The First (and Second) Coming of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

TL;DR

A peer-reviewed textual/paratextual study (Anglia 139.3, 2021) that is NOT a general reception-history but a close study of one overlooked layer of Infinite Jest's publication: the twelve pre-publication excerpts printed in journals, magazines and newspapers between 1992 and early 1996 — the "first coming" of the title, against which the February 1996 novel is only a "Second Coming" (the pun is Yeats's, cued by Little, Brown's "It’s coming" marketing postcard). Andersen does two things. (1) Bibliography: he assembles "the first complete inventory" of the twelve excerpts (correcting errors in prior lists), mapping each to its corresponding pages in the novel. (2) Argument: drawing on Michael Bhaskar's "paracontent," John Bryant's "fluid text," Gérard Genette's paratexts and Jerome McGann's "bibliographical codes" / "radial reading," he argues the excerpts occupy "a gray area between self-contained content and marketing," and that the sum of them exhibits a "striking bias" — nine of the twelve derive from the Ennett House (addiction / recovery / sincerity) strand, while Hal and Enfield Tennis Academy appear in only one (#7). This imbalance, Andersen argues, "coerces" readers toward the sober, anti-postmodern, "E Unibus Pluram" reading of the novel and away from its "zany humor," "supernatural elements" and "pronounced irony" — the "Pynchonian" half. His payoff is an in-novel reading claim: IJ is a "self-contradictory, equally sincere and insincere, sentimental and ironic masterpiece", and the excerpts (like Wallace's own self-representation in the essay-interview nexus) pre-framed it as only its sincere half. The value to the archive is two-fold: it is the reception strand's textual-history sibling to Medvetz's sociological reception theory (both use an "in-between" frame; they periodize opposite ends of the timeline), and it supplies a skeptical counterweight to the generally favored eup-connection reading plus a support for pynchon-influence's denied-but-real pole.

