To Read or Not to Read Infinite Jest

I only have one official reading goal for this year and that's to complete Infinite Jest.  I've had a copy sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of years and I finally decided to take the plunge.  I'm currently 312 pages in and if you're considering whether you should begin a similar undertaking, here are some things to consider:

When you are reading, do you like to know what's going on at all times?
If so, Infinite Jest might not be for you.  For starters, it takes place in a future time when each year is subsidized by a corporate sponsor.  The opening section is in the Year of Glad while the next section is the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.  The Section after that is the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad.  How these years are ordered chronologically isn't spelled out until page 223.  In addition, while the sections are usually short, you might read several sections in a row that occur in different years, focus on characters that you won't see again for another hundred pages, or seem to have no relation to each other.  If that makes you crazy, this book might not be for you.  If you're able to go along for the ride though, know that things will start to connect in delightful ways and that Wallace leaves clues sprinkled here and there in the text that will help you link things up.  There are also a wealth of online resources if you come across a character or scene that sound familiar but which you can't quite put in context.

Go read the first section of the book. Did you like it?
I think your reaction to this first section is probably a good barometer for how you'll experience the rest of the book.  Did you find it delightfully unorthodox or just annoyingly pretentious?  Would you describe the pacing as "circuitous" or just "rambling"?  As you get further into the book, you often won't know right off how one section relates to another, but if you enjoy the style of Wallace's writing, you can experience each scene in isolation then just file it away for later reference and move on.  If you removed this opening scene from the book and presented it as a short story, I think it could absolutely hold it's own.  I could read and re-read this section on it's own and love it every time.  However, plug the scene into the context of the 964 pages that follow it and, according to some semi-spoilers I accidentally saw, it will both foreshadow crucial events to come and not be fully understood until you've read the final page.  If you find this wildly intriguing, this book might be for you.

Does most of your reading take place in bed while you're waiting to fall asleep?
Any single section of this book is not hard to understand¹.  The only difficulty is figuring out how everything is related to everything else.  There are a lot of characters and events that don't converge until hundreds of pages into the book.  Remember though that Wallace is a master of word choice and he knows how to make details stick out in ways that won't be realized until later.  You might read a scene that has a single line about a drug dealer who keeps snakes in a trailer on the outskirts of the city, only to suddenly realize that you've read an entire section about said drug dealer 35 pages ago.  However, if your attention is split between reading this book and listening for your number to be called at the DMV or if you're only half alert when you read that sentence, you're going to have a much harder time keeping up.  If you ever saw the movie Inception (and if you haven't, you should) imagine trying to watch that movie while you were in and out of the room or starting to drift off.  You might still enjoy some of the scenes, but you're going to be very confused and not really appreciate the movie when it's over.

Do you love to get lost in a good book?
Have you ever gotten sucked into a book only to glance up at the clock and realize you should have been in bed hours ago?  Did you not care and keep reading because you had to know what was going to happen next?  Maybe this happens further into Infinite Jest, but I'm on page 312 and it's only happened to me in short spurts.  The format of this novel is such that the flow of reading is frequently broken up and disrupted.  For starters, the sections are short and often mixed together with seemingly unrelated sections or contain end notes that require you to flip to the back of the book.  That being said, several sections (and even one end note) have sucked me in and had my rapt attention.  Wallace's writing is good enough to do that, but he intentionally fragmented the story to serve a purpose.  If you're willing to keep with the book and enjoy it for what it is, the structure of the book complements the content.  Once you've finished the book you can go back and find an online guide to reading the book chronologically, but if you insist on doing this you first time through, just don't.  Go find something more linear and don't look back.

