IJ study archive

A Sometimes Funny Book Supposedly about Infinity: A Review of Everything and More

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TL;DR

Michael Harris, a research mathematician (Université Paris 7), reviews Wallace's 2003 Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity for the Notices of the AMS — and does so entirely in the shadow of Infinite Jest, which "propelled Wallace (DFW) immediately—and deservedly—to the front rank of American writers." The review's interest for this archive is twofold. First, it is a specialist verdict on Wallace's mathematics: Harris finds Everything and More "laced through and through with blunders of every magnitude," and — extending the judgment to the novel — doubts that Wallace's "familiarity with optics, Quebecois dialect, and psychotropic drugs" is any more extensive than his shaky set theory, a direct challenge to the encyclopedic authority IJ's footnotes project. Second, Harris reads Everything and More through IJ's own forms: its lack of "closure" ("a problem having been posed as central at the beginning … the reader is surprised to discover that the book ends with no resolution in sight"), its interpolations, and its footnote apparatus — even citing a reviewer's claim that Wallace designed IJ "to resemble…a ‘Sierpinski gasket’". A witty, learned, ambivalent piece: it grants Wallace real metaphysical seriousness about infinity while insisting a mathematician cannot forgive the errors.

Key claims

  • IJ as the measure of Wallace's standing. The Pentagon's abandoned 2001 "Infinite Justice" campaign name was noted to echo not "Shakespeare’s Poor Yorick" but the title of Wallace's 1996 novel — "It says something about our author’s standing in American letters". The novel's difficulty is a running reference point: "try figuring out what happens in IJ without a guide".
  • The blunders verdict. Everything and More "not only lacks a clear sense of direction … but is laced through and through with blunders of every magnitude." Harris catalogues genuine set-theory and analysis errors (a spurious point-set/abstract set-theory distinction; a mangled Zermelo-Fraenkel presentation; the Extreme Value Theorem misused; the continuum hypothesis claimed three times to be an assertion it is not, even while stated correctly elsewhere) and concludes "A mathematician reading E&M is unlikely to be so forgiving of DFW’s blunders" as the general reviewers were.
  • The encyclopedic-authority challenge. The core provocation for IJ: "Will DFW’s “real following” be upset to learn that the author may neither know nor “know” as much about trigonometric series as he appears to believe? Or that, by extension, his familiarity with optics, Quebecois dialect, and psychotropic drugs is not as extensive as the numerous footnotes to IJ suggest?" — i.e. the footnoted omniscience of IJ may be, in places, performance rather than mastery.
  • Wallace's own disclaimer, on the record. Harris quotes Wallace on NPR's Talk of the Nation (Oct 13, 2003): "I got into this as an exercise in something called ‘technical writing’" (main text, p. 636), and in n.32 itself (p. 638), "I wince at the idea that there are mathematicians in the audience … because I’m by no means an expert."
  • The math-as-metaphysics thread (which Harris credits). Wallace's real preoccupation, in E&M "and presumably in his fiction as well, is ultimately metaphysical" — the difference between what you "know" and what you really know (the Mr. Chicken/induction parable). Harris ties this to IJ directly: "footnote 324 of IJ echoes the apparently sincere preface to E&M when the (admittedly ambiguous) character Pemulis calls mathematics “The nightlight on life’s dark wall.…”"
  • The Sierpinski / no-closure link. Harris quotes a reviewer of E&M claiming "Wallace is on record as designing Infinite Jest to resemble…a ‘Sierpinski gasket’" (n.34: D. Kipen in the San Francisco Chronicle, Nov 18, 2003) — presumably, Harris glosses, "because most of the crucial plot developments are left to the reader as an exercise" — and quips "Why not a Cantor set, I wonder?" He reads E&M's own unresolved ending as reproducing IJ's: "Readers of IJ may recognize here a familiar pattern": a problem posed as central at the beginning, and "the book ends with no resolution in sight."
  • Sincerity over irony (against the "send-up" reading). Jim Holt's New Yorker hypothesis that E&M is "a sly send-up of pop technical writing" [OCR wrap regularized] is tempting but, Harris notes, undercut because what might be taken as "DFW’s artistic manifesto" ("E Unibus Pluram") "comes out explicitly in favor of sincerity over hip irony and cynicism."
  • A comparative endnote datum. Note 15: "The endnotes to IJ, some of them with their own footnotes, contain crucial plot information and run to 97 pages, or 8.99% of the total volume of the book" — a precise figure for the endnote load. He also sources to Stephen Burn's Reader's Guide (note 30) the observation that "[m]uch that appears to be casual in IJ turns out to be crucial to understanding the structure as well as the author’s intentions."

