United States of America: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Thoughts: I didn’t know whether to put Infinite Jest in my reading around the world list. It takes place in America, but in an alternative-reality sort of America (I suppose literary folk might use the word speculative). But it is my list. I can have anything on it.

Possible spoilers within the next few paragraphs: I don’t know if you can dislike Infinite Jest. I also don’t know if you can like it. At around eleven hundred pages including end-notes, it sort of just exists in a state that if you finish it there must be something meaningful to have kept you pushing forwards. I have all the standard criticisms – the ending was weak (but there was really no other way to end it. Actually, no, I guess there were lots of other ways to end it and I think having the ending scene being Gately rather than Hal is the main issue. I think a lot of the criticism regarding the ending is due to the novel not ending on Hal. Unfortunately, there’s also the caveat that the point of the novel is to be untethered within the narrative and the novel ends with Gately at his most untethered both physically and mentally so you have the literary ending mimicking the structural basis of the plot. So I can see the point of ending with Gately. I just, like everyone else, don’t like it). I don’t mind so much some of the other issues like non-linearity. I can barely center myself in time so others’ inabilities to do the same I find acceptable too. I doubt I will ever read the novel again (even though doing so would probably make sense to re-read it right now because I can linearize the non-linear parts knowing now what happens), but it sort of strikes me as a piece of work that changes as you change – characters which had been sympathetic cease to be so and empathy comes in for characters you felt nothing for earlier. Maybe in ten years I’ll dig it up and read it again. I know Geoff read it about ten years ago on Ed’s suggestion (which is why we have a copy around. I think we bought our own although the copy we have may be Ed’s). Maybe he will re-read it now and we can discuss.

Am I happy I read Infinite Jest? Yes. Does it make me feel bad about me as a writer? Also yes (there are no eleven hundred page novels hidden away inside my brain here). Do I not really know what I’ll be doing with my reading time now (I started in September and only finished on Monday in Baltimore)? Another yes. I did go out and buy The Pale King as I was getting to the end of Infinite Jest because I started wondering what I would do with non-Infinite Jest time once I finished reading. Like right now, I’m thinking what I’m going to do and I feel sort of lonely. Infinite Jest is populated by lonely people. I would fit right in. I’d like to think that if David Foster Wallace hadn’t killed himself three years ago, that maybe we would have been friends.

Rating: 5/5

Zambia: Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller

Thoughts: I had a high school teacher from Rhodesia. She was always smugly paternalistic about being from Rhodesia, about being our teacher, about life in general. I guess growing up being told you are better than ninety percent of the people around you gives you a sort of desire to be smugly paternalistic about life. I always wanted to slap her a little bit when she talked about Rhodesia. It was like there was no concept that there were non-whites that lived there too. I kind of felt the same in this book. There are black Africans in it, but that doesn’t seem to be the point. The point seems to be something else that maybe not being from Rhodesia I don’t really understand. Maybe my high school teacher would.

I really thought there would be something to this book but it’s pretty much fluff. I was interested but kept thinking that there must be someone out there who has done this better. Everything is so shallow with hints of unease when it could have wrenched your heart out instead. Fuller’s holding herself back in this. Or maybe she just doesn’t feel the necessity to let herself go.

Rating: 3.5/5

Australia: Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee by Chloe Hooper.

Thoughts: It’s sort of like a car-wreck book. You know what’s going to happen from a sentence or two in, but you read it anyway in the hopes that maybe this time something will be different. It’s not a book that delves into anything too deeply and at times it seems rather light weight for what was being discussed. Also, there should be an index. All non-fiction books should have indices.

Rating: 4/5