All summer, I’ve been participating in the online book club/community that is Infinite Summer and I’m happy to report that I persevered and recently finished David Foster Wallace’s 1,079 page tome, Infinite Jest.  The book, while infuriating at times (particularly at the end, and often throughout the 100 pages of footnotes), was undoubtedly a worthwhile endeavor with a valuable lesson. 

But does it betray some fundamental lack of appreciation/intelligence/humanity that my greatest relief is that I no longer have to heft around a hardcover book that is purportedly only three pounds, but in the practice of routinely holding said book in one hand felt more akin to an awkward, boxy, 15 lb. dumbbell?  I was beginning to develop such muscular definition in my right hand and forearm that every person who noticed the disparity in musculature between my left and right arm no doubt pegged me as a savagely chronic masturbator, silently judging me, and on a few occasions, offering up expressions that seemed to suggest I might try changing it up with the other hand every now and then.

So, thank you, David Foster Wallace.  Though I know you are sadly no longer with us (I couldn’t determine whether the fact of my finishing his masterpiece on the first anniversary of his suicide was appropriate or grossly macabre), I am certain you are deriving an infinite amount of jest from the public’s perception of my overachieving onanism when, in reality, the only self-abuse I was subjecting myself to was the neural conditioning your book induced.  Well, most of the self-abuse.