Listing all posts tagged literature

Monday, June 6th 2011

Via Kottke, a graphic design exploration of the world of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It’s hard to describe how amazing this is, unless you’ve read it (I’m still 200 pages from the end). Be warned, this is the kind of book which is like an endless vacation in which every meal is a heavy banquet: great but incredibly demanding of endurance.

Also worth remembering in its utter postmodern awesomeness: illustrations of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

Monday, April 13th 2009

Mother Earth Mother Board

Neal Stephenson’s great essay about undersea cable laying is a perfect example of what one of my favorite writers does best: take an incredibly dull subject and turn it into the most interesting and exciting story. This text resembles In the Beginning was the Command Line but better — because it’s about an utterly unfamiliar theme which hasn’t dated as much as his 1999 comparison of computer operating systems.