Final Thoughts
If you don't end up liking this book or you're just reading it because someone made you think that you ought to have read it, please don't make yourself miserable over it.  It can be hard to talk about Infinite Jest without sounding like an a highbrow literary asshole or at the very list a pretentious know-it-all.  I think this book is absolutely worth the time spent reading and trying to understand it, but people read for many different reasons and have widely varying tastes.  If you enjoy Wallace's style and are just frustrated trying to keep up and put everything in context, take notes, get a reader's guide, or take advantage of the wealth of online resources related to this book. Don't give up on the book too soon.  On the other hand, if reading any book is making you miserable and you're not enjoying it even while you're doing it, just stop.   Maybe you'll come back to it later or maybe you won't, but either way you'll be better off.



¹ If you do feel like you're hitting too many words or references that you don't understand, try keeping the online page-by-page annotations handy.  These annotations aim to be spoiler-free and both define some words that you might have to otherwise look up in a dictionary and provide explanation for references that might not be common knowledge.

I'm not usually one to make New Year's resolutions, but last year I made one.  I had gotten out of the habit of reading on a regular basis so I resolved to read a couple of books a month.  That's a manageable rather than lofty goal, but it ended up being perfect.  Here's the run down:

The Best (in no particular order):

• Gone Girl - It's nice to find a book that becomes extremely popular and is also well-written.  This one has a great twist and a great twisted character.  This book sucked me in and spit me out.  
• Hyperbole and a Half - If you're not familiar with Allie Broch's blog, you need to get with the program.  Head over there right now.  It's way better than what you're reading here.  Really, why are you still here?  Ok, you back?  If you liked that, the book is exactly like that.  Tons of pictures, but that's the best part.  The book contains some of the best posts from her blog, but also a lot of new content.
• Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace - I have a soft spot in my heart for the words of David Foster Wallace.  Reading this book gave me a new perspective on the man behind the writing.  The further I got into it, the more intrigued and full of dread I was.  You can count on one hand the number of books that have ever made me cry, but this is one of them.
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - There is a whole class of non-fiction books out there that don't read like non-fiction.  They tend to weave what could have been dry facts into a narrative so full of life you'll lose track of yourself.  You get to the end and realize you've not just learned about a new topic but you've seen it put into the greater context of humanity.  This is one of those books.
• Born to Run - Another excellent non-fiction book.  I'm still not convinced of all the conclusions reached in this one, but it was absolutely worth the read.  You don't have to be a runner to love this one.
• Beloved - This book turned up on a list of a friend's most memorable reads and it turned out to be very different from what I expected.  I knew it was a story about slaves in post-civil war America but I had no idea that you could almost call this a ghost story.  It's extremely well written (no surprise considering Toni Morrison won a Pulitzer Prize for it) but even if you miss the allusions and recurring imagery the story alone is enough to draw you in.  As you might expect though, this is a gritty story about people living hard lives and making hard decisions.  This book is worth reading, but it's a punch in the gut. 
• This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't - Don't get weirded out by the title of this one.  It's not a sappy self-help book.  I'm not really even sure how to describe this one, but I think it's one of those hidden gems that more people should be reading.  Have you ever been watching a Ted Talk and the speaker says something that flips a topic on its head and makes you think about it in a way you've never thought of it before?  This book is like that.

Not Bad

• The Book Thief - I don't expect every book to be uplifting and happy, but if a book is going to be sad I want it to have enough other things going for it (well-written, thought-provoking, dark humor, insightful, etc) that it evens out to being worth the time it takes to read.  This book was good and it has a lot going for it, but not quite enough to overcome the sad.  I don't regret reading it, but I could have done without it too.   
• Why Evolution is True - Interesting topic, but this one was not as good as The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
• Let's Pretend This Never Happened - I think The Bloggess is hilarious, but all things considered I don't think this one quite makes the "Best Of" list for this year.  That being said, this one is probably handicapped by having been read early in the year and not being fresh in my mind.
• The Fault in Our Stars - Do you ever read a book just to see what all the fuss is about?  I wasn't expecting too much from this one but it at least exceeded those low expectations.  It was sad and sappy, but not as sappy as I feared.  It also has a couple of twists, which kept it from being as predictable as you'd think for a book about a kid with incurable cancer.
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - The only downside to this book is that it's not as good as Bossypants.  
• The Rosie Project - The second best book I read for my book club this year.  
• Your Inner Fish - Covered some aspects of evolution that I wasn't aware of and put a new spin on the long history of humanity and how we got where we are.  Was a little dry at times but it's an interesting topic.
• This is Where I Leave You - I read this because I wanted to watch the movie.  

