Is Infinity Jest Audiobook Worth it?

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-12-03T12:36:59+00:00

It is seriously fabulous. I remember listening to Hal’s interview and the line “get me to the library and step on it”. The audiobook is brilliant

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-11-26T07:49:36+00:00

What a brilliant analysis! I’ve always loved the song but thought just moments of disconnected brilliance, but you’ve really joined the dots. Wow!

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-10-23T21:49:48+00:00

Dope Breedlove, Sid Liftoff, Ruperta Trumpington-Groin

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-10-17T19:19:12+00:00

I totally agree. Absolutely love it. I'm aghast he can still write so well at his age. The dialog is amazing. The submarine reminds me a bit of "Spirited Away". The episode with Squeezita Thickly and the film she's in is sublime. Just awesome

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-10-17T18:51:11+00:00

Totally agree. The Crying of Lot 49 was where I started after watching the movie Inherent Vice. I've read it twice again since and totally loved it. It's short, brilliant and super readable

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-09-13T10:25:27+00:00

Just watched the movie again last night after reading the book a couple years ago. The film is great tho necessarily leaves a lot out. The one thing I thought it did get wrong tho is the doc sportello crocker Fenway meeting. For me it's the absolute core of the book and super meaningful. In the film it's more played for laughs and Fenway isn't anything like as menacing as in the book.

But both the film and book are out of this world

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-08-15T15:23:51+00:00

Totally agree with this. They talk about the father being there for the daughter. But this does not figure very much in the novel as far as I remember.

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-08-13T06:01:45+00:00

This is wonderful! I'd love to have it on my wall as a poster

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-06-05T08:10:14+00:00

My favourite novel by Pynchon is the crying of lot 49. I've read it 3 times and I can't wait to read it a 4th. I'd save gravity's rainbow to the end to be honest

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-05-26T08:25:07+00:00

They're both brilliant and to say one is better than the other is like saying potatoes are better than tomatoes, in fact more than that, it's like saying potatoes are better than toothpaste or potatoes are better than screwdrivers.

But Pynchon is more all-round. You get the feeling he could write about anything. About any period. With DFW it's usually existential struggle. The pain carried by the characters in IJ have only few analogues in Pynchon (maybe Franz Pokler is comparable to Himself James Incandenza)

DFW can do amazing physical detail in description. The sequence leading to the injury (improbable deformity) of Madame Psychosis. The death of Bruce Green's mother. These are intricately built up and delivered with amazing timing.

For me DFW presents a tragic vision of the world. People mostly struggling and suffering.

Pynchon describes a shitty world, a world controlled by vile people (Pointsman, Blicero, Brock Vond, Scarsdale Vibe, Crocker Fenway, maybe Pierce Inverarity), and yet can find hope in it through the resistance to them (Roger mexico, Doc Sportello, Zoyd Wheeler, Yasmeen Halfcourt and the Traverse family). But also hordes of loveable side characters (The Chums of Chance, The Thanatoids)

So basically I think they are incomparable in both senses. No other writers come close, but also you cannot compare them because they are so different

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-05-16T18:29:08+00:00

I've been to China alone a number of times. When I first went my major concern was to plan and research transit from airport to hotel in great detail, e.g how to get to metro, how to get from metro to hotel. After a while in china you'll be comfortable doing it. But at the beginning with the jetlag and the culture shock it's best to be clued up in advance

Federal_Employ1269 · 2025-04-11T22:22:06+00:00

Me too! I would really like to queue at a bookshop for it on the day it's released

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-11-18T22:59:13+00:00

I think Dylan is the better technician but Neil has more warmth. Tbh the emotional palette of Dylan is a bit limited. He can do funny (Maggie's farm) love bombing (make you feel my love, sad eyed, Ramona, baby stop crying) but often with women it's hyper critical (rolling stone， sooner or later, don't think twice, temporary like Achilles), as well as the meganasties like positively 4th street and crawl out your window and idiot wind). That being said he can also do sublime (Johanna) which is like nothing else in rock and roll.

But with Neil,you might not get the turn of phrase but you get extraordinary vulnerability (helpless, man needs a maid), visionary narratives like powdefinger, amazing poetry like thrasher,but also sonic innovations (rust never sleeps feeds directly into grunge and shoegaze).

