Since I moved to Boston two years ago, a copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest has been taunting me from my nightstand. “You can’t finish me,” it said. “I am over a thousand pages long. I have nearly 100 more pages of essential end notes! Some of my end notes have footnotes!! I am written in all types of different dialects and I revolve around a world just similar enough to confuse you! You can’t handle me.” This book is a real asshole…kinda like that guy in your college comparative literature class who rambles on and on for the half of the class that he isn’t using to hit on your girlfriend. So when my friend C.J. emailed me in June to ask if I wanted to be part of his reading group for Infinite Jest as part of the national reading group “Infinite Summer” I jumped at the chance. I had the whole summer off, I would have tons of down time, and I didn’t have plans to read anything else. I would shut that arrogant book up and show David Foster Wallace who is boss.
Three months later, it is clear that David Foster Wallace is.
I kind of tried. Everyone says that if you make it through the first 200 pages (223 to be exact) you won’t be able to put it down. I read 60 pages before the official reading start date. I thought I was well on my way. Unfortunately, I only made it through 100 more over the next two months. It isn’t that the book is bad. It is impossibly well-written. There were numerous pages and passages that are laugh out loud funny and rival the best sections of anything that I have ever read. But there were other sections that were painfully dry and dense. Once my road trip began, I quickly fell behind on my reading. I used the excuse that I couldn’t read in the car, but that wasn’t really true. It was more that I didn’t want to. I’d pick up the book, read 10 pages, and then my mind would start to wander. Worse, I never had any desire to pick it up again. Eventually, it became an anchor around my neck. I wanted to read other books, but I was reticent to start anything else because that would be admitting failure. So there I was, in the middle of a Mexican standoff with the ghost of Mr. Wallace. Yesterday, I finally put my hands up and admitted defeat.
Unfortunately, this road trip blog has a lot in common with Infinite Jest. I have enjoyed writing it, but it has been beginning to hang over my head as well. The farther removed I have gotten from the trip, the less interested I have been in finishing it. In the mean time, I have come up with a lot of other ideas that I am interested in writing about but have been holding back until this was finished. Alas, that day is today.
In the end, the road trip was everything that I could have hoped for. I had a fantastic time hanging out and getting drunk with friends in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. The last few days of the trip were actually some of my favorite of the trip. I think Emlen, Truong, Tes, Julia, and Jon were on this trip to see the country, but seeing all of my friends and family was far and away my highlight. I was fortunate enough to get to spend time with both my parents and all of my siblings, Meaghan, Alex & Lisa, Jennifer, Lauren, Kevin & Lynn and a cast of hundreds in Austin at their wedding, Dane & Sarah, Aaron & Susan, Blake, G, CJ, and Kim. And I missed so many others that I could have seen if things broke just a little differently.
I don’t know if I learned any grand life lessons on this trip, but I definitely saw some things about myself that I didn’t always like. I am much more of a control freak than I realized. I think most people would describe me as mellow or laid back, which it true…as long as I get my way. I surprised myself by actually liking the outdoors, and…gulp…hiking. Even turning 30 wasn’t so traumatic. My friend Nath wrote to me and said that he hoped I didn’t see my birthday as a “Major Point of Crisis”. He’s right…it wasn’t. It was just another in a long series of reminders that growing up a little isn’t such a bad idea.
I plan to continue to write here so please continue to read. No definite plans, but it will probably consist of some combination of work stories and drunken anecdotes, opinions on sports, television, & movies, and just a few other random thoughts.
To Infinite Jest…plan for a rematch before I turn 31. And stop being such a dick.
What I’m Listening To: Velvet - The Big Pink, Two - The Antlers, Bad Day - darwin deez
