Infinite Summer over

Infinite Summer officially wrapped up today. For those unaware, Infinite Summer was a blog set up for "endurance bibliophiles" to read and discuss David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest over the course of one summer (June 21st-September 22nd; roughly 75 pages per week). I chose not to participate because 1) I didn't realize the site existed until they were one month into the "exercise," and thus, I was already behind, and 2) the comments invited heavy discussion from plot-predicting first-time readers and spoiler-hinting re-readers. This would have made for an interesting study in intertextuality--with a digital blog post/comment dynamic battling Wallace's physical narrative/footnote dynamic--but after 20 or so pages, I realized this book was meant to be a solitary literary adventure demanding only the influences of my own imagination.

In fact, I would have been more apt to participate had the reading frame been shorter (three months would have been torturous for me, given how quickly and intensely the book grabbed my focus). I feel that this pace would have caused the readers to sacrifice more time and energy on the book, and thus change their thoughts and experiences. That seemed to be the point of Infinite Jest: to be toiled over as quickly as possible. I don't think it was meant to be studied and discussed (at least when being read for the first time), but rather ingested at once in an individual mind.