Theories & evidence

THEORY: Wallace's displayed technical mastery — in mathematics and, by extension, in the encyclopedic expertise IJ's footnotes project — is in real part unreliable performance, not command

  • Crux: pemulis-fake-math
  • Stance: advances
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary] E&M is "laced through and through with blunders of every magnitude"; specific set-theory/analysis errors catalogued (the point-set / abstract set-theory distinction; the Zermelo-Fraenkel presentation; EVT misapplied; CH thrice misstated). [pp. 632, 635]
    • [inference] The generalization to IJ: Wallace's "familiarity with optics, Quebecois dialect, and psychotropic drugs is not as extensive as the numerous footnotes to IJ suggest?" [p. 636]
    • [text] IJ n.324 — Pemulis on math as "The nightlight on life’s dark wall.…" — read as echoing E&M's sincere preface; Pemulis the "(admittedly ambiguous)" math-authority character. [p. 636]
    • [author] Wallace's own on-air disclaimer, quoted by Harris (n.32, NPR Talk of the Nation, Oct 13, 2003): "I wince at the idea that there are mathematicians in the audience … because I’m by no means an expert." [p. 638, n.32]
  • Notes: A working mathematician's specialist verdict — the strongest external corroboration in the archive that the novel's footnoted expertise is partly a pose. Counterweight Harris himself raises: he credits Wallace's metaphysical seriousness about infinity as genuine, grants the NYT reviewer's gentler "a smattering of technical infelicities" framing exists, and allows the errors may partly be accessibility trade-offs. Bears on the math-error cruxes (eschaton-math-error, pemulis-fake-math) and on the encyclopedic-authority question; does NOT itself adjudicate any specific IJ math error.

THEORY: Infinite Jest deliberately withholds closure — a central problem posed early is left unresolved by design, mirrored in Everything and More's own dissolving argument

  • Crux: designed-holes
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary] "Discussions of IJ insist on the book’s absence of “closure”"; E&M reproduces "a familiar pattern" — the book "ends with no resolution in sight." [p. 636]
    • [secondary] A reviewer's claim that "Wallace is on record as designing Infinite Jest to resemble…a ‘Sierpinski gasket’" (n.34, Kipen); the plot-developments-left-as-exercise rationale is Harris's own "presumably" gloss. [p. 636 + n.34]
  • Notes: Harris reports the no-closure/Sierpinski reading second-hand (to characterize E&M), rather than advancing it himself — a designed-holes / annular-structure (via sierpinski-structure) sighting, count-for-popularity. The Kipen SF-Chronicle Sierpinski attribution is distinct from the Silverblatt 1996 origin held in larb-infinite-proofs; both trace to Wallace's "on record" claim.

THEORY: Infinite Jest is genuinely encyclopedic in ambition — Wallace's metaphysical seriousness and breadth are real even where the technical execution fails

  • Crux: encyclopedic-design
  • Stance: entertains
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary] Wallace's "breadth of knowledge and interest, frequently described as “encyclopedic”, and a brilliant talent for pastiche, displayed to great effect in IJ." [p. 633]
    • [secondary] Note 15's endnote metric: crucial plot information across "97 pages, or 8.99% of the total volume of the book." [p. 637 n.15]
  • Notes: Harris holds both at once — real encyclopedic ambition, unreliable execution. The tension is his point, not a contradiction to resolve.

Themes

Mathematics and metaphysics (infinity, Cantor, the know/"know" distinction); encyclopedic authority and its limits (footnoted expertise as performance); structure and non-closure (the Sierpinski/no-resolution reading); irony vs. sincerity (against the "send-up" hypothesis); reception (IJ as the yardstick of Wallace's standing).

Cross-references

Notable passages

Verbatim from the review (Michael Harris's prose; two-column OCR wrap regularized for the reader — see ledger for byte-exact spans).

  • On standing: the "1,079-page Infinite Jest (IJ) propelled Wallace (DFW) immediately—and deservedly—to the front rank of American writers."
  • On the verdict: E&M is "laced through and through with blunders of every magnitude."
  • On IJ by extension: his "familiarity with optics, Quebecois dialect, and psychotropic drugs is not as extensive as the numerous footnotes to IJ suggest?"
  • On non-closure: "Readers of IJ may recognize here a familiar pattern … the reader is surprised to discover that the book ends with no resolution in sight."
  • The Sierpinski quip (n.34): "Why not a Cantor set, I wonder?"
  • On the endnotes (n.15): they "run to 97 pages, or 8.99% of the total volume of the book."

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