164. The mountain has been conquered

I.

The mountain has been conquered. That’s really how it feels. After two and a half months I have finished Eindeloos vertier (the Dutch translation of Infinite Jest) by David Foster Wallace. Nearly twelve hundred pages. Dozens of characters, time jumps, sentences that seem never to end, and lists of narcotics with complicated names. I have read it all. It’s done. Do I get a button now?

I wrote about the book twice before: just before I started and roughly halfway through. I think it would be pointless to say much about the content here — if only because I wouldn’t know where to begin. The book is too rich to do justice to in a few paragraphs.

I can, however, say something about my reading experience. The bookseller had urged me to let the novel wash over me. I did that, though that might sound too passive. This book demands active investment from the reader; otherwise you inevitably lose the thread.

One notorious chapter, often cited as boring and unreadable, is about Eschaton, a geopolitical game played by several main and supporting characters in the novel. A sort of living Risk on the tennis court. Pages upon pages describe the complex rules and the players’ moves, dressed in incomprehensible jargon.

I was struggling a little, but at the end of the chapter my patience was richly rewarded. The game had spiralled out of control in a hilarious way. If I had been reading less attentively, I would have missed it.

A valuable reading experience, I thought. A central theme in Infinite Jest is attention. In 1996, Wallace described a dystopian vision of the ultimate attention society. In the book, a video is described that is so addictive that people can do nothing but keep staring at the screen until they die.

Am I letting my attention be hijacked, or am I giving it freely? This month I’m confronting myself (under the banner of May Social Free) with that question, by staying off social media as much as possible. On a meta level, Infinite Jest does the same thing. The book demands your full attention, but then does everything it can to distract you — through perspective shifts and hundreds of footnotes.

At certain moments I lost out to the novel, just as I sometimes lose out to the attention casino in my pocket. Though Infinite Jest at least made me richer.

II.

Quentin Tarantino says he has never seen The Bride Wore Black and you just have to take his word for it. Even though the similarities with Kill Bill are striking. Both are revenge films in which the protagonists (strong women) work their way through a hit list with a certain flair.

He’s not a Truffaut fan, says Tarantino. Hence. And François Truffaut is the one who made The Bride Wore Black in 1968. When the film appeared in cinemas, it received sharp criticism. Truffaut later claimed he didn’t think it was a particularly successful film himself.

I don’t pay much attention to the opinions of Tarantino and Truffaut. I like this kind of film.

The Bride Wore Black is about Julie Kohler, a woman who wants to murder five men. She holds them responsible for the death of her brand-new husband. Truffaut briefly sketches the character of each man before Kohler appears to do away with them.

Kohler is an idealistic killer, Truffaut said in an interview. The men portrayed are one and all sexist and misogynistic. As a viewer you can go quite far with her motivations. Truffaut wanted to give the film a feminist dimension. And although she knows that being vengeful is not right, she won’t be talked out of her plan. The men must die.

I enjoyed the cool, Hitchcock-like storytelling style of the film. As a viewer you know roughly what is about to happen and watch the fate of the men unfold. The murders are sometimes a little absurd, which I enjoy too. Kohler locks one of the men in a stairwell cupboard and then seals the gaps with duct tape, suffocating him within seconds. I mean, come on.

It’s a shame that films like this are so poorly available on the torrent of streaming services in the Netherlands. I’ve therefore been watching more via physical media again. That films like this continue to be released and therefore remain watchable is something I will always support.

PS.

I still remember seeing Un Chien Andalou during a film studies lesson at secondary school. The shot in which an eye is slit open you never forget. Classmates looked away or closed their eyes; mine were opened. So this was also possible with film! Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel is a series of surrealist scenes; Nerdwriter made a video about the thinking (or lack thereof) behind the film.

John Oliver gets worked up about AI chatbots. It gets worse and more disturbing by the minute, and John Oliver gets angrier and angrier.

What a music video this is, people.

You just read blog №164, written in the week of 27 April to 3 May 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and receive it in your inbox every Sunday for free.