Day 26: Or you could just play the game.
I actually finished this game several days ago, but have delayed posting it for two reasons:
1. I still can’t believe that I actually made a board game for this book – or any book. Horrors. 2. If one’s going to do a project like this, he or she should do a better job of it than I have. (After some deliberation, I decided that a doing a “second draft” was even worse than making it in the first place.)
My objective in creating the game was to convey both the general idea of the book (in a superficial sense) and the experience of reading it. I think that in these respects, it is a success. One could answer the question “So what’s that big book about?” just as easily after playing this game as I can at this point, having diligently read 700 pages of it.
“Uhh… some guys… at a tennis academy?… and a halfway house?… mostly. It’s sort of hard to explain…”
“Mmmm, okay.”
As far as conveying the experience of reading the book, I hate to give away the trick, but since I doubt that anyone will play ever play it, I might as well. The game is endless. Like Monopoly, but ACTUALLY endless. You can escape it by dying, but otherwise you can count on bouncing back and forth from narrative to narrative indefinitely. There are even footnotes to read that have nothing to do with the progression of the game at all – they just delay your progression around the board even further. Teehee! And in one page vs. 1079? I did it so much more succinctly than DFW!
Move by flipping a coin; “heads” moves one space, “tails” moves two.
See? Just one page!
Note the flesh-eating two-headed rabbit in Great Concavity. Inspired.
Day 25: I confess - I Jest don’t get it.
This probably should just be posted as a response to Day 24, but I’ve been lazy and owe you two days, so I’m going to own up to my cluelessness right here in the open where everyone can read it most easily.
Aaron, I want to give DFW and IJ more credit, but am also sure that he knows how to manipulate his audience and it is, indeed, hard with this book not to feel sometimes like he’s forcing his ego on me page after page after page.
My completely honest thoughts on the book at the moment:
I feel like DFW is having fun playing games and that the chance of a reader empathizing with any of the characters or getting any entertainment out of the “plot” is deliberately avoided by obtuse writing and incidents made so outrageous that there isn’t anything to hold on to. Yes…greater metaphors… blabla… I get glimpses of the bigger picture here and there, but I’m old fashioned. For an investment of this much time and effort, I’d like a plotline or character I felt like I could sink my teeth into every once and awhile. Is there more to this book than cleverness for its own sake? If I viewed the thing with enough distance would it take on any shape for me? Right now I mostly see “amoebic blob.” Reading with a lack of background and, probably more importantly, confidence, I’m willing to accept the answer “You just don’t get it.” So okay, I don’t get it, WHAT IS THE POINT?!*
To return to the old food discussion, it’s been like eating… a lobster. Lobster is classy and tastes okay, but it’s a pain to get into and I’ll confess that, for the effort, I prefer the less sophisticated but still delicious crab.
Consider the Crab
*My desire to understand Infinite Jest IS genuine. Aaron? Billifer? Anyone? Maybe at the end of the challenge?
