Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Still Life
Page 87
He opened the ledger to the "Contested Entries" section and inscribed; Wallace, David Foster – “Infinite Jest” Status: Under Ritual Review. Pending Soliloquy.
He would speak of it at dusk, in the Great Hall. Whether or not anyone listened.
The Soliloquy of William I, Prince of Orange
On the Matter of “Infinite Jest”
"There are books that arrive too early, and books that arrive too late. This one arrived precisely when I was not looking."
He stands beneath the ancestral tapestry, hands clasped behind his back, speaking to no one and everyone.
"I have resisted its inclusion. Not out of disdain, but out of caution. For what is a classic, if not a wound that refuses to heal?"
He paces slowly, the echo of his boots a metronome of doubt.
"Wallace wrote as if he knew we would not understand him until we had forgotten how to read. He footnoted our distractions, indexed our grief, and made tennis a metaphor for recursive despair. I respect that. I fear it."
He pauses before the fireplace, which burns cedar as always.