Wow, Infinite Winter is in its final week. That flew!
It's wrap-up / reflection post time and there are many posts worth heading over to the Infinite Winter site to read. Of note, is Matt Bucher's piece, Living with Infinite Jest for 20 Years (so much of it is quote worthy - just read it all):
[...]Infinite Jest survives partly because it still speaks to how things are now. We can only guess how long society and the novel will hold this sort of equilibrium. It might seem quaintly outdated by 2036 or even more relevant. In 1997, it was somewhat difficult to find another soul who’d actually read the whole of Infinite Jest. That’s part of why we treasured those early group reads. Now, it’s much more likely that any serious reader I meet has either read the book or has a good story about why they haven’t or can’t, but they all know it. For years after his death I was reluctant to admit that Wallace’s suicide played a central role in his new-found fame or even brought in hordes of new readers. My reply would be “Well maybe, but so…” And yet by now there is no question that people who had never heard of Wallace prior to 2008 picked up his books because they heard about his suicide, his commencement address, or saw Jason Segel in that role. As the scale of readership has increased, so have the number of homages, side projects, and tributes. Yes, there are more poseurs, more articles to read, more backlash, more politics to negotiate, but all of that is outweighed, in my humble opinion, by the good and honorable and ultimately more lasting stuff effected by and from new readers.
[...]
Continue reading Matt's piece, Living with Infinite Jest for 20 Years, here.
Oh, I wrote a little something too - Coming Full Circle.
(Watercolour - Nathan Seppelt)
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