New Fall Syllabus #2: INFINITE JEST!

And here’s the Infinite Jest syllabus. This one turned out to be a surprisingly difficult puzzle to put together, just because I felt strongly that the book absolutely had to be finished by the class period before the class period before Thanksgiving (and later determined that we really needed a whole week to talk about the book just as a whole) — while I also felt (after the experience of the Tolkien class was so great) that it would be really good to have a slow start where we talked a bit about Wallace as a thinker and read some of his other work. This seemed especially urgent to me because of the fact of the suicide, which really does seem to risk retrospectively poisoning some aspects of the book and Wallace’s larger career (I’ve included the MLA panel we’re doing explicitly in the course as a last-day exercise, though I realized yesterday while prepping the course that I seem to have completely cryptomnesically ripped off Tom Bissell in my panel abstract — very embarrassing).

I decided early on that “beginning with the end” was the way to do this course, discussing the suicide openly and concretely at length at the very start of the class. My workshopmates in my Jesuit pedagogy seminar last semester very helpfully suggested some strategies for making the course a comfortable place to talk about some very uncomfortable things, and strongly suggested that I include an explicit content note in the syllabus (which as you can see, I did, a fairly lengthy one; I don’t think I’ve ever done one before, except in briefly offering the possibility of an alternate assignment for Lolita in a sophomore-level survey).

The result of all this is a syllabus that I’m pretty happy with and that I hope won’t be too demanding. I’ve thought a lot about not just trying to generate buy-in and a spirit of shared endeavor, but also how to make sure I don’t lose a ton of people along the way. In the end, with a MW class meeting trying to read a 1,079-page novel in nine weeks while leaving space at the beginning and end for other conversations about Infinite Jest, I decided I just couldn’t do much better than around 50-70 pages per class period for the long haul, especially in the back half. I hope the assignments and the structure of the course pull them through, and give them space to get something valuable out of it, even if (as seems inevitable) some number of them completely hate both the book and me by the end…

As before, full syllabus with course procedures and all assignments at the link, but here’s the day-by-day schedule:

M	Aug 29	FIRST DAY OF CLASS   audiobook: “This Is Water” (Commencement Address to the Kenyon College Class of 2005) (in class)
W	Aug 31	“Alas, Poor Yorick” monologue from Hamlet, Act V, sc. i [D2L]   George Saunders, “Informal Remarks from the David Foster Wallace Memorial Service in New York on October 23, 2008” [D2L] Jonathan Franzen, “Informal Remarks from the David Foster Wallace Memorial Service in New York on October 23, 2008” [D2L]   roundtable discussion: How to Talk About Sad Things, Together   (after class) Mandatory D2L Post #1
M	Sep 5	LABOR DAY—NO CLASS
W	Sep 7	David Foster Wallace, “The Planet Trillaphon as It Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing” (1984) and Afterword by Kevin J. H. Dettmar (2016)
M	Sep 12	David Foster Wallace, “Octet” (1997/1999) Guest Lecture: Tom Moore   (after class) Mandatory D2L Post #2
W	Sep 14	David Foster Wallace, “Octet” discussion continues   Infinite Jest forewords by Dave Eggers (2006) and Tom Bissell (2016) [D2L]   roundtable discussion: How to Talk About Literature, Art, Artists, Genius, Greatness, Pretension, Ambition, “Trying Too Hard,” Success, Failure, Annoyance, Fondness, Commitment, Honesty, Community, Solitude, Work, Intellectual Experiences That Might (or Might Not) Change Your Life, &c.   (after class) Mandatory D2L Post #3

 

INFINITE JEST

			IJPPD(A)(NCF)*
M	Sep 19	Infinite Jest through p. 17   brief primer: How to Read Infinite Jest [in class]	14
W	Sep 21	Infinite Jest through p. 63	46
M	Sep 26	Infinite Jest through p. 127	64
W	Sep 28	Infinite Jest through p. 171	44
M	Oct 3	Infinite Jest through p. 226	55
W	Oct 5	Infinite Jest through p. 283	57
M	Oct 10	Infinite Jest through p. 342	59
W	Oct 12	Infinite Jest through p. 398	56
M	Oct 17	Infinite Jest through p. 450	52
W	Oct 19	Infinite Jest through p. 503	53
		FALL BREAK
M	Oct 24	Infinite Jest through p. 589	86
W	Oct 26	Infinite Jest through p. 648	59
M	Oct 31	Infinite Jest through p. 711	63
W	Nov 2	Infinite Jest through p. 775	64
M	Nov 7	Infinite Jest through p. 845	70
W	Nov 9	Infinite Jest through p. 911	66
M	Nov 14	Infinite Jest through p. 981 “CONVERGENCE” DUE	70
W	Nov 16	Samuel Cohen, “To Wish to Try to Sing to the Next Generation: Infinite Jest’s History” N. Katherine Hayles, “The Illusion of Autonomy and the Fact of Recursivity: Virtual Ecologies, Entertainment, and Infinite Jest” OPTION #3 PROSPECTUS DUE BY TODAY
M	Nov 21	Research Workshop with Heather James (Raynor) Bring in the general topic you think you might want to write about, as well as some useful research questions.
		THANKSGIVING BREAK

* Infinite Jest pages per day (approximate) (not counting footnotes)

 

CODA: AFTERLIVES

M	Nov 28	OPTION #1 and #2 PROSPECTUS DUE TO ME ON D2L   Michael Pietsch, editor’s note, The Pale King (2011) [D2L] David Foster Wallace, “Good Old Neon” (2001) [D2L]
W	Nov 30	Lee Konstantinou, “No Bull: David Foster Wallace and Postironic Belief” [D2L] Adam Kelly, “David Foster Wallace and the New Sincerity in American Fiction” [D2L]
M	Dec 5	Ed Finn, “Becoming Yourself: The Afterlife of Reception” [D2L] Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “Infinite Summer: Reading, Empathy, and the Social Network” [D2L] MetaFilter.com, “RIP, DFW” [Web] The Howling Fantods, Wallace-L, etc.
W	Dec 7	FINAL THOUGHTS: MLA 2017 panel: “Infinite Jest at 20” [D2L]   PROJECT WORKSHOPS Bring in four copies of the prospectus for your final project.   LAST DAY OF CLASS
W	Dec 14	FINAL PROJECT DUE BY 12:30 PM