Infinite Jest: A Novel.

Uncorrected proof of the first edition of the author’s magnum opus. Thick octavo, original wrappers. Boldly signed by David Foster Wallace with his added smiley face on the front free endpaper and three times by jacket designer Steve Snider: on the front panel, the front free endpaper beneath Wallace, and on the rear panel. Steve Snider, a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a designer whose fifty-year career encompassed the art directorships of The Atlantic, Little, Brown and Company, and St. Martin’s Press, produced one of the most recognizable typographic jacket designs in the history of American publishing when he created the cover for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Reasoning that the novel at over 1,000 pages and two and three-eighths inches thick required a jacket that announced its importance with grand and approachable typography rather than specific imagery, Snider focused on the word “infinite” and deployed what he and editor Michael Pietsch described as “the Big Book look,” presenting a single design that Pietsch approved immediately and that the sales force loved without reservation. The author was a conspicuous exception to the general enthusiasm. Wallace’s six-word response upon receiving the jacket was: “Got the jacket. Wow. Pretty sky.” And when he signed Snider’s personal copy of the novel, he inscribed it “For Steve Snyder — with many thanks,” misspelling the designer’s name with a Y rather than an I, a small but pointed error that Snider has noted with characteristic wit, wondering in retrospect whether it reflected a genuine oversight or a quietly deliberate expression of the author’s displeasure. The anecdote has since become one of the more celebrated and bittersweet footnotes in the history of a book that Chad Harbach declared in 2004 now looks like the central American novel of the past thirty years, a dense star for lesser work to orbit. In near fine condition with creasing to the top of the spine and light bumping. Publicity sticker of the Little Brown representative to the front panel. Jacket designer by Steve Snider.