2008 September

September 14, 2008

RIP, DFW

Filed under: culture — scrame @ 5:40 pm

I read infinite jest a few years ago. I had no idea who he was, I picked it up because it was the longest book i could find in an english book store in Tokyo.

As someone who has picked over most of everything Vonnegut has written, I was surprised to find someone who used science-fiction in a similar slapdash manner. Given that it was written in the mid-90′s, and the amount of time it must have taken to write, there are a lot of curious anachronisms on how technology would play out in the near-future. There were things I didnt like, parts where the novel was padded, or i didnt think he got a characters voice right, and there are a lot of urban legends and email forward-type jokes poured in. But those are just nitpicks which is what the non-novelists of the world have to offer.

It took about 6 months, but i finished it: every damn page, and every damn footnote. I finished it in Thailand where I was with a couple friends who had recently gotten out of the Peace Corps. We all nitpicked, and joked about the length, and we had somehow all made it through. I had a similar exchange with jesse that summer. The nitpicks are the same on either side, but are ultimately what defines it as a love it or hate it book.

And why, for all these nitpicks, did I plod through it?

Because in the mountains of details, broken time-lines, eccentric vocabularies, and implications, there were terrifyingly fresh insights and believable absurdities sucker-punching you on every page.

This was near the end of my time in japan. My apartment was basically an 8×10 room. I slept on a futon that was about a quarter inch thick directly on the floor, in the same space that I cooked in.

I kept at it because those nights were filled with me curled in a ball, tears welling up in my eyes, laughing uncontrollably.

At a fucking footnote.

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Scrame

September 14, 2008

RIP, DFW