Дэвид Фостер Уоллес, «Бесконечная шутка» — Алексей Поляринов, три поста в LiveJournal (рецензия + два релиза фан-перевода, 2014–2016)

TL;DR

Three posts from Alexey Polyarinov's personal LiveJournal, spanning the fan-translation years and read here as one chronological record of how the Russian Infinite Jest (Бесконечная шутка) came to be. The 2014 post is a long review-essay written before the translation existed: Wallace's biography (the prodigy arc that ends, shockingly, in suicide), a plot map (Enfield Academy and Ennet House; Hal descending, Gately climbing; ONAN, the lethal Entertainment as macguffin), a style reading that names Wallace a “noticing machine” whose hyper-detail freezes narrative time (glossed through Borges's Funes and a bee that must beat its wings furiously to hang still), and the book's argument as Polyarinov sees it — IJ as Wallace's manifesto against postmodern irony, his call to a new sincerity, keyed to the Hamlet/Yorick title source and to Wallace's own essays. The 2015 post releases the first 100 pages of the fan translation and tells the origin story: a friend's This Is Water goldfish parable in 2011 sent Polyarinov to Google, then to ordering the blue hardcover on Amazon, stalling on page four, and besieging the book for four years with guides (including Elegant Complexity) until he understood that some books are built like haunted houses, with their own entry points — plus the split work with Sergey Karpov (600+ notes left in the drafts, an argument over whether to print «блядь», and Wallace's optical-illusion author errors that appear in no guide). The 2016 post is the short release of the first 200 pages — the last free teaser before print, with thanks to Karpov and a list of the other Wallace pieces the pair had already rendered. Across all three, Wallace's own words enter only as Polyarinov's renderings (an IJ “you are what you love” passage; an E Unibus Pluram bird-in-a-cage aphorism; a quote from Wallace's Dostoevsky essay; a Brief Interviews bee line; reported speech from the biographical record, D. T. Max's biography being the one carrier he names; the This Is Water parable) — one long passage explicitly closed «(перевод фрагментов мой)» — his own rendering, so marked.

Key claims

• The discovery arc, told most fully in the 2015 post (65491). A friend who learned Polyarinov designed aquariums and studied tropical fish told him a parable in 2011 (the This Is Water goldfish parable, though neither knew it then); charmed, Polyarinov googled the author, found Wallace, read the Wikipedia entry, and «заказал на Амазоне его главный роман «Infinite jest»» (ordered his main novel Infinite jest on Amazon — gloss ours), the book arriving a month later «(тяжелая, теплая, синяя)» (heavy, warm, blue — gloss ours). He «забуксовал на четвертой странице» (stalled on the fourth page — gloss ours); the book then spent years as a mousepad, a paperweight, a flyswatter. He ordered a guide, then a second («Elegant complexity», 500 pages), read Wallace's easier books, and prepared to storm the novel — a storm that failed a first, second, third, fourth time. This is the archive's Amazon telling of the origin story (the public pervoe recap has him order the book on eBay — a discrepancy between two of his own accounts). Note the IJ-side page number differs too: page four here, page five in the pervoe recap.

• The architecture revelation (65491). Bouncing off the book taught him that «у каждой книги есть своя архитектура, свои арки, залы, коридоры, — и свои точки входа» (every book has its own architecture — its arches, halls, corridors, and its own entry points — gloss ours); most books are enfilades of rooms easy to walk through, but some «они как дома с привидениями: сначала ты переселяешься в них, а потом они — в тебя» (are like haunted houses: first you move into them, then they move into you — gloss ours). The tactical lesson: no sense storming a fortress when you do not know where the entrance is.

• The split workflow with Karpov (65491, 73574). The translation is fan work: «мы с Сергеем Карповым очень старались, весь год вычитывали и редактировали это синтаксическое болото» (Sergey Karpov and I tried hard, spent the whole year proofreading and editing this syntactic swamp — gloss ours); they «оставили друг другу больше 600 примечаний в черновиках» (left each other more than 600 notes in the drafts — gloss ours) and argued in a shared chat over trifles — for instance whether to use the word «блядь». The 2016 post thanks Karpov, who has «(и приложит еще) много сил/ресурсов для перевода Уоллеса» (put, and will put still more, effort and resources into translating Wallace — gloss ours).

