Becoming Yourself: The Afterlife of Reception

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TL;DR

A Stanford Literary Lab pamphlet (Pamphlet 3, 2011; a version appears in The Legacy of David Foster Wallace) that studies Wallace's reception empirically — by network analysis of Amazon purchase recommendations and of book co-occurrences in professional and consumer reviews. Finn's finding is that Wallace occupies an unusually self-enclosed "subnet" (readers of one Wallace book buy another rather than branching out), that professional critics triangulate him between Pynchon, Barth and DeLillo while everyday readers reach instead for Shakespeare, Joyce and Melville, and that Infinite Jest's readers repeatedly use Hamlet as an interpretive key. Its lasting value is as the best quantitative account of how Infinite Jest was actually read and canonized in its first fifteen years — a measure of how widely particular readings are held rather than a new interpretation of the plot.

Key claims

Three conjectures, then data. Finn argues Wallace is (1) "different" — employing "a style wildly divergent from anyone else on the literary scene"; (2) "postmodern" in a historical sense — his books "speak to Pynchon, Barth, and DeLillo in a way that they rarely do to younger novelists"; and (3) "integral" — his fragmentary prose enrolls readers in reconstructing a whole, both individually and as a community. He tests these against network data ("Unless we study what I call the social lives of books" we keep literature in a lab Wallace tried to escape).
The self-enclosed subnet. On Amazon, Wallace's recommendations "almost invariably point browsers to more Wallace texts", an unusually introverted cluster; by contrast Powers, Morrison and even Franzen link out to many more non-self texts. Infinite Jest is the one node in his subnet that behaves "normally," reaching out to other authors (Pynchon, Faulkner, Ellroy, Danielewski, even Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic).
Critics vs. readers. In professional reviews "Wallace is triangulated between Pynchon, Barth, and DeLillo," with Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow the second-most-connected node after Infinite Jest and the "yardstick against which his work is most consistently measured." Amazon reviewers, "much more expansive," pull in Ulysses, Moby Dick, even Les Misérables — a "Great Books" frame rather than a Generation-X one.
Hamlet as the readers' skeleton key. The strongest evidence for the "integral" reading is that "Wallace’s Amazon readers consistently connect his work, particularly Infinite Jest, to Hamlet." Ordinary readers deploy the play as "a narratological skeleton key that promises to unlock a basic structure and purpose to Infinite Jest", identifying the title's source in the graveyard scene, matching Hal to Hamlet, and reading the opening "I am" as the answer to Hamlet's opening "Who's there?" Credentialed reviewers, Finn notes, rarely mention Hamlet: "Hamlet haunts Infinite Jest from its title to its anti-heroes" but is treated by professionals as "a relatively superficial feature."
The re-reading experience. Finn quotes an Amazon reviewer describing the book's loop — reaching the last page and realizing "This is the last page, but not the end of the story", having "read the story’s conclusion a month before," then re-reading with new meaning, the title "which refers to the graveyard scene in Hamlet."
Reading as demanding pleasure. Reviewers frame the novel as a "workout for the brain" and the "literary equivalent of cocaine"; Finn's own stylistic coda reads Hal's failed interview (the "I am not what you see and hear" opening, scene 003), the Eschaton set-piece (scene 073) and a Gately passage (scene 066) as moments where Wallace inflects style to invite the Hamlet/Pynchon/Joyce comparisons his readers make.

Theories & evidence

THEORY: Hamlet is the organizing intertext of Infinite Jest — a key ordinary readers use to unlock the book's structure and purpose (even as professional critics discount it)

Crux: hamlet-frame
Stance: endorses
Evidence:
- [secondary] Aggregated Amazon reviews repeatedly link Infinite Jest to Hamlet; Finn quotes readers matching Hal to Hamlet, reading the opening "I am" as the reply to "Who's there?", and glossing the title via the graveyard scene. [pp. 19-20]
- [text] The opening interview scene (Hal: "But it transcends the mechanics. I’m not a machine. I feel and believe." … "I am not what you see and hear."), which Finn reads as a Hamlet-like existential failure to be understood. [scene 003, pp. 12-13]
Notes: This is primarily a popularity datum — evidence of how widely the Hamlet reading is held among general readers — not a new argument for it. Finn records the professional/amateur split cite-as-written: credentialed reviewers treat Hamlet as superficial.

THEORY: The novel is annular — its last page returns the reader to its first, so a full reading is a re-reading in which early "insignificant" passages acquire their meaning

Crux: annular-structure
Stance: endorses
Evidence:
- [secondary] An Amazon reviewer's account of finishing, realizing "This is the last page, but not the end of the story", having read the conclusion "a month before," and re-reading — with sentences that "had seemed insignificant … infused with new meaning". [p. 19]
Notes: Reader-testimony evidence (maps to reader-realization); Finn endorses it as the paradigmatic "integral" reading experience but adduces no page-level structural argument of his own.

THEORY: Infinite Jest is an encyclopedic postmodern novel in the Pynchon line — Gravity's Rainbow is its most persistent critical yardstick

Crux: encyclopedic-design
Stance: endorses
Evidence:
- [secondary] In Finn's review-co-occurrence network, Gravity's Rainbow (14 links) is second only to Infinite Jest (17), a "gateway to … classic high postmodernism"; the Eschaton nuclear-war game (scene 073) is offered as the set-piece that "clearly seems to echo" Pynchon. [pp. 14-15, 22]
- [secondary] A Chicago Tribune review lists Gaddis, Barth, Elkin, DeLillo, Vollmann and "especially Thomas Pynchon" as the tradition underlying the novel. [p. 15]
Notes: Maps also to pynchon-influence. Finn's caveat, cite-as-written: this critical frame is "incomplete" — it historicizes Wallace with an older generation and underweights his attention to "the heavily mediated present."

Themes

Reception and canonization; the Hamlet intertext; postmodern inheritance (Pynchon/Barth/DeLillo); the encyclopedic/"maxi-novel" mode; reading as active, communal labor; the difficulty/pleasure of the prose.

Cross-references

mccarthy-last-audit-pale-king — Finn quotes McCarthy's Pale King review for its claim about Pynchon.
For the Hamlet and circular-structure readings this study offers something the interpretive sources cannot: quantitative evidence of how widely general readers actually hold them.
In the novel: the opening interview (scene 003), Eschaton (scene 073), the Gately/Charlotte Treat needlepoint passage (scene 066).

Notable passages

On style: Wallace "employs a style wildly divergent from anyone else on the literary scene."
On the Hamlet key: readers use it as "a narratological skeleton key that promises to unlock a basic structure and purpose to Infinite Jest".
Reader on the loop: "This is the last page, but not the end of the story."
On the readerly appeal: the "literary equivalent of cocaine."