Not Good

• Allegiant
• City of Bones
• The Introvert's Way

Meh

• Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
• An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
• The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
• Insurgent
• The Giver
• Old Man's War
• The Language of Flowers

I've enjoyed getting back on track with reading this past year so I'm going to try to keep it up in 2015.  I'm changing my official goal though.  Instead of resolving to read 25 books, I'm resolving to read one.  A year and a half ago my spouse decided to get me a little surprise and ordered me something off my Amazon wish list.  The item he picked was Infinite Jest.  I was excited because I've always wanted to read it, but I've also got a mental block when it comes to long books.  I will pick a 300 page book over a 1,000 page book every time.  So while it won't take me all year to read it, at some point this year I'm going to work my way through Infinite Jest.  I'm sure in the mean time I'll justify procrastination by reading a bunch of other stuff as well.

Why Thanksgiving is the Best Holiday Even Though I Like Christmas More

I went to the grocery store yesterday with a list of items I needed for Thanksgiving dinner.  This is the first year we’re having the whole family to our house, so I wanted to make sure I got everything I needed.  I went during the middle of the day so it wouldn’t be crowded with people holding similar lists filled with similar items and thankfully I had no problem finding everything I needed.  The odd thing is that I could barely tell from wandering the aisles that we were days away from the second biggest holiday of the year.  The only indication at all was that the end caps were stocked with items like pecans, canned pumpkin and Karo syrup.  The fall decorations had been moved to the clearance aisle and almost everything in sight suggested that Christmas was in full swing.

Every year it feels like Christmas encroaches a little further onto the territory of Thanksgiving, the strong, silent winter holiday.  I was hoping it wouldn’t be so bad this year since Thanksgiving falls so early.  This means the Christmas shopping season even longer than usual and there is plenty of time to shop and hang stockings.  No need to get ahead of ourselves.  Instead, I think this year has been even worse.  Usually when the Christmas decorations start appearing on shelves in mid November, the predominant sentiment I hear is people bemoaning Christmas’s early arrival as though it were a great aunt showing up an hour before a family gathering.  This year, however, all I’ve heard are people talking about putting their trees up early or trying to get a jump on their shopping.  I’ve had several people say to me “Christmas is almost here” when it’s actually 5 weeks away.

I understand why stores don’t wait until after Thanksgiving to start in with Christmas.  I can’t really blame them.  They’re there to make money and they only make money if we’re buying things. This is why Thanksgiving gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop.  At Thanksgiving, no one’s getting a card and we’re not buying gifts for each other.  There are no balloons or huge bags of fun sized candies to be snatched up by eager consumers.  Thanksgiving has managed to remain one of the purest of holidays chiefly because no one has succeeded in commercializing it.  This is one of the best things about Thanksgiving. 

The other thing that makes Thanksgiving the best holiday is that it’s the great equalizer.  No one is disqualified from celebrating because they can’t afford it.  You could be alone and homeless without a penny to your name and still find a church or shelter serving a simple Thanksgiving dinner where you’d sit together with people of similar means and feel a part of something for that hour.  For most people though, the circumstances aren’t so dire.  And while Christmas separates the haves from the have nots when it comes to gift giving and elaborate light displays and decorations, Thanksgiving has simple requirements.  It’s one meal spent with people we love.  Most importantly, it’s not an expensive meal of steak and lobster tail and white truffles.  Thanksgiving is turkey, a meat that can be easily had for under a dollar a pound.  Thanksgiving is green beans, whether elegantly prepared or dumped out of a can.  Thanksgiving is cranberry sauce with the lines of the can still visible and a bowl full of mashed potatoes.  You’d be hard pressed to find a meal that can be had for less money unless you resorted to beans and rice. 

