Infinite Jest. A Novel
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1996. 1st Edition. Large octavo, publisher's blue cloth over azure paper-covered boards, original illustrated dust jacket.
"Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else." First edition of American literary legend David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus. Inspired by Wallace’s personal experiences with addiction and structured around Sierpinski gasket (a fractal formed by recursively subdividing a triangle into smaller triangles), the famously massive novel (over 1000 pages, with hundreds of endnotes) is set in a near-future dystopian North America (O.N.A.N.) and follows an expansive cast of characters among three interwoven subplots. The now-iconic "cloud cover" dust jacket was designed by Steve Snider, then art director at Little, Brown, who was going for the "big book" look of the 1970s, with large type over a clouded blue sky taken from an old ad, suggesting the concept of infinity. First printing with complete number row to copyright page and William Vollmann's name misspelled to lower panel of dust jacket. Trace of glue staining to endpapers at gutter; unclipped dust jacket with minor edgewear. Near fine. Item #12764
$300.00