by Dish Staff
An 11-year-old DFW superfan recreated Infinite Jest with Legos:
[English professor Kevin] Griffith and his son [Sebastian] had the idea to “translate” Infinite Jest into Lego after reading Brendan Powell Smith’s The Brick Bible, which takes on the New Testament. “Wallace’s novel is probably the only contemporary text to offer a similar challenge to artists working in the medium of Lego,” they write, grandly, on their website. …
Sebastian didn’t read Infinite Jest himself. “Let me be clear – Infinite Jest is not a novel for children,” says Griffith. “Instead, I would describe a scene to him and he would recreate it in a way that suited his vision. All the scenes are created by him and he then took photos of them using a 10-year-old Kodak digital camera he received for a present long ago. I think that having the scenes reflect an 11-year-old’s perspective gives them a little extra poignancy, maybe.”
The caption for the above image is from page 409 of Infinite Jest: “Clipperton plays tennis with the Glock 17 held steadily to his left temple.” Meanwhile, Matthew Nolan looks for lessons from DFW about why American men aren’t playing the sport better:
Wallace’s discerning tennis essays and fiction made it clear that elite tennis players cannot simply be manufactured through training by academies and player development programs. The fact that there are aspects of success that go beyond the academy helps to explain why the current top 20 players in the world represent 14 different countries, and almost all come from different training backgrounds. The recent success of junior male players, like U.S. Open Wild Card Noah Rubin from the training facility run by John McEnroe (another Wallace favorite), will excite Americans, but enthusiasm needs to be tempered with Wallace-ian recognition of the nature of the game. Wallace would not likely have lamented the state of American men’s tennis but instead would have probably sympathized with the ongoing struggles of all players, regardless of national origin. Likening tennis to life itself, a veteran player and coach in Infinite Jest respectfully sums up the game: “It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely.”
(Image via Brickjest)
The Dish 