Listen to KCRW’s Bookworm Michael Silverblatt and David Foster Wallace discuss some of the structural components of Infinite Jest as well as their opinions about the plight of modern literature in this stunning interview from 1996:

“MS: ‘…Something came into my head that may be entirely imaginary which seemed to be that the book was written in fractals?’

DFW: ‘Expand on that.’

MS: ‘It occurred to me that the way in which the material is presented allows for a subject to be announced in a small form, then there seems to be a fan of subject matter, other subjects, then it comes back in a second form containing the other subjects in small, then comes back again as if what were being described.. and I don’t know this kind of science but I said to myself, “This must be fractals”.’

DFW: ‘It’s, uh, I’ve heard you were an acute reader. That’s actually one of the things structurally going on. It’s actually structured like something called a Sierpinski Gasket…’ “

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