Bookworm: David Foster Wallace on Infinite Jest

TL;DR

The famous "fractal" radio interview, recorded during the IJ publicity tour. Silverblatt guesses the book is "written in fractals" and DFW confirms it was structured as a Sierpinski Gasket (pre-edit); he also gives his clearest statements on addiction as distorted religious impulse, Schtitt as the novel's "embedded fascist," double binds, and IJ being designed for rereading. Audio exists: DFW did five Bookworm appearances (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2006), hosted on KCRW's current site. The full text here is a fan transcript (andbutso.com).

Key claims

• Structure: the draft delivered to Pietsch in '94 is "actually structured like something called a Sierpinski Gasket... a very primitive kind of pyramidical fractal," though after "mercy cuts" it's "probably kind of a lopsided Sierpinski Gasket now." Primary evidence for the fractal/triangular-recursion readings of IJ's architecture.
• But structure wasn't a priori: Pietsch described the first 400 pages as "a piece of glass that had been dropped from a great height"; DFW says the structure mimics how the world hit "my nerve endings... a bunch of discrete random bits" containing non-obvious connections, and that structural scaffolding was "kind of like pitons in the mountainside" — partly for himself.
• Difficulty must be seduced into: "a lot of the avant-garde has forgotten that part of its job is to seduce the reader into being willing to do the hard work." He worked harder on IJ than anything in his life and "there's nothing in there by accident".
• The point of art (mid-career restatement): in his twenties he believed "the point of fiction was to show that the writer was really smart"; now "it's got something to do with loneliness and something to do with setting up a conversation between human beings." Repeats the Salon intent: "I wanted to do just something really sad... about what was sad about America."
• Against the addiction-novel reading: the book isn't "about drug addiction and recovery" per se; the cultural sadness comes from "loss of purpose or organizing principles, something you're willing to give yourself away to," and "the addictive impulse... is interesting and powerful only because it's a kind of obvious distortion of... a religious impulse or an impulse to be part of something bigger."
• The fascism warning: Schtitt (unnamed; "the guy who essentially runs the academy now is a fascist") is "the only figure there who isn't completely insane in terms of his approach to at least sports," and contemporary nihilism is "setting ourselves up for fascism" because emptied-out values create "a hunger" for someone who will "tell you what to think... what's important." ("I am not Wyndham Lewis, by the way. It's not a pro-fascist book.") Key gloss on the Schtitt/Marathe axis.
• AA research: Boston's open meetings (75%) let him attend without membership; AA was "the one place where I saw the kind of stuff that seemed to me... important talked about"; notes the irony that Tradition Eleven (anonymity) means a book like IJ technically can't be written by a member.
• Double binds as the book's structural unit (Silverblatt cites the kleptomaniac-agoraphobe exam): "most of the stuff in my own life... that's interesting and true involves double binds"; e.g., achieving while retaining "a self apart from your achievement" — "it's as if the culture is some Zen teacher... whacking us no matter what we do."
• Designed for rereading: "it's designed to be a book... to be read more than once"; the hard part was making it "fun enough so somebody would want to" without being "co-opted by the very principles of commercialism and, you know, 'like me, like me, like me,' that the book is partly about."
• Barth patricide continued: "Westward" taught him there was "nothing but involution and basically masturbation... in that kind of game-playing meta-move intertextual stuff".

Themes

Construction/form (Sierpinski Gasket, shattered glass, designed rereading); addiction as displaced worship (anticipates This Is Water's "everybody worships"); entertainment/seduction (fun without pandering); AA and sincerity; Schtitt, fascism, and the value-vacuum; double binds (Hal's, Gately's, Joelle's).

Cross-references

• McCaffery interview: the smartness-vs-loneliness arc and "Westward" autopsy in compressed form.
• Salon interview: same tour, same "really sad" intent and AA material from the other direction.
• This Is Water: "something you're willing to give yourself away to" = "everybody worships."
• The Unfinished: corroborates the Pietsch editing timeline and the cuts.
• IJ connections: Schtitt's speeches on the infinite inside the court's boundaries; Marathe vs. Steeply on choosing attachments; the Eschaton/structure readings; endnote architecture; the opening dedication to AA storytellers.

Notable passages

• "It's actually structured like something called a Sierpinski Gasket... it went through some I think 'mercy cuts', so it's probably kind of a lopsided Sierpinski Gasket now."
• "[Pietsch] said it seemed to him like a piece of glass that had been dropped from a great height."
• "I don't think I really understood what loneliness was when I was a young man. And now I've got a much less clear idea of what the point of art is, but I think it's got something to do with loneliness and something to do with setting up a conversation between human beings."
• "the addictive impulse... is interesting and powerful only because it's a kind of obvious distortion of kind of a religious impulse or an impulse to be part of something bigger."
• "we're really setting ourselves up for fascism... the nice thing about fascists is they'll tell you what to think, they'll tell you what to do".