Key claims

• The "two comings" are pre-publication vs. publication, not rise vs. fall. The paper's "first coming" = the staggered dispersal of the novel through excerpts from 1992 on; the "second coming" = the complete first edition (February 1996). Little, Brown's marketing (a series of alluring postcards to four thousand reviewers/producers/booksellers, one reading only "It’s coming," Max 2012: 211) supplies the Yeats "Second Coming" pun. NOTE for the driver: the task framed this paper as "reception-history of IJ's two comings," but its actual object is the pre-publication excerpt apparatus and its framing effect — a composition/paratext study, adjacent to but distinct from a reputation-history like Medvetz.
• The excerpt count is exceptional. Pre-pub excerpts from modern US novels "usually number at most a couple (and often none)"; IJ had "no more or less than a dozen" (some reprinted), 1992–early 1996 — "a massive flow of texts that deviates from the norm," "a sort of unsystematic, partial and distributed serialization". This is unlike the sparse one-or-two of Catch-22 / Blood Meridian or the full serialization of Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities.
• The inventory (his "first complete" list, correcting prior bibliographies). Twelve items, mapped to IJ pages (1996 first ed.): #1 "How Don Gately Found God" (Harvard Review 1, 1992 → pp. 55–60, Gately suffocates the A.D.A. during a burglary); #2a "Three Protrusions" (Grand Street 42, 1992 → pp. 17–27, Erdedy waiting), #2b repr. Pushcart Prize XVIII; #3 "From Quite a Bit Larger Thing in Progress" (Conjunctions 20, 1993, ~50 pp., almost half the total → pp. 127–128, 193–198, 343–375, 376–379, mostly Ennett House); #4 "The Awakening of My Interest in Annular Systems" (Harper's, Sept 1993 → pp. 491–503, mattress + drunken father); #5 "From Infinite Jest" (Review of Contemporary Fiction 13.2, 1993 → pp. 502–507, Erdedy refusing to hug at an NA meeting — the first excerpt to name the title); #6a/#6b "It Was a Great Marvel… 2" (Iowa Review 24.2, 1994 + Transgressions anthology → pp. 157–169, JOI lectured by his drunken father); #7 "It Was a Great Marvel… 1" (Iowa Review 24.3, 1994 → pp. 27–31, JOI as conversation coach — the ONLY Hal/JOI- adult E.T.A.-side piece; "number 1 appeared last"); #8 "Several Birds" (New Yorker, June 27/July 4 1994 → pp. 299–306, Poor Tony's seizure); #9 "An Interval" (New Yorker, Jan 30 1995 → pp. 270–281, Ennett House vignettes); #10a "Adventures in Regret IV" (LA Times, June 1995 → pp. 205–211, Tiny Ewell's tattoos), #10b "High Regret Ink" (Puncture 35, Spring 1996); #11 "Chivalry" (Grand Street 55, Winter 1996 → pp. 442–449, AA + Gately's childhood); #12 "An Excerpt" (promotional pamphlet, late 1995/early 1996 → pp. 38–39, Bruce and Mildred Bonk).
• Theoretical frame — "paracontent." Following Bhaskar (2011), the excerpts are texts that "exist between content and marketing"; paracontent is a form of advertising that is "advertising itself, as the advert is actually part of the thing being advertised." They "can easily be enjoyed as aesthetic experiences on their own, even while they peddle an upcoming product."
• Theoretical frame — "fluid text" and "bibliographical codes." Via Bryant (2002), each excerpt is a version of a "fluid text" ("any literary work that exists in more than one version"), so the excerpts document textual evolution (e.g. excerpt #8 opens "Poor Tony Krause had a seizure in the fall," the novel "…on the T.," IJ: 299). Via McGann (1991), the titles/illustrations/venues are "bibliographical codes" that literary scholars neglect; Andersen performs McGann's "radial reading" of the "complex radial networks and communicative exchanges" around the text — "the verbal text and the documentary materials operate together to a single literary result."
• The excerpts were separately edited — composition was collaborative. The excerpts went "through the editorial crucible more than once" before Pietsch ever touched the completed manuscript; the New Yorker imposed its house-style "close punctuation" (extra commas) on the Poor Tony excerpt, some of which survives into the novel (e.g. "Then, wholly friend- and connectionless, Poor Tony, in hiding, began to Withdraw From Heroin," IJ: 300). This "has been mostly neglected in the existing archival research on Wallace", "obscuring how collaborative a process the composition of Infinite Jest really was."
• The bias — Ennett House over E.T.A. "[B]y far the majority" of excerpts derive from one of the novel's two strands: Gately and the halfway-house denizens "appear in nine of the twelve excerpts, while Hal is only present in a single excerpt (#7)" (Lyle appears briefly in #3; JOI-as-child in #4 and #6 — "represented much more fully than Hal himself"). By contrast The David Foster Wallace Reader (2014) balances the two. The dust-jacket itself names "a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts and a nearby tennis academy."
• The bias is aesthetically loaded, not random. The Ennett House strand carries the sincere, "gritty and realistic focus on “old untrendy human troubles and emotions”" of E Unibus Pluram; the E.T.A. sections are "rife with supernatural elements, zany humor and… a pronounced irony that for lack of a better word can be described as Pynchonian" (the Eschaton chapter, IJ: 321–342; the furniture-moving wraith). So the excerpt selection "express[es] a set of intentions… more aligned with Wallace’s very vocal rebellion against postmodernism than a more balanced selection… would have been" — a "coercion" that runs counter to Wallace's stated author-reader ethic of "respect, equality and even love."
• Read Wallace against his own agenda. Andersen aligns with Burn, Herman & Staes, Konstantinou, Williams, Groenland, and Roberts & Jackson ("White Guys: Questioning Infinite Jest’s New Sincerity," 2017) in urging skepticism toward Wallace's "eloquent self-representation". The excerpts, like the essay-interview nexus, produced a "remarkable unity of vision" that "shapes the first, partial coming of the novel, but which is not present in its second, complete coming, which is equally the work of a sincere literary rebel and a comic prankster." Closing claim: IJ is "the self-contradictory, equally sincere and insincere, sentimental and ironic masterpiece".
• Karr / #MeToo (footnote 13). "E Unibus Pluram" was "originally dedicated to Mary Karr, whom Wallace famously stalked as he composed Infinite Jest (Max 2012: 146–149), and who has later contributed to Wallace being posthumously exposed to the #MeToo movement"; the dedication was "discreetly removed" from A Supposedly Fun Thing (1997). Karr "seems to haunt the background of a number of excerpts" (she nominated #2a for the Pushcart, and Harvard Review 1 also ran a poem and review by her).

