Two Ways to Draw Infinite Jest's Sierpinski Gasket
2 days ago
- #Infinite Jest
- #Sierpinski Gasket
- #David Foster Wallace
- David Foster Wallace confirmed that Infinite Jest is structurally based on the Sierpinski Gasket, a fractal triangle, though he noted edits may have made it 'lopsided'.
- Two methods to construct the Sierpinski Gasket apply: the top-down geometric approach used by Wallace during writing, and the chaos game method experienced by readers through rereading.
- Wallace's construction involves three institutional vertices: Enfield Tennis Academy (discipline), Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (surrender), and the Wheelchair Assassins (ideology), with recursive subdivisions mimicking the fractal.
- Readers build the Gasket via the chaos game: starting from any point, they repeatedly move halfway to a random vertex, with each reread adding points that gradually reveal the fractal structure, explaining why early reads feel like noise.
- Key features of the chaos game metaphor include initial iterations as 'burn-in' (noisy first reads), independence from starting point, and each step relying only on the previous point, allowing non-sequential rereading.
- The Sierpinski Gasket is defined by what is removed; in Infinite Jest, this corresponds to the absent center, such as James Incandenza's death and the Entertainment, which the novel avoids showing directly.
- While the book is finite, the reader's chaos game through rereading can approach infinite resolution, with each pass increasing sampling density and clarifying the structure, aligning with the novel's title and design for prolonged attention.