• The optical-illusion author errors that appear in no guide (65491) — a translator's close-reading catch. Among the things they fought over: what to do with «странными оптическими иллюзиями, которые выглядят то ли как ошибки автора, то ли как намеренные искажения законов физики и оптики, но при этом не упоминаются ни в одном путеводителе» (strange optical illusions that look either like the author's errors or like deliberate distortions of the laws of physics and optics, yet are mentioned in no guide — gloss ours). Polyarinov finds their absence from every guide «очень странным» (very strange — gloss ours). If it is all too much — «дикие монтажные склейки, смысловые провалы, почти нечитаемые предложения длиною в две страницы» (wild editing-cuts, gaps in sense, near-unreadable two-page sentences — gloss ours) — then «это не мы идиоты, это так и надо» (it isn't that we're idiots, it's meant to be that way — gloss ours).

• The novel as an anti-irony manifesto (2014, 50610). Polyarinov's essay reads IJ as Wallace's challenge to all of postmodern literature, «с ее сарказмом и цинизмом» (with its sarcasm and cynicism — gloss ours) — Wallace «первый американский писатель, объявивший войну иронии» (the first American writer to declare war on irony — gloss ours), the novel his manifesto and «упрек писателям старшего поколения» (a reproach to the older generation of writers — gloss ours). He keys it to the Hamlet title source — Infinite jest is the phrase Hamlet speaks over Yorick's skull, «И точно так же Уоллес написал свой тысячестраничный опус, глядя на голый череп постмодернизма» (and in just the same way Wallace wrote his thousand-page opus looking at the bare skull of postmodernism — gloss ours) — and threads it through Wallace's own essayistic call for sincerity, quoting (in his own rendering) the bird-in-a-cage image and a passage from Wallace's Dostoevsky essay (which he dates to 1995; see Accuracy notes).

• The style reading: Wallace as “noticing machine” (2014, 50610). A critic, he says, aptly called Wallace a «noticing machine» (English in the source); his prose is «череда бесконечных, многостраничных, невротических перечислений/описаний» (a chain of endless, multi-page, neurotic enumerations and descriptions — gloss ours). Polyarinov glosses this through Borges's “Funes the Memorious” (whose Russian rendering he quotes) and through a bee that, to hang still in the air, must beat its wings faster than in flight — an image he draws from Brief Interviews. The cost: many IJ scenes feel «многословными и избыточными» (verbose and excessive — gloss ours), time seems to freeze, and Wallace becomes «литературный Плюшкин, коллекционер мелочей» (a literary Plyushkin, a collector of trifles — gloss ours).

• The releases (65491, 73574). The first 100 pages went out in December 2015 with a link to download «все это безобразие» (all this outrage — gloss ours); the first 200 pages in November 2016 — «Это последний тизер, дальше — только через год и на бумаге. Крепитесь.» (This is the last teaser; after this, only in a year and in print. Brace yourselves — gloss ours), signed off «Всем waste» (a pun on the novel's own motifs). The full АСТ edition duly followed in print.

Theories & evidence

These are one reader-translator's touches — an essayistic review and two release notes, not close-argued positions — graded conservatively as the source's own stance.

CONNECTION: several endings exist — the Wallacewiki fans hold four “canonical,” equally probable interpretations of the novel's close

• Crux: ending-missing-year
• Stance: mentions
• Evidence:
  • [S — RU / P] «фанаты открывают сайт Wallacewiki, куда выкладывают свои версии того, что значит концовка «Шутки» (на данный момент существует четыре «канонические» равновероятные интерпретации концовки романа)» (fans open the Wallacewiki site, where they post their versions of what the ending of Шутка means — at present there are four “canonical,” equally probable interpretations of the novel's ending — gloss ours). [50610, line 298–301]
• Notes: A reception pointer, not an adjudication — Polyarinov reports that the ending is multiply reconstructable and names a fan count of four “canonical” readings, without endorsing one. Rhymes with the pervoe recap's Swartz/Reddit pointer (there, the pair name Swartz's as the famous reconstruction). mentions.

