![]() Hal, his uncle, and the tennis coach want Hal on the school’s tennis team, but the academics/admissions people have some concerns about Hal’s application. These include an Admissions Director, the Director of Composition, a Dean, the tennis coach, and possibly more. Tennis prodigy Hal, the first-person narrator, and his uncle (an administrator at the tennis academy Hal has attended since the age of seven) are sitting before a large group of Important Admissions-Related People at the University of Arizona. This is not hyperbole. What I gathered is this: I dove right in, and from the first sentence to the last of the first chapter, my eyes never left the page. (Second place goes to War and Peace, at 132 pages.) I bother to mention this because, at 176 pages, Infinite Jest is now officially the longest sample of any book I have downloaded. ![]() And since-like anyone with an e-reader-I live in a virtual bookstore, I grabbed my Nook (not hard since it’s always within arm’s reach) and downloaded the free sample. But the reasons were compelling, I guess. I read this post late in the evening, right around when I should have been resting my eyeballs to prepare for sleep. It all started with a post called “ 1088 Reasons You Should Read Infinite Jest.” (The list only actually offers 20 reasons. On Sunday, I named Infinite Jest as a book readers can benefit from dipping into, even if they never read it straight through to the end. ![]()
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