Now, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy; embarking on the Infinite Summer project was a half-serious commitment I thought of as something challenging but also intellectually stimulating to fill a few slow summer weeks with. I’m still trying to read the novel, but have (at the moment) decided that I can/will just leave it, forget about it, toss it out the window if I want to.
Infinite Jest is difficult. It’s easy to dislike, even hate. It’s frustrating, weird and just awful at times. My big problem with the text is that not once has it felt like it’s “fluent” or “from the heart”. Every single sentence feels like it’s been carefully constructed. Compare with a modern masterpiece like Gravity’s Rainbow, where paragraph after paragraph can be weird and strange, but an absolute joy to read because of the way the text flows. It’s organic. It’s poetry. I have a hard time enjoying Infinite Jest because to me, it lacks that certain something; is it, perhaps for lack of a better word, soul?
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish this novel. According to the Infinite Summer schedule, I should reach page 432 tomorrow. Right now, I’m at page 200. I really wanted to like it, to be seduced by the novel – but the sad fact now is that I’m everything but. Regardless of whether I’ll be able to ever finish it or not, I think I can already safely say that I’ll have a hard time recommending it to just about anyone.
