Hot take: I just finally got through 'Infinite Jest' after 3 false starts

For the past 8 months I've been trying to finish David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' for my local book club, and let me tell you, it felt like fixing a car with no manual. I kept getting stuck in the footnotes about halfway through the second chapter, losing track of which character was which. The group kept asking why I couldn't just read it straight through, like it was a light novel. After the third restart, I realized I needed to treat it like a puzzle, not a normal story, and mark key characters on sticky notes. It took me a full 10 weeks of on and off reading to finally close that book last Tuesday. Now I have to lead the discussion next week, and I'm worried I missed half the plot. Has anyone else here fought through a book that just refused to click?

3 comments

3 Comments

piperbailey21d ago

Borrowed a copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" from my friend Marcus for a road trip once. He warned me it was dense but I thought I was smart enough. Ended up reading the same page about a banana breakfast six times before I threw the book in my glove box and didn't touch it again for two years. When I finally finished it I texted Marcus and he just replied "told you so" with a skull emoji.

uma_williams21d ago

My friend Sarah tried to read 'Ulysses' for her book club last year and it was a total mess. She kept notes on napkins and had three different colored highlighters going at once, but she still couldn't tell if the main character was alive or dead by chapter five. At the meeting she just said "I have no idea what happened but the prose was pretty" and everyone laughed because they were all lost too. Did your book club give you a hard time for using sticky notes?

jenny4721d ago

Three different colored highlighters? That's the most committed I've ever heard of anyone being for a book club.