Αριστούργημα ετών 30: Η αλήθεια για το Infinite Jest του Ντέιβιντ Φόστερ Γουάλας

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TL;DR

A long NEWS 24/7 interview (TALKS section, 7 February 2026, by Theodosis Michos) with Kostas Kaltsas, the Greek translator of Infinite Jest, timed to the novel's 30th birthday and to the imminent Greek edition (Gutenberg, a few months away). It is the newest translator interview in any language in the hunt, and the same translator the archive already holds at ~20% progress in the 2016 Esposito round-up — here a decade later, near completion, and expansive. Kaltsas's headline argument is that the mythology around Infinite Jest has almost nothing to do with the novel and everything to do with the mythology around Wallace himself — the Saint David of the post-suicide years or, after the posthumous revelations of his abusive behaviour, the emblem of the misogynist “lit-bros” — a fight, he says, mostly conducted by people who have not read the book. He gives a one-sentence verdict on the novel (a wildly complex book about the wildly complex way we live now, thirty years on looking less hysterically-realist and more good old naturalism), walks Wallace's oeuvre (worst: the philosophy thesis Fate, Time, and Language; sentimental favourite: the Oblivion stories), and, on the single line he most returns to, reads an at-first-glance ironic sentence about a suicide as the epitome of Wallace's project: irony deployed not to distance but to sink the reader, within three words, into the most unspeakable, human pain. The Greek edition runs to about 600,000 words (from ~500,000 in the original); he read the novel four or five times before agreeing to translate it — the epitome, he says, of Stockholm Syndrome.

Key claims

The Greek edition and Kaltsas's standing

Imminent, from Gutenberg, ~600,000 Greek words. Infinite Jest is a few months (λίγοι μήνες) from finally appearing in Greek, from εκδόσεις Gutenberg , more than ten years after Kaltsas decided to translate it. The original is roughly half a million words; his translation runs to about 600,000. (The article names only Gutenberg — no Orbis Literae imprint and no Greek title (Άπειρο αστείο) appears anywhere in the text; see Accuracy notes.)
Four or five reads before signing on — the Stockholm-Syndrome bond. He read the novel τέσσερις-πέντε φορές (four or five times) before taking “τη μεγάλη απόφαση” (the big decision — gloss ours) to translate it; the bond you form with a 1079-page book that you first read four or five times and then ended up translating is, he says, the epitome of Stockholm Syndrome.
His Wallace credentials, as the article gives them. Kaltsas is introduced as a novelist (Η Νικήτρια Σκόνη, Psychogios 2024), a scholar of David Foster Wallace, and to date the Greek translator of Wallace's This Is Water (Αυτό εδώ είναι νερό — Μερικές σκέψεις για τη ζωή, Kritiki 2015). (The article does not mention a PhD or the University of Southampton — external biography, not stated in this source.)

