Something I Don't Want to Do....

...but feel I ought to.


Some good reasons not to read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace:

1. The footnotes. I thought Paul Auster was bad, but with almost 100 pages of footnotes, DFW makes him look like a beginner.
2. I've heard the book is post modern, so I'll be obliged to look up the meaning of simulacrum and Derrida.
3. A friend of mine who is doing a PhD on DFW pinched about an inch of the book's pages and said, "This bit's really bad, but it gets better afterwards."
4. I like short books.
5. Writers whose work I didn't particularly care for, such as Dave Eggers, like it.
6. Writers whose work I admire, such as Chad Harbach, have read the book and said that DFW has done everything they wanted to do and done it better. 
7. The last time I played tennis I was in short trousers.
8. I'm 41 years old and I'll probably be 42 before I finish it. 

There are some good reasons to read it:

1. The first scene blew my mind.
2. I read Proust, or at least I read one book of À la recherche du temps perdu, which is surely the high water mark of impenetrable prose.

My aim is to read a bit, blog a bit.

I have the Abacus, 2013 edition, ISBN 9780349121086.

I have motivation.