I'm beginning to think I might actually finish reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest quite soon, being in sight of the last hundred pages. I have absolutely no idea how it's going to end - an excellent thing in itself. I suspect there won't be an ending in anything like the conventional sense; it's just going to somehow stop.
I'll be glad when it's over, as I'll be free to move on to some briefer fiction; but I'll be equally sad when it's over as each time I pick it up I know I'll be rewarded in some way, but that way is deeply unpredictable. Also I'll miss the frequent shocks attendant upon having my face rubbed into realities I'd rather avoid, thank you very much.
For the first three hundred pages or so, I seemed unable to stifle my awareness that Wallace had chosen to eliminate his own map (to adopt some of the terminology of his text) and found my reading frequently cross-referencing that sad reality. But in recent days I've just found myself surrendering to the novel without giving any real thought as to its underlying vision of things. It seems strange to be reading a text with such clear philosophical implications innocent of all thought, but there it is.
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