3 Ways to Visualize the David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

What dotted lines have to do with telenovelas, pop culture reverence and analog GPS.

David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, a favorite book of many, is the kind of genre-bender that will thwart your mind with its convoluted narrative, plethora of allusions and cultural references, and multilateral connections between the characters. Navigating its maze of relationships and 400 footnotes could drive even the most seasoned literary disentanglers up the reading room wall.

So today, we look at three visual efforts to deconstruct the iconic novel.

INFINITE JEST CHARACTER FLOWCHART

To illuminate the essential points of the novel’s plot, German designer Jonny set out to flowchart the novel’s most essential characters, revealing an amusingly complex ecosystem that’s part Shakespearean play, part Mexican telenovela.

GEOLOCATION PHOTO TOUR

If the characters aren’t enough of a brilliant mess for you, David Foster Wallace adds another layer of confusion with a slew of locations that would send any GPS spinning. One brave Infinite Jest reader decided to take a tour of Boston, photographing all the locations mentioned in the book, then plotting them on a map.

INFINITE JEST CHARACTER DIAGRAM

From designer Sam Potts comes another visualization of the relationships between the characters, this time in the form of a diagram.

It’s really, really hard to know where exactly to delimit the Great Concavity. Where the novel is vague, a map must be specific, even when it is being demapped. I did the best that makes sense to me.” ~ Sam Potts

Since family is an important theme in the novel, a dotted line represents additional metadata showing a family connection.

The reverence in the designer’s tone as he explicitly points out that the diagram is no substitute for actually reading the novel bespeaks the height of the pedestal Infinite Jest has erected for itself in pop culture:

The best I can hope for in terms of this diagram’s relationship to Infinite Jest is that it’s a) as accurate as I could make it and b) a reminder of the seemingly endless details and pleasures to be found in Wallace’s masterpiece.” ~ Sam Potts

The poster is available as a free downloadable PDF and sold as a 36″ x 24″ print on 80# Lynx Opaque paper for a well-justified $20.

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PICKED: Poetry Animations

Just as we thought we’d seen every YouTube meme, every cat falling down a toilet, every famous pop song turned history lesson, we stumble across poetryanimations — a bizarre yet addictive series of famous poets “reading” their classics via quasi-animated archival photographs.

The project is the brainchild of London-based videographer sound recordist Jim Clark, who takes his work as seriously as someone with an endearingly quaint @hotmail email address would.

Bizarre as these audiovisually missynched ghosts may be, the description text on each video offers surprisingly rich information on the author, the specific poem and its historical context.

Whether poetryanimations are a budding meme remains to be seen, but they’re certainly a treat for lit geeks with a penchant for the quirky.

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The Snark Handbook, Insult Edition: Verbal Sparring Lessons from Literary Greats

A year ago, The Snark Handbook: A Reference Guide to Verbal Sparring became an instant favorite with its enlightening and entertaining compendium of history’s greatest masterpieces in the art of mockery, contextualizing today’s era of snark-humor and equipping us with the shiniest verbal armor to thrive as victor knights in it. This month, author Lawrence Dorfman is back with a necessary sequel, this time providing the sword: The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition: Comebacks, Taunts, and Effronteries, complete with 50 delightful black-and-white illustrations.

Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” ~ Mark Twain on Jane Austen

It’s a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what’s between her ears instead of her legs.” ~ Katherine Hepburn on Sharon Stone

From strategic instructions on how and when to throw your peers the jabs of well-timed snark to a well-curated collection of history’s most skilled literary insult-maestros, the book is the yellow brick road to what, deep down, you know you always knew you were: Better than everybody else.

I am reading Henry James… and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.” ~ Virginia Woolf on Henry James

He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of his, unless you were a fourteen-year-old nymphet.” ~ Capote on Faulkner

Sure, The Snark Handbook is the anti-Zen approach to life’s confrontations. Still, it walks the fine line between potent wit and tongue-in-cheek lightheartedness in a way that makes it not just a toolkit but a treat as well. That, or at least a handy 200-pager with which to smack the next fool that crosses you.

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Coralie Bickford-Smith’s Book Covers for Penguin Classics

Coralie Bickford-Smith is easily our favorite book cover designer. Her signature patterns for Penguin breathe new life into some of literature’s greatest classics. Somewhere between Victorian wallpaper and modernist upholstery, her intricate yet minimalist designs emanate a kind of obsessive charm that makes us love the books they grace even more.

The color choices and graphic elements offer a wink with subtle play on elements from the book’s plot or setting to those who would wink back, from the glamorous chandelier of The Great Expectations to scissors of Little Women.

The cover is there to serve the content, so the content has to be taken into consideration. How and to what extent the content is represented on the cover varies of course – sometimes it will be quite literal, other times more oblique, or even just a suggestion of mood and tone.” ~ Coralie Bickford-Smith

But perhaps most stunning of all is Bickford-Smith’s work on Penguin’s recently released F. Scott Fitzgerald series, from The Great Gatsby to Flappers and Philosophers: The Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and everything in between.

A few of our favorites:

• The Great Expectations
• Sense and Sensibility
• Little Women
• Oliver Twist
• The Hound of the Baskervilles
• The Woman in White
• Pride and Prejudice
• Jane Eyre

The complete collection can conveniently be found right here.

So if you’re looking for a thoughtful and elegant gift that will mesmerize the design-loving literary fiend in your life, look no further than Coralie Bickford-Smith’s Penguin classics.

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Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:

♥ $7 / month♥ $3 / month♥ $10 / month♥ $25 / month

You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:

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