His reading of the novel and its mythology

The mythology is about Wallace, not the book. Kaltsas's load-bearing claim, given twice (as answer and as pull-quote): “Η μυθολογία γύρω από το Infinite Jest έχει ελάχιστη σχέση με το ίδιο το μυθιστόρημα, και άμεση σχέση με τη μυθολογία γύρω απ’ τον ίδιο τον Ντέιβιντ Φόστερ Γουάλας” (the mythology around Infinite Jest has very little to do with the novel itself and a direct relation to the mythology around David Foster Wallace himself — gloss ours). That Wallace-mythology has had two faces — the “Αγίου Ντέιβιντ” persona (that of Saint David — gloss ours) the suicide briefly enshrined, the genius tormented artist too good for this world; and the overweening narcissist whose writings, on that reading, mainly aim to convince the reader he is a genius artist. The posthumous revelations of his sometimes abusive behaviour (chiefly toward the women in his life) happily deposed the Saint, he says, but raised him instead into the emblem of a vaguely-defined community of misogynist “lit-bros” — idol or scapegoat depending on the corner of the internet, often, if not mostly, for people who have not read him.
A one-sentence description of the book. Set off as a block quote and repeated in the running prose: Infinite Jest is “ένα εξαιρετικά περίπλοκο, εξωφρενικό (αν και όχι τόσο δύσκολο όσο φημολογείται) μυθιστόρημα για τον περίπλοκο, εξωφρενικό τρόπο με τον οποίο ζούμε τώρα, γραμμένο πριν τριάντα χρόνια, που μοιάζει πια λιγότερο «υστερικά ρεαλιστικό» και περισσότερο παλιός καλός νατουραλισμός” (an extraordinarily complex, outrageous — though not as difficult as rumoured — novel about the complex, outrageous way we live now, written thirty years ago, that by now looks less hysterically-realist and more good old naturalism — gloss ours) .
We talk about books more than we read them. The mythology, he argues, has pushed as many people away from the novel as toward it; it is characteristic of the age “να μιλάμε για βιβλία περισσότερο από ό,τι τα διαβάζουμε” (to talk about books more than we read them — gloss ours), and a half-million-word novel is perfect fodder for that. The misunderstanding to dissolve on the 30th anniversary: that we can or should talk about the book “χωρίς να το έχουμε διαβάσει” (without having read it — gloss ours). He is tired of “«κριτικά» κείμενα” (so-called critical texts — gloss ours) whose authors have “εμφανώς, και εξωφρενικά λανθασμένα” (obviously, and outrageously wrongly — gloss ours) copied a plot summary from Wikipedia; when the translation comes out he may turn off his router for a while.

Craft and the oeuvre

Wallace's deepest influence is a voice, not a form. Infinite Jest is so sui generis that Wallace's most important influence lies less in the novelistic form than in “ένα συγκεκριμένο είδος αφηγηματικής φωνής” (a specific kind of narrative voice — gloss ours) that fuses erudition and the Sublime with “μια επιτηδευμένα ανεπιτήδευτη προφορικότητα και σκατολογικό χιούμορ α λα Πίντσον” (a studied-artless orality and scatological humour à la Pynchon — gloss ours); Wallace's most decisive contribution to late-20th-century American letters, he adds, was in the short story and the essay.
Best / worst / favourite. The worst for a general reader, he offers, is the analytic-philosophy thesis Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (2010), or Everything and More (2003), the popular history of infinity in which the amateur maths-lover Wallace, as he puts it, got out of his depth. The Broom of the System (Η σκούπα και το σύστημα, Kritiki 2016) is the juvenile work of the more literary interest — Wallace himself later dismissed it as a novel that seems written by “έναν πολύ έξυπνο δεκατετράχρονο” (a very smart fourteen-year-old — gloss ours), though Kaltsas rates it a remarkable debut that leaves “καμιά αμφιβολία για το μέγεθος του ταλέντου” (no doubt as to the scale of the talent — gloss ours). His own favourite, setting Jest aside, is the Oblivion stories (Αμερικανική Λήθη, Kedros 2011) — the deepest, most essential American short fiction, he says, of the last twenty-odd years.
Have the books aged? Not at all. Kaltsas: “δεν έχουν γεράσει καθόλου” (they haven't aged at all — gloss ours); the moments that have aged badly are a by-product of Wallace's ambition — his refusal to repeat himself and to write only from the perspective of the “μεσοαστού, υπερμορφωμένου λευκού στρέιτ άντρα” (middle-class, over-educated white straight man — gloss ours) he was.

