(Summer of the) Year of Glad

Infinite Summer has begun.

I will be reading Infinite Jest for the third time. Here's why.

And also: my consumption of pixels-on-a-screen has been vastly outstripping my consumption of ink-on-cellulose-pulp for many years now. I have mixed feelings about this, but it seems healthier to start getting a larger dose of the latter in my life.

But, my comrades-in-Jest, before you exit the Information Superhighway you might want to take a look at the 10th Anniversary Edition Foreward by Dave Eggers:

In recent years, there have been a few literary dustups — how insane is it that such a thing exists in a world at war? — about readability in contemporary fiction. In essence, there are some people who feel that fiction should be easy to read, that it’s a popular medium that should communicate on a somewhat conversational wavelength. On the other hand, there are those who feel that fiction can be challenging, generally and thematically, and even on a sentence-by-sentence basis — that it’s okay if a person needs to work a bit while reading, for the rewards can be that much greater when one’s mind has been exercised and thus (presumably) expanded.

Much in the way that would-be civilized debates are polarized by extreme thinkers on either side, this debate has been made to seem like an either/or proposition, that the world has room for only one kind of fiction, and that the other kind should be banned and its proponents hunted down and, why not, dismembered.

Like the FSM, the Complexity Wars are everywhere.

Comments

[Mark]

1.

Glad you mentioned the Infinite summer. It was enough to jump start me into a reread of which I am 400 pages in (I know, I 'm cheating). I feel like I'm reading a different book since there was so much I missed the first time around.