Infinite Jest author commits suicide (2 yrs ago)

[Tamahome]

I haven't read the book, but I've heard it talked about a lot:

http://io9.com/5049700/david-foster-w...

[terpkristin]

It's a great book. It's a difficult book, especially at first, but it's one I quite enjoyed and recommend to others. I recommend it in Kindle/ebook version. ;) (actually, the Kindle format made it very easy to go back and forth between the copius footnotes and footnotes to footnotes and the main text)

DFW committed suicide in 2008. I read recently that one of his unfinished works is going to be published posthumously. I believe it is titled The Pale King.

[terpkristin]

Also, if you have read Infinite Jest, you might enjoy this sort of infographic-ish thing that provides a sort of map of the book: http://jonny.snsy.de/wp-content/uploa...

I originally saw it linked from Kottke.org

[Tamahome]

terpkristin wrote: "DFW committed suicide in 2008. I read recently that one of his unfinished works is going to be published posthumously. I believe it is titled The Pale King."

Oh, I didn't even know. Io9 had some other article about him, and mentioned the suicide.

[terpkristin]

Tamahome wrote: "Oh, I didn't even know. Io9 had some other article about him, and mentioned the suicide."

No worries, I don't know how common knowledge it is if you don't follow his works in general. He was a bit...out there. There are rumors that the work on The Pale King (I looked it up, to be published in 2nd quarter 2011) were very frustrating and may have been a contributing factor in his suicide. Of course, that's entirely speculation.

I read Infinite Jest as a part of the Infinite Summer (http://www.infinitesummer.org) and found that that helped motiavte me to stay along...basically, the book can be intimidating when you see it in it's 1,000-ish page glory, but if you try to read it in one season (in this case, summer), it comes down to about 75 pages a week, or 10-11 pages a day. After the first few weeks, I was reading more than 10-11 pages per day, it just drew me in.