionally somewhat unnecessary, writing techniques. A few as follows:
-The revelation of details about characters, especially in appearance, near the end of the characters' developments. For example, a character who appears throughout the novel is finally revealed to have white hair. Which may seem like a totally nominal trait, but was completely disorienting for me in the moment as it totally changed my minds-eye picture of the character.
-The seemingly backwards development of characters (which probably explains the first point). Throughout the book, there are smaller vignette type stores that are all connected. And there are three main lines, life at ETA, the Ennet House, and the goings on of the AFR. The first hundred pages of the novel don't make a ton of cohesive sense because all of these different seemingly disconnected stories happen and they only start to make real sense together about halfway through. Which is my number one reason why I want to read the book again.
-The EXCESSIVE use of footnotes. I'm sorry but I really get annoyed when authors use footnotes for EVERYTHING. That's why I haven't made it through but ten pages of Ulysses. Anyway, DFW uses footnotes for every little aside that he might use. Some footnotes are more than asides. There are entire story lines that happen through a single footnote that might be several pages long. And sometimes I would get lazy and not really read the entire long footnotes carefully which makes me feel like I must have missed something.

Overall, I would definitely suggest it to anyone who is willing to take the plunge. Worth it.

I am now reading Hipster Christianity by Brett McCracken which is interesting but his writing shows that it's his first book and he's trying to figure out if he wants to have a casual or academic voice. He's coming to speak at Wheaton this week so I might be able to go see him speak and get some light shed. After, I'm going to start Till We Have Faces again for a Sunday school class at church and hopefully finally get to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. As a reminder: I'm always ready for some suggestions for books, movies, and music.