According to its Amazon.co.uk receipt – archived in my Gmail inbox – I bought the thing nearly two years ago. Since then, I’ve moved house twice and it  has occupied space – unread – on at least 3 different bookshelves. Finally, however, I’ve started reading Infinite Jest.

Nearly two weeks in and just under 120 pages covered, I’m loving it. Before embarking on the semi-mythologized task of reading IJ, I familiarized myself with David Foster Wallace’s work by first inhaling his shorter non-fiction offerings, Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never do Again and Both Flesh and Not, and, so, was familiar with his frequent long-winded diversions and his fondness for endnotes. I’ve been told that it takes around 200 pages  of reading before Infinite Jest becomes in any way rewarding. Although I haven’t even nearly reached that milestone, I’m already obsessed with this novel. There is something markedly earnest to Wallace’s prose that speaks directly to a reader. Here was a man gifted with not only an incredibly perceptive mind but a considered and self-aware style of communicating these observations. David Foster Wallace knew language:

When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I’m trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It’s a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing.

Not only that, but the guy has me almost liking tennis. Infinite Jest will most likely take up all my reading time for the rest of this year, but I’ve a feeling that it’ll be worth it. I’ve already bought a copy of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men for the new year.