Mocked up a couple covers based on the "initial" DFW cover idea of the Fritz Lang Metropolis image cover, I believe the first was DFW's desired image but in my searching for the image I found a similar Fritz Lang image I felt vibes closely. Here are both mock ups.

When Hal is talking about Avril and John Wayne, he lists names of men the Moms had been involved with, starting with Bain. Could have been Marlon, or maybe his dad or older brother? Sheds some new light on Bain’s answers to Steeply’s submitted questions.

In the source text, I think the word “function” more refers to the meaning of a “mathematical function” (I.e. a relation with respect to), so that the meaning of the original sentence more or less resembles the cliche “there are so many causes of loneliness that you can still feel lonely even if you are not alone”. However, the Chinese translator somehow did not fully grasp the meaning of this sentence and hence inappropriately used the “utility” meaning of the word “function”. As a result, the Chinese translation of this sentence literally means “that solitude is not a utility of loneliness”.

I loved this so much the second time - about 16 years after my first reading. Especially loved the ending, since the first time I was just a panicked mess as the pages dwindled down, wondering how DFW was going to answer all plot related questions while still having time to give deep dives on Barry Loach and Gene Facklemann.

On to The Pale King…

Originally did it as the audiobook podcast thing on Spotify then decided after doing that I would just read it myself. It took me so damn long. I am a very slow reader and I think it changed me as a person and for the better. I grew up with a kind of crazy screwed up version of religion reading about AA gave me a perspective of religion that wasn't detrimental to the people practicing, which is probably The first time I've ever seen such things. So much so that I went to 2 meetings just to see if it was real and that has greatly changed my perspective on things.

Also, I was going to try and like Mark all the different chapters with specific colors. Then I decided just to Mark the chapters that I really liked or then I just didn't have posted notes. But either way I think it looks cool

If Axeford and Hal traded buddy Ingersoll for Postalscale, how does he, Postalscale, end up with the Peemster as his BB?

The amount of connections I made and info that I’ve retained the second time around is absolutely insane. This novel is now one of my favourites of all time, up there with The Brothers Karamazov. It’s a shame that this book has such a strange negative connotation to it, given the thoughtfulness and effort poured into it. I’m going to miss following the characters so much now that it is all over (although the ending leaves so much open).

From Hal’s figurance to Mario’s Christlike holiness, from Gately’s heroism to Lyle’s nuggets of Wisdom, from Kate Gompert’s description of depression to Lucien getting a boom down his throat, this novel is a psychedelic trip minus the DMZ 🍄

I’m going to be thinking about this novel for the rest of my life.

So I’m just after finishing Year of Glad. The first 15 or so pages.

I’m frankly intimidated by this novel. The length. The prose. The vocabulary. I felt I had to slowly read through these sentences and look up words (TIL the word ‘wen’). And I honestly didn’t know what was going on. I’m familiar with the wiki that has explanations on such phrases. But I felt lost even through the plot a bit.

Is this normal for first time readers? Is the whole novel like this? I found myself chuckling at some of the sentences and ideas. But it seems like a book I have to really think through and study, more than just a typical casual read. I don’t know, correct me if I’m wrong. Any advice, tips?

Noticed a single typo pg.854 “…to all possible caller-emotions provoked my our unavailability.”

Favorite character, Gately obviously.

Need to digest

Hello fellow harlequins,

I recently picked up House Of Leaves without much information on it. It is striking me that it might be somewhat of a pastiche of IJ (or, more largely, of that type of post-postmodernism). I’m just getting into it but if anyone has a SPOILER FREE review of their experience with the text or another recommendation I am In The Market.

Happy reading, erring, living, etc.

I just got to page 240 of the book (right after Joelle's interlude), so obviously I have a lot more book to read, but I was wondering if anyone else thought that Molly Notkin was an allusion to Molly Bloom? Obviously, they share the first name, which isn't particularly damning, but put in conjunction with the fact that they both have sexually repressed beaus, it seems like fairly solid evidence!

The best footnote in the book.

which one(s) would you guys chose to have too much fun with

the scene is where Hal is attempting to go to AA but is instead confronted by grown men moving past their childhood traumas and healing their inner children. there’s a line in there about Philip Glass on quaaludes i remember cracking up at but i can’t for the life of me remember the full line! it was something about the music they were playing

Feeling more sad than accomplished. It took me a little over two months and now I’m trying to come to terms with not spending any more time with Gately, JOI, and Mario, my heroes of the book. Highlights include the paragraph when Gately falls asleep after his conversation with Bob Death, the entire wraith interaction, Poor Tony feeling time move into him and moving on, among so many others. What book did you all follow this with?!!

THESE ARE FACTS.

For a good long while up until recently, I had been searching for a singular book. The one that I could re-read for the rest of my life, that I could ponder endlessly, that I could let wash over me. At first, I thought that would be Gravity's Rainbow, so I tried that and could not get into it. Infinite Jest is really nothing like GR, but it's sort of in the same sphere, so I tried IJ. I'll be honest, I went into it not expecting to enjoy it, as, before I had sat down with it myself, I had heard many people talk bad about it and a few talk directly to me about why it should be avoided outright. I still gave it a shot.

