I almost brought back Advanced Footnote Technology for this post but then I remembered I'm lazy

A cousin of mine recently finished her long battle with David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. So maybe that's why I feel the sudden need to pick his books back up, since I doubt Uncle Earl's next in line for this family duty. Or maybe it's that I've finally recovered from my own affair with DFW's books, which happened a couple years back, and now I'm ready to dive back in. Or maybe it's that last year's short fiction collection Oblivion just came out in paperback and I've been hearing a lot of buzz about the newly released essay collection Consider the Lobster, and I haven't read either and I suddenly feel behind; like it's not nice of me to be ignoring what he does offer us in my rush to hold out for another novel, oh me of high expectations. Or maybe it's that whole "I just finished Ulysses and now I want to eat DFW's canon in under a week" factor. Or...who knows.

Whatever it is, DFW's back on my radar, and there's holiday book store gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, and I think we know what that means: trouble. (Never mind the 20 percent off sale going on at Half Price Books this week, a discount that could and probably will easily lead to some serious wallet-targeted damage in the next day or two.) Profiles like this (via) don't exactly hurt matters, either. Nothing ground-shattering in there, but still an interesting read.

And hey never-you-even-mind the recent birthday discovery. Just sayin': I'd happily sign a special birthday copy of my blog for DFW if he'd reciprocate with, oh, I don't know, something small. Some small token of the shared specialness of this one particular day of the year. Something like...oh...I don't know...the secret lost director's cut of Infinite Jest maybe. That would do nicely. Very nicely indeed.