Steven’s Reviews > Infinite Jest > Status Update
Steven
is on page 906 of 1079
On the home stretch now. The last hundred pages have been especially grueling as most are narrated in free-indirect discourse from the POV of a character on a ventilator coming and going from dream states in between having to listen to addicts recount their woes. As per his style, DFW here inverts the Pareto diagram, it's 20/80, payoff/verbiage.
— Oct 29, 2020 08:13AM
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Steven’s Previous Updates
Steven
is on page 809 of 1079
Starting to appreciate how much DFW uses Socratic dialogue in conjunction with crosstalk. CF the conversation between Marathe and Kate Gompert pages 774-782, and of course the conversations between Hal and, well, everybody, but especially with Mario.
— Oct 22, 2020 09:42AM
Steven
is on page 682 of 1079
Annoyed by this completely BS move on 665: "Q, Q, Q, (Q, Q[Q], Q, Q, Q,) Q, Q, (Q), Q, Q, 269" Where the 269 is a footnote to some, but not all, of the answers to these unknown questions. A favorite technique of DFW, the unknown questions. What's annoying here is putting the answers in a multi-page footnote when the preceding three pages have been the back and forth correspondence. Plus a key incident gets buried.
— Oct 19, 2020 07:58AM
Steven
is on page 568 of 1079
More than half way through a close reading. Realizing now how much I missed by skimming previously. It is grueling, however, to read every word and chase down all the threads.
— Sep 01, 2019 10:06AM
Steven
is on page 109 of 1079
Read this when it came out in 1996, skimmed a lot, though. Giving it close read this time in this the Summer of Infinite Jest.
— Jun 24, 2019 09:40AM
