tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16843005.post7823680487790847870..comments2010-05-31T19:48:27.629+03:00Comments on The PoMo Circus in Crete. The Lavender Way in Felia: Book Review: Infinite Jest by David Foster WallaceAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10696910021125004214noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16843005.post-1439480905119502522010-05-31T19:48:27.629+03:002010-05-31T19:48:27.629+03:00Thanx for taking the time to respond Anthony. We a...Thanx for taking the time to respond Anthony. We are all entitled to our opinions and I hope I made mine clear. Unlike so many of the IJ reviews I have read I tried to review the work and not the author. <br /><br />To summarise I think it was a brave effort but one that was misconceived and ultimately one that fails at what it attempts. That is not to say that I would not recommend it to others.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10696910021125004214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16843005.post-76599770529295253022010-05-31T06:19:58.823+03:002010-05-31T06:19:58.823+03:00I'm not totally clear on what your objection i...I'm not totally clear on what your objection is.<br /><br />Obviously it's not never-ending: it does spiral out in so many directions as to point to an infinite end. And just because the title suggests it's funny, and it uses slapstick school-boy humour doesn't mean it's a funny book. DFW, the man himself, has said way more than once that he never set out to be amusing -- he set out to write a sad, unhappy book. <br /><br />I'm glad you made that connection to Beckett -- not too many folks point out the DFW-SB coincidence of thought. Thing is: DFW's is like Beckett and neither is a nihilist. <br /><br />DFW's culture is sad and lonely and self-defeating in a lot of ways; by writing a book like IJ he accepts himself as part of that culture; and he uses the tools and methods and language of that culture he's diagnosed to try and find a way out. The alternative would've been to write a book transcending all the bleakness he's lived and observed, which isn't an alternative in the same way quitting a game isn't an option.<br /><br />Comparing DFW to JJ is a bit confusing, too. Just because both books (IJ and say FW) have the same weight in kgs, doesn't mean they're out to do the same things. FW is dense and inward-looking, playfully contracting the language to perform impossible (or near-impossible) feats. IJ works so hard to make a connection to the reader, nearly collapses from exhaustion in order to make the world it comprises empathetic. It's about failure in the way Beckett's work is -- the complete inability to overcome darkness (in this case, mediocrity, addiction, and the striving for impossible perfection) and yet the courage to still go on and write about it, to continue living on when everything's been extinguished.<br /><br />Each story in the book is equal parts ridiculous and desperate. You might laugh at them, mock how goofy it all really is, or recognize the struggle of each: not just the struggle to find a new language in order to express seemingly foolhardy or quotidian problems, but the struggle to live out very simple and common ambitions -- coming clean from drugs, achieve excellence, stay focussed and true to oneself (whatever that is) while living in a world of noise and folly.<br /><br />It's a brave thing to take on a book like this for review. It's kind of a low blow to suggest the image of a rope with which the author can go and hang both himself and his narrative by. (Don't you read the papers?)<br /><br />A critic should show what is new and beautiful in a work; never tear it apart to show how it works; and definitely never point out what the work isn't. FW's isn't a lot of things, but that doesn't stop anyone who really pays attention from appreciating what it does do well. Same thing here. <br /><br />IJ is peculiar and head-throbbingly difficult (it took me nearly 8 months to get through my first reading of it) and upsetting: any reader of a review of IJ deserves to understand how strange and powerful a book it is, even if all the formal stuff and meta-gags seem old hat by the 666th page.Anthonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14448374101386551246noreply@blogger.com