Last night I finished Infinite Jest, or, the moniker I maintained it in my thoughts over the last 400 pages or so, “that damn book.”

I cede that my vocabulary is in a consequential state of small-pond-big-fish-gone-to-big-ponditis, but this is actually likely the most positive affect IJ (TDB) has had on me. I thought that the most literarily ingenious thing David Foster Wallace accomplished throughout the entire book was to add pronoun-clarifying adjectival phrases (I know I learned a word for them in 3rd grade or so, but I don’t remember it, the word.) <-The parentheses containing an example of such a structured sentence.  I also liked the way he used “but and” as one functional conjunction, which if I remember correctly is an actual single word in Russian.I was “entertained” for 30 something hours of my life, though it was sort of entertainment the book edifies/condemns as the opposite of anhedonia, except in the one or two parts where sheer commitment seems to be idealized in a gruesome twisted way. 

And here I have hit upon the word- gruesome.

This book dragged me through descriptions of horrific unpleasantness, dangling the (hummus-covered) carrot of plot resolution, purpose, anything that gave a subtle nod to goodness, and by then end had revealed to me that carrots (and probably hummus, too) had been a projected figment of my imagination all along, that I had plowed through the book on my own volition, that my desire to be entertained was self-destructive based on the very fact that I had spent 1000 pages and 20 dollars on this intellectual/moral sadomasochism… I’ll cut it short (er). The book was a really, enormously big minus sign in my own personal book, which is much shorter and would never have the presumption to think that it was worth writing down, much less make best-seller lists by virtue of sales that were recommended by those who had probably not finished, understood, enjoyed (the last of which I’m sure is unnecessary in appreciating literature as it is understood from above mustaches and ray bans and plaid and sweater vests by 140+iq’d brains, maybe while people are yachting, and inventing facebook and talking nihilism, or whatever it is brilliant people do.)

Anyways, so no sooner had I closed (and decided to burn, because donating would be unmerciful and keeping would be a dishonest endorsement) the book than I opened the Book and discovered that immediately following the Esther I had just finished was Job, and within the first chapter I was delighted and filled with hope by the attitude that should be adopted in suffering, what the book truly lacked, by the selflessness and sanity when Job says-

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.”

So, I’m planning on sticking with the Book I enjoy and books that edify similar things, or at the very least edify the tiniest ounce of goodness, and I’m saying this all in a very secret-in-the-room-with-the-door-closed-and-But-For-the-Grace-less-faithfully-than-we-both-expect way.

Okay, sorry about the space on your feed.