no hard spoilers until otherwise stated
One of the, if not the most humbling reading experience I have ever had. However, before I go into detail as to what and why the book humbled me it is essential to express that the book–even without my complete understanding of it (This helped a lot 1); not being able to properly work out the complete unwritten ending on my own which Wallace describes as the book having failed one 2–is absolutly amazing. I was thinking of rereading the book again the second I finished it but decided against it due to my exams coming up which would properly stretch out the time required for the full reread. Furthermore, I only found DFW’s quote (first footnote) after having decided not to tackle the puzzle myself and just look it up 3. I regret having taken this step a lot (!) as I do not think I was that far away from working it out myself (Edit: Well, at least to the complete solution I was also not really close lol). However, working it out would have required rereading the entire thing. I will still reread the book 100%–just not this upcoming year.
Herb: Is there no “ending” to “Infinite Book” because there couldn’t be? Or did you just get tired of writing it?
DFW: There is an ending as far as I’m concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an “end” can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you. ↩︎