The line he returns to (the sincerity crux)

Irony turned toward pain, not away from it. Asked for a single line he often returns to, Kaltsas sidesteps the novel's famous last sentence and gives instead an “εκ πρώτης όψεως ειρωνική φράση” (at-first-glance ironic phrase — gloss ours) from his own translation, describing the suicide of Joelle van Dyne's mother (an attribution the novel bears out; see Accuracy notes): “…απαρηγόρητη, είχε αυτοκτονήσει βάζοντας τα άκρα της στον σκουπιδοφάγο – πρώτα το ένα χέρι και έπειτα, κάπως ως εκ θαύματος αν το σκεφτείς, το άλλο” (…inconsolable, she had killed herself by putting her limbs in the garbage disposal — first one hand and then, somewhat as-if-by-miracle if you think about it, the other — gloss ours). The epitome of irony, that “ως εκ θαύματος” (as if by miracle — gloss ours), until the wary reader takes “αν το σκεφτείς” (if you think about it — gloss ours) not as a figure of speech but as a literal instruction and sinks, “μέσα σε τρεις λέξεις” (within three words — gloss ours), into “στον πιο ανείπωτο, ανθρώπινο πόνο” (the most unspeakable, human pain — gloss ours). He frames this against Wallace's stated project of positioning himself ironically toward the irony he saw as the age's chief problem — the irony “E Unibus Pluram” (quoting Lewis Hyde) calls “the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage”; Kaltsas's bird-song phrasing is a drifted rendering of that line — and of writing fiction that, however dark, would, in the McCaffery-interview formulation, “find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it”.

On the “most important writer of his generation” question

Vollmann the only rival; and a Dickens caution. The only other writer of the generation who could claim the title, he says, is the knottier (and so less influential) William T. Vollmann. But — having invoked Dickens earlier — he cautions that Dickens's own contemporaries did not always rank him among their greatest and doubted he would last, sometimes comparing him unfavourably to now-forgotten names (Bulwer-Lytton, Ainsworth): our judgements remain “δέσμιοι της ιστορικής μας στιγμής” (prisoners of our historical moment — gloss ours), all “υπό αίρεση” (provisional — gloss ours).

Theories & evidence

CONNECTION: Wallace's anti-irony project read approvingly — irony deployed toward, not away from, human pain; the bird-that-loves-its-cage image and the aim to illuminate being alive and human — glossed through a single suicide sentence in Kaltsas's own translation

Crux: sincerity-definition
Stance: endorses
Evidence:
[W] Kaltsas frames Wallace's project as the intention “τοποθετηθεί ειρωνικά απέναντι στην ειρωνεία” (to position himself ironically toward irony — gloss ours), the irony Wallace saw as the age's chief problem and had called “τραγούδι ενός πουλιού που έχει μάθει να αγαπάει το κλουβί του” (the song of a bird that has learned to love its cage — gloss ours). BACK-TRANSLATION of Wallace's reported words — paraphrase-only. RESOLVED at audit: the English original is HELD — “E Unibus Pluram” (in the held A Supposedly Fun Thing text) prints the Lewis Hyde line Wallace quotes: “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” Kaltsas's bird-song-loves phrasing is a drifted rendering of it; quote authority for any English use = the essay, never this Greek.
[W] The positive aim: to write literature that, however dark, would “βρει τρόπο να απεικονίσει τον κόσμο και ταυτόχρονα να φωτίσει τη δυνατότητα να είναι κανείς ζωντανός και άνθρωπος μέσα σε αυτόν” (find a way to depict the world and at the same time illuminate the possibility of being alive and human within it — gloss ours). BACK-TRANSLATION — RESOLVED at audit: the English original is HELD in mccaffery-1993-interview, verbatim: “it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.” Quote authority = the held interview, never this Greek.
[N] [K] The reading proper (Kaltsas's firsthand voice, over his own translation): the suicide sentence's “ως εκ θαύματος” (as if by miracle — gloss ours) reads as the epitome of irony until “αν το σκεφτείς” (if you think about it — gloss ours) is taken literally and the reader sinks “μέσα σε τρεις λέξεις” (within three words — gloss ours) into “στον πιο ανείπωτο, ανθρώπινο πόνο” (the most unspeakable, human pain — gloss ours).
Notes: The interview's richest crux contact and its emotional centre. The load-bearing Wallace phrasings (the irony-about-irony aim; the bird/cage image; the depict-and-illuminate aim) are all back-translation (rule 2): paraphrase-only, never quoted as Wallace — and both aims RESOLVE to held English (the Hyde cage line in “E Unibus Pluram”; the McCaffery depict-and-illuminate sentence), quoted above from the held originals. What is firsthand and quotable is Kaltsas's own reading — that Wallace's irony works toward pain, not away from it — which is a sincerity-definition endorsement from the earnest/New-Sincerity pole, consonant with the archive's large lane (and with Blumenbach's “his books were always moral”). Oeuvre/reception-scoped; no IJ-internal plot/ending claim.

