When you buy the audio edition of ij, you get the novel sans footnotes. I was just going to start listening to infinite jest today, i have an audiobook of it and the first thing it has is a publishers note which says that the audiobook skips all footnotes, but does have another narrator mention the numbers of the footnotes when they appear. It sucks that the end notes and errata is not included in the audiobook. The footnotes were not incorporated into the main text at all. Why do people have such a negative view of infinite jest on this subreddit. By turns descriptive and digressive, definitive and satiric, the. We felt that it was important to make infinite jest accessible in the audio format as soon. This author fears no new literary device and mixes them up with widegrinning glee.
Just over twenty years ago, david foster wallace published his bestknown and most frustrating novel, infinite jest. Our website also provides download infinite jest pdf in many format, so dont worry if readers want to download infinite jest pdf online that cant be open through their device. A heartbreaking true story of a man who reads infinite jest without constant pats on the back. Luckily that has been remedied and the endnotes were released as a separate audio file similar to using two bookmarks, ive had to use two audio players to bounce back and forth. The audiobook for infinite jest was released in 2012. Stream and download audiobooks to your computer, tablet or mobile phone.
Steven asin infinite jest is the perfect book for the kindle paperwhite. Why infinite jest will kill your book club youtube. To talk about infinite jest means you have to bring up the length of the novel, the immense use of end notes there are 388some spanning several pages, and atypical use of grammar and punctuation. When people do tackle it, they often give up within the first 200 pages or soone of the most difficult parts of. These refer to the novels endnotes a device well known to fans of infinite jest. Because of his schedule, pratt had to record it in sections, interspaced by the other books he was narrating. Set in an addicts halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwedup family to come along in recent fiction, infinite jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives. Infinite jest is a 1996 novel by american writer david foster wallace. Infinite jest by david foster wallace free download. If you cant glance down while reading the text to see where the author is drawing from, the book is pretty worthless. By no means is this an easy read but it can be a rewarding one.
Page 93 states that rome, nny new new york, glens falls, nny, and beverly, ma are all. If you like infinite jest you might like similar books consider the lobster and other essays, the pale king, white noise, a supposedly fun thing ill never do again. Set in an addicts halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwedup family to come along in recent fiction, infinite jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our. The definitive guide to metafilters infinite favorite. David foster wallaces infinite jest is an audiobook, minus endnotes audio by andres jauregui on march 27, hachette audio released david foster wallaces magnum opus infinite jest most of it, at least as a 56hourlong audiobook. To get to this point i had to read the text three times through, listen to it once as an audiobook, and spend hours and hours reading critical. David foster wallaces infinite jest is an audiobook. David foster wallace what to read after infinite jest.
Why i cannot recommend the infinite jest audio book infinite jest i guess this is a first for me and ill get straight to the point. Without endnotes, the audiobook version of infinite jest ends up being around 56 hours. It has been categorized as an encyclopedic novel and made time magazines list of the 100 best englishlanguage novels published between 1923 and 2005. Set in an addicts halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwedup family to come along in recent fiction, the novel explores essential questions about. So did i, for the first two or three pages, until i saw the author didnt give a damn. David foster wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. Im currently listening to the audiobook of infinite jest, which is brilliantly narrated, from audible. Learn infinite jest english with free interactive flashcards. Its 56 hours long, but its so well performed that it never drags at any moment in the book. Its a big very big, bold, complex book that divided critics yet nevertheless landed with a thud on that list of novels everyone intends to read someday.
I was pretty sure greg carlisle had something like this somewhere in his excellent guide to infinite jest, elegant complexity i cant recommend carlisles book enough but sans index and after lots of flipping, i guess not. Reading infinite jest 20 years on books podcast books. Infinite jest is the name of a movie said to be so entertaining that anyone who watches it loses all desire to do anything but watch it. The combination of dfws prose and sean pratts narration is pretty far above anything else ive heard on audiobook. We felt that it was important to make infinite jest accessible in the audio format as soon as we were able, and are gratified to find that there is an audience that has been waiting for just this occasion. In a sprawling, wild, superhyped magnum opus, david foster wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novel the broom of the system. And please pay attention to formatting and grammar. But infinite jest regarded by many as wallaces masterpiece is just awful. It spans everything from addiction and depression to family relationships and the pursuit of.
