david foster wallace interview you've probably already read

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I have to say, that of all (Read:ALL!!!) of the postmodern fictions I've read, the ending of "Infinite Jest has the biggest (harshest) emotional payoff of the lot of 'em. I leaves you stranded and utterly freaked. And, no doubt about it kiddies, "Jest" is a major pain in the ass to read. Major.
When its good, its fantastic. When its bad, its interminable. 

Be sure to read the title essay from "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". When you're wading through the thick mists of a Melvillian obsessive descriptive disorder, seventy pages is an acceptable commitment.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Carvill John" <johncarvill at hotmail.com>
> Thanks for that, hadn't read it. Just started Infinite Jest this weekend. 
> I'm about 100 pages in and I don't know whether I'm going to (a) race 
> through the rest of the book, love it, recommend it to whoever will listen, 
> or (b) drop-kick it over the hedge into my least favourite neighbour's 
> greenhouse. The interview produces the same ambivalence, the whole thing 
> reads like one of his interminable footnotes, a sort of arch parody of 
> lit-crit pretentiousness. And if he used the term 'recursion' just one more 
> time I think I'd have to track him down and give him a slap.
> 
>