intentional-errors
This asks whether the novel's scattered errors — odd spellings, garbled facts, small inconsistencies — are planted on purpose. It is contested because individual errors rarely carry proof of intent, and the sweeping idea that they all signal deliberate unreliability rests on inference, with its own advocate's counter-evidence still in play.
Adjudication
This crux has an adversarial ledger: The Novel's Structure. The per-reading verdicts are below.
Theories on this crux
| Reading | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Minor structure & design cruxes | favored |
| The anti-Entertainment & the book-as-samizdat family | open |
| Minor JOI cruxes |
Discussed in
- A discussion of Dubious Maths in Infinite Jest
- IJ Book Club Ep. 43 (S3 Ep 9): In the Mind of DW Gately — live close-read of the Fackelman flashback and the two-wraiths visit (pp. ~910–933)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 45 (S3 Ep 11): ACCOMPLICE! — the club reads the film straight through: the AIDS-twist plot walked beat by beat, the Lyle-as-Himself's-accomplice wink landing at its exact dosing-morning placement, and Hal's snowed-in excavation of his own memory (pp. ~944–950)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 46 (S3 Ep 12): You Ain't Gonna Learn What You Don't Wanna Know — endnote-24 filmography walkthrough + Hal on the floor (pp. ~948–951)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 50 (S3 Ep 16, the feed's final episode: The voice down the hall was weeping like its heart would break): one page and twelve sentences of Gately's last section — the St. Elizabeth's baptism assembly, the ice-bath dispute, the dosing war reignited, and the whole novel floated as Himself's own made-up composition (pp. ~972–974)
- Mistakes Corrected in the 20th Anniversary Edition of Infinite Jest (And Some That Weren't)
- The Great Concavity Ep. 21: Clare Hayes-Brady — The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace, resistance to closure, and Wallace on gender (recorded ~November 2016)
- The Second Time Around (Through page 102)
- There Are Exactly Two Mistakes In Infinite Jest
- Zehn Wahrheiten: Ich musste das Falsche richtig falsch übersetzen