My point in all this is not to put a damper on the joy that comes with the winter juggernaut of a holiday that is Christmas.  I absolutely love Christmas and it brings its own set of heart-warming feelings of togetherness and love and charity.  The problem is that Christmas is also Black Friday and crowded malls and outdoing the neighbor’s light display.  So while I’m excited about Christmas, I’d like to just enjoy the uncorrupted purity that is Thanksgiving first.  I want to sit at a table filled with people I love and enjoy some cheap poultry and potatoes.  We’ll half watch a football game and talk about things that make us happy. And that makes me happy.

A Dose of Reality

In my life, I’ve watched my fair share of movies.  Of those movies, almost none of them have had subtitles and few were made anywhere other than Hollywood.  I rarely go to movies that would be considered “artsy” and only twice have I been to my city’s “independent” movie theatre.  I do have a bit of snobbery in me when it comes to the arts, but almost none of it is applied to films.  In fact, calling them “films” is as uppity as I get about it.  I say all of this to inform you that I don’t consider myself a “film critic” in any capacity.  I tend to watch movies for entertainment value and not once have I walked out of a theatre thinking “the directing was sloppy.”  There is, however, one general criticism that I feel I must make, because I have recently noticed a disturbing trend coming out of Hollywood.  The people in charge of making movies seem to think that if aliens travel to earth and attempt to take over, we’ll be able to fight them off with our “advanced” technology and scrappy ingenuity. 

I know the trend of portraying humans as the ultimate underdogs didn’t start with movies…it was there in books and on radio dramas before the first movie was made.  But someone has to put a stop to this by speaking the plain, honest truth.  If aliens from the far reaches of the galaxy have the technology to travel to our planet and they are intent on taking over, they’re going to do it.  They’re going to alight somewhere in their spaceships, or maybe just appear out of thin air, and do whatever they came here to do.*  I’m not implying we would go down without a fight, and I’m certainly not discounting the amazing technology that has been developed by the human race. We might even manage to slow them down a little.  After all, we have put a man on the moon and sent research ships into distant space.  But we’re also the ones who lost a spacecraft on Mars because half the team was using English measurements and the other half was using metric.

I realize that a movie about the successful extermination of the human race wouldn’t have much of a box office draw, so I understand why alien invasion movies usually end with humans winning out.  You can make a great movie, and a lot of money, portraying humanity as unconquerable.  I myself, have very fond and vivid memories of seeing Independence Day for the first time in the theatre.  So why am I bothering to burst the metaphorical bubble?  The final straw was a movie preview I saw during this year’s Super Bowl. 

Really?  Come on, people.  If aliens are headed to earth, we’re not going to fend them off with horses and six-shooters.  A longer preview hints that one of the humans has some help, and trust me, they’re going to need it. 

Perhaps I’m making too big of a deal out of this, but someone has to!  These movies have a high entertainment value, but….AT WHAT COST?  These movies are encouraging a false sense of security while we should actually be developing a force field to surround the earth or some invisibility suits or laser guns.  I really hope someone at the pentagon is working on these sorts of things.  If I’m going to pay taxes, the money should at least be going toward something useful.

 

* I don’t, by the way, assume that aliens would only bother to come all this way if they had evil plans.  Maybe they would just come across our planet while trolling for new friends.  Maybe they’re trying to spread a peaceful message to all corners of the galaxy.  Maybe we have the best beaches.  Aliens might show up and be the absolute bee’s knees.  But they might also just be hungry.

A Semi-Accurate Historical Perspective on the Remote Control

I have always assumed that remote controls were a fairly recent technological development, which is based on me remembering a time when I didn't know that such a thing existed. This is how I tend to date historical events, by the way. Something either started happening since I've been alive (cell phones, home computers, and Justin Beiber) or else something has been around for my entire life (televisions, sweatpants, and microwave ovens). On this criteria, I labeled remote controls as "relatively new" because I distinctly remember seeing one for the first time and I distinctly remember being unimpressed.