Theories & evidence

The paper's central apparatus — the paracontent inventory-and-framing method — is a paratext/publishing-history frame, not an IJ plot/interpretation crux; recorded in Key claims as reception/composition-strand analytic scaffolding (the Medvetz/Bissell precedent). ONE claim, however, cashes out as an in-novel reading claim and is blocked below.

THEORY: IJ is equally sincere and ironic ("Pynchonian") — the excerpt apparatus (like Wallace's own self-representation) pre-framed it as only its sincere, anti-postmodern half, coercing the New-Sincerity / "E Unibus Pluram" reading and eliding the comic-metafictional half

• Crux: eup-connection (relativizes / qualifies), with pynchon-influence alongside (supports the denied-but-real pole)
• Stance: complicates eup-connection (normalized qualifies→complicates) (does NOT deny that many sections execute EUP's program — grants it — but argues that reading IJ only through the EUP lens is a coerced, partial framing); advances the real-Pynchonian-content side of pynchon-influence
• Evidence:
  • [draft] The E.T.A. half of the novel is "rife with supernatural elements, zany humor and, yes," "a pronounced irony that for lack of a better word can be described as Pynchonian" — instanced by the Eschaton chapter (IJ: 321–342) and "the supernatural presence that moves the furniture around at E.T.A. has no counterpart in Ennett House." [sec. A Fine Imbalance, fn. 20]
  • [draft] The sum of excerpts privileges the sincere Ennett-House material (nine of twelve) and elides the E.T.A./comic/metafictional/wheelchair-assassin material, so it "express[es] a set of intentions… more aligned with Wallace’s very vocal rebellion against postmodernism" than a balanced selection would be — a framing "coercion." [sec. A Fine Imbalance]
  • [draft] Conclusion: the first, partial coming "framed the upcoming novel in a way that has made it difficult to grasp the complexity of the self-contradictory, equally sincere and insincere, sentimental and ironic masterpiece"; the complete novel "is equally the work of a sincere literary rebel and a comic prankster." [sec. Conclusion]
  • [secondary] Support for the Pynchonian side: Andersen cites Brian McHale (2013: 194–195) on IJ's "debt to Thomas Pynchon" and A. O. Scott's "The Panic of Influence" (2000) — in Andersen's own gloss of Scott, "much of Wallace’s career was shaped by his complex agon with Pynchon and other postmodernists" — though he flags McHale may over-read Pynchon (McHale's own confessed habit, 1992: 10). [sec. A Fine Imbalance / Conclusion]
• Notes: This is a genuine in-novel reading claim, which is why it earns a block where the paracontent mechanism does not (cf. Medvetz's cultural-splash apparatus, kept out of the theory record). Its force relative to the theory record: (a) a qualifier/counterweight to eup-connection, which the archive adjudicated favored (see the structure adjudication) — Andersen does not contradict that IJ attempts EUP's program (he affirms "many sections" do), but insists the novel is equally its opposite, so the pure EUP-execution reading is one half of a self-contradictory whole and is partly an artifact of how Wallace (and his publisher) pre-framed the book. This caps, without denying, the EUP-as-master-key gloss. (b) A support for pynchon-influence's denied-but-real pole: Andersen asserts substantial, non-ironic-in-the-Wallace-sense Pynchonian content (Eschaton, the furniture wraith, "zany humor"), independent of the McHale catalog he partly distrusts. Do NOT read Andersen as rebutting eup-connection outright, and do NOT read him as advancing wallace-misogyny (see Karr below — that is a footnote sighting, not this block).