CONNECTION: A reception/translator witness to Infinite Jest's encyclopedic scale — 1079 dense pages, ~98 of them endnotes (a whole book by themselves), roughly half a million words, part science-fiction and part comically-grotesque à la Dickens

Crux: encyclopedic-design
Stance: mentions
Evidence:
[I] The deck (journalist voice) states the scale: the “μνημειώδες Infinite Jest των 1079 πυκνογραμμένων σελίδων, 98 εκ των οποίων -ένα ολόκληρο βιβλίο από μόνες τους- αποτελούν παραπομπές, ενίοτε επί παραπομπών” (the monumental Infinite Jest of 1079 densely-written pages, 98 of which — a whole book by themselves — are endnotes, sometimes endnotes-upon-endnotes — gloss ours).
[K] Kaltsas gives the word count: “ένα μυθιστόρημα περίπου μισού εκατομμυρίου λέξεων (στο πρωτότυπο· γύρω εξακοσίων χιλιάδων λέξεων στη μετάφρασή μου)” (a novel of about half a million words in the original; around six hundred thousand in my translation — gloss ours). [NB: this span contains U+0387 ano teleia — see Byte-facts.]
[K] The genre texture: Jest is “εν μέρει επιστημονικής φαντασίας αλλά και κωμικά γκροτέσκο α λα Ντίκενς” (part science-fiction but also comically grotesque à la Dickens — gloss ours).
Notes: A mentions-grade reception sighting, not an argument for encyclopedic intent. Kaltsas and the deck name the scale, the endnote bulk, and the density as physical/experiential facts; nothing argues what the construction is for (encyclopedic-design's actual crux). A sighting only. The endnote apparatus is named (98 pages, a whole book by themselves, endnotes-upon-endnotes) as a physical fact only, with no argument about its function — endnotes-function logged as adjacency, NOT a block (lapresse precedent).

CONNECTION: The lethal Entertainment as plot summary — a film so entertaining its viewers watch it “to death,” and terrorists who weaponize Americans' willingness to amuse themselves to death

Crux: entertainment-lethality
Stance: mentions
Evidence:
[I] The deck describes “μια μυθική, χαμένη ταινία” (a mythical, lost film — gloss ours) so entertaining that its viewers “μένουν κατατονικοί μπροστά στις οθόνες τους να την παρακολουθούν ξανά και ξανά μέχρι θανάτου” (stay catatonic before their screens watching it again and again to death — gloss ours).
[I] [K] The terrorists want to weaponize “την προθυμία των Αμερικανών να διασκεδάζουν μέχρι θανάτου” (Americans' willingness to amuse themselves to death — gloss ours) as a weapon against them (restated by Kaltsas in answer 2).
Notes: A mentions-grade plot-summary sighting. The lethal-film premise is described (the catatonia, the to-death viewing, the terrorist plot) but no argument about the mechanism of lethality, or its continuity with real TV, is advanced (entertainment-lethality's actual crux). Mostly journalist voice (the deck), restated in Kaltsas's answer 2. The amuse-themselves-to-death phrasing echoes Postman, unattributed here. Adjacency to book-as-entertainment / media-prescience logged, not folded.