The first remote I saw allowed you to change the channel without getting up off the couch, but it also had a wire running between the tv and the remote. This didn't exactly scream "groundbreaking technology" since this was at a time when people would sit through an entire program rather than switching channels at the slightest provocation. Under these circumstances, the remote saved, at best, a few seconds every half hour. Then and now, I don't think that level of convenience makes up for the risk of tripping over a wire every time I get up to use the bathroom or refresh my snack.

As is probably the case more often than I realize, my method of dating historical events based on my own personal experience is not very accurate. For one thing, it only puts things into the two categories of "less than 30 years old" or "more than 30 years old". When something falls into the "less than 30 years old", I can usually refine my estimate by remembering how old I was when something happened. This makes it easy to place New Kids On the Block before The Backstreet Boys, but doesn't do me any good if I'm trying to put Henry VIII in historical perspective. In a more relevant example, I can list all the presidents in order, but only if I start with Jimmy Carter. So while my method makes some refinement in chronology possible, it becomes increasingly inaccurate as the age of something approaches or exceeds 30. In the case of remote controls, I'm way off.

As it turns out, the first patent and demonstration of a remote control didn't require any wires, didn't use AA batteries, and it most certainly didn't occur in my lifetime. It was done by Tesla in 1898. He used radio frequency to control a boat during an exhibition at Madison Square Garden. I would like to think that the event looked like this:

But it was probably more along the lines of this:

I don't know a lot about history, but I did read that the U.S. Patent office was reluctant to recognize Tesla's patent until he had a working model because they were so incredulous about the claims he was making. If even the U.S. patent office couldn't imagine such a thing, how was the working model received by the locals? Perhaps it met with cries of "Witch, witch, burn the witch!" (This was the same time as the Salem witch trials, right? It's hard for me to know since they're both so old.) I'm pretty sure I would have read about Tesla had been burned at the stake though, so I guess everyone was pretty reasonable about the whole thing. They probably sat down over a grande half-caff caramel macchiato and dreamt of a day when people would be free to set off fart sounds remotely and change channels at an alarming speed without even the aid of wires.

Science is Sexy and the Robots are Coming

A friend of mine recently mentioned how sick she's getting of the current prevalence of vampires in books, movies, and tv shows. From Twilight to True Blood to The Vampire Diaries, they're everywhere. And it's not just in the books and movies, it's the product tie-ins and the tween t-shirts and the expectation that anyone give a rat's ass about Team Jacob or Edward. Don't get me wrong....I read all the Twilight books, saw two of the movies, and am currently catching up on True Blood. But I know exactly where my friend is coming from. At first, it was novel and interesting, but now it's just getting to be passe.

The problem with getting rid of one fad is that there's always another one ready to replace it. In this case, I'm prepared to make a prediction on what fad will follow vampires. Bear in mind that I'm not making this prediction willy-nilly. I've put some thought into various factors that might come into play, including what made vampires popular in the first place, what trend is ready for a comeback, and what current trends might bleed over into pop culture. After considering several possibilities, I predict that the next pop culture trend will be....robots.

If robots do make a resurgence, it's going to require a book, movie, or tv series to spark the fire, but the kindling is already there. Robots have been popular before, but it's been awhile. There was The Day the Earth Stood Still in the 50's. There was Vickie the Android and the Terminators in the 80's. The 90's brought us Lt. Commander Data, and in 1999/2001 we had Bicentennial Man and A.I.. Most recently, there was I, Robot in 2004. So while there has certainly been a thread of interest in robots for quite some time, I think a resurgence of "robot mania" is right around the corner. This continual undercurrent of interest is ready to erupt. The only thing required is for someone to come along and make robots sexy. Someone needs to give us a robot with a heart of gold, a sense of humor, an acceptably tortured psyche, and a sex drive. Someone needs to do for robots what Twilight did for vampires.*

