Michael Pietsch: Editing Infinite Jest (Infinite Summer guest essay)

TL;DR

DFW's editor describes acquiring and editing Infinite Jest (posted to Infinite Summer 07.03.09, adapted from a Q&A with Rick Moody in Sonora Review 55, May 2009). Primary testimony on how the published text took shape, including verbatim Wallace marginalia resisting cuts.

Key claims

• Pietsch received ~150 opening pages on submission in April 1992 from agent Bonnie Nadell; the book was contracted long before completion.
• Editorial method: every section faced the question "Can the book possibly live without this?" — because the book's size alone would deter readers.
• Wallace accepted cuts of roughly 250 manuscript pages, but every decision was his; Pietsch stresses the editor only earns the writer's agreement.
• The Marathe/Steeply mountainside colloquies and the Orin Incandenza football strands were the sections Pietsch found hardest going, and Wallace revised them considerably.
• Wallace's cut-resisting margin notes are quoted, e.g. fighting for pp. 327-330 (the Eschaton sequence area) and pp. 739-748, and joking about restoring cuts an hour after making them.
• Useful for arguments about authorial intention re: structure — Wallace defended specific passages with "theoretico-structural arguments," i.e. the ordering and retention of scenes was deliberate, not editorial accident.

Themes

Textual history / context; entertainment-length tension (the editor explicitly framed cutting around reader endurance); authority of the published text for ending theories.

Cross-references

• Complements Steven Moore's "The First Draft Version of Infinite Jest" essay (cataloged on howling-fantods-ij) on draft-vs-print differences.
• Marathe & Steeply scenes; Orin's punting backstory; Eschaton (if pp. 327-330 in manuscript correspond to that stretch).
• infinite-summer-how-to-read-ij tip 4 ("trust the author") is empirically backed by this account.

Notable passages

"p. 52—This is one of my personal favorite Swiftian lines in the whole manuscript, which I will cut, you rotter." — Wallace to Pietsch

"pp. 327-330. Michael, have mercy. Pending an almost Horacianly persuasive rationale on your part, my canines are bared on this one." — Wallace to Pietsch

"P. 785ff—I can give you 5000 words of theoretico-structural arguments for this, but let's spare one another, shall we?" — Wallace to Pietsch

(cite-as-written cross-flag — transmission variance vs dtmax-2009-the-unfinished: this note (via Pietsch) carries "arguments" PLURAL as standalone p. 785ff marginalia; dtmax (via Max) carries it "argument" SINGULAR, inside one continuous Wallace reply that also contains the "what's happening to Gately by end" sentence — the variance is recorded as-is, unresolved.)