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.
FIND a COPY
Find a copy of Infinite Jest on Amazon.
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.