4 ms·

show of hands, how many HN readers have tried to read Infinite Jest and never made it all the way thru?

bbayles 9y ago
Infinite Jest is worth getting through. It's not easy or pleasant, but it's something I'll always remember vividly.
Analemma_ 9y ago
Heh, guilty, although I do get farther and farther each time. Last time I made it almost halfway before I stopped. The issue is that I'm a "distracted reader" and tend to leave books half-finished. Unfortunately, the likelihood of this happening is a function of the book's length and density: if I can read it in a day or two, there's no time to get distracted, but Infinite Jest is both long and slow. Someday, though.
Lordarminius 9y ago
I did. I found it a very complex book densely packed with allusions obscure references. I didn't understand it completely. I plan revisit it someday after reading a synopsis (if my 200+ store of unread digital books will permit me :) ) The author of the article keeps referencing DFW's use of marijuana but stops short of condemning it. I think it's worth stating that it can not have helped his health.
johnhattan 9y ago
I made it about 125 pages. I wanted to like it, but the endless digressions and footnotes wore me out.
- laxatives 9y ago
  FWIW, I didn't like it for the first 300-400 pages either. But it very quickly became one of my favorite books. Its worth sticking it out to the end.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >300-400 pages >very quickly How good can a book be if it starts off bad and stays that way for so long, most books would have already ended?
    - laxatives 9y ago
      I never said it starts off bad. DFW just makes a point to make the book inaccessible. It isn't meant to attract a wide audience, but many good things are initially dismissed because they aren't easy.
savanaly 9y ago
I got through it by treating it like a mystery novel. I really did want to find out what the heck was going on both on a plot level as well as where these character arcs were headed. In a superficial way, none of that really gets a good conclusion by the end, but by reading a lot of analysis and discussion by fellow readers I agree with Wallace when he said that most of the story is there, you just have to do considerable reading between the lines. To me, that's thrilling.
arethuza 9y ago
I did make it through, mostly, I didn't get the sections about the Québécois separatist group so might not have read those in as much detail as the others - everything else I loved. Mind you - I've never re-read it which is something I usually do a lot with books I really love (must have read Anathem 7 or 8 times).
character0 9y ago
I never would have made it through IJ without my book club. That was our inaugural book and now we're around 15 books deep. One thing that was particularly effective for us was to meet every week, but reading shorter sections. For a book like IJ where it's easy to miss things, this is really useful. Weekly meetings are tough, but it's with a great group of friends and missing a meeting only puts me about 3-5 hours of reading behind.
basseq 9y ago
It took me two or three "false starts" before I worked up enough inertia to make it all the way through. You need to get about 200 pages in before it "clicks". It's also a very different kind of reading. You read to absorb, not to comprehend. In a completely-unrelated comparison, there's a line from John Scalzi's Old Man's War that rings true when reading Infinite Jest: "The secret, I found, was to stop fighting it or attempt to organize the information the way I was used to getting it, in discrete chunks of verbal speech. Just accept you're drinking from the fire hose and open wide."
psyc 9y ago
Raises hand. I only made it 50 pages in. I didn't understand it, or didn't find anything interesting in it. I don't doubt that there's something there. I just couldn't get to it, or perhaps there's something about my perspective vs his that makes it hard for us to "communicate" and it translates as not compelling.
yarrel 9y ago
I made it all the way through. I wish I hadn't.
gglitch 9y ago
I got 200-300 pages in twice before finally, on the third try, getting over the hump, after which I couldn't put it down, and in fact re-read it a couple years later. I think the key to enjoying it is thinking of it less as a singular linear story, and more as a large portfolio of short stories, many of which can be assembled more or less linearly to tell a mostly cohesive story (though many of the other stories are peripheral to the main thread). This might sound ridiculous, but DFW was a masterful composer of short stories, and once you adapt to enjoying each little section of IJ on its own terms, the whole becomes much, much more enjoyable. Thrilling, even - I frequently found that the more dull or challenging a given short story was, the more powerfully it ended. There's something almost musical about how he could slowly mount tension (as tedium, or difficulty, or obscurity) to an almost unbearable pitch, only to sublimate it in the end. My .02 anyway. I know many people find other people's enthusiasm for his work annoying, but I'm not totally sure why. They're just stories. There's nothing fundamentally toxic about it.

