what the endnote apparatus is for
This asks what the novel's sprawling endnote apparatus is for — essential architecture or a removable gimmick. The dispute runs less over whether the notes are deliberate than over what work they actually do: quarantining digressions, disrupting the reading, training attention, or all of these at once.
Scenes
Adjudication
This crux has an adversarial ledger: The Novel's Structure. The per-reading verdicts are below.
Theories on this crux
| Reading | Verdict |
|---|---|
| The endnotes are essential, deliberately disruptive architecture | strongly-supported |
| Minor structure & design cruxes | favored |
Discussed in
- 'Neurotic and Obsessive' but 'Not Too Intransigent or Defensive': Editing David Foster Wallace
- Bookworm: David Foster Wallace on A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again — KCRW (May 15, 1997)
- Caleb Crain interviews DFW, raw cassette (Oct 17, 2003) — tape diff vs the printed Boston Globe Approaching Infinity
- Community book club 3
- DFW on Whad'Ya Know? with Michael Feldman — PRI, Madison WI (April 5, 1997)
- David Foster Wallace's Writing Routine
- I Hate Infinite Jest ep. 23 (pp. 652–682) — guest Hannah Smart: the Marlon Bain endnote, Avril–Orin, and a spoiler run through the wraith, JOI's suicide, and DMZ
- IJ Book Club Ep. 09: All good parties have a line for the bathroom — Ennet House grounds, the halfway-house wisdom list, tattoos, DMZ logistics, and Joelle's last party (from p. ~193, page ref ASR-derived)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 15: Quick question, Mike — Is the map the territory? — the shortest Marathe/Steeply interlude (p. ~317), then Eschaton whole (the I-Day debacle + n. 123)
- Infinite Cast Part 109: Joelle at Don's bedside (pp. 854–864) — commentary segment (~15 min): abiding as impossible present-living, the thirteenth step, and the audiobook the endnotes break
- Infinite Cast Part 42: endnote 110 concluded — commentary segment (~20 min): the mechanics recap, the Steeply-inception hypothesis, plot-in-footnotes, the weed-addict window
- Infinite Jest Book Club ep. 14: Word is Wayne has exactly one gear — endnote 110 line-by-line (the Orin–Hal call as coded warning), plus Mario's birth section
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 02: Eating Granola With A Large Wooden Spoon (v2.0) — monthly IJ read-through, pp. 1–105 (Year of Glad through the locker room; the filmography tour, Gompert, Schtitt)
- The Great Concavity Ep. 18: Sean Pratt — narrating the Infinite Jest audiobook (56 hours, the endnotes controversy, and tempo as design)
- The Great Concavity Ep. 4: Corrie Baldauf on the Infinite Jest color-tab project (late 2015)
- The Language of Landscape, Information, and Disturbance: An Existential Look at the Literary Techniques of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
- The Legacy of David Foster Wallace
- Tradurre \"Infinite Jest\" – Giulia Bocchio intervista Edoardo Nesi
- Transcendence, fast and slow: Infinite Jest and the dynamics of a cultural splash
- What's So Funny About Infinite Jest? (Lora Kelley, The Paris Review)
- «L'Infinie Comédie»: pourquoi il faut lire David Foster Wallace
- “Infinite Jest” Has Turned Thirty. Have We Forgotten How to Read It? (New Yorker anniversary essay + an online forum thread)