David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest

 If we try something new, some will look at it and say, "The sentence is too long and difficult to follow", or "I just love the way you did that -- it's so different", or "I can't tell if that's the author speaking or which character", or "I can't tell what's going on", or something.

I have just read the first 50 pages or so of "Infinite Jest", a long (!) novel usually cited as Foster's most prominent. It is exhilarating and confusing and funny and tragic and all mixed up. 

Here is what Harold Bloom, author of "Genius" and a bookshelf of other works, as well as a Yale professor, had to say about it: "Infinite Jest is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can't think, he can't write. There is no discernable talent."

Time magazine cited Infinite Jest as "one of the most influential books of the 20th century". Other sources have made similar comments to this.

I think about this when I try something new. As an apprentice writer, I am quick to admit that my experiments may well fall on the 'just awful' side of the scale. But sometimes, these disappointments are more about beginning to learn to do something in full sunlight.

Even an eagle, right out of the egg, doesn't look that impressive.