CONNECTION: IJ enacts Wallace's essayistic call — the novel as a manifesto against postmodern irony, a bid for sincerity

• Crux: eup-connection
• Stance: mentions
• Evidence:
  • [S — RU / P] Wallace is «первый американский писатель, объявивший войну иронии» (the first American writer to declare war on irony — gloss ours), and IJ «его манифест, попытка найти новый ориентир» (his manifesto, an attempt to find a new bearing — gloss ours). [50610, line 468–471]
  • [S — RU / P] Polyarinov threads the reading through Wallace's own prose — an aphorism he renders «Ирония — это птица, полюбившая свою клетку » (irony is a bird that has come to love its cage — gloss ours; the line he reaches for is the Lewis Hyde sentence Wallace quotes in E Unibus Pluram, though Polyarinov names neither) and a passage from Wallace's Dostoevsky essay. [50610, line 469; 474–480]
• Notes: Polyarinov argues the essay-to-novel continuity (Wallace's anti-irony program executed as fiction) fairly directly, but reaches it through the Hamlet frame, the bird-cage aphorism, and the Dostoevsky essay rather than through E Unibus Pluram by name or a passage-level mapping; it is a reception essay, not a textual argument. Held at mentions, though it leans toward the argued pole. The bird-cage line and the Dostoevsky quote are Polyarinov's own renderings of Wallace, carried here for their sense, not as Wallace's own words.

CONNECTION: the title is Hamlet's phrase over Yorick's skull — Wallace wrote his opus looking at the bare skull of postmodernism

• Crux: hamlet-frame
• Stance: mentions
• Evidence:
  • [S — RU / P] «название книги — Infinite jest — это цитата из «Гамлета» и, что еще важнее, слова эти Гамлет произносит, глядя на череп Йорика, придворного шута» (the book's title, Infinite jest, is a quotation from Hamlet, and — more importantly — Hamlet speaks these words looking at the skull of Yorick, the court jester — gloss ours), so «Уоллес написал свой тысячестраничный опус, глядя на голый череп постмодернизма» (Wallace wrote his thousand-page opus looking at the bare skull of postmodernism — gloss ours). [50610, line 494–497]
• Notes: The title-source observation extended into a reading (postmodernism as the dead jester Wallace eulogizes). Reception-level; mentions.

ADJACENCY (logged, NOT folded): the goldfish parable as Polyarinov's entry to Wallace

• Candidate slug: this-is-water-connection (adjacency only)
• Evidence: [S — RU / P] A friend's parable in 2011 — rendered by Polyarinov as «Плывут как-то две молодые рыбки, а навстречу им — старая рыба… «Что еще, мать твою, за „вода“?»» — sent him to google its author and so to Wallace. [65491, line 163–171]
• Notes: The This Is Water goldfish parable, but as a biographical discovery anecdote, not an argument about IJ's relation to the Kenyon address; doubly mediated (told by a friend, identified later by search). Thin — an adjacency only. The parable text is a back-translation of Wallace (held-English candidate = This Is Water).

ADJACENCY (logged, NOT folded): the optical-illusion author errors that appear in no guide

• Candidate slug: intentional-errors (adjacency only)
• Evidence: [S — RU / P] The pair could not decide «что делать со странными оптическими иллюзиями, которые выглядят то ли как ошибки автора, то ли как намеренные искажения законов физики и оптики, но при этом не упоминаются ни в одном путеводителе» (what to do with strange optical illusions that look either like the author's errors or like deliberate distortions of the laws of physics and optics, yet are mentioned in no guide — gloss ours); Polyarinov finds their absence from every guide «очень странным». [65491, line 211–215]
• Notes: A genuine translator close-reading catch that touches the deliberate- vs-accidental-error question — but Polyarinov is explicitly uncertain («то ли… то ли…»), and it is translation-workshop-framed — an adjacency only.

ADJACENCY (logged, NOT folded): the “noticing machine” hyper-detail style reading

• Candidate slug: prose-tempo-design (adjacency only)
• Evidence: [S — RU / P] Wallace's imagination «всегда стоит в режиме «макросьемки»» (is always set to “macro-shooting” mode — gloss ours); the detail is so dense that «книга никуда не движется, что время как будто замедлилось/застыло» (the book goes nowhere, as if time had slowed or frozen — gloss ours). [50610, line 444–453]
• Notes: A style reading (hyper-detail as tempo — time frozen by noticing), glossed through Borges's Funes and the still-hovering bee. Essayistic and one reader's — an adjacency only.

