Earlier this week I finished Infinite Jest for the first time. This is a book I will now return to again and again for sheer entertainment value. However, the journey to finishing this book took around a decade, as I bought it as a recommendation from a friend, got 200 pages in and quit, then traded it in to a local bookstore, then rebought it years later. Hilarious to me now.
When I started it this second time I took a lot of umbrage with the subject matter and really struggled to maintain interest at first. For some reason I thought the book was pretentious and cheap. Really, I was projecting a lot of my own mental health struggles onto the book, like a forlorn companion I could knock down to feel better about myself. The irony is astounding. It took about 6 or so months for me to read it, and the novel accompanied me through a lot of personal growth in that time. This growth and reading were mostly unrelated, but after finishing it I was thankful that I stuck with it because I found it to be a fantastic piece of work, and my struggles with the earlier sections made more sense as I understood the novel a bit better.
I’m not recommending anyone read Infinite Jest, because I think only certain types of readers would enjoy it, but I am curious as to what other people’s experiences have been with finishing books they refused to stop reading, even when they really wanted to.
by shipmepickles
1 Comment
Was this post meant for me? I haven’t picked up Infinite Jest many months after just hitting a wall with it at around the 200 page mark. I may pick it up and read some tonight.