the scale and content of the cuts (and the 300–500-pages myth)
This asks how much was really cut from Infinite Jest before publication, and whether the famous story of hundreds of pages removed is a myth. What hangs on it is the book's composition legend: the author's own tour-era figures, the editor's memories, and what the people who actually saw the manuscript report all pull in different directions, and reconciling them turns on what counts as a page.
Adjudication
This crux has an adversarial ledger: The Book's Composition. The per-reading verdicts are below.
Theories on this crux
| Reading | Verdict |
|---|---|
| The cuts were modest and scope-preserving; the "300–500 pages cut" story is a myth — the bigger fact is what was *added* after 1993 | strongly-supported |
Discussed in
- 1458 words on a book that has more than 1000 pages (SPEAK magazine interview with David Foster Wallace)
- A Brief (Crowd-Sourced) Interview with Michael Pietsch — Infinite Winter (2016)
- Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
- Bookworm: David Foster Wallace on A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again — KCRW (May 15, 1997)
- DFW on Whad'Ya Know? with Michael Feldman — PRI, Madison WI (April 5, 1997)
- DFW with Christopher Lydon — The Connection, WBUR Boston (February 21, 1996; the rediscovered 'lost' interview)
- David Foster Wallace and 20 years of Infinite Jest
- David Foster Wallace, my fateful correspondent (Nora Krug, Washington Post Books, 30th-anniversary column) — with eight unpublished DFW letters, a postcard and a holiday card
- I'm Hannah Smart who wrote the LARB \"Mister Squishy\" essay. I'm developing a DFW biography. AMA
- IJ Book Club Ep. 34 (feed-titled S2 Ep 4, in practice the season-2 finale): Kevin cries for all of us — Pemulis's dismissal (endnote 332) and Hal's Inner-Infant meeting (pp. ~795–808)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 38 (S3 Ep 4 by feed position): Full of the sound and fury... — the off-the-board roadmap session: the head-dig as settled fact, JOI's save-Joelle scheme, the hole-communication mechanism, and the who-is-the-plant fight (no new pages)
- Infinite Jest's Sierpinski-Gasket Structure (an online forum)
- Infinite Proofs: The Effects of Mathematics on David Foster Wallace (Los Angeles Review of Books)
- Infinite Winter's crowd-sourced Michael Pietsch interview (2016) — EXCERPT ONLY (Howling Fantods reproduction)
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 01: Wherein We Begin By Beginning — series-opening primer (DFW bio, influences, New Sincerity, composition history, adaptations); no book pages covered
- Michael Pietsch to DFW, December 22, 1994 (second-read letter + cut-suggestion list)
- Remembering David Foster Wallace — To the Best of Our Knowledge special hour (WPR/PRI, 2009)
- Rereading David Foster Wallace — New Yorker Festival panel (D.T. Max, Mary Karr, Dana Spiotta, Mark Costello, Deborah Treisman)
- The Grunge American Novel (Frank Bruni, The New York Times Magazine, Mar 24 1996)
- The Making of Infinite Jest — Bonnie Nadell & Michael Pietsch in conversation (McNally Editions)
- Two Ways to Draw Infinite Jest's Sierpinski Gasket (Chip Lynch, chiply.dev) — with its Hacker News thread