CONNECTION: The hysterical-realism label revisited — James Wood's coinage, Wood's recanting, and Kaltsas's reframe of Infinite Jest as good old naturalism; Wallace's influence located in a narrative voice

Crux: prose-tempo-design
Stance: mentions
Evidence:
[K] Kaltsas narrates the reception history of James Wood's “υστερικό ρεαλισμό” (hysterical realism — gloss ours; BACK-TRANSLATION of Wood's English coinage) — Wood first praised Jest, then dismissed it as the non plus ultra of hysterical realism, then, years after Wallace's death, judged that verdict rushed and unjust, once remarking Wallace was “υπερβολικά ρεαλιστής” (too much of a realist — gloss ours; BACK-TRANSLATION of Wood).
[K] His own reframe: the novel by now looks “λιγότερο «υστερικά ρεαλιστικό» και περισσότερο παλιός καλός νατουραλισμός” (less hysterically-realist and more good old naturalism — gloss ours), and Wallace's deepest influence is “ένα συγκεκριμένο είδος αφηγηματικής φωνής” (a specific kind of narrative voice — gloss ours) fusing erudition and the Sublime with a studied-artless orality and Pynchonian scatology.
Notes: A mentions/adjacency-grade sighting, honestly thin for prose-tempo-design: Kaltsas discusses the novel's realism register (hysterical vs. naturalist) and Wallace's narrative voice, not the difficult-sentence-as-design argument that is the crux's core. It touches the prose-tempo-design neighbourhood (the register carries an explicit translator-craft evidence tier) but argues genre/voice, not tempo. A sighting only. The hysterical-realism and too-much-of-a-realist phrasings are back-translations of James Wood (third-party, non-Wallace); English authority = Wood's New Yorker/Guardian criticism, not held here — recorded so the driver does not mis-file them as Wallace voice.

Themes

Translation as craft and endurance (four or five reads before signing on; the Stockholm-Syndrome bond; ~500,000 words become ~600,000; more than ten years to the Greek edition; the router he may switch off); the mythology around the book vs. the mythology around the man (Saint David vs. the misogynist “lit-bros”; idol or scapegoat for the un-read); reading vs. talking-about-reading (the Wikipedia-plagiarism complaint; the age that discusses books more than it reads them); the encyclopedic scale (1079 pages; 98 pages of endnotes-upon-endnotes; half a million words; part sci-fi, part Dickensian grotesque); the lethal Entertainment and amusing-ourselves-to-death (the catatonic viewers; the terrorists' weapon); hysterical realism vs. naturalism (Wood's coinage, recanted; Kaltsas's good-old-naturalism reframe) and Wallace's influence as a narrative voice (erudition + the Sublime + studied-artless orality + Pynchonian scatology); irony turned toward pain, not away from it (the suicide sentence; the “if you think about it” read literally); the oeuvre ranked (the philosophy thesis and Everything and More as “worst”; The Broom of the System as the very-smart-fourteen-year-old verdict; the Oblivion stories as the sentimental favourite); Wallace's ambition and the perspectives beyond the white straight man; and the historically-provisional nature of literary judgement (the Dickens/Vollmann caution).

Cross-references

esposito-ij-around-the-world — the direct sibling: the SAME translator, a decade earlier. The LitHub round-up carries Kostas Kaltsas at ~20% through the translation (2016), naming the hardest problem (the register-mixing; the O.N.A.N.C.A.A. → A.B.N.A.N.K.A.Σ. acronym that goes “hopeless” in Greek) and Greece as “the bleeding edge,” the sixth translation then in the works. This news247 piece is Kaltsas near completion (2026), from ~20% to a few months out. The strongest cross-link in the note; the two are the archive's Kaltsas/Greek cluster.
The translator-testimony cluster — blumenbach-trashpool-2011, blumenbach-spiegel-2009, nesi-minimaetmoralia-intervista, kerline-books-2015, mokita-blumenbach-passage-2017 — the cross-language translator interviews. Kaltsas joins them as the Greek voice and the latest: where Blumenbach dwells on the 28 jargons and Kerline on the deliberately broken syntax, Kaltsas dwells on the mythology-vs-man problem and on irony-toward-pain. His they-haven't-aged-at-all verdict and the sincerity reading rhyme with Blumenbach's always-moral reading of Wallace.
lapresse-infinie-comedie-2015 — the French-language reception neighbour (a Montréal notice of L'Infinie Comédie): the nearest non-English reception primary that situates the translated IJ in another literary culture, here Greek rather than Québécois. Both mark a long-delayed translation's arrival; this one is an interview, not a review.