Themes

Reception and the framing of interpretation (how a novel is pre-received before it is read); paratexts / bibliographical codes / genetic criticism (titles, illustrations, venues, house-style punctuation as meaning-bearing; "radial reading"); textual fluidity and composition history (excerpt-vs-first-edition variants; separate pre-Pietsch editing; the New Yorker's "close punctuation"; excerpts written and edited by many hands — "how collaborative a process the composition of Infinite Jest really was"); irony vs. sincerity / New Sincerity vs. postmodernism (the paper's interpretive stake — IJ as "equally sincere and insincere"); the E Unibus Pluram / McCaffery-interview "essay-interview nexus" and Wallace's anti-postmodern program (extended by Andersen to an "essay-interview-excerpt nexus"); Pynchon influence and the "agon" with the postmodern patriarchs; the dual structure (E.T.A. on the hill / Ennett House below; Hal's fall / Gately's climb, loosely joined by the wheelchair-assassin Samizdat quest; they ‘meet’ only in the surreal first/chronologically-last chapter, IJ: 17); addiction and hitting bottom (Poor Tony's seizure, Erdedy's NA hug, the halfway house); Wallace, Karr and #MeToo (footnote datum); the marketing apparatus ("It’s coming" postcards; the "genuine work of genius" blurb).

Cross-references

• medvetz-transcendence-fast-slow — the reception strand's other 2021–22 academic sibling and this note's designed pairing. Both frame IJ's publication through an "in-between" concept (Medvetz's "space between fields" ≈ Andersen's "gray area between… content and marketing"), both mine the Harry Ransom / Little, Brown apparatus, both deflate the lone-genius myth in favor of distributed/collaborative authorship, and both cite Max 2012 and the pre-pub marketing. They periodize OPPOSITE ends of the timeline (Andersen the run-up, Medvetz the aftermath) and differ on the key theory record point: Andersen makes an in-novel claim, Medvetz makes none. (The Medvetz note's Cross-references watch line — "Add the pairing when that note lands" — was converted to a live reciprocal link to this note; logged in both notes' fix logs.)
• e-unibus-pluram-ij-connections + e-unibus-pluram — Andersen's whole argument turns on the "essay-interview nexus" (McCaffery interview + EUP, RCF 13.2, 1993) as IJ's programmatic frame; he extends it to an "essay-interview-excerpt nexus" (excerpt #5 ran in the SAME issue). Directly relevant to the eup-connection block above as a skeptical counterweight.
• bissell-four-theories-ij — the positive-pole craft reading; Bissell celebrates the withholding/difficulty Andersen would say the excerpts trained readers to expect. Both are reception-strand notes; Andersen supplies the skeptical, read-against-the-agenda pole to Bissell's admiring one.
• conversation-murphet-ij-at-30-uneven — the misogyny/uneven dissent; Andersen's Karr/#MeToo footnote is a data point of the same reception fight (route both under wallace-misogyny/ij-boys-book).
• dtmax-2009-the-unfinished — Andersen quotes it directly (fn. 19): "Though Infinite Jest had begun as a book with Hal Incandenza at its center, as it grew Wallace moved his focus more to the figure of Don Gately" (Max 2009). This corroborates Andersen's "sections about Don… written later" composition hypothesis and the note's own Gately-centering thread.
• dtmax-every-love-story — Max 2012 is Andersen's biographical baseline (the postcard campaign, p. 211; the Karr stalking, pp. 146–149).
• infinite-summer-pietsch-editing-ij — Andersen's point that the excerpts were edited before Pietsch, so "portions of the novel have been through the editorial crucible more than once", complicates the Pietsch-as-sole-editor story that the Infinite Summer Q&A tells from the inside.
• debraski-ij-cuts / the manuscript-differences survey — Andersen's excerpt-vs-first-edition variants (a "fluid text" layer) are a distinct textual-history stratum adjacent to the cut-list/manuscript-diff work; the twelve excerpts are proposed by Andersen as "a useful starting point for future bibliographical studies of the textual evolution of Infinite Jest."
• gc-ep026-jeff-severs-balancing-books — carries the Karr story-theft charge and its aa-gift-economy answer (in the theory record); the proposed karr-source-theft slug itself originates in ijbc-ep02 (Tommy Doocey / The Liars' Club), and is NOT in the theory record. Andersen's Karr footnote is a related (stalking/#MeToo) but distinct datum (not story-theft) — a correction of the archive's earlier record, which had credited gc-ep026 as the slug's origin.
• gc-ep010-nick-maniatis-howling-fantods — Andersen corrects/extends the Howling Fantods "Uncollected DFW" list and cites Steven Moore's "First Draft Version of Infinite Jest" (Howling Fantods) as a composition source.