Themes

The fan-to-official path told from inside (a friend's parable → googling → the blue book from Amazon → stalling on page four → years of guides → the release posts); the reader's phenomenology of a difficult book (carrying two kilograms of words for two years, throwing the book at the wall, colour-coded bookmarks per character, books built like haunted houses with entry points); translation as fan labour (a syntactic swamp, 600+ notes traded in the drafts, the «блядь» argument, the optical-illusion author errors no guide records); Wallace's biography as a shock (the prodigy arc ending in suicide; the first breakdown and ECT behind IJ); the style as hyper-detailed noticing that freezes time (Funes, the hovering bee, the literary Plyushkin); and the book's argument as Polyarinov reads it — IJ as a manifesto against postmodern irony and a bid for the new sincerity, keyed to Hamlet/Yorick and to Wallace's essays. Wallace's own words enter only as Polyarinov's renderings (an IJ passage, an E Unibus Pluram aphorism, the Dostoevsky-essay quote, a Brief Interviews line, the goldfish parable, and reported biographical speech, with D. T. Max the one carrier named).

Cross-references

• pervoe-polyarinov-karpov-2020 — the same pair's public-facing 2020 event recap. These LiveJournal posts are its long-form, firsthand source: the fan-to-official origin, the split combing workflow, the difficulty-lives-in-how reading, and the spoiler-free ending pointers all originate here. Two of Polyarinov's own tellings diverge between the two records — here he orders the book on Amazon and stalls on page four; the recap has him order it on eBay and break down on page five.
• kerline-books-2015 — Francis Kerline (the French translator) is the reading-before-translating counter-pole: he deliberately did not read the novel first, where Polyarinov spent four years besieging it before a line of translation. Both land on Wallace's difficulty living in the how — the deliberately broken syntax that has to be re-broken correctly.
• nesi-minimaetmoralia-intervista, blumenbach-trashpool-2011, blumenbach-spiegel-2009, mokita-blumenbach-passage-2017, galindo-graca-infinita-historia-pessoal-2018, gobetti-acqua-in-bocca-2013 — the translator-testimony cluster. The Russian node's distinctive contribution is the amateur, self-taught, out-of-love register (a whole year of nights and weekends, 600+ traded notes) and the pre-official fan renderings Polyarinov marks as his own. Unlike Nesi (who corresponded with Wallace by fax), these posts record no Wallace contact of any kind — the pair worked from the text and from guides.
• ctl-frank-dostoevsky — the very essay the 2014 review quotes (the plea against requiring of our art an ironic distance from deep convictions, the really urgent stuff stuck inside asterisks): Wallace's review of Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky biography, which the archive holds in English. The English original of Polyarinov's rendered passage lives there.
• news247-kaltsas-2026 — the Greek translator reaches for the same E Unibus Pluram cage sentence and drifts it the same way: Kaltsas renders it as the song of a bird that has learned to love its cage, Polyarinov as a bird that has come to love its cage — two translators, independently, compressing the printed line (the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage) into a bird-loves-cage aphorism.
• esposito-ij-around-the-world — the around-the-world hub carries no Russia entry (no Polyarinov, no Karpov), so these posts stand as the archive's Russian-side companion to it rather than a footnote of it.

Notable passages

Reader prose leads with the English sense; the Russian span is the verbatim anchor, the English in parentheses is our gloss (paraphrase). Guillemets « » reproduced as printed; the nested curly marks in the goldfish parable are the source's own.

• «заказал на Амазоне его главный роман «Infinite jest»» (ordered his main novel Infinite jest on Amazon — gloss ours) — the origin story's vendor, here Amazon. [65491]
• «забуксовал на четвертой странице» (stalled on the fourth page — gloss ours) — the first bounce off the book. [65491]
• «они как дома с привидениями: сначала ты переселяешься в них, а потом они — в тебя» (they are like haunted houses: first you move into them, then they move into you — gloss ours) — the architecture revelation. [65491]
• «оставили друг другу больше 600 примечаний в черновиках» (left each other more than 600 notes in the drafts — gloss ours) — the split workflow with Karpov. [65491]
• «то ли как ошибки автора, то ли как намеренные искажения законов физики и оптики, но при этом не упоминаются ни в одном путеводителе» (either the author's errors or deliberate distortions of the laws of physics and optics, yet mentioned in no guide — gloss ours) — the optical-illusion catch. [65491]
• «это не мы идиоты, это так и надо» (it isn't that we're idiots, it's meant to be that way — gloss ours) — the release-note disclaimer. [65491]
• «Что не требует усилий — не заслуживает усилий» (what requires no effort deserves no effort — gloss ours) — the 2014 essay's epigraph and refrain. [50610]
• «первый американский писатель, объявивший войну иронии» (the first American writer to declare war on irony — gloss ours) — the anti-irony manifesto reading. [50610]
• «Уоллес написал свой тысячестраничный опус, глядя на голый череп постмодернизма» (Wallace wrote his thousand-page opus looking at the bare skull of postmodernism — gloss ours) — the Hamlet/Yorick key. [50610]
• «литературный Плюшкин, коллекционер мелочей» (a literary Plyushkin, a collector of trifles — gloss ours) — the “noticing machine” style reading. [50610]
• «Это последний тизер, дальше — только через год и на бумаге. Крепитесь.» (this is the last teaser; after this, only in a year and in print. Brace yourselves — gloss ours) — the 2016 release note. [73574]
• Framed Wallace-work renderings (Polyarinov's Russian, never Wallace's English): the goldfish parable (This Is Water); the bird-in-a-cage aphorism (reaching for the Hyde cage line of E Unibus Pluram); the Dostoevsky-essay quote; the bee line (Brief Interviews); an IJ “you are what you love” passage; and a long IJ passage on American art and irony that Polyarinov explicitly marks «(перевод фрагментов мой)» (translation of the fragments mine — gloss ours).