Notable passages

Kaltsas's words (firsthand) unless marked. Greek is the verbatim anchor; the English in parentheses is our gloss (paraphrase). The source's quotation punctuation is «…» guillemets; quoted spans are reproduced byte-true (nested marks preserved). Wallace-voice spans are marked [W — back-translation] (paraphrase-only, never Wallace verbatim); novel-in-Greek renderings [N — novel, Greek translation]; the interviewer/journalist [I].

“Η μυθολογία γύρω από το Infinite Jest έχει ελάχιστη σχέση με το ίδιο το μυθιστόρημα, και άμεση σχέση με τη μυθολογία γύρω απ’ τον ίδιο τον Ντέιβιντ Φόστερ Γουάλας” (the mythology around Infinite Jest has very little to do with the novel itself and a direct relation to the mythology around David Foster Wallace himself — gloss ours) — the headline claim, given as answer and pull-quote.
“Το Infinite Jest είναι ένα εξαιρετικά περίπλοκο, εξωφρενικό (αν και όχι τόσο δύσκολο όσο φημολογείται) μυθιστόρημα για τον περίπλοκο, εξωφρενικό τρόπο με τον οποίο ζούμε τώρα, γραμμένο πριν τριάντα χρόνια, που μοιάζει πια λιγότερο «υστερικά ρεαλιστικό» και περισσότερο παλιός καλός νατουραλισμός” (an extraordinarily complex, outrageous — though not as difficult as rumoured — novel about the complex, outrageous way we live now, written thirty years ago, that by now looks less hysterically-realist and more good old naturalism — gloss ours) — his one-sentence description.
“ένα συγκεκριμένο είδος αφηγηματικής φωνής” (a specific kind of narrative voice — gloss ours), fusing erudition and the Sublime with “μια επιτηδευμένα ανεπιτήδευτη προφορικότητα και σκατολογικό χιούμορ α λα Πίντσον” (a studied-artless orality and scatological humour à la Pynchon — gloss ours) — where Wallace's deepest influence lies.
On the reads and the work: the bond with “ένα βιβλίο 1079 σελίδων που πρώτα το διάβασες τέσσερις-πέντε φορές και μετά κατέληξες και να το μεταφράσεις” (a 1079-page book that you first read four or five times and then ended up translating — gloss ours) is “η επιτομή του Συνδρόμου Στοκχόλμης” (the epitome of Stockholm Syndrome — gloss ours).
“δεν έχουν γεράσει καθόλου” (they haven't aged at all — gloss ours) — on Wallace's books.
[W — back-translation] Wallace's aim, as Kaltsas reports it: to “τοποθετηθεί ειρωνικά απέναντι στην ειρωνεία” (position himself ironically toward irony — gloss ours) — the irony he had called “τραγούδι ενός πουλιού που έχει μάθει να αγαπάει το κλουβί του” (the song of a bird that has learned to love its cage — gloss ours) — and to write literature that would “βρει τρόπο να απεικονίσει τον κόσμο και ταυτόχρονα να φωτίσει τη δυνατότητα να είναι κανείς ζωντανός και άνθρωπος μέσα σε αυτόν” (find a way to depict the world and at the same time illuminate the possibility of being alive and human within it — gloss ours; the cage image is Lewis Hyde's, quoted in “E Unibus Pluram”; the second aim is the McCaffery-interview formulation — both held in English).
[N — novel, Greek translation] “…απαρηγόρητη, είχε αυτοκτονήσει βάζοντας τα άκρα της στον σκουπιδοφάγο – πρώτα το ένα χέρι και έπειτα, κάπως ως εκ θαύματος αν το σκεφτείς, το άλλο” (…inconsolable, she had killed herself by putting her limbs in the garbage disposal — first one hand and then, somewhat as-if-by-miracle if you think about it, the other — gloss ours) — the suicide sentence from Kaltsas's own translation; English authority = the novel.
On the ironic surface and the pain beneath: “Η επιτομή της ειρωνείας, αυτό το «ως εκ θαύματος», ώσπου, υποψιασμένος, να διαβάσει κανείς το «αν το σκεφτείς» όχι ως σχήμα λόγου αλλά ως κυριολεκτική προτροπή, και να βυθιστεί μέσα σε τρεις λέξεις στον πιο ανείπωτο, ανθρώπινο πόνο” (the epitome of irony, that as if by miracle, until, wary, one reads the if you think about it not as a figure of speech but as a literal instruction, and sinks within three words into the most unspeakable, human pain — gloss ours).
[W — back-translation] Wallace on The Broom of the System, as Kaltsas reports it: a novel that seems written by “έναν πολύ έξυπνο δεκατετράχρονο” (a very smart fourteen-year-old — gloss ours). Paraphrase-only.
[N — novel, Greek translation] “τις αγέλες από υπερμεγέθη ‘Άγρια Βρέφη’ της ανατολικής Αναδιαμόρφωσης” (the herds of oversized 'Feral Infants' of the eastern Reconfiguration — gloss ours) — Kaltsas's Greek rendering of the novel's feral-infants material; English authority = the novel.
[I] The deck's lethal-film summary: a lost film so entertaining its viewers “μένουν κατατονικοί μπροστά στις οθόνες τους να την παρακολουθούν ξανά και ξανά μέχρι θανάτου” (stay catatonic before their screens watching it again and again to death — gloss ours).

