forever funny decade

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is turning ten years old.

And yet the time spent in this book, in this world of language, is absolutely rewarded. When you exit these pages after that month of reading, you are a better person. It’s insane, but also hard to deny. Your brain is stronger because it’s been given a month-long workout, and more importantly, your heart is sturdier, for there has scarcely been written a more moving account of desperation, depression, addiction, generational stasis and yearning, or the obsession with human expectations, with artistic and athletic and intellectual possibility. The themes here are big, and the emotions (guarded as they are) are very real, and the cumulative effect of the book is, you could say, seismic. It would be very unlikely that you would find a reader who, after finishing the book, would shrug and say, “Eh.”

-- David Eggers in his new foreward to the book

I bought the book in its original hardcover edition in December 1996 when I was travelling in America (rather appropriate). It wasn't until I finished High School that I had the mental space to read it. It took me most of 1998 and significantly shaped that pivotal year. It was as inspiring and provoking and moving and absorbing as only true masterpieces can be.

Its was a stunning novel, and I bought a few copies for friends. One who read it again immediately after finishing it and (being a crazy mathematics guy) began to se that the book itself was structured like the obtuse mathematical formula which shaped the Echelon game.

Reading this foreward has given me the heebeejeebies; its a celebration of one of the defining books of my life...

and it makes me hunger to create even more.

So go read the freakin' book.

(For the scribophiles who frequent this site -- the only screenwriter I think who matches DFW's genius is Charlie Kaufman, though I think there is so much that can be mined from DFW's oeuvre. Except I see he is now writing Saw 4. Wtf?)