Fact: Most people who own a copy of Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s 1,079-page magnum opus, haven’t finished it. But with The End of the Tour, starring Jason Segel as Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky, in theaters today, it’ll reemerge as a topic of conversation. Impress your bookish friends with the novel’s main talking points. You should also read it for real… eventually. The Title: “Infinite jest” has three meanings in the context of the novel. Read More...
“I just felt bad for the duck.” That was one theatergoer’s conclusion about How to Transcend a Happy Marriage during intermission. Still, she and her friend were optimistic that the story would come together in its second half, and they would leave feeling enriched as any theatergoer hopes to. But then, the lights went down the second time and one of the eight characters in the play turned into a bird, so they probably didn’t. Read More...
The history of Middle-earth stretches long before two tiny hobbits made the trek into Mordor. Between The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien's writing spanned thousands of years, and the detail-oriented professor turned world-building into an art. Tolkien approached his storytelling like a particularly meticulous historian, constructing detailed timelines and origins for even the most inconsequential of characters. The result is one of the richest and most elaborate fantasy worlds ever created, chronicling everything from the birth of the sun and the moon to the destruction of that familiar gold ring. Read More...