If you aren't convinced that robots are primed to make a comeback, look no further than Verizon wireless. All you people out there with iPhones are certainly still convinced that there is no substitute, but if you've spent much time with one of the latest Android phones, you'll know that the playing field has been leveled. Android isn't actually a phone, it's an operating system, but Verizon knows that if you try to explain that to the average cell phone buyer, their eyes are going to glaze over and they're going to get distracted by some other shiny object. So Verizon got permission from George Lucas to brand their Android phones as "Droids". The phones are thin, smart, fast, more popular than ever, and advertised using a robotic motif. Score one for the robots.

Finally, I think robots are ready to come back because science is cool again. Science no longer means you're a dork who hangs out in a lab, it means you're capable and intelligent. Even the Emmy award winning series The Big Bang Theory, which paints 4 physicists as geeks on the outlying corners of social interaction, had enough sense to pair up Leonard with the stereotypical hot chick, Penny. There is also the 2007 movie adaptation of I Am Legend to consider. The main character is Robert Neville, who is one of the few survivors after a virus turns most of the earth's population into light-hating, human eating creatures. If they'd stayed truer to the book, Neville would have been a fairly uneducated alcoholic, but instead, the movie paints him a methodical scientist who keeps a lab in his basement and is actively developing an antidote to the virus. He's also played by Will Smith. In other words, science is sexy.

So there you have it. Popularity is a fickle thing, so it might end up being centaurs or mermen, or demigods or aliens or any host of other things, but my money is on robots. I've tried to consider all the options and weigh the evidence. I've laid out my argument in a logical manner and stuck to a method in order to solve this pressing matter. Why go to so much trouble? Because science is sexy, and soon, robots will be too.

*Ok, ok, I know that Twilight wasn't the first series to make vampires sexy. I think Interview with a Vampire already did that, but I doubt most of the people with "Team Edward" posters know that. And of course, Anne Rice wrote that book 20 years before the movie came out and maybe someone else did it before her. I'm too lazy of a blogger to really trace this back to it's origins. You should know that about me by now.

Diet Dr. Pepper Tastes Nothing Like Regular Dr. Pepper

Having gotten some coupons in the mail yesterday, I decided to treat myself to lunch at Arby's today. My meal came with a drink and, trying to be somewhat health conscious, I chose diet Dr. Pepper. There are some diet drinks that I can easily drink without thinking about the "diet" designation with every swallow, but after taking a sip of my drink, I was reminded of the harsh reality that Diet Dr. Pepper is not one of those drinks.

Diet Dr. Pepper's slogan is "Diet Dr. Pepper...tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper." I know that slogans sometimes sacrifice grammar and accuracy in exchange for brevity, but this slogan makes no sense. The problem is that little "more." If you took it out, it would be a blatant lie, but with it in there, the phrase is begging for a "than." Did they update the formula and now Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper than it used to? Does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than Sprite does? Does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than it tastes like chicken broth? The possibilities are open to interpretation.

The problem with diet drinks is that they are trying to taste like something that they'll never really taste like. Sodas are sweet. When you change that key ingredient, sugar, you'll inevitably get a different taste. In a way, I admire that Coke knows this well enough that they doesn't even bother trying to make Diet Coke taste like regular Coke. When Coke introduced Diet Coke in 1982, rather than making it a diet version of the original formula, they used a different formula entirely. In fact, when Coke make the ill-fated decision to change their original formula back in the 80's, they took the Diet Coke formula, made it with high fructose corn syrup and called it New Coke. It was a disaster. It wasn't till they came out with Coke Zero that you actually get to try the "original" coke recipe with a diet spin. So perhaps it would be more fitting if Dr. Pepper would lend their slogan to Coke. Then you could accurately say "Coke Zero tastes more like regular coke than Diet Coke does!"