Day 3 – The Panini

I promised a mutual friend of ours who shall remain nameless (though his name rhymes with Mawn O’Mullivan and he lives in Chicago in a community that rhymes with Moscoe Millage; he also goes by the alias of Matt Barney on this blog) to say this to myself:

I, Aaron Fai, created a blog about a book I am reading.

He asked me to let that sink in for a minute.

Yes! I am writing a blog about a book I’m reading. Yes! I am conscious that this is possibly the lowest common denominator of literary criticism not to mention of the blogosphere. Yes! This grants our friends permission to ridicule us for years to come and bring the subject up at dinner conversation despite any visible signs of mortification on our part.

I see that you’ve been ignoring all the topics that I brought up for discussion on my first post. You won’t get out of them that easily. I’ll be gracious and cut to the chase. We both know which topic we want to discuss: this novel’s culinary parallels.

After careful contemplation, I present my first nominee for a culinary counterpart to Infinite Jest:

THE PANINI

When the panini popped up a few years ago, at least in Los Angeles, everyone went crazy for them. Those dark score marks on thin Italian bread became a hallmark for cafes everywhere on the west side. They were the new thing and every waxy face in Hollywood had their preference to what to go in their precious panini. Avocado, artichoke, turkey – whatever. In the end, of course, they were subject to the natural trajectory of all celestial bodies in Los Angeles; they rose and then they fell (I should write for E! Entertainment, shouldn’t I?). You looked down at your $7.99 panini and you realized: dammit, this is a grilled cheese sandwich. It didn’t taste any worse, you just fell back to the ground a little.

Infinite Jest debuted in 1996 under similar aplomb and while we weren’t really of the literature reading age (I was too busy getting picked last in basketball in seventh grade), I’d like to think that every lit junkie in L.A. was buying it and flipping through it’s contents, professing how much they adored the self conscious ending but how disturbed they were by the lack of narrative conclusion and asking what this meant for their times. Truthfully, outside Adam I-Forget-His-Last-Name-But-He-Was-Short-And-Was-On-The-Rowing-Crew in the dorms in college reading it halfway (I think to impress his girlfriend), I’ve never seen anyone toting IJ around. But my point is, even though the book’s immediate celebrity has passed and everyone has long since realized that it’s just a damn sandwich, I mean book, the thing still has presence and evokes discussion. I’m glad to be reading DFW’s big book now rather than in 1996. Aren’t you?

Your turn.

P.S. Is it just me, or do you really miss the short health specialist updates where more and more people keep joining in to watch the cartridge?