Advertisement
Jacket Copy

Would you read ‘Infinite Jest’ on an iPhone?

By Carolyn Kellogg
Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Apple’s new television ads promote various aspects of the iPhone 4, including iBooks and the iBookstore, as shown above. The books they showcase include the Stieg Larsson bestseller ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’ and several by acclaimed author Cormac McCarthy.

And the ad also includes, down on the bottom shelf, David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest.’ In print, ‘Infinite Jest’ clocks in at more than 1,100 pages. That’s got to be a lot of pages -- a lot of lots of lots of pages -- on a palm-sized device like an iPhone.

What do you think -- would you read a book that long on an iPhone?

After the jump, Apple’s ad.

One more thing: ‘Infinite Jest’ has footnotes. On top of those 1,100 pages in your palm, you’ll also have to contend with the footnotes.

Advertisement

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Jacket Copy
Carolyn Kellogg

Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Prior to coming to The Times, Kellogg was editor of LAist.com and the web editor of the public radio show Marketplace. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.

Advertisement