But over the last 4 or 5 months I have been totally immersed in a gargantuan epic, a maximalist work that shows that sometimes more is more and more.
Last night I finished reading David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest." Truly one of the greatest novels I've ever read. A work that I can say really did "change my life." Literally. I mean, I've had to show an amazing commitment to read it, to stick with it, it tested my patience, and endurance, and forced me to concentrate on one task for long stretches of time.
How counter to our Attention Deficit, everything in the moment now world? It changed what I think a novel is, and what a novel can be. There are "dead ends" and weird digressions and 388 endnotes. Plus nearly 1000 pages of text. I read every page, every note, every word.
The narrative jumps around, the scenes come out of sequence and circle back. It's such a perfect picture of our world. It was written in 1996, but it seems so "of the moment."
It feels like a major accomplishment just to have finished the thing. It's a wonderful, confounding, beautiful, funny, mind-altering read. It's about addiction, pop culture, drugs, entertainment, sports, madness, and what it is to be a human being in the late 20th and early 21st century. It's all that and so much more.
It's a comedy, a tragedy. Etc. It's everything and more. I didn't want it to end. I fell in love with some of the characters. I fell in love with David Foster Wallace's mind, even though at the same time it was maddening and confounding too. It proves that the more you pay attention, the more you look, the deeper you focus, the more you see, the more you understand, the more you know and feel.
What a masterful writer. What a wonderful novel. Life-changing!
