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Scene-by-Scene Summary 17, Scenes 148 – 158: Abandon All Hope
14 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) – Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, Enfield, MA Returning to Joelle’s room in Ennet House, she is thinking that the reason she...
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The Sweet Spot
The Sweet Spot I’m almost finished, only 43 pages to go and I’ll probably sprint so I wanted to say something about this before we all move on. “A somehow deliciously symmetrical buzz: the mind floats...
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Summer of Jest Update: The Finish Line
This is it. The last weekend of Summer of Jest. Monday, Sept. 2, is the last day on the Reading Schedule. After that point all spoiler-related concerns will no longer be Entertained. However, we’re...
View ArticleAll’s Well That “Ends” Well (?) – my thoughts on the IJ finale
When I read the last line of Infinite Jest the first coherent thought I had was: “well, I kind of wish I had been wearing pants for that.” Was I angry? At first – yeah, I think I was. After months of...
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Summer’s End.
“I am in here.” I turned the last page of Infinite Jest around two weeks ago. I hadn’t meant to get so ahead of the group’s schedule; up until the mid-500’s I think I was on target (or not far off...
View ArticleSummer of Jest Slideshow #2 (Mind the Buddha!)
Courtesy of the inimitable Mark Jabbour, using images uploaded to the Summer of Jest Facebook group (Jul-Sept 2013). Slideshow #1, aka “Global Chaos,” can be found here.
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No One Should Read Infinite Jest more than Once
by Zachary Warner Last words… So, you just finished reading Infinite Jest and now you’re trying to make sense of the much lauded comedy. It’s likely that you’re confused and just bursting with...
View ArticleThat’s a goddamned lie
That’s a goddamned lie. “Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.”[1] Or, “… no matter how smart you thought you were, you are actually way less smart than that.” (p.201) That, I...
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Reasons why I’m Majorly Behind but am Definitely NOT Quitting Infinite Jest
The “I” is for the first reading. Funny how I knew I would be re-reading The Jest before I even started the first time! It’s nearly October and I’m nowhere near finished with The Jest (as one of my...
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Himself’s Figurants
David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel, Infinite Jest, represents realism as a function of banality. It’s narrative rarely resolves, disrupted by a seemingly boundless lexicon and an erratic temporality,...
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Drawing Conclusions
When I look back on the year 2013 three things come to mind: This was the year my eyesight could be corrected with glasses after a medical marathon, the first year of my best friend’s twin girls and...
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Unwasted, with Sacha Z. Scoblic
Infinite Conversations – Episode 2 Recorded August 1, 2013 Download (right-click to save to your computer) Sacha Z. Scoblic is the author of Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety—and a fellow reader of Infinite...
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Scene-by-Scene Summary 14, Scenes 111 – 114: Backstories
As of the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment (2009) – Boston, MA We get another account of teleputer technology and some of the medical conditions that arise when over 50% of a city’s population...
View ArticleWallace (and me) on The Family
Let’s start with this: David Foster Wallace was a genius – insomuch as intellect and the ability to construct words into sentences like no one else has ever before or since. And to do so he had to have...
View ArticleInfinite Jest predicted Netflix. Netflix presents OITNB. OITNB is Infinite Jest.
[A guest post by Jake Jabbour, originally posted on his Tumblr blog. — ed.] It took me 26 months, give or take a week, to read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in its entirety. Depending on what...
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Wallace on ‘Himself’
The pages’ in Infinite Jest 736 – 747 were the most disturbing and upsetting for me and they were not about drugs or alcohol, addictions; sexual abuse; depression, animal abuse, death, murder, torture...
View ArticleThere but for the Grace of What? (or “Why I Quit Infinite Jest.”)
I quit Infinite Jest last night. Maybe for the summer, or maybe for good. At first I thought it was because I hit the Matty Pemulis section on page 684 and the rape was triggering because of my own...
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Wallace on Wallace
What follows is a reflection from the reading of pages 809 – 851, what we in the group have been calling “The Wraith,” but what might more accurately be called, The Fever Dream. It’s what’s going on in...
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Scene-by-Scene Summary 15, Scenes 115 – 133: People Take Their Places
11 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) - Enfield Tennis Academy, Enfield, MA We now travel back a couple days, back to the match between Hal and Stice, which happened by an order...
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Scene-by-Scene Summary 16, Scenes 134 – 147: 14 November, Year of the Depend...
14 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) – Enfield Tennis Academy, Enfield, MA Returning to the viewing room with Hal and the other ETAs, they are still watching Blood Sister: One...
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