NP - Infinite Jest

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I've been lurking more than posting lately, but I agree with whoever said that ATD's size allowed Pynchon to make up for the IV-like flaws contained therein (i.e. less subtext, more on-the-nose writing) with sparks of layered insight and good writing.  But it did contain that strong candidate for his Worst Sentence Ever:  "Reader, she bit him."

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Sep 23, 2009 2:59 PM
>To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: NP - Infinite Jest
>
>I like Matthew, too and I am one who stopped out of reading some BIG novels due to work overload and life pressures (including GR back in the dark ages)------BUT I am firmly of the camp that we should take the time with (the right) big books.......The world is hugely hard to get right....
>So, size matters. 
>
>Here's one major problem as I see it: How do we feel the big books relatively whole, positive or less than?  We have to have some sense of the cumulative themes as they come together---or don't. (see the plisters
>on whether Aginst the Day works as a whole or doesn't. I had more time than when I first tried to read GR (or Proust for that matter) and/but I did feel it build to its ending(s).....
>
>Others feel there is much that is extraneous in Atd, as I did about IJ, say. 
>
>Just sayin'...
>
>--- On Wed, 9/23/09, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> Subject: NP - Infinite Jest
>> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 2:37 PM
>> Matthew Yglesias, one of my favorite
>> political bloggers just finished IJ:
>> 
>> http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/09/infinite-jest.php
>> 
>> After working at it on-and-off all summer long, I’m
>> finally done with
>> Infinite Jest and I feel . . . well, I don’t quite know
>> how I feel. I
>> was determined not to let reading this difficult book
>> become a
>> “difficult” process and just resolved to read a page
>> then turn the
>> page then read the next page (modified, as necessary, for
>> footnotes
>> and such) and not spend too much time worrying about
>> whether or not I
>> was understanding everything that’s going on.
>> Consequently, I enjoyed
>> myself reading the book—it’s funny, clever, etc., has
>> some great set
>> pieces, blah blah. Also some weak points. But by the end
>> this has
>> added up to . . . what, exactly? I don’t really know. A
>> sprawling
>> meditation on addiction and the over-entertained American,
>> I guess.
>> 
>> But in a fundamental sense it struck me as very
>> unsatisfying. Not just
>> in terms of the weird ending, but in terms of definitely
>> not feeling
>> like I got more out of reading it than I could have gotten
>> out of
>> reading three books that were one third the length. That in
>> turn is
>> really making me glad that I was made to read Anna Karenina
>> and Moby
>> Dick in high school. I really loved both those giant
>> honking books,
>> but does it really make sense for a busy person in the
>> modern world
>> who maybe doesn’t care to dedicate all that much time to
>> classic
>> novels to read them? Seems like it might make more sense to
>> read some
>> short Tolstoy like “Family Happiness” and “Hadji
>> Murat” and then move
>> on to other things.
>> 
>> Adding new possible ways to entertain ourselves naturally
>> starts to
>> squeeze out the viability of some old ways. And maybe the
>> long novel
>> is among the squeezed. Which seems in some ways regrettable
>> (which I
>> take it is part of the point of Infinite Jest) but at the
>> same time to
>> really be a feature of the world.
>> 
>> 
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