Infinite Jest

AUTHOR: David Foster Wallace

READ by HAROLD in OCTOBER 2013

Harold's Commentary/Review:

It’s not as original as you think, the premise that there might be something so entertaining that you must watch it again and again until it kills you (I mean, isn’t that just social media writ large?) But of course the entertainment is supposed, here, to be a film (the word “film” rings in my ears as being so antiquated because, working at Factory Media Centre, it has come to stand in for analog). I doubt that anything analog would be so persuasive to today’s (drug) addicts.

Well, the Incandenzas are a raucous crew. The experience of encountering them via footnote after footnote in this book, was as pedestrian as it was postmodern. I am glad for the audio edition as I don’t think I could have finished “reading” it. And yet I found it exhilarating. What a commitment on the part of David Foster Wallace to insist on so granular and so ordinary a level of interconnection and insight. A massive and important mashup of microwaves, Moms, marijuana, and Quebecois.

I’m sad that DFW died.

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HAROLD'S READING HISTORY


APR 2013

MAY 2013

JUL 2013

AUG 2013

SEP 2013

OCT 2013

DEC 2013

JAN 2014

WHAT is THIS?

This digital bookshelf is, loosely defined, a collection of books that I (Harold Sikkema) have read over the years of my life. I began this list because I wanted to get a sense of my reading over time. I suppose the chronology also gives a picture of my evolving interests and concerns. I cannot claim that this is a complete list; there are lots of things I've read that are not listed here. I will add to my digital bookshelf as time allows. See also: A Compendium of Books, an earlier blog post reflecting on this effort.