Le maudit Mo D.

m.d. vs. i.j.

Some eleven years ago, I was spending my summer in a little place called Noho, Mass. I also spent the other three seasons there that year, but that summer, the summer of the year 1,997 A.D., was the summer I purchased a highly-acclaimed work of fiction called Infinite Jest. It was by an author named David Foster Wallace (Amherst '84?) and he was hot shit on bone china then. This groundbreaking novel was also backbreaking in size. I could never carry it in my purse and casually whip it out to read a few pages while I waited for my clothes at the laundromat. It was too important for such casual reading.

I purchased my copy from the slightly damaged book sale table at the now-defunct Beyond Words Bookshop on Main St. There was (and still is) some light foxing on the edges of the book.

I have never read past page 79. This book is over 1000 pages long.

If there is one personal possession I have unfailingly carried with me from one dwelling to the next, and that has been with me at all times throughout my adult life, it is my copy of Infinite Jest:

I know that at some point in my youth, I found the writing of this book both important and entertaining, as young budding-writer Mo took the green pen she had five-fingered from Charles at Kinko's and used it to underline passages that she had wished she had written herself

The slight outer damage to the book saved me about eight clams:

(sale price)

(publisher's suggested retail price, U.S./Canada)

I see that over the years, I have indeed put forth a good effort to try to read I.J. Tucked inside the book I found as book markers two pieces of mail addressed to places I lived seven and nine years ago:

(the 'Op, lived there 2000-2002)

(my Dictionary-era apartment, late 1998-1999)

I know of only a handful of people who have completed this book and a few who have actually read it twice. In the eleven years that I have owned this volume, I estimate that I've read over one hundred other works of fiction and at least a hundred more works of nonfiction, including DFW's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.

I suspect that I will never finish muddling through I.J., though I will carry the damn thing to my grave for reasons that have more to do with fulfilling the big ambitions of my twenties over, you know, actually wanting to read the thing.

Posted by Zerd at June 8, 2008 03:46 PM