A Hardly Exhaustive But Still Interesting Look at the Differences Between the Infinite Jest Galleys and First Printing

TL;DR

A 2016 post on the DFW Words blog comparing an advance reading copy (galley) of Infinite Jest against the first-printing hardcover, paragraph ending by paragraph ending, across the whole 1,079 pages — the only published collation of this textual layer known to the archive. The comparison shows Wallace "had clearly worked on the book between the advance galleys and the hardcover release": beyond corrected typos, there are scores of small changes "made for what seemed to be purely aesthetic reasons", making the galleys "a kind of penultimate draft". The headline finds: the galleys read "A.F.R.aid" (twice) where the hardcover reads "afraid" — an error with "obvious allusive frisson"; Avril's full name lacked "Tavis" in the galleys; the samizdat vocabulary was still unsettled at two points (the hardcover adds "samizdat's" at one and swaps samizdat OUT for "Entertainment" at the other); and the hardcover adds the clause that has Hal getting "secretly high" in the Lung passage, absent from the galleys. Roughly a hundred variants are listed in all, each keyed to a page of the shared pagination, which Little, Brown "has kept" — the post notes — "remarkably well-preserved with each new edition".

Key claims

• Occasion and method. Prompted by Wallace's remark about "712,000" typos in the proofs, the author bought an ARC and found that "the ones sent out to reviewers had "all but one of the mistakes" corrected" — "the galleys were accompanied by a piece of Little, Brown stationary on which was printed one erratum" — yet plenty of other corrections and "changes made for what seemed to be purely aesthetic reasons" separate galley from hardcover. The method: "I'm comparing the last word (or syllable) of the last line of every paragraph", backtracking where they differ; viable because "Little, Brown has kept Infinite Jest remarkably well-preserved with each new edition" ("there are no weird editions with slightly bigger/smaller fonts, different pagination, etc."). Changes slighter than a paragraph-ending shift can escape the method — the list is knowingly incomplete.
• Scale caveats. "These are not substantial changes" — word- and punctuation-level only, no new paragraphs — and "The galleys are still 1,079 pages long." The post compares galleys to hardcover only: "There were additional changes between the hardcover and paperback; I'm just comparing the galleys to the hardcover."
• The A.F.R.aid variant (p. 765). In the galleys, a Dolores-attributed passage reads "A.F.R.aid" twice where the hardcover reads "afraid" — "persons who are deeply A.F.R.aid … of their own emotions," "…as A.F.R.aid … of obliteration, emotional engulfment." The author calls it "a very unusual error, probably a completely random typescript mistake" ("was there a search and replace "afr" with "A.F.R."?") "but it has obvious allusive frisson".
• Avril's name (p. 898). Galleys: "Avril Mondragon Incandenza"; hardcover adds the middle name — "Avril Mondragon Tavis Incandenza, Ed.D., Ph.D." — a late, deliberate reinforcement of the Avril–Tavis tie.
• Samizdat vocabulary swaps. At p. 646 the galleys read About the samizdat of now where the hardcover has "About the Entertainment of now" (the print text confirms the Entertainment side); at p. 658 the galleys' the director's other son gains an insertion in the hardcover — "samizdat's director's other son". The Marathe/Steeply terminology was still being adjusted at galley stage, in both directions.
• The Lung passage cut (p. 52). The galleys had Hal descend, activate just one of the big exhaust fans and exhale palely; the hardcover inserts "and get secretly high" — the secret-tokes clause is a hardcover-stage addition to the passage.
• Other notable variants (galley → hardcover): had said → "had told him" (Randi, p. 20); we're mysterious to each other → "you and I are mysterious to each other" (p. 41); The Wholly Mammoth was Petropolis Kahn → "The Petropulator was Petropolis Kahn" (p. 907); a 320 kg → "75 kg" weight in the barrel-accident letter (p. 139 — the printed text reads "I weigh 75 kg", scene 043); Mmmyellow → "Mmyellow" (p. 171, scene 050); scores of small word substitutions ("frightening" → "scary," "can" → "bathroom," "end" → "climax," "pyramids" → "cones," etc. — the last two directions CORRECTED at the W6 fold: the draft had them reversed, the same linear-order failure mode as the p. 139 weight decode; raw "life-reversing end [DEL: climax:DEL]" / "pyramids [DEL: cones:DEL] of epileptic light" against print "life-reversing climax" (scene 095) / "cones of epileptic light" (scene 136) — body = galley, [DEL:] = hardcover).
• Physical/typographic notes: the galleys carry a circle marker in the triple line break before the yrstruly section (p. 128), and lack the quarter-circle device in the bottom right corner of p. 981.

Theories & evidence

THEORY: Wallace continued deliberate aesthetic revision between the advance galleys and the first printing — the galleys are a penultimate draft state

• Crux: late-additions
• Stance: advances
• Evidence:
  • [draft] The collation itself: beyond typo fixes, changes "made for what seemed to be purely aesthetic reasons"; "Wallace had clearly worked on the book between the advance galleys and the hardcover release", making "the galleys as a kind of penultimate draft". [post body]
  • [draft] Substantive late touches: the "get secretly high" insertion at p. 52; the "Tavis" insertion in Avril's full name at p. 898; the samizdat-vocabulary adjustments at pp. 646/658. [list entries]
• Notes: Extends the record of late revision one layer beyond the post-1993 additions already documented: revision continued into the ARC→first-printing window (late 1995). The author's method caveat is the block's own caveat: only paragraph-ending-shifting changes are caught, so the list is a floor, not a census.

Themes

Composition and revision (the last documented authorial pass); editing and production history (the erratum slip, the preserved pagination across editions); the A.F.R. and Avril threads (both headline variants touch them); errata culture and textual fidelity in the fan community.

Cross-references

• dfwwords-two-mistakes — the same blog's 2011 census of the two genuine errors surviving in the settled text; this post is its upstream layer (errors caught between galley and hardcover).
• The blog's 2016-03-23 sequel on the 20th-anniversary edition's corrections (in the acquisition queue; not yet digested) — the downstream layer.
• moore-first-draft-ij, debraski-ij-cuts, riles-in-dfw-archive-part1, cafoscari-comparative-reading-ij-2021 — earlier strata of the same genetic chain (handwritten drafts → 1992/1993 manuscripts → June 1994 typescript → galleys → first printing).
• Scene anchors for the headline variants: scene 154 (the A.F.R.aid/afraid passage, pp. 755-769), scene 170 (Avril's full name, pp. 896-902), scene 013 (the Lung passage, pp. 49-54), scene 004 (Randi, pp. 17-27), scene 010 (Mario/Orin call, pp. 39-42), scene 172 (Petropolis Kahn, pp. 906-911), scene 123 (the Entertainment-of-now exchange, pp. 638-648), scene 127 (the samizdat's-director's-son line, pp. 655-662).

Notable passages

• "Wallace had clearly worked on the book between the advance galleys and the hardcover release. Therefore it's tempting to look at the galleys as a kind of penultimate draft".
• On the A.F.R.aid variant: "This is a very unusual error, probably a completely random typescript mistake (was there a search and replace "afr" with "A.F.R."?) but it has obvious allusive frisson".
• On the stable text: "Little, Brown has kept Infinite Jest remarkably well-preserved with each new edition, i.e. there are no weird editions with slightly bigger/smaller fonts, different pagination, etc."