154. Endlessly looking forward

I.

The colossal novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace turns thirty, and there is now finally a Dutch translation: Eindeloos Vertier. It is a blue-and-yellow brick of 1,168 pages. Pleasingly conspicuous for the performative readers, except that you don’t exactly toss this tome into your bag.

In virtually every article I read about the book, there is a warning. The warnings tend to be about length. About the complicated language. About the long sentences. About the interminable footnotes. About labyrinthine structures.

In short: know what you’re getting into.

This kind of scaremongering has the opposite effect on me, so I cycled to the bookshop on Saturday morning. Because what is also in every article: your effort is doubly rewarded by the end of the novel.

Reading a 1,168-page book requires considerable effort. It helps me to get enormously excited about it in advance. That started a few weeks ago when I read an essay about Infinite Jest in The New Yorker. On arts and culture site Vers Twee I read a series of blogs leading up to the publication of the translation to get in the right mood. This weekend I am also reading pieces in Volkskrant and Trouw.

Lately I haven’t been reading particularly thick novels. I read a lot of collections of shorter pieces, in fact. The very short stories by A.L. Snijders, the diary of Anne Frank, the faxes to Ger by Nicolien Mizee. The last time I allowed myself to get lost in a book for weeks must have been two years ago. I read 1Q84 by Murakami then. And before that: Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, which I read in 2020.

With good cheer I now begin this colossus. Eindeloos Vertier. The bookseller said at the register: “Keep breathing. Let it wash over you slowly.” I detected not a trace of irony in his face when he said that.

II.

Jeff Tweedy is halfway through his set on Wednesday evening at TivoliVredenburg when he says: “We’re getting close to the end.” Disappointed murmurs from the audience, some surprise too. Already? Then the singer continues: “In general, I mean.”

The concert is not politically charged, but it is clear that Tweedy is unhappy about the state of the world. The Grote Zaal reminds him of it. Mild PTSD, he says himself. Ten years ago, the Wilco frontman played here too, on the evening after Donald Trump was first elected president of the United States. “You took good care of us that time,” he says. “Thank you.”

Tweedy is playing solo material tonight, but he has brought a band along. A really excellent and wonderfully likeable band. His two sons Sammy and Spencer are playing, along with three neighborhood friends their age. Papa Tweedy takes his boys on a world tour.

The songs from his latest solo record Twilight Override sound even more irresistible live than on the album. Thanks to the voice and charm of Jeff Tweedy of course, but also very much thanks to that band. They can play softly, but also let songs slowly spiral out of hand with Tweedy bashing away fastest and hardest on his electric guitars. Until the peak is reached — then pull it back down to a quiet ending. The formula always works.

Every evening the band plays a song connected to the country they are in. In Tivoli the choice falls on I Got Nightmares, a 1966 track by the Dutch band Q65 from The Hague. One of Tweedy’s favorite songs, he says himself.

The audience is enjoying it and Tweedy manages well to ease his Tivoli-PTSD. Together we keep the spirits up. The wonderfully meandering and hopeful song Feel Free earns applause when Tweedy sings: “Get yourself born in the USA / Love with a love they can’t take away.”

PS.

On Valentine’s Day, Jeff Tweedy released a quiet cover of Cameron Winter’s Love Takes Miles for his wife. “It seems very true to me about how love kind of actually works,” writes Tweedy on his Substack, where you can listen to it. “I think you can feel the immediate feeling of love over and over and over again. But the real love takes a lot of miles, a lot of time. That’s the kind of love that makes ground harder under your feet and colors stronger. It’s just not the same thing as puppy love.”

This trailer for Toy Story 5 looks really fun. With a tablet from hell as the main villain.

Pieter van der Wielen is one of the best presenters in the Netherlands. I came to know him as the interviewer on Nooit meer slapen; these days I listen to the radio program Nieuwsweekend every week. Now Van der Wielen has written a book, about Paris, told through 160 hotels. The Volkskrant features a lovely interview with him this weekend. “I once did a screen test to succeed Matthijs van Nieuwkerk on DWDD. I was terrible, above all very fake. I was performing like a bad version of myself. A character I hope never to see again. Fortunately I didn’t get it. I nearly became a proper prat.”

This clip from Keuringsdienst van Waarde naturally speaks to my Brabant roots. What makes a proper worstenbroodje?

Harm de Kleine writes a refreshingly original newsletter inspired by music he finds in thrift shops. This week a live recording of Fela Kuti at Paradiso prompts him to dig into newspaper archives. How did journalists who were actually there write about that 1983 performance? Trouw concluded that Fela Kuti was “an arrogant show-off,” for starters. A great piece.

There is a new Lana Del Rey album on the way and I am looking forward to it. This week White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter was released in advance.

You read blog №154, written in the week of 16 to 22 February 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll receive it every Sunday free in your mailbox.