Exclusive: New (Fan-Designed) Cover of 20th Anniversary Edition of Infinite Jest (Plus a Brief Interview with Michael Pietsch) — The Millions

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TL;DR

A short December-2015 Q&A The Millions ran alongside its reveal of the fan-designed cover for the February-2016 20th-anniversary edition of Infinite Jest (winner: Ohio designer Joe Walsh, whose cover dropped the sky imagery of every prior U.S. edition). Michael Pietsch, Wallace's editor and Hachette CEO, answers three questions about the reissue. It advances no interpretive theory about the novel; its value is as reception-and-packaging history plus one authorial-taste datum: Wallace once proposed for the Infinite Jest cover "a photo of a giant modern sculpture made of industrial trash" — rejected by the creative director as too subtle — and himself suggested the cover image used on the paperback of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Pietsch also gives his own three-line gloss of the book's "main ideas" and confirms the anniversary-edition apparatus (Tom Bissell's new Foreword; the 10th-anniversary edition had a Dave Eggers foreword).

Key claims

The occasion. February 23, 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of Infinite Jest's original publication; Little, Brown issued a new edition that date with "a new introduction by Tom Bissell." To recognize "the deep way that so many readers have connected with the book over the last twenty years" (Little, Brown's phrasing), the publisher ran a contest for fans to submit cover designs.
The winning cover. Ohio-based designer Joe Walsh won; his cover "has dispensed with the sky imagery that has adorned all prior U.S. editions of Infinite Jest" and is "spare" with "symbolic imagery with a playful undertone."
Why reissue now (Pietsch). "It’s the publisher’s job to find ways to keep books fresh," and the anniversary was "an unmissable occasion to highlight how alive the book still is"; "Infinite Jest is embraced and discussed by ever larger numbers of readers with each passing year." He is "astonished that ten years have passed since our 10th anniversary edition with a foreword by Dave Eggers."
Pietsch's gloss of the novel's ideas. "The book’s main ideas—that too much easy pleasure may poison the soul, that we’re awash in an ocean of pain, and that truly knowing another person is the hardest and most worthwhile work in the world—are truer now than they’ve ever been." He defers to "Tom Bissell’s brilliant new Foreword."
Why a fan cover / what David would have thought. "The internet has made it possible to see the massive amount of creative response readers have to Infinite Jest"; a fan-cover contest was "a way of honoring and highlighting all that creativity." Pietsch declines the counterfactual: "I never presume to comment on what David would have made of this or any other aspect of our work." "The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust wholeheartedly supported the idea of inviting fans to submit cover art."
Wallace's own cover taste (authorial datum). "David sometimes made suggestions for cover art. For Infinite Jest he proposed using a photo of a giant modern sculpture made of industrial trash—an interesting idea, but one that our creative director felt was too subtle and detailed to work as a cover image. The cover image for the paperback of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is one he suggested, and that I’ve always loved."

Themes

Reception and canonization (the anniversary strand; the ever-growing readership; fan creativity as publishing occasion); book packaging and cover history (the sky-imagery lineage broken by the Walsh cover; Wallace's own rejected industrial-trash-sculpture proposal; the ASFT paperback cover); the editor's public custodianship of the book's meaning (his three-line "main ideas" gloss; his refusal to speak for the dead author; the Trust's role).

Cross-references

mcnally-making-of-ij-nadell-pietsch, iw-pietsch-2016-full, infinite-summer-pietsch-editing-ij, pietsch-letter-dec-1994 — the Pietsch editing-and-editorship cluster; this is the lightest, packaging-focused member, from the same 20th-anniversary moment as the fuller Infinite Winter interview.
The 20th-anniversary edition apparatus (Tom Bissell's Foreword) — this note fixes the fan-cover-contest and Bissell-Foreword facts; the 10th-anniversary edition's Dave Eggers foreword is confirmed here in passing.
Wallace's proposed IJ cover ("a giant modern sculpture made of industrial trash") is an authorial-taste datum that resonates with the novel's waste / Great Concavity imagery, but as a rejected cover idea, not an interpretive claim about the text.

Notable passages

"The book’s main ideas—that too much easy pleasure may poison the soul, that we’re awash in an ocean of pain, and that truly knowing another person is the hardest and most worthwhile work in the world—are truer now than they’ve ever been."
"I never presume to comment on what David would have made of this or any other aspect of our work."
"David sometimes made suggestions for cover art. For Infinite Jest he proposed using a photo of a giant modern sculpture made of industrial trash—an interesting idea, but one that our creative director felt was too subtle and detailed to work as a cover image."
"The cover image for the paperback of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is one he suggested, and that I’ve always loved."
"Infinite Jest is embraced and discussed by ever larger numbers of readers with each passing year."