Book rant

[tubby2]

I am currently about 10 pages into David Foster Wallace's 1,000+ page book, Infinite Jest, and I'm seriously wondering if I should just move on now before I cause myself any more pain. Having been trained for years in the virtues of writing clear, simple prose, I cannot tolerate reading the horribly constructed, needlessly complex sentences that he

Comments

nooooo!

[unseleigh]

Infinite Jest is a great book! It takes a while to get used to the prose style and absorb enough of the world that it starts to make sense, but when it starts to pick up it picks up fast. It's one of the funniest books I've ever read, and despite its being so damn long by the time I was halfway through I didn't want it to end.

Re: nooooo!

[tubby2]

See, that's what everybody says, which is why I've stuck with it this far - but it requires me to override every literary instinct in my body. You guys are killing me!

I trust your judgment, so I guess I'll stick with it a little longer. But if it doesn't show signs of improvement over the next 20 pages, it's a goner.

Re: nooooo!

[unseleigh]

It got a lot easier for me to read when I started thinking of it as a verbatim transcript of conversation, if that's any help.