Accuracy notes

Cite-as-written throughout (Greek orthography preserved as printed).

The garbage-disposal suicide: the attribution to Joelle van Dyne's mother is correct. Kaltsas introduces the quoted sentence as describing “την αυτοκτονία της μητέρας της Τζοέλ βαν Ντάιν” (line 396), and the novel bears him out: in Molly Notkin's account, Joelle's mother — released from custody after the acid incident and “apparently despondent” — killed herself exactly so (“putting her extremities down the garbage disposal—first one arm and then, kind of miraculously if you think about it, the other”), on Thanksgiving of the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Kaltsas's Greek renders the novel's “one arm” as “το ένα χέρι”; cite-as-written for his rendering.
Source typo: “Infjnite Jest.” The lost film's title is printed “Infjnite Jest” (with a j) at lines 123 and 254 — a source typo for “Infinite,” reproduced as written. Elsewhere the novel is correctly “Infinite Jest.”
Source typo: “Ντέιβιντ ρόστερ Γουάλας.” In the interviewer's fourth question (line 327) Wallace's middle name is printed “ρόστερ” (the Φ of “Φόστερ” dropped) — a source typo, reproduced as written; every other instance is correctly “Φόστερ.”
The bird-song cage phrasing is a drifted rendering. Kaltsas's “τραγούδι ενός πουλιού που έχει μάθει να αγαπάει το κλουβί του” (song of a bird that has learned to love its cage) reaches for the Lewis Hyde line Wallace quotes in “E Unibus Pluram,” whose printed English is “it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage” — a common drift of that much-quoted line. Reproduced as printed; the essay's English is authority.
The Greek title is never printed. The article names the novel only as “Infinite Jest” (Latin script) and “το Jest”; the Greek title “Άπειρο αστείο” does not appear. See gist corrections.
Publisher: only Gutenberg is named. “εκδόσεις Gutenberg” (line 158); no “Orbis Literae” imprint appears (gist correction).
Biographical facts. Wallace's dates “(1962-2008)” (line 103) are correct; the 1079-page figure and the ~half-million-word original are the standard figures. The article does not state Kaltsas's PhD or University of Southampton (gist correction).