Choose from 500 different sets of infinite jest english flashcards on quizlet. Anyway, i drew the lines with info from infinite jest on pages 93, 403 and 438. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, infinite jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of american culture our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our. Some early listeners have been disappointed that the novels endnotes are. Infinite jest introduced me to style breakthroughs that i hope will be emulated. Those endnotes signal an amazing attention to detail and a curious insecurity at the same time. This man reads infinite jest and no one cares youtube. These are the endnotes to david foster wallaces infinite jest, a gargantuan, mindaltering comedy about the pursuit of happiness in america. Infinite jest by david foster wallace audiobook 17 youtube. The way the footnotes were handled in infinite jest was that they werent. There are those days, after all, that our poor eyes are simply too strained to take in that bedside copy of infinite jest youve been meaning to finish. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, brief interviews with hideous men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain. I recently purchased the audible edition of infinite jest, this comes with a pdf copy of the endnotes. Its like wallace was trying to ward off any potential readers.
Also, with the second novel i wrote i had to learn not to imitate david foster wallace. Later, the audiobook publishing company hired the narrator back to just read the footnotes, which you need to buy as a separate title. I had just read infinite jest, right after college, and i wrote like him for a year or two and it was just, you knowyoure trying to emulate your heroes kind of thing. It seems every time i bring up infinite jest on this subreddit it gets down voted a lot, and i only post about ij when its relevant to the discussion. The novel is widely noted for its unconventional narrative structure and its experimental use of endnotes there are 388 endnotes, some with footnotes of their own.
Why i cannot recommend the infinite jest audio book infinite jest. Infinite winter page 12 of 12 read infinite jest with. Why i cannot recommend the infinite jest audio book. When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your my library section along with the audio. I began reading infinite jest by david foster wallace around october 2008. In the narration, its only ever called the entertainment or the samizdat. Essays and arguments, brief interviews with hideous men. In short, if finnegans wake was a rancid fart that was proudly left to rip, infinite jest is a weak one, lacking sound and odor. Some early listeners have been disappointed that the novels endnotes are currently available only in text form, to be read. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website.
It pushed me off track a little bit because youre not doing your thing, youre. Much of his nonfiction writing explores these themes more directly and succinctly. The last elmore leonard novel i listened to took about six hours. The evil of endnotes in academic books the heidelblog. If youre thinking about getting the audio version of infinite jest, there are few things to consider. Infinite jest requires action on the part of the reader to keep up with the hundreds of notes and errata footnoted throughout the text. The depressed person by david foster wallace 1998 pdf. When his infinite jest came out 20 years ago, david foster wallace felt some anxiety about how his fully stuffed novel would be received. I was in france at the time, and when i got back to the u. Listen to infinite jest audiobook by david foster wallace, narrated by sean pratt. Definitely worth a try for anyone attempting a second read. Initially the audiobook did not include the endnotes except as a text file attachment. Infinite jest is a gargantuan, mindaltering comedy about the pursuit of happiness in america. Beyond the ease with which one can lookup footnotes, consider the following.
Our policy towards the use of cookies all clarivate analytics websites use cookies to improve your online experience. But infinite jest warned against the insidious virality of popular entertainment long before anyone but. Infinite jest has been called an encyclopedic novel with three hundred and eighty eight endnotes. The exhaustive footnotes and overused slang was a little off putting at first, but i.
Please keep these annotations spoilerfree by not revealing information from later pages in the novel. David foster wallace interview on infinite jest with. I read pages 110 of infinite jest and talk about great first lines in novels. They flow into each other as if they werent even the end of a sentence. I have never read infinite jest or anything by wallace, but it seems like there are two kinds of white people in the world. Theyre a judge kind of telling a prospective buyer whether the books good or not. That means the only way to listen to infinite jest with the endnotes to is have your finger hovering over the pause button, switch to the endnotes audiobook, hit play and hover your finger over the pause button, listening for the exact moment the endnote ends. I had ordered the book from after hearing of david foster wallaces death.
Infinite jest is the title of james incandenzas braindestroying cartridge, but said title only appears in endnote 24, his filmography. Brief interviews with hideous men audiobook by david. What its like to record the audiobook version of infinite. Matt bucher is the administrator of the david foster wallace mailing list and publisher of elegant complexity. A gargantuan, mindaltering comedy about the pursuit of happiness in america set in an addicts halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwedup family to come along in recent fiction, infinite jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives. I cant recommend the purchase of the what at first appears to be the amazing ive heard good things about the audio. I bought the audiobook but i also bought the kindle version to help. I think in infinite jest the writing style not just sentences like these but jumping between text and endnotes gives the reader a deeper experience with his argument about attention, boredom, and the ways modern society seeks to constantly distract us.