“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”

August 15, 2015 1:40 PM

There are two routes to literary immortality: [Pepsi-Infinite-Blue]

• Slave for years—if not decades—over a work of fiction so searingly sui generis, so well and truly fused with an authentic zeitgeist, so deeply attuned to life’s vicissitudes and the mysteries of the soul, that establishment and nonestablishment figures alike have no choice but to revere you and send you soaring toward the firmament, never to be forgotten.
• Hitch your wagon to David Foster Wallace’s star.

For the less ambitious among us, option number two has never been more desirable. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Infinite Jest, Little, Brown is hosting a contest: you can design the cover for the new edition, thus earning one thousand dollars and suturing your memory to Wallace’s own.

“We invite the readers whose enthusiasm for and engagement with Infinite Jest has shaped the book’s legacy to share their inspiration with us,” Michael Pietsch, Wallace’s editor and the CEO of Hachette, said in a statement.

Poor Yorick Entertainment, a fansite, has a good sampling, including this design in gouache by Jennie Ottinger.

For all the rules and regs—and a slew of dry, exacting legalese with capitalized Nouns of exactly the sort that Wallace loved to parody—click here.

posted by Fizz (32 comments total)

• Hitch your wagon to David Foster Wallace’s star.

Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg have opted for option no. 2.*

*I still want to see this film, train-wreck that I think it is.
posted by Fizz at 2:00 PM on August 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ugh, this cult of DFW is really getting to be a bit much. (And I love his work.)
posted by naju at 3:04 PM on August 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Not to nitpick, but cover design isn't exactly the same as writing.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:08 PM on August 15, 2015

naju, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I've yet to read any of his major fiction works, but I have read many essays and shorter works. I find myself more interested in works ABOUT David Foster Wallace than works written BY him. There's something fascinating about the cultural and social mark that he has left behind. And I realize that a part of this fascination is a little paparazi-esque. Something about him is compelling.
posted by Fizz at 3:09 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't remember this laser focus on his personal life at all being the case until he ended his life. There's something ghoulish about it.
posted by naju at 3:14 PM on August 15, 2015 [10 favorites]

I remember the many think pieces, film proposals, and such that came out in the decades after Philip K. Dick's death, and for similar reasons: He wrote imaginative and original fiction that had a sort of psychological ruthlessness and honesty that readers connected with. And it's natural for readers to want to know more about somebody who seemed to know what they're thinking.
posted by ardgedee at 3:23 PM on August 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

I haven't really seen a "laser focus on his personal life." He's a scary great writer and a bit polarizing, because you can either read his long fiction or you can't, and sometimes you can't even if you can recognize what makes it so great. I can't, but my wife can, and that gets interesting sometimes. I think there are some parallels between DFW and John Kennedy Toole. They both saw past the veneer of seriousness which the world wears to an underlying farce which DFW saw with great and equal parts clarity and horror.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:24 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I still want to see this film, train-wreck that I think it is.

It's been really well reviewed, though.

I heard Segel talk about it on WTF last week... I dunno. He seemed sincere? He even read IJ before beginning filming.
posted by mr_roboto at 3:31 PM on August 15, 2015

That's good to hear mr_roboto. It's nice to know that it was treated with respect. Will watch and see.
posted by Fizz at 3:42 PM on August 15, 2015

Personally I thought it was a pretty amazing film and Segel is mesmerizing as Wallace.
posted by octothorpe at 4:08 PM on August 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I wonder how much a design firm would have charged them to do an original cover. This probably saves them money, provides free publicity, and has a veneer of appealing to the fandom.

Not sure how DFW would have felt about all that.
posted by Celsius1414 at 4:28 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Infinite Jest is just plain false labeling. Even if the book had been 100% Jest, that is still a finite, limited quantity. And really effective at irony/sarcasm, or else it would've been far more serious and humorous as I finally found it (The title itself kept me away from reading it for years until MeFi's Own kottke goaded me into it during the Infinite Summer of 2009, while the hundreds of footnotes have actually encouraged my own writing style*)

or didn't you notice how often I use asterisks?
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:15 PM on August 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

*and over an hour after I wrote that I noticed it should read "NOT really effective" and I dropped an asterisk

*goodnight, everybody!
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:44 PM on August 15, 2015

I didn't think the film was a train wreck at all. I thought it was quite good, particularly Segel. The Slate Culture Fest discussion of it was fairly good I thought. As was Maria Bustillos's convo with Lipsky about it (on The Awl I think?).
posted by vunder at 6:48 PM on August 15, 2015

The existing covers of IJ have been dull to hideous.
posted by vunder at 6:54 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

The existing covers of IJ have been dull to hideous.

Semi-related: for anyone who is interested in cover design, I urge you to seek out Lolita - The Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov's Novel in Art and Design Paperback [New Yorker] by John Bertram (Editor), Yuri Leving (Editor).

