True Crime Early 90s Style

Pages Read: 57

Pages To Go: 921

Footnotes: 20 of 388

I’d watch the modern noir crime thriller based on this chapter.

Some random observations, now that I’m about six percent of the way in:

• DFW knows a LOT about recreational drug use.
• In the episodes that concern addiction and drug use, DFW’s style is much more immersive and narrative, and therefore much easier to follow along. More please.
• People are so predictable. Is this because people are afraid of being viewed as different? Is it intellectual laziness?
• I definitely want to know what happens in Don Gately vs. Assistant D.A.
• I am 100% certain that Vince Gilligan has read Infinite Jest.
• As I was flipping through the footnotes trying to find the right page, I found that one of the next few footnotes is several pages long and involves a detailed filmography for an as yet unmet character, James Incandenza. That’s going to be a rough one. Already weighing whether I can safely skim through it without feeling like a complete failure.

I’m also very very intrigued by teleputers. Was this really a thing? Did DFW make it up? Did he take a very niche technology in the prototype stage and imagine that it would become a mass consumer item? It’s like a hint of science fiction in an otherwise extremely grounded narrative. It’s like something out of Vonnegut.

Vocab Word: Lividity reddish- to bluish-purple discoloration of the skin due to the settling and pooling of blood following death (I actually know what this one was, thanks to Serial. Justice for Adnan Syed!)

You are reading my live blog of Infinite Jest. Start at the beginning.