IJ study archive

The Howling Fantods — Infinite Jest section

source

TL;DR

The Howling Fantods (running since March 1997) is the central DFW fan hub, and its Infinite Jest page is the best single directory of IJ reading resources on the web. The page itself is a link catalog, last substantially updated 2013, so many links rot — but it names nearly every classic fan resource, which makes it the master index for this whole project category.

Key claims

  • Hub page, not analysis: a blurb on the novel plus two link lists ("Reading Resources" and "Web Links" of 1996-era reviews).
  • Reading resources it catalogs (most relevant to us):
    • The Infinite Jest Wiki (wallacewiki) — page-by-page annotations (see wallacewiki-ij)
    • "Infinite Jest: A Scene by Scene Guide" by O'Neill (faculty.sunydutchess.edu) — the skeleton Drew Cordes and others built chronologies on
    • "How to Read Infinite Jest Chronologically" (Drew Cordes PDF, hosted on HF itself; see ij-chronology-subsidized-time)
    • Tim Ware's Online IJ Index and Steve Russillo's chapter/reverse-footnote index (1990s relics, reachable via archive.org)
    • Matt Bucher's IJ Character Profiles (on HF) and Sam Potts' character diagram (see sam-potts-character-map)
    • Jake Bittle's "Plot Symmetry" diagram (the plot-as-egg/Sierpinski symmetry picture)
    • Dan Schmidt's "Notes on IJ" (dfan.org/jest.txt) — compact ending/plot dossier
    • Aaron Swartz's "What Happens at the End of Infinite Jest?" — with Maniatis's own on-page caveat that he disagrees with Swartz's DMZ claim and notes marijuana withdrawal as a rival explanation for Hal's condition
    • Boston geography material: Boston Globe DFW memorial tour, Flickr "IJ Tour of Boston" sets, ETA grounds drawings (one from Elegant Complexity), all superseded in practice by Infinite Atlas/Boston (see infinite-atlas-boston)
    • Steven Moore's essay "The First Draft Version of Infinite Jest" — what changed between draft and print
    • "Dubious Maths in IJ" discussion and the IJ vocabulary glossary (erasing.org)
    • James O. Incandenza online filmography — endnote 24 retyped and searchable
  • The site's other sections (IJ Theses page, Notes & Speculations page) host longer-form fan criticism worth mining separately.
  • Web Links section is mostly 1996 reviews (Birkerts/Atlantic, Kakutani/NYT, McInerney/NYTBR, Newsweek, Newsday), many marked "Broken Link" — use archive.org.

Themes

Meta-resource: covers all themes by reference (ending/Hal's collapse, character webs, Boston geography, chronology, draft-vs-published textual history).

Cross-references

Notable passages

"My favourite book of all time and the very reason this site exists. Read it." — Nick Maniatis, page header

"[I don't agree with all of this. Particularly the DMZ explanation - it is also possible, and there is evidence for, marijuana withdrawal being a reason too. - Nick]" — Maniatis, annotating the Aaron Swartz ending essay link

Advances