[Infinite Summer] Today begins Infinite Summer, a sort of online bookclub running from today until September 21. For the next three months, many of us will be wandering throughout David Foster Wallace’s 1,079-page novel Infinite Jest.
At first I thought, “Oh! This will be fun!” and then I actually went out to get a copy of the book yesterday and found it to be one of the most daunting images of my life. It is big. It is doable in three months, but it will most certainly take me all three of those months. I feel a bit like Harry Rent in Mark Sarvas’s novel Harry, Revised, in which the protagonist accepts the challenge to himself to read The Count of Monte Cristo, before contemplating which edition to buy: abridged or unabridged?
Of course, everything is easier to manage when you have friends helping you out. And while none of my friends see merit in the summer reading project (“Joe, you are such a loser!” one said to me yesterday as I described why I bought the book), there are plenty of people on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks chatting away about their reading to one another.
Everything will be okay.
