The Infinite Jest Challenge

First of all, can I just direct everyone joining us to the comments section of Day 25? I think you’ll agree with me that it was the only substantial discussion of the merits of Infinite Jest thus far in this blog. Thank you for doing our jobs for us, readers.

I admit that I have done little to no work on my place mat. But by the grace of President’s Day weekend, I will make some prototypes. What’s even more strange than making a first draft of an Infinite Jest themed board game is spending more than one week just planning an Infinite Jest themed place mat.

Things I love about the board game:

1. The fact that it is completely unclear how to play it. How do you move forward in the game? Are those page numbers directing me to the novel or to other squares? What does the penny have to do with anything? How many moves does heads represent? Tails?

2. The incongruity between the slapdash layout of the squares and the cute little pictures of bunnies, anthropomorphized joints, and bouncing tennis balls. Makes me want to tear my hair out!

3. The squares contain mostly sincere recapitulations of the novel, except for once in a while when they lapse into grudges against parts you obviously dislike – i.e. “You come across two unusual characters hiking in the Southwest. They seem suspicious but everything that they’re saying seems is really boring… p. 510″ LOVE that still visible cross-out.

4. The wood surface that it’s on top of. Is that your floor? I bet you and siblings could do / have done some serious sock sliding/skating (terms widely recognized by Google’s lexicon, but not yet sanctioned by urbandictionary.com) on that waxy surface. Can that be part of our Day 31 finale celebration? I think you can beat these kids in a 200 meter speed skate, especially The Republic of Make A Doo Doo:

Five days, twenty tylenol, and fifty plus hours of sleep later, my flu has finally succumbed to the power of my immune system. My speedy recovery spares you all the cringe worthy posts I had planned to use to postpone any further discussion of the book, including: (1) a personal biblio-biography, (2) a personal timeline of things worshipped and things feared (à la Todd Levin), (3) my favorite online dictionaries.

I’m looking forward to the next 700+ pages, as you so helpfully pointed out. It feels like we started reading this book weeks ago, not just eleven days. Eleven days? Inconceivable! Is it possible that Infinite Jest is affecting my experience of the time-space continuum? How is my experience of reality different because of David Foster Wallace’s words? My life does seem to be made of many narrators all of a sudden.

In the interest of experiment, I want to reverse this newfound strangle hold DFW has me locked into and instead impose reality on Infinite Jest. A reverse neck breaker of literary proportions, if you will. This time, I, the reader, will take charge over the book. No longer will I sit complacently wondering how Infinite Jest may devastate my well conceived opinions and thoughts. I have branded ye, O DFW! You now exist in a universe containing only two choices!

But I’d like you to know that in all truth, I’m only for one thing this campaign season with no sign of flip flopping.