Accuracy notes

• Vendor — Amazon here, eBay in the pervoe recap. In post 65491 Polyarinov orders the book «на Амазоне» / «Амазоне» (line 172–173); the 2020 pervoe recap has him order it «на eBay». Reproduced as written; the discrepancy is between two of his own tellings.
• Page number — page four here, page five in the pervoe recap. 65491 has him «забуксовал на четвертой странице» (stalled on the fourth page — line 174–175); the pervoe recap has «сломался на пятой странице» (broke down on the fifth page). The 2014 review (50610) gives no page number, only two years of carrying the book.
• Weight — Polyarinov flags his own rounding. The 2014 essay's refrain is «почти два килограмма слов» (almost two kilograms of words), but its own footnote says «строго говоря, книга весит 1450 грамм, но я сильно округлил в большую сторону, чтобы добавить фразе ритма» (strictly speaking the book weighs 1450 grams, but I rounded well up to give the phrase rhythm — line 173–175), and the body later gives «весом в 1.5 килограмма» (weighing 1.5 kilograms — line 288–289). Self-aware inconsistency, reproduced as written.
• Page count — the English 1079-page figure. The 2014 review cites «1079 страниц мелким шрифтом» (1079 pages in small type — line 259) and «388» endnotes (line 261), i.e. the English print figures (the review predates the Russian АСТ edition; the pervoe recap uses the АСТ 1280-page figure).
• The Dostoevsky essay is dated a year early. The review introduces the quoted passage with «Еще в 1995 году в своем эссе, посвященном биографии Достоевского» (line 472); Wallace's essay on Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky biography ran in 1996 (it is dated 1996 at its foot in Consider the Lobster). Reproduced as written.
• The bird-cage aphorism is a drifted rendering — and two translators drift it the same way. Polyarinov's «Ирония — это птица, полюбившая свою клетку » (irony is a bird that has come to love its cage) reaches for the Lewis Hyde sentence Wallace quotes in “E Unibus Pluram,” whose printed English is “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” No bird appears in the printed line; the Greek translator Kaltsas independently drifts the same sentence into a bird-song image. Reproduced as printed; the essay's English is authority.
• The Dostoevsky-essay quote opens on Polyarinov's own bracket. His rendering begins «[эта книга]...» (line 474); the printed English sentence opens “Frank’s bio prompts us to ask ourselves…” — the bracketed [эта книга] is his marked substitution, reproduced as written.
• «OСАН» with a Latin O (line 399). The acronym for the fictional Организация Северо-Американских Наций is printed once as «OСАН» with a Latin O (U+004F) fused to Cyrillic «САН», and once as «ОСАН» with an all-Cyrillic О (U+041E, line 414); the same note gives the English original «ONAN (Organization of North American Nations)». Reproduced byte-true.
• Bird-cage aphorism has a space before its closing guillemet. Printed «Ирония — это птица, полюбившая свою клетку » (a space precedes the closing », line 469). Reproduced as written.
• Biographical figures reproduced as written. The review dates the first suicide attempt to «В октябре 1988 года 27-летний Дэвид Уоллес» (October 1988, the 27-year-old — line 325; Wallace, born February 1962, was 26 that October) and the MacArthur award to «В 1998-м году» (1998 — line 294; commonly dated 1997). Wallace's death is dated correctly, «12 сентября 2008-го года» (line 317). «Майкл Питч» (line 251) is Michael Pietsch. These are Polyarinov's biographical claims, reproduced as written.