Infinite (De)coding, or “His wit’s as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard.”
At a high school reunion in what I will call the Year of the iPhone 16, a classmate recommended I read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), which I promptly dismissed as pretentious. I majored in literature and have read some whopper works of fiction, including James Joyce’s Ulysses and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace , but Infinite Jest is just the type of book I tend to eschew for its popularity among men who showboat really long books in the same way they measure the length of their Johnsons (a metaphor the character Rod “the God” Tine, Sr. would appreciate). Perhaps Wallace was hip to that metaphor, as well, and meant to have much of the book go over the unsuspecting knob’s head, cony-catching some numbskulls with his southpaws, Hal et al (See footnote 268 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQThnv8c2uI ). I myself would not have understood the extent of his project, namely the conundrum of anonymity (disguised with Alcoholi...