Hello, I'm Drew Ross
today's the big
challenge
the Big Book
challenge. I
Mentioned a few episodes ago that I wanted to read the book
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
So we're getting ready to do that
If you're like me in your reading life you go in ebbs and flows. You go
Through peaks and valleys, right?
For me there are times where I
Gotta turn the brain off. I just want to read something light
Maybe it's an adventure, you know some Jack Reacher some
maybe a murder mystery even go back to Agatha Christie and
Just enjoy the ride something light and easy
and then there are other times where
You you gotta have
something that challenges you I remember when I was a little kid, you know, trying act grown-up trying to be
Like one of my dear friends Mike Loughnane
He was just so smart
, he had a sharp mind and was funny as crap
And he read all of these amazing books
So we were best friends and I thought, "Man
You know if he could read these books I can read these books. So
We were I think in seventh grade somewhere around in there, maybe sixth
and we went
On a school trip and we had spending money
and I
Was in the bookstore waiting or not the book store in the UH
I don't know how to describe this kind of a convenience store on campus and they had a a rack of books
you know just
Popular fiction and we're standing in line gonna buy our chips and drinks or whatever
And I look
and I see Stephen King's The Stand I
Remember Mike talking about how great Stephen King was now
Remember this is their early eighties the very early days
and
Stephen King was just then
exploiting, you know into the phenomenon that that he is and
I saw that book and I'm thinking I
Can do this, you know, we're on this academic trip
My my friend Mike has read this book and I may not be as smart as him. But hey
I'm pretty freaking smart
And I've got the money next thing, you know the class you're gonna be like what he we're doing
so I grab the book I get my chips my drink and a
thousand-page novel
And as soon as I handed that money over I'm thinking oh my gosh, what did I do?
This is ridiculous. I'll never finish this book. I could barely read
encyclopedia brown and now
I'm on the hook first. Stephen King's The Stand
um
My friend Mike though. He was like cool man. You're gonna love it
I'd go home and over the next it took me about three and a half months
That and I've told my kids is that book changed my life
Not because it's the greatest book ever. In fact, I think this ending is just
downright ridiculous
but
the
Characterization is incredible the plot to the flow. I mean it just the way Stephen King
Pulls you into knowing these people. It's it's a great book. I mean get me wrong
I love it, but that's not why it changed my life
It changed my life
Because I read every single word
And I knew I read it
nobody could take that from me and
That it started when we were at the end of the school year
And it I read that all summer long almost the whole summer
And I to this day. I remember that they're little so far I was sitting on
Reading that night after night and the sense of accomplishment
that I got
When I finished that book
And I was not a quick reader
But that sense of accomplishment was just awesome
From manhood. I was supposed to read Moby Dick as a junior in high school. I
Didn't even I might have read a few chapters
Total
but when they assigned Moby Dick, I thought to myself I
can do that I
Didn't want to do that, but I knew because I had finished the stand
And I can do this and from that point forward
I've always had this need to challenge myself further
But I'd really tell and this is what I tell my kids and students another had in the past
You're gonna be reading something, right?
so
You've gotta live a life of reading. So if you read five short books
What's the difference between that in one long book?
So the idea that a book is long
Shouldn't intimidate you you're gonna be reading anyway
now
The question is is it worth the
For me the stand was to this day I can remember Larry Underwood
One of the characters in the stand there are several scenes
that I
Remember that have been implanted in my mind. In fact, I'm talking so much about the stand
I should probably do an episode on that in the future
And now as I'm preparing to read Infinite Jest, I have that feeling
I'm standing in the convenience store. It's decision time
It's time for me to figure out
Can I do it? I?
Mean look at this beast
That's gigantic that's in fact that's got to be bigger than the stand
so
When I got this in the mail, I was like what this is a weapon
I'm gonna finish that also another factor is that
This book is not Stephen King
This book is
Intellectually dense
the
Vocabulary in this book is off the chart so it's gonna be a challenge
Mentally as well as just with my discipline. Can I finish it?
Whatever it takes to get through it my goal in reading
Is - it's like juice, right?
you take the horn enjoy the pineapple or whatever and just
that
You give everything out of it you can
And then you run it through again
and then you take all the very best of what's in that fruit and
You bring it in? That's what I read for I
want to get
inside David Foster Wallace's head
I want to see what he's you mad to my way of looking at the world
Yeah, I've already read a small amount of his stuff. Like I think I mentioned before and I love it
It's challenging it's dance. It's difficult
I'm not smart enough to really get all of it
This book is actually if you go online and do research on
What this book was?
produced
Specially on the university level there are a college courses
Designed to reanalyze this just like Shakespeare
Um, it's it's pretty impressive
and what I also like is sometimes when
An author or a creative
um
commits suicide or dies under mysterious circumstances
There's this sort of revisionist history the girls bad-lookin
You know kinda deifies their work David Foster Wallace the depth of you
he was
Absolutely on a pedestal long before he committed suicide
O'Malley college courses where they're trying to decipher
What's going on in this book? Just
Further cements his place as a as a legend. Why do I?
want to read a book like this, I would say that the primary reason is I
wanna be challenged like I said before I wanna
I'm gonna
Brush up against a mind
That I know is thinking thoughts that I haven't considered
And so David Foster Wallace gives that to us. He's gonna give us a book
that is
Intellectually challenging as well as the way it's written
The concepts involved just the whole thing
is
difficult
So I want to take that challenge
I know it's you know a huge amount of it's gonna be way over my head
I'm not gonna sit here and pretend to be some sort of, you know, enlightened one that
can read this book and
Point out the flaws and stuff like that's not my goal and reading is to feel smarter than everybody else
My goal is to find some fuel
to
get a new way of looking at things that adds to my enjoyment of life and
my ability to connect with other human beings
so
all that said I
Hope it's not boring
I've had a lot of friends say you're reading what a couple of them have already read it and they you know
Enjoy it on some levels
but I've only read about
People who loved it. I had a nanny my friends who were like, oh my gosh
We're gonna sit for hours and discuss this
so
That's a little concerning. I don't want to read this book. Just did he ever say yes red and it just
you know, you always get a little street cred when you actually can bring some discussion to the table on a
challenging book like this
but I
Really hope I get something out of it one of my predictions is a
For reading is that
Looking at interviews with dfw
Sometimes strikes me as a bit of an intellectual snob
and I'm hoping it's not just a big a
How smart I am look at all the words I use and/or
Die up here
Because I do get a little bit of that from his work
I still love it, but I'm looking forward to it. I
Hope that you've accepted the challenge to read this book
Find something that strikes your fancy
That is a thick book. It is denser than you're used to and
See what happens
You may hate it, but I guarantee if you're like me when you finish that last page
at the very least
You're gonna know you did something
So take care of yourselves
Read something that hurts and I'll see you soon
