Reading Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest has been sitting by my bedside haunting me for months and months. It's an - apparently - brilliant novel that is over 1000 pages long. It was given to me by my dear friend and renowned artist/intellectual, The Abbot of Theleme...I don't know when. It was ridiculously long ago that he gave me this novel. Let's call it two years ago. The best I could do during this time was to read about 100 pages. The Abbot told me initially that the book wouldn't make sense to me until about page 300. Given that I read the first 100 over the course of two years, suffice it to say that the Brilliant Infinite Jest not only doesn't seem brilliant - I also have barely any memory of it except for some vague notion of video tapes called..."Interlace"(?)

I don't know. It's all a blur. I remember something also about drugs and a woman. But...

What I do remember quite clearly though is from DFW's actual life - that DFW was once a tennis player. I remember also a brilliant article he wrote about Roger Federer and the beauty of tennis.

This connects me to DFW. For I was once a soccerfootballplayer. And I am still in a unique way interested in the beauty of that game.

There's another thing that kind of connects me to DFW - his death - but I'll touch on that later.

What I will say about DFW's death at this point is that it seemed to spark me to start reading The Thick Book again.

As I mentioned, The Abbot gave me The Thick Book two years ago. At that time I scoffed at the fact that most people who attempted to read the book never finished it - because it was too thick, to long. I thought I was better than the others.

But like so many others I failed.

In fact, I was planning to return the loaned Thick Book back to The Abbot last spring. Then there was a lovely coincidence the night before I planned to drop the book off at The Abbot's house. I got out of a cab in front of my house in the wee hours of the morning (after a night of drinking) and was passed by an attractive young woman. I took an extra long look at The Attractive Young Woman and saw that she was carrying a thick book. As she passed under a street lamp the cover was illuminated and I saw the blue sky and orange letters of The Infinite Jest. Since she was carrying "The Thick Book" I saw this as a sign. Though I am an atheist I always respect "signs". Don't ask me why just now. I just do. Anyways I resloved to restart reading The Thick Book...and finish it. So, I never dropped the book off at The Abbot's door.

The sign of The Attractive Young Woman carrying The Thick Book never amounted to much.

In fact, by the end of last summer when I met The Abbot to see a play and have a few drinks - I not only had not read The Thick Book but I had not even opened it.

In the middle of our drinks after the play, The Abbot out of the blue asked, "So, what do you think about the death of David Foster Wallace?"

I had not heard. As you can imagine, a long, emotional discussion ensued, focusing on depression, suicide, art, genius, etc, etc. (Actually, typical things that The Abbot and I talk about.)

The next day I went online, read about the death of DFW and learned more about his life and writings and the brilliance of The Thick Book - and resolved to finally read The Thick Book.

Do you think it helped me that DFW had killed himself and added an irresistable dimension to an already - apparently - brilliant story?

Nope.

By this Christmas holiday I still had not read The Thick Book.

For some reason I recently announced to The Abbot that I planned to finish the thousand pages during my two week break from being a gymteacher at the local high school in Torontocanada.

That was a ridiculous proclamation of course - given my history with The Thick Book but my only explanation is that I was feeling some love for The Abbot after his band put on such an inspiring show at the local Irish pub a few nights before.

This love did not take me far in the reading as I didn't even open the book during the holidays. I might be excused given that I was caring for my mom who had suffered a stroke but that's no excuse really as I could have read the Thick Book instead of all of those newspapers I devoured.

And so yesterday, with the Christmas holidays drawing to a close I had an idea as I stepped out of the shower and saw the Thick Book sitting by my bed: I would read the book page by page - literally; I would tear off a page or two when ever I needed to and carry around the least portable book of all time with me in this manner. That way there would be no excuses: the book, the story, would be with me at all times and I would systematically, day after day, page after page, finally read the damn thing.

It did occur to me that The Abbot might not like this treatment of his book. But that thought was fleeting. I was inspired (in a crazed, maniacal way).

I started by ripping off the beautiful, blue-sky cover, along with the several pages of testimonials proclaiming the Thick Book's brilliance- and the first two pages of the story - which are numbered - by some strange publishing protocol: pages 3 and 4.

I then folded the cover and the pages in half and put them in my pocket.

This is how I plan to read the 1000+ pages.

The carcass of The Thick Book sits on my desk, beside my blogmachine, waiting to be torn at day after beautiful, painful, exhilarating day.

I am not evil. I'm just different. Who ever said there were rules about how you read a frigging book? Especially one that haunts you and mocks you?

We'll see how it goes.