IJ

[Will Layman]

If the reason you don't like INFINITE JEST is the w/r/t and the footnotes,
then perhaps you're reacting to the smallest symptoms of the book's larger
design.  It is a book full of jargon, inside material, cross-referencing and
self-conscious recursiveness.  The footnotes and the abbreviations are
hardly lazy but part of a bigger scheme.

I think IJ was one of the very best novels of the 1990s and that it left
pathetically in the dust most contemporary literature I've read.  And I
thought it was more accessible and more humane than, for example, Delillo's
UNDERWORLD by leagues.

-- Will

On 3/25/06 10:24 AM, "jd" <wescac at gmail.com> wrote:

> Who knows, maybe it's one of those astoundingly brilliant novels that
> we just aren't giving a chance, a la people back in the day with The
> Recognitions...  but I didn't know anything about the recognitions
> when I picked it up... I did it totally by chance and with no idea
> what it was, other than big.  IJ was reccomended but I really didn't
> know what I was getting into with that one, either.  And I love The
> Recognitions, and really feel bleh about IJ.  Meh.  Though it did
> spark an interesting conversation at least.  Without those footnotes,
> or even if they were on the same page so you didn't have to flip to
> the back of the book, and without his "lazy writing" so to speak
> (w/r/t w/r/t and & instead of "and", etc), it might have been a really
> enjoyable book.
> 
> On 3/25/06, Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
>> Seems as if I'm giving up reading the book for the third time!
>> 
>> This could explain why.
>> 
>> Otto
>> 
>> B C Johnson wrote:
>>> And I think the discursive, prolix style of IJ reflects the speed freak
>>> free association inner monologue of the newly denarcotized.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>