Let's Make Books Cool Again

So if you've spent any time on various corners of the nerd internet - and let's be honest, you're reading a blog: you have - you've probably seen the above quote, delivered by the inimitable John Waters.  It's funny, right?!  Books are sort of nerdy, but if we make them sexy they'll be cool again!  Sex and books guys!  Great combo!  We're gonna make books cool!

Yeah, I didn't think so.  It's a fun image and a witty line, but frankly if that's all your interested in Tumblr isn't that hard to navigate.  The fact of the matter is making books cool is gonna require slightly more effort than being selective about who you sleep with.  It's going to require you to read, and then talk enthusiastically about, books.  And that's significantly harder than browsing the internet.

But it's not impossible - and it's something I want to start doing more often.  So let's have some book talk.  And no, this isn't a subtle way to brag about the fact that I'm reading Infinite Jest.  I'll do that once I've finished it.  And it won't be subtle.

But I am currently reading Infinite Jest.  As I've made abundantly clear, David Foster Wallace may be my favorite author of all time - and yet despite this I've never read his magnum opus.  I've tried many times, even made some decent headway, but make no mistake - this book is dense.  It doesn't help that it opens, not just in media res, but in media res as written by Wallace at his most obtuse.  The first chapter is, in many ways, totally incomprehensible.  Funny, heartwarming, and surprisingly charming, but I still have very little idea what's actually going on.  From there, it starts to skip around, hitting a variety of members of its vast ensemble cast, though usually anchoring everything back to Hal, our protagonist.  The long and the short is it's a book with a sprawling sense of scale and a language all its own, which means it takes a few tries to figure out where and when everyone belongs.

I'm less than a tenth of the way in right now, just getting finishing the first Orin chapter, but there was a passage I had to pull out a pen and underline while I was on the subway (at the risk of being THAT guy).  

These worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light - the soul's certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.

One of the reasons Wallace cracks my top five is that he so wonderfully articulates things I've experienced before - he's an excellent chronicler of the mundane, of these normal moments of poignant drama.  Everyone's had that experience, sitting on the edge of the bed and preparing yourself mentally for a day that you know is going to a Sisyphean struggle.  But he captures it so succinctly and poetically, and makes it sound brilliant and unique in a way that I can only dream of.

So here's to actually talking about books, and here's to my maybe actually finishing Infinite Jest this time.  It's certainly a worthwhile adventure.