Infinite Jest is worth getting through. It's not easy or pleasant, but it's something I'll always remember vividly.

Heh, guilty, although I do get farther and farther each time. Last time I made it almost halfway before I stopped. The issue is that I'm a "distracted reader" and tend to leave books half-finished. Unfortunately, the likelihood of this happening is a function of the book's length and density: if I can read it in a day or two, there's no time to get distracted, but Infinite Jest is both long and slow. Someday, though.

Lordarminius 9y ago

I did. I found it a very complex book densely packed with allusions obscure references. I didn't understand it completely. I plan revisit it someday after reading a synopsis (if my 200+ store of unread digital books will permit me :) ) The author of the article keeps referencing DFW's use of marijuana but stops short of condemning it. I think it's worth stating that it can not have helped his health.

johnhattan 9y ago

I made it about 125 pages. I wanted to like it, but the endless digressions and footnotes wore me out.

laxatives 9y ago
FWIW, I didn't like it for the first 300-400 pages either. But it very quickly became one of my favorite books. Its worth sticking it out to the end.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >300-400 pages >very quickly How good can a book be if it starts off bad and stays that way for so long, most books would have already ended?
  - laxatives 9y ago
    I never said it starts off bad. DFW just makes a point to make the book inaccessible. It isn't meant to attract a wide audience, but many good things are initially dismissed because they aren't easy.

savanaly 9y ago

I got through it by treating it like a mystery novel. I really did want to find out what the heck was going on both on a plot level as well as where these character arcs were headed. In a superficial way, none of that really gets a good conclusion by the end, but by reading a lot of analysis and discussion by fellow readers I agree with Wallace when he said that most of the story is there, you just have to do considerable reading between the lines. To me, that's thrilling.

arethuza 9y ago

I did make it through, mostly, I didn't get the sections about the Québécois separatist group so might not have read those in as much detail as the others - everything else I loved. Mind you - I've never re-read it which is something I usually do a lot with books I really love (must have read Anathem 7 or 8 times).

character0 9y ago

I never would have made it through IJ without my book club. That was our inaugural book and now we're around 15 books deep. One thing that was particularly effective for us was to meet every week, but reading shorter sections. For a book like IJ where it's easy to miss things, this is really useful. Weekly meetings are tough, but it's with a great group of friends and missing a meeting only puts me about 3-5 hours of reading behind.

basseq 9y ago

It took me two or three "false starts" before I worked up enough inertia to make it all the way through. You need to get about 200 pages in before it "clicks". It's also a very different kind of reading. You read to absorb, not to comprehend. In a completely-unrelated comparison, there's a line from John Scalzi's Old Man's War that rings true when reading Infinite Jest: "The secret, I found, was to stop fighting it or attempt to organize the information the way I was used to getting it, in discrete chunks of verbal speech. Just accept you're drinking from the fire hose and open wide."

psyc 9y ago

Raises hand. I only made it 50 pages in. I didn't understand it, or didn't find anything interesting in it. I don't doubt that there's something there. I just couldn't get to it, or perhaps there's something about my perspective vs his that makes it hard for us to "communicate" and it translates as not compelling.

yarrel 9y ago

I made it all the way through. I wish I hadn't.

gglitch 9y ago

I got 200-300 pages in twice before finally, on the third try, getting over the hump, after which I couldn't put it down, and in fact re-read it a couple years later. I think the key to enjoying it is thinking of it less as a singular linear story, and more as a large portfolio of short stories, many of which can be assembled more or less linearly to tell a mostly cohesive story (though many of the other stories are peripheral to the main thread). This might sound ridiculous, but DFW was a masterful composer of short stories, and once you adapt to enjoying each little section of IJ on its own terms, the whole becomes much, much more enjoyable. Thrilling, even - I frequently found that the more dull or challenging a given short story was, the more powerfully it ended. There's something almost musical about how he could slowly mount tension (as tedium, or difficulty, or obscurity) to an almost unbearable pitch, only to sublimate it in the end. My .02 anyway. I know many people find other people's enthusiasm for his work annoying, but I'm not totally sure why. They're just stories. There's nothing fundamentally toxic about it.