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Before even clicking through to the article I was thinking about Infinite Jest. > As an author, I want to add more details which don’t fit in the main body of

Before even clicking through to the article I was thinking about Infinite Jest. > As an author, I want to add more details which don’t fit in the main body of the text. Because I hate deleting text and my editor told me to take it out. I joked about IJ doing that exact thing, that the editor was all “no, you can’t just list nonsensical film titles for four straight pages” and DFW said “watch this.” Of course it’s us poor readers that pay the price having to use two bookmarks (or three, as some footnotes have footnotes). And there was plenty of this: > the user is forced to break from the flow of reading I’ve never had to reread so many passages. If you take it all in stride it’s quite fun, really. I found it humorous and chuckled each time I had to skip to the back, like I was privy to an inside joke. The article does raise good points, and I’ve never used an e-reader. I bet it helps a ton, I imagine something like the pop up doc/diff/def viewers like in a modern source code editor. I imagine it would’ve taken away some of the fun from IJ, but of course that’s not a typical case.

codetrotter 6y ago
I tried to read Infinite Jest once but eventually gave up because I found it kind of exhausting to read and I couldn’t really follow along. After reading your comment I decided to have another look at it. I knew last time that it was a weird book, and that it was enjoyed by a lot of people. But even looking at the first page of it again I just don’t feel compelled to read it. Maybe some day.
- 1MachineElf 6y ago
  There's a decent audiobook too, if that helps.
  - thedanbob 6y ago
    As someone who has done a little work on the side recording audiobooks, I hope they paid that guy well. That sounds like a nightmare.
    - sixstringtheory 6y ago
      How do you handle footnotes in audiobooks?
      - thedanbob 6y ago
        I was told to read them right after the sentence in which they appear. It sucks when there's one in the middle of a sentence or multiple in one sentence, really breaks the flow of the thought. On the other hand, I can't think of a better way to handle them without omitting them entirely. There's a few things like that which have really made me realize how visual books are, and how challenging they are to translate to the spoken word (simple example, imagine how to express with your tone of voice that this is a parenthetical rather than a new sentence).
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  I hear you. It took me around 2 years to finish, with a few other books interspersed as breaks from it. There were many nights in bed where I didn’t make it through a single whole page before passing out. In the end I came away from it more with a feeling I had lived a part of life in another person’s (really several peoples’) shoes, less that there was any particular climactic aha! moment. Life, as wonderful as it is, still has its banalities and mundanities. You’re not missing out on a great truth, just a quirky story. Plenty of those to go around. Hope you find a good one!
bschne 6y ago
DFW is notorious for this, in his non-fiction essays he goes on so many tangents within the main text already, often only to then go off on yet another tangent in an almost page-long footnote. Funny thing is he sort of parodied himself by going all out in his 2005 piece "Host" [1] by going so far as to nest footnotes within each other. That piece is actually interesting to compare across different media, as the interactivity of the web version makes it somewhat elegant to look at or skip the footnotes at the reader's discretion, whereas in the print edition in "Consider the Lobster", they are put in boxes within the main text and connected by arrows. It takes a great deal of concentration/"work" to read his stuff but when you're in the right frame of mind all the depths and semi-related thoughts can make it all the more interesting... 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/303812/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/30...
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  It sounds a lot like Proust too, I’m about 1/3rd of the way through Swann’s Way, which I haven’t picked up in months now, too long. He takes tangent to the next level, not only in duration but in frequency, and the sentence length! It’s like reading a free-associative depth first search of the guy’s memories.
  - cafard 6y ago
    It takes some slogging. Quarantine seems just the right time to read Proust.

codetrotter 6y ago

I tried to read Infinite Jest once but eventually gave up because I found it kind of exhausting to read and I couldn’t really follow along. After reading your comment I decided to have another look at it. I knew last time that it was a weird book, and that it was enjoyed by a lot of people. But even looking at the first page of it again I just don’t feel compelled to read it. Maybe some day.

1MachineElf 6y ago
There's a decent audiobook too, if that helps.
- thedanbob 6y ago
  As someone who has done a little work on the side recording audiobooks, I hope they paid that guy well. That sounds like a nightmare.
  - sixstringtheory 6y ago
    How do you handle footnotes in audiobooks?
    - thedanbob 6y ago
      I was told to read them right after the sentence in which they appear. It sucks when there's one in the middle of a sentence or multiple in one sentence, really breaks the flow of the thought. On the other hand, I can't think of a better way to handle them without omitting them entirely. There's a few things like that which have really made me realize how visual books are, and how challenging they are to translate to the spoken word (simple example, imagine how to express with your tone of voice that this is a parenthetical rather than a new sentence).
sixstringtheory 6y ago
I hear you. It took me around 2 years to finish, with a few other books interspersed as breaks from it. There were many nights in bed where I didn’t make it through a single whole page before passing out. In the end I came away from it more with a feeling I had lived a part of life in another person’s (really several peoples’) shoes, less that there was any particular climactic aha! moment. Life, as wonderful as it is, still has its banalities and mundanities. You’re not missing out on a great truth, just a quirky story. Plenty of those to go around. Hope you find a good one!

bschne 6y ago

DFW is notorious for this, in his non-fiction essays he goes on so many tangents within the main text already, often only to then go off on yet another tangent in an almost page-long footnote. Funny thing is he sort of parodied himself by going all out in his 2005 piece "Host" [1] by going so far as to nest footnotes within each other. That piece is actually interesting to compare across different media, as the interactivity of the web version makes it somewhat elegant to look at or skip the footnotes at the reader's discretion, whereas in the print edition in "Consider the Lobster", they are put in boxes within the main text and connected by arrows. It takes a great deal of concentration/"work" to read his stuff but when you're in the right frame of mind all the depths and semi-related thoughts can make it all the more interesting... 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/303812/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/30...

sixstringtheory 6y ago
It sounds a lot like Proust too, I’m about 1/3rd of the way through Swann’s Way, which I haven’t picked up in months now, too long. He takes tangent to the next level, not only in duration but in frequency, and the sentence length! It’s like reading a free-associative depth first search of the guy’s memories.
- cafard 6y ago
  It takes some slogging. Quarantine seems just the right time to read Proust.