And We Now Return You To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Pages Read: 148

Pages To Go: 830

Footnotes: 48 of 388

I know, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated my progress. You might be wondering whether I got too busy to read or if I just gave up. Rest assured there is no giving up, just procrastination. I blame DFW.

This most recent section involved unusually long and complex chapter titles about things like the state of video phoning and fake articles about heart transplant recipients being robbed of their artificial organ by Harvard Square transvestites. I’m not sure how any of this holds up.

I will say I was fascinated by DFW’s in-depth analysis of why video phoning would be a failure. Living in the time of zoom meetings and Covid-19 it might be tempting to say that while the prediction had a lot of sound estimation of human vanity, he missed the mark on how quickly people would adjust to holding a camera/phone in their hand at all times.

Except when you realize rather than embrace video communication, we’ve actually moved in the opposite direction to the point that text is now the preferred form of communication, and even voice calls seem passé.

Well, you can’t get everything right.

Vocab Word: Putative Generally considered or reputed to be.

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