Office Music. Always divisive.

If you step up to the plate and offer your iPod up to the ears of others, prepare to face either congratulatory eyebrow-raising for that surprisingly entertaining Korean electro-Jazz or (far more likely) complete derision for daring to muddy air of your place of business with your ‘maudlin Americana’. (Adam Duritz from the Counting Crows has no business in dreadlocks. No business.)

So what’s the best strategy? Your best bet is to not offer up your music at all - what could be more personal, more soul baring, than sharing with others your “Cool Choons 4 Chillin” playlist? Better yet, combine this tactic with miserly disdain for your colleagues’ choices, steadfastly refusing to offer up any viable alternatives.

Then, when their patience with your refusal to “put up or shut up” has reached breaking point, slap on a general crowd pleaser - maybe a bit of Jimi Hendrix, or some Kraftwerk - and office relations are once again restored.

The author of the second most difficult book I’ve ever tried to read *, I was very sad to read about David Foster Wallace taking his own life last September. And since then, I’ve taken up the challenge of finally finishing ‘Infinite Jest‘. It isn’t just the density of the novel itself, like some kind of star (my knowledge of physics isn’t great, but I think they’re dense) it’s the weight of the bloody thing. I think I’ve increased my chances of developing some kind of hand arthritis though holding the novel. Maybe I should get one of these?

I like to think I’m a man who doesn’t shy away from innovation and I did consider taking the decision to slice the book into ten or so sections and read each one individually, but then there are all the footnotes at the back you have to keep referring to; it wouldn’t work. This would also have given me the chance to read it on my way to and from Blackbridge Inc. of a morning and evening, but I’m not sure if it doesn’t need a calm, isolated environment to really concentrate on it. Something like a literary flotation tank. It also requires utter sobriety, even a small glass of beer, a demi, is enough to befuddle me too much to take it all in.

This all adds up to making a difficult book difficult to read. But I’ll get there, darn it. Mr Wallace, I owe you that much.

* This would be the Recognitions by William Gaddis. It might as well be written in swahili.