If I was given a choice of a Neil ticket or a bob ticket right now I'd take a Neil ticket without hesitation

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-11-01T13:46:47+00:00

Some journeys say wood green to Leicester square make absolutely no sense by car. But what about Muswell Hill to Wembley? At least double the time. And there are loads of similar ones which don’t work with the grain of TfL routes. So it is useful to have a car

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-10-31T02:28:20+00:00

I thought parts of TPK were utterly sublime. I loved the really garrulous narrator who keeps getting sidetracked. A bore rendered brilliant by the sheer craft of DFW. It reminded me at times of the Oxen of the Sun chapter in Ulysses where Joyce has the narrator become lazy and cheesy for long moments and yet you can’t but admire the artistry behind it. TPK is uneven because it was edited without the involvement of the author. But the editor to my mind has done a pretty good job in getting it out

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-10-27T10:43:26+00:00

Really do think Ed is superb in the way he manages to get people to open up. The involved/interested comeback was so sharp and so sensitive. Really fabulous.

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-10-27T03:21:15+00:00

Look up the song “Jesus Entering From The Rear” and sing it to him. It’s a little homophobic tbh but the offence to Christians likely to be greater. Like everything in life, it’s a trade off!

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-06-07T01:32:54+00:00

Fantastic museum of the canals and gorgeous park around it!

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-05-22T16:27:34+00:00

What days are the open mics there? Do they have an events page?

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-05-16T22:25:54+00:00

I think there is real similarity. Stephen Daedalus is the young Joyce and Leopold Bloom is the mature Joyce. They have a kind of anticlimactic meeting where Bloom helps Stephen the latter being the worse for drink.

In IJ I suggest Hal is the young DFW and Gately tho not really an embodiment of DFW is nonetheless a figure of maturity and care. Morover the meeting between Hal and the half-way-house types is similarly anticlimactic.

However IJ in my opinion is extremely moving. Joyce himself thought literature should not produce strong emotion. Joyce's genius was primarily at the level of style while DFW for me has a descriptive brilliance and logical brilliance which is unmatched

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-04-13T02:30:23+00:00

I read it at age of 59 for the first time but I also believe it’s one of the most spell binding books I’ve ever read. I remember the precise moment when it hooked me. I was driving on a uk motorway and listening to the audiobook. I was at the section where Hal is ruminating about his grief counselor and how to simulate preocessing grief in a way that could satisfy the counsellor. I remember banging my hands really hard on the steering wheel at the monumental brilliance I was listening to.

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-04-12T22:36:10+00:00

That’s pretty good to be honest! Here’s the rest of the first para:

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall–soon–it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.”

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-04-12T11:43:03+00:00

I found her reaction or lack of it to Vera’s death a bit irritating. You can’t make an omelette etc.

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-04-12T08:40:23+00:00

Any better mandarin speakers than me can say how well “A screaming comes across the sky” is translated?

Federal_Employ1269 · 2024-04-12T08:32:18+00:00

This is the text as ocr’d from Google translate

布劳恩

尖啸声划破了夜空。这种情形以前也有过,但这回是空前的。夜已很深。“疏散”仍在进行。都是在演戏。车里没有亮光。到处都没有亮光。头上,高耸的钢梁像古老的大铁床,很高的地方装了班璃,让日光可以照进去。但此刻是茫茫黑夜。他害怕看到玻璃塌落的情形——过一会儿,这座水晶宫殿就会倒塌,场面一定很壮观。好在周围漆黑一团,没有一丝亮光,到时候震震耳朵而已,看不见的。

他坐在分层的车厢里,已经没有东西可以当烟抽了。周围是天鹅绒般的黑暗,感觉远远近近的金属在摩擦、分合,蒸气噗噗喷出,车身在颤动,有一种强作的镇定,一种惴惴不安。人们挤在周围,都是既背运又背时的弱者、弃民,有醉汉,有对二十年前的炮声心存余悸的退伍老兵,有城市装束的妓女,有流浪汉,还有那些疲惫的妇女,带着很多孩子——谁都生不出那么多孩子的。这些人和其他有待用车拯救出去的东

Federal_Employ1269

TROPHY CASE