14 April 2011
The Pale King; David Foster Wallace
Opening sentence:
Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in the morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek.
Opening sentence of Infinite Jest:
I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.
I would love to purchase chapter 19 and send it to many friends. It manifests every political/social/philosophical discussion we've ever had. I just finished the kernel of the book--chapter 22, pages 154 through 252. A daunting, directed bildungsroman. Overall a less flagrantly bleak worldview and more bleakly hopeful. I have yet to go back and map all of the characters I've met at various ages and when I've met them. This should have been done, casually and without too much effort, from the start. There are many.
I received the book, pre-ordered, the Friday before NYC whereas it officially comes out tomorrow on tax day.
The Pale King; David Foster Wallace
[ posted by sstrader on
14 April 2011 at 10:40:41 PM in Current Interests
, Language & Literature
| tagged david foster wallace ]
- A Visit from the Goon Squad; Jennifer Egan posted by sstrader on 13 May 2013 at 9:36:56 PM
- The Fractal Prince; Hannu Rajaniemi posted by sstrader on 28 November 2012 at 12:11:33 AM
- Three books on atheism posted by sstrader on 11 November 2012 at 2:15:21 PM
- Three recent books posted by sstrader on 15 August 2012 at 7:41:32 PM
- The Unfolding of Language; Guy Deutscher posted by sstrader on 26 April 2012 at 9:48:06 PM Other entries categorized in Language & Literature:
- The city posted by sstrader on 6 March 2016 at 9:43:27 PM
- The children of Infinite Jest posted by sstrader on 23 August 2015 at 3:48:24 PM
- Posthuman dystopia posted by sstrader on 22 March 2015 at 10:21:25 AM
- Poetry and apocalypse posted by sstrader on 22 November 2014 at 10:41:33 AM
- Roman Jakobson's functions of language posted by sstrader on 5 October 2014 at 10:36:23 AM
Related entries
Other entries categorized in Current Interests: