jonesing for prose

More on Infinite Jest:

I'm finding that my brain wants to read it faster than is humanly possible; wants to devour it, skip ahead, forge onward. If I were to read it at the pace my brain desires, I'd be missing salient points and details that I feel might be important to the outcome. Reading it has become an all-consuming need, hovering right there under my desire for a cigarette or for a lengthy nap or a session on my new Playstation 2.

I bring this up because the novel, in essence, is about addiction. Each of the "main" characters seems to be struggling with an addiction of his own. Hal Incandenza is addicted to pot. Joelle van Dyne is heavy on ze crack. Don Gately has replaced his former oral narcotics and alcohol habits with a need to be controlled by AA and NA. J.O. Incandenza was a boozer. Avril Incandenza is quite possibly a sex addict. Pemulis's addiction to 'drines causes his right eye to twitch maddeningly. The plot revolves around a film so entertaining that to watch it creates a dependency so dire that the watcher will watch it again and again on infinite repeat until he dies.

Dozens of theses have been written on this very subject, in colleges all over America, but what none of them really seem to say is that this book itself is addictive. Right now I want nothing more than to grab it and wolf down the last 400 pages. But since I'm at work, and ostensibly have to be busy, I can't do that. So instead I'm combing the web looking for other Wallace goodies. I could join the wallace-l discussion list, but they're currently talking about IJ, and I don't want to spoil myself, so I'm heartily avoiding that. Instead I've taken to reading Wallace's essays & short stories that have been published in various web rags.

Yesterday I read "Tense Present" which is ostensibly a review of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner, but sort of turns into this grand comparison of the Descriptive and Prescriptive camps of English usage, which really sounds like something dry and technical that only your high school comp teacher would find interesting, no? But Wallace manages to keep it fascinating and entertaining. Or maybe I just find it fascinating and entertaining beacuse I'm one of those SNOOTs he keeps talking about (Bessica, this article is for you, hon).

I'm afraid that tracking down and reading Wallace's ouevre may have dire consequences on the rest of my natural life. I may never be able to sleep again.
I've already started peppering my instant messages with footnotes. Please send help.

Posted by laura at October 30, 2002 11:14 AM | TrackBack