This might be the best thing you’ll see on the internet all day. Earlier this year, English professor Kevin Griffith and his 11-year-old son Sebastian started Brickjest, a project in which they aimed to “translate” David Foster Wallace’s postmodernist classic Infinite Jest into Lego form. The final product has some 100 images, each of Lego scenes created by Sebastian based on his father’s descriptions. According to their website, the pair “first envisioned translating David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest into Lego after reading The Brick Bible, by Brendan Powell Smith. Wallace’s novel is probably the only contemporary text to offer a similar challenge to artists working in the medium of Lego.” Well, they certainly met the challenge. After the jump, check out a few of the best scenes, and then head on over to Brickjest to see the whole project.
“P.13. I am rolled supine on the geometric tile. I am concentrating docilely on the question why U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to regain control.” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 64. The tall, ungainly, socially challenged and hard-drinking Dr. Incandenza’s May-December marriage to one of the few bona-fide bombshell-type females in North American Academia, the extremely tall and high-strung . . . Avril Mondragon . . .” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 79. So but when Schtitt dons the leather helmet and goggles and revs up the old F.R.G.-era BMW cycle . . . it is usually eighteen-year-old Mario Incandenza who gets to ride along in the side-car . . .” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 93. Feral hamsters are not pets. They mean business.” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 94. Marathe said: ‘. . . have I merely pretended to pretend to pretend to betray.'” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 125. At which point U.S.S. Millicent Kent stopped them . . . and crushed Mario’s large head to the area just below her breasts . . .” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 268. Schacht and his opponent warm up their groundstrokes with the fluid economy of years of warming up groundstrokes.'” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 322. Eschaton is the most complicated children’s game anybody around E.T.A.’d ever heard of.” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 409. Clipperton plays tennis with the Glock 17 held steadily to his left temple.” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 449. Hal incandenza had this horrible new recurring dream where he was losing his teeth . . .” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 645. ‘Somewhere along late in the progression the old man let it be known he was working on a secret book that revised and explicated much of the world’s military, medical philosophical and religious history by analogies to certain subtle and complex thematic codes in “M*A*S*H.”‘” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith
“p. 981. And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.” Photo Credit: Kevin Griffith