It is a fascinating look at the various covers that have been used to design/sell Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. A very beautiful coffee-table book. Some are easily recognizable and some that were banned and the behind the scene stories that went into those decisions.
posted by Fizz at 7:07 PM on August 15, 2015

Pepsi Blue... Posted by Fizz

*snickers*
posted by pjern at 8:27 PM on August 15, 2015

Infinite Jest is not that hard and neither is it particularly world changing. It's long. You need two bookmarks and a vacation to read it. It is great, and you should give it all three of those things. It was refreshing and youthful when it was new and probably it still is now that it is old and great. But I agree with the early commenters that the hagiography has gotten out of hand, but maybe that's just the marketers at work, working at marketing books and movies and late last century novelists. Year of the DFW Biopic. I hope it helps his estate.
posted by notyou at 9:55 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

He even read IJ before beginning filming.

Such dedication, to read a New York Times bestseller!
posted by shakespeherian at 11:25 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah me too I also hate it when my favorite band becomes popular. Soon everyone will have their albums.

Just kidding it's awesome. It doesn't matter how many pretentious dummies buy Aeroplane Over The Sea just because they heard some other dummy talk about it on a podcast -- it's a great record, and the hype just means more people get to hear it.

It's certainly better than another Cool Business Guy, Rock & Roll Footnote or King Asshole biopic, right?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:29 PM on August 15, 2015

METAFILTER: is not that hard and neither is it particularly world changing. It's long. You need two bookmarks and a vacation to read it. It is great, and you should give it all three of those things. It was refreshing and youthful when it was new and probably it still is now that it is old and great. But I agree with the early commenters that the hagiography has gotten out of hand,
posted by philip-random at 1:08 AM on August 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

His essays on pop culture and sports are brilliant. Fantastic stuff.

I wish I knew of more (by anyone) like them.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:14 AM on August 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

So they're asking designers to design something for free?

Way to go with devaluing an entire industry.
posted by my-username at 1:46 AM on August 16, 2015

Celsius1414, they are saving some money but not much. A professional designer can get a few thousand dollars for a cover at best. The economics of publishing are tough all around.

There is a lot of debate in the graphic design community about whether this kind of competition is exploitive. (The Lolita exercise that Fizz describes above is seen as being somewhat different.)
posted by How the runs scored at 4:35 AM on August 16, 2015

Infinite Jest is not that hard and neither is it particularly world changing. It's long. You need two bookmarks and a vacation to read it. It is great, and you should give it all three of those things.

I think it's probably the second-greatest thing ever written in the English language. But I've always recognized it's not for everyone, and I've never wasted my breath trying to tell those who don't get it how great it is.
posted by oheso at 5:03 AM on August 16, 2015

I'll just chime in to point out that Infinite Jest is hilarious.

A lot of folks who aren't English majors don't know that, and get scared off by a book that weighs in competitively with a dictionary.

I've sold the book to about ten people-- one of which was just learning English as a second language, and even she was in tears by about page ten. It's a funny book.
posted by mrdaneri at 7:21 AM on August 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

I've never read IJ, or any of DFW's fiction except for Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, which I admired but did not enjoy at all. But I am blown away by his non-fiction; Consider the Lobster and the other essays within are just so insightful to me, even when I strongly disagree with his point of view (as in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again).

So I've wanted to try IJ for awhile and now think I will. Is it readable on a Kindle? I don't like how kindle handles footnotes in general, but it's not so bad. Are there really lots of page-long footnotes? Should I just get a paper version?
posted by skewed at 11:26 AM on August 16, 2015

My mother read it on a Kindle, and she seemed to think it was OK.
posted by thelonius at 12:36 PM on August 16, 2015

I vote a strong no on the kindle for this book. Incredibly long, multitudes of characters, the aforementioned footnotes.. All these together with passages you may find yourself wanting to re-read a couple of times makes this story, for me anyway, a books book.
posted by bird internet at 6:31 PM on August 16, 2015

I actually did my first read on paper and my second on the Kindle. It was nice, once I had a handle on it, to be able to click back and forth, and to be able to take it with me, since the book doesn't fit in my purse.

I don't feel compelled to read it front to back a third time, but I do go back to it often and read chunks. It's really suited to that; much of IJ is kind of a series of short stories.
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:02 PM on August 17, 2015

At least one of his friends has come out publicly against the movie, but I'm sure I would feel that way if I were in his shoes regardless of the quality of the movie - no one is going to be able to touch your real, now gone, friend.

I actually prefer his non-fiction also. I constantly wish he was around to write about life in [current year]. There are so many things I want his take on. (Was he EVER prescient with IJ - as if he could see right into this age of iPhone zombies and Trump polling in first place.)

I wish I knew of more (by anyone) like them.

They have almost opposite styles of writing, but discovering Janet Malcolm's non-fiction was the same life-altering, mind-melting experience for me as when I picked up DFW for the first time.
posted by sallybrown at 1:11 PM on August 17, 2015

I wish I knew of more (by anyone) like them.

They have almost opposite styles of writing, but discovering Janet Malcolm's non-fiction was the same life-altering, mind-melting experience for me as when I picked up DFW for the first time.
posted by sallybrown at 4:11 PM on August 17 [+] [!]

On the subject of great essayists worth reading:

- Loitering by Charles D'Ambrosio
- The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum
- Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
- Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews, 1989-2010 by Geoff Dyer
- When I Was A Child I Read Books Hardcover by Marilynne Robinson
- The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison
posted by Fizz at 7:36 AM on August 19, 2015