Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

First published in 1996, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is already accepted as a classic work of literature. The book is set in a dystopic future, where the years themselves have been subsidized, Upper New England is toxic waste dump, and giant feral hamsters roam the land in ravenous packs. The action mostly revolves around life at an elite tennis academy, ETA, and life at the much-less-elite rehab down the road. The book, which is famously 1,079 pages long, endnoted to infinity, not to mention highly unwieldy, plot-wise, has been adapted into music videos and avant garde art shows. But now it has come to possibly the greatest medium of all: LEGO.

Inspired by the LEGO Bible, Kevin Griffith, a Professor of English at Capital University, and his son Sebastian, decided to stage scenes from the book last February. They’ve covered a surprising amount of the plot, and caption each of their photos with a relevant quote. Their process sounds adorable: the elder Griffith describes the scenes to eleven-year-old Sebastian, who then creates them. We’ve included a few of our favorites below, but you can check out the rest on Brickjest.com. Oh, and be warned, there are tons of spoilers…although, with a book like Infinite Jest, spoilers probably don’t matter too much.

Here’s the opening scene, Hal Incandenza’s interview with the various Deans of the University of Arizona:

Infinite Jest in LEGO - Hal's Opening Scene

A scene from James Incandenza’s masterpiece, Blood Sister: One Tough Nun:

Infinite Jest in LEGO - Blood Sister: One Tough Nun

Orin Incandenza, flying high with the Cardinals of the future:

Infinite Jest in LEGO - Orin Incandenza as a Phoenix Cardinal

Here’s Donald Gately and the rest of the Enfield residents, sitting in the common room:

Infinite Jest in LEGO - Enfield House

And here’s the scene with Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.), the Antitoi Bros., and the broomstick. If you’ve read the book, you know which one we mean, and please don’t ask us to describe it any further. Just be glad we left the Raquel Welch scene out…

Infinite Jest in LEGO - Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.)

[via Electric Literature!]

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Stubby the Rocket

Author

Learn More About Stubby
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments