Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DJ Ian's Sunday Evening "Tell Me What You Really Think"

You're listening to Radio KCRCR, "Tell Me What You Really Think", where we listen to the critics and you talk back. That's if there's any time left after I finish my rant. Hehe.

A lot of listeners ask me about my namesake. What about that other Ian Graye, you say. The one on GoodReads. What do you think of him? And what did you think of his recent review of David Foster Wallace's magnum opus?

Well, let me reassure you: that other Ian Graye is a wanker. Don’t trust his five star review of “Infinite Jest” (“IJ” for short, but not for long).

He is a classic pseudo-intellectual, who occasionally comes under the sway of people like Nathan, MJ and a few female Good Readers with brains and/or ambition, and tries unconvincingly to run with their small herd, while simultaneously feigning the impression of reading, appreciating and reviewing the big books that appeal to them. He is a post-capitalist lapdog of the tamest and most ineffectual kind.

This is what he would say, if he had the guts. Actually, it’s not what he would say, it’s what I'm saying.

He can wallow in pretension.

IJ is a dogs breakfast. Nobody has actually read it from cover to cover. Nobody has understood it on its own terms. Anybody who reckons they’ve read it or understood it is lying and needs to be exposed for the fibbers they are.

The sooner there is something that is post-postmodernism that we can get our hands and minds and kindles and iPatches on the better. No wait, it doesn’t matter.

Postmodernism was invented so that nerds could take money off other nerds.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world can eat, drink, snort, smoke, dance, party and have sex regardless and in spite of the postmodernist nerdfest going down, down, down in the library.

Length

Surely, it is enough to state the length of this book to condemn it.

If an author has 1,100 pages in them, then write four novels of 275 pages each.

Can Sting possibly be any better on the fourth day of his tantric sex than he is on the first?

What is the point? To achieve a target for the Guinness Book of Records? For as soon as you break the record, somebody else will want to beat you and your record will last for, how long, one year, at most?

Repetition

In a book that long, there must surely be a lot of repetition of themes and subject matter, if not dialogue and actual words.

As for a book whose ending simply takes you back to the beginning? That's not what I call recycling. Recycling is the yellow bin. Or, wishful thinking for charities, two copies sitting side by side in a second hand book store.

Self-Indulgence

See my comment about Sting. Beyond that, I risk being guilty of the post-modern crime of repetition. In fact, I might already be guilty. Damn. How ironic.

Irony

Show me somebody who really knows what irony means and I’ll show you a bullshit artist.

I mean, what does “an incongruity between the literal and the implied meaning” mean?

Is there any literal meaning that is not implied? Surely, DFW meant everything his words implied.

Therefore, they are not incongruous, they are deliberate and congruous.

This is starting to sound like that other Ian Graye, so I will stop.

Playfulness

OK, so they play tennis in this book. So what?

And so what if he plays with our minds? Writing this bloody book probably played with DFW’s own mind. How can you control something as gargantuan and prolix as this?

It plays with our minds, because it played with his. If he had won the game, it would have been a shorter, sharper, better book and a more pleasant experience for us.

There is a reason tennis has a tie-breaker. IJ needed a tie-breaker. Around 300 pages.

Black Humor

I like black humor, white humor and Jewish humor. I haven’t heard any other types yet. But I hope I do eventually.

However, I can’t remember any good jokes in IJ, nor can I remember LOL’ing.

Even if I could remember one, there’s no way I would ever tell a mate in a pub or print it on a t-shirt, which is my ultimate test of a good joke, well, an aphorism, anyway.

Intertextuality

I mean, are you serious? Who would invent a word like “intertextuality”, but a postmodernist wanker?

Did the English language really need this word? Did it have to be imported from France or Italy, or wherever?

Intertextuality…”the relationship between one text (a novel for example) and another or one text within the interwoven fabric of literary history…an indication of postmodernism’s lack of originality and reliance on clichés”.

Put two things next to each other, juxtapose them, as the other Ian Graye would say, and you have a relationship (a “juxtaposition”). So what?

If you want to refer to another book in your book, it’s a quote if it’s acknowledged or plagiarism if it’s not.

So what? Any graduate student can do this. We used to call it cheating.

As for cliches, we were taught to eschew them in my day. DFW uses truckloads of cliches, mostly old ones, but many new ones of his own creation. How pathetic. There are nearly as many cliches in IJ as there are in Hamlet. I mean, "To be, or not to be", if Shakespeare was half the writer he's supposed to be (or not to be), he would have steered clear of that old chestnut.

Pastiche

Once again, write your own bloody book.  Don’t copy somebody else’s. Sampling is cheating.  If I want to read the other book or listen to the other song, I’ll find it on iTunes.

Metafiction

Another word created by postmodernists for postmodernists. It’s like a secret handshake. A club for us and not for you. Because you won’t let us into your club, and your club is blockbuster, best-selling fiction with a home and a boat in the Bahamas.

Anybody who can write should strive for a home and a boat, better still, a houseboat. If you haven’t got it in you, don’t waste trees or cyberspace. Write a blog. Do your pathetic little reviews on GoodReads. Or pathetically long reviews, in the case of my namesake.

Fabulation

I mean, honest, we’re talking fiction here, and some critic has to introduce a synonym and pretend it means something different. A distinction without a difference. A high distinction without a job prospect. This is today’s academia for you.

Poioumena

This word makes me want to vomit.

I mean I love Maoris and their language, but words weren’t meant to consist of four consecutive vowels. It's inconsonant.

Historiographic Metafiction

Another one. What, aren’t the old words good enough for postmodernists? This would have been edited out of the wiki article if anybody knew what it meant or had the guts.

Instead, it’s left in, and college students in my wake will struggle to apply it correctly in a sentence for another 20 years.

If this term was a dog, it would be put down. In fact, this term is a dog. Bang.

Temporal Distortion

It gets worse. “Fragmentation and non-linear narratives”. In a word, drugs. Nobody used this language when the poison of choice was alcohol.

In the old days, the bell would ring, and you’d say, “Oh, is that the time?” Not temporal distortion.

Magic Realism

All the best drugs come from South America. Say no more. But put a frat boy in a broad brimmed hat and sit him on a horse and it doesn’t make him a gaucho or a magic realist.

Technoculture and Hyperreality

Doof doof. I can’t remember one computer in IJ. Unless you count microwaves and whatever they played the cartridges on. And, I mean, who remembers cartridges?

Paranoia

The only source of paranoia for me in IJ is the sense that DFW might have known what he was talking about and I didn’t get it. But if he did and I didn’t, then I’ve read all the other IJ reviews on Good Reads, and no two of them are the same, so quit the bullshit and admit it, nobody gets it. It’s time we fessed up, it can’t be got, we weren’t supposed to get it, DFW didn’t design it to be got, leave it alone.

IJ is a conspiracy by the paper manufacturing industry to consume paper, put it inside a hard cover and never let it see the light of day.

Yes, a paranoid conspiracy, I know, but guess what, it worked.

Maximalism

A big word for “long”.

Minimalism

A big word for a little idea. Incongruous, if not ironic, I know.

Encyclopaedic

Yes, IJ is long, but credit where credit is due, it contains a lot of words and meanings, about a lot of things, but let's face it, nobody ever reads an encyclopaedia from beginning to end, we all dip in one entry at a time, if not randomly, and we wouldn’t know shit about all the other bits that we didn’t read.

Let’s hope there's not a question about them in the exam.

Well, that's about it from me. Let me leave you with one more serious thought.

Party at my place. Come on.

KCRCR. Whatever will be will be. And whatever will not be will not be. That is the answer and there's the rub. Thanks, Bill. Can I have my bottle back now, please?

Oh, is that the time? Let's cross to Rupert for the news.



TAME AND INEFFECTUAL POST-CAPITALIST LAPDOG FIVE STAR REVIEW

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...



NERDS ONLY PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL FIVE STAR REVIEW

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...



THE "TELL ME WHAT YOU REALLY THINK" VOTE COUNT (AUDITED BY CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS NICE WATERCLOSET)

DJ Ian:

February 17, 2013

41 likes

Post-Capitalist Lapdog Review

February 17, 2013

38 likes

Nerd's Only Pseudo-Intellectual Review

February 17, 2013

27 likes

DJ Ian's one star review jennifer garnered more "likes" in 12 hours than either of the other five star reviews did in 10 months (they were posted in April 2012).


View all my reviews