Infinite Boston

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a novel about addiction and infinite recursion has inspired a frighteningly dedicated (and very cool) website. Bill Beutler has put together a Tumblr called Infinite Boston, which photographs and describes places in Infinite Jest in no small depth. As Beutler writes:

In July of what might have been Year of Glad, one year ago this week, I traveled to Boston, Massachusetts with the express purpose of visiting as many of the landmarks and lesser known precincts that appear in, or provide inspiration for, the late David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest as I could manage on a Thursday–Sunday trip. My reasons for doing so will become apparent at a later date, but for now I am pleased to present what I am calling “Infinite Boston”: a ruminative travelogue and photographic tour of some fifty or so of these locations, comprising one entry each non-holiday weekday, from now until sometime in early autumn.

So, for instance, Father & Son Market

The peculiar thing about the Father & Son Market is that, given the extremely small role it plays in the novel, it might as well have been a complete invention. And yet it most certainly was not: Father & Son was and very much still is a convenience store on Comm. Ave. where you can purchase things (bottled water, in my boring case) as characters do in the novel: where Hal buys candy, where Mario is given yellow tea, and where Avril buys Benson & Hedges at $5.60 a pack (for all of Wallace’s prescience, cigarette tax hikes were apparently one thing he failed to envision).

I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why this discovery surprises me so much . . .

Pretty cool.

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