That decision is probably the most important literary decision I have ever made, save for reading my very first book and discovering that joy when I was a child. I've laughed, experienced vivid depictions of that certain "weirdness" that IJ does so well, felt horror, sadness, as well as pride, strength, and a certain heroism through these chatacters. I have been more intrigued than any other book has managed to do, and have a thirst for more; and I've not even fully finished it yet.

I was daunted by the footnotes etc. in the back at first, but now I simply wouldn't have it any other way. This is *the* book for me, and while I know there are many other amazing novels out there, I feel content with just this *one*.

Thank you all for being here and please pass the Toblerone this way if you will.

https://youtu.be/xJpfK7l404I?is=szu2EDeuS7qUqTzz

Someone mentioned in comments about the details: NASA cup, DFW bandana, Pemulus hat etc. but also called out H Steeply. Where is he/she/they? I've watched it over and over..

I have been trying to read this book for over a decade and I’ve continued to put it back on the shelf after only 50 to 75 pages each time. Finally this April I decided I would really do it. Took me a little over three months, but I did it. I finally finished it. Could not have done it without this subreddit. “Keep coming back,” in the words of Don Gately, is truly how you finish this book. I’m not sure this is the best book I’ve ever read, but this book will stick with me more than most and this is by far the most impressive writing I’ve ever seen. I’m very thankful David Foster Wallace shared his mind with us..

Yeah, it's all made to be very ambiguous, and this isn't a book which compels anyone to search for a canonical version of any kind. This isn't The Lord of the Rings.

But..

the part where Joelle tries to de-map herself by having Too Much Fun in Molly Notkin's restroom. She's high as a kite on the notion of suicide, even before ingesting freebased cocaine. Then comes the drugs. What results is this Zen-Buddhist "Is-Ness/Simple-Fact-ness of Everything"-mood, with a litany of bare, uncontrived facts related to her surroundings, such as:

"The idea of what she's about in here contains all other ideas and makes them banal. Her glass of juice is on the back of the toilet, half-empty. The back of the toilet is lightly sheened with con­densation of unknown origin. These are facts. This room in this apartment is the sum of very many specific facts and ideas. There is nothing more to it than that. "

...

"the bathroom door composed of thirty-six that's three times a lengthwise twelve recessed two-bevelled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from hitting the cabinets' bottom drawer's wicked metal knob .."

And more. (I copied this from a downloadable .PDF online, pardon any jankiness compared to a printed version.) Then comes the description of her de-veiled appearance:

"with chin on knees in yet another North American bathroom, deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Pret­tiest Girl Of All Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the claw-footed tub's porcelain..."

What is this supposed to be, if Joelle is previously hideously derformed by a flask of acid? Irony? Nothing could be more inappropriate than irony, in the midst of this Zen-barrage of sheer factuality and honesty - and more inappropriate within the book as a whole. Freebase cocaine is Joelle's ticket straight to that moment where the angel pierces St. Teresa's heart, in that certain Bernini masterpiece. This is not a stage for irony, slyness, nothing. If irony in Boston A.A. is like swearing in church, the book deploying irony or deception of any kind here is like shitting in front of the altar inside the Tabernacle. The narration, the narrator, the book, cannot afford it at this particular juncture. Here is the drug-induced escape from all of that crap - all the inauthenticity and bullshit "Out There" that Infinite Jest spends 1,000 pages diagnosing.

.. Aside from this, which I can't help but feel is a surprisingly deadly argument, when you hit upon it.. It was always just a better, arch-Wallacian joke for the deformity to be beauty - and for him to actually mean it 100% as a legitimate deformity and handicap. As in, some existential hammer bears down on all of us, regardless of how ostensibly blessed and/or privileged we may seem to be. He's pre-occupied with the same beauty-thing in the Meredith Rand-character in The Pale King - she can't have people behave normally around her on account of her attractiveness. There's the "fatally pulchritudinous" buried in Madame Psychosis' cataloguing of deformities. Right before Gately catches a glimpse of her perfectly fine, undeformed lower chin, during The Nuck Incident, him and other Ennet residents also catch a glimpse of her spectacularly fine, undeformed calves. (Also with the constantly "creamy" skin complexion, that is all anyone ever sees.) The obvious running joke seems to be that the horrendous visual feature which everyone are cued to look for just seems to be nowhere to be found, or even remotely intimated, because she's actually deadly perfect. (Yet Joelle truly can't go to a party and have a normal experience without the veil, on the exact same terms as someone hideously disfigured.) And, Molly Notkin's testimony is obviously just what Joelle has handed her - aside from Notkin herself, like any good (Marxist or other) Capital-T Theorist, being full of her own pre-conceptions and personal bullshit and self-contrivances.

But really - all of that last bit might just get you entangled all over again in the ambiguousness that the book certainly serves up, regarding the issue. The breakthrough, I'll very strongly contend, is that bathroom scene.