are you fucking retarded

Don't believe the hype OP. IJ is NOT difficult at all. People who say it's overly-intellectual, pretentious, too difficult, boring, etc are either literally retarded or haven't read it. Just have a basic understanding of French (or just use Google Translate, I guess) and you'll be fine. You'll finish it between a couple of day and two weeks depending on how much free time you have and your level of autism.

That being said I wouldn't recommend this as your first DFW work. The Pale King or Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (or even A Supposedly Fun Thing, I guess) are easier ways to get into his work.

Have fun.

>>7834196
>What should I do before and as I read the book?
Grow up in middle class america. Thats literally all you need.

>>7834196
start with the greeks

>>7834196
i'm reading it right now.
start at the start

Yes read this post first

>>7834196
play tennis and do drugs for a few years. Also use some annotations online, because you'll lose a lot if you guess words by context (unless you're autistic and memorize dictionaries like Hal)

>>7834290
See this is what I mean OP. This motherfucker is either a retard or has never read the book (I wouldn't be surprised by either). If you actually have to look up any word he uses in that book, then you're fucking hopeless.

>>7834297
laughing at the stupidity of this post

>>7834297
I had like about 40 words written down to look up not even 100 pages in. Looked up 10 or so, already forgot the definition and meaning of the first five, and gave up completely.

That's my experience, so don't know what you're insinuating here with your illiterate shitpost. The book's vocabulary is definitely a little above your average mass-marketed bestselling author. I know you're full of shit, as nobody, even a chemist, would know the meaning of some of the chemical formulas depicted in the book, as some are straight up fabricated by DFW.

>>7834329
Or you could just skip the things that don't immediately evoke emotions. It's a long and entertaining book, missing a few references that weren't for you is fine.

>>7834262
Accurate, yeah.
/thread

>>7834196
Rid yourself of all rituals that could become unhealthy before starting.
I had this thing where i would only read while I smoke/want to smoke as soon as I read (cigarettes btw).
while reading IJ i upped my consumption of nicotine to a now cancerous level that forces me to spend all my time hooked up to some memechines that do my breathing for me.
this book will kill you.

>>7834513
I feel like thats what dfw inted the book to be like.
remeber, he had never been on the internet when he finsihed IJ, so i wouldnt use the internet to understand everything thats in it.
Its like in the end when <spoiler>gately communicates with the wraith and gets all these words pressed in his mind. Thats exactly what reaing this book is supposed to be</spoiler>

>>7834205
>That being said I wouldn't recommend this as your first DFW work. The Pale King or Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (or even A Supposedly Fun Thing, I guess) are easier ways to get into his work.
What the fuck, no this is wrong. IJ is the only book where DFW's ideas are placed in their entirety. The short stories are just more of IJ's character vignettes, the nonfic is just more of the expository and argumentative sections of IJ, I'm reading The Pale King right now and it's an IJ type of thing without its overall polished composition. And then his early works are just developmental curiosities. His main work is IJ and the rest of his output is supplemental to that and it would make no sense to read anything else first.

For op's question, read hamlet but also mostly this >>7834262

>>7834562
I read a short story collection and two essay collections (as well as a few interviews) before reading IJ and my opinion of him as a writer would have been higher had I don't done so. I can see what you mean about it having the entirety of his thought contained within but I had already pieced everything together before hand from the other material. It's not like he is a great or deep thinker, nor is he a particular good writer so I found myself preferring his much short works. I disliked IJ (although this is not the only reason) because it felt like having 20-30 of his essays all tied together by a weak narrative when I preferred the essays because they were concise, concentrated in purpose, and not muddied by his bland characters.

>>7834196
You don't need to read Hamlet or anything to prepare. Maybe just read a few of Wallace's essays and watch/listen to some of the interviews he gave while promoting IJ.

All the energy you people put in to your DFW (AKA Big Dave) threads is impressive

>>7834262
Also know what Canada is

You dont need to but he takes heavily from the brothers karamazov. We could give you a huge list of books and philosophers that he references but a main point of his was that you didn't have to do that to read it, it can stand by itself.