DFW
21/03/10
02:40
I’d forgotten - if
indeed I ever knew - that Infinite Jest is
subtitled A Novel. I’d recommended it
to a friend, who for reasons best known to himself is
currently abstaining from reading novels, and for
whom the subtitle posed an interesting dilemma. Are
we to take it (as my friend did) as ironic? Or does
it fulfil the relevant criteria to qualify as a
novel? As I rule, I’m not terribly interested
in these generic questions, which seem a peculiarly
British preoccupation. Yet it seems interesting to me
that DFW would consciously and overtly allude to the
idea of the novel at the beginning of his baggy
masterpiece. Did he have a reshaping of the format in
mind? Or was he thinking of the never-ending
competition to write the Great American Novel? I
don’t know enough about DFW to answer these
questions - but they interest me.