The reason I decided to read Infinite Jest was because I’d never considered doing so before. I’d seen it, sure – it’s hard to miss a book with a spine that thick on a bookshop shelf – but I’d never gone from picking it up to taking it to the cash register. When I stumbled across the Infinite Summer project, I realised that it was probably the only way I’d ever read the book and so I committed myself. Bought the book, signed up to the progress meter and started.
As I read, I checked in at the website and read some of the discussions but never joined in. I realised that I was reading it in a different way to how others seemed to be. I was not jotting, referring, agonising – I just read it. Read it and read it and read it. I don’t think I could have done it any other way; it seemed to require that sort of momentum.
At about 50 pages to go, I started to suspect that certain stories would not be resolved. I started to wonder whether any “plot” lines would be resolved. I started to consider whether resolution would even fit with this type of work.
And then I finished.
Early on in the project I read this post by Marcus Sakey:
Still, I labored through the rough spots, and found more than enough to tickle me and keep me going. But while I don’t want to reveal too much, I will say that when I got to the end, my initial reaction was, “Huh.”
Not in a bad way. There had been moments of such startling brilliance along the way, episodes so hilariously sad and tragically funny, that I knew even at the time that it was something special. But still, at the very end, there was a “Huh” factor.
And so I’ve finished. Huh.
I doubt I’ve finished with it for ever, though.
