The First Draft of Infinite Jest

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In the nineties Wallace sent this guy Steven Moore (editor at Review of Contemporary Fiction/Dalkey Archive, author recently of The Novel: An Alternative History) the first draft of Infinite Jest. Moore still has it and he wrote all about what was in it.

Interesting example:
>A-B. “Preliminary Throat-Clearings.” These two pages contain the dedication to Fenton Foster (whom Wallace identified as “My mother’s father, who died before I was born” in an interview with Valerie Stivers [http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0596May/Verbal/dfwmain.html]), an epigraph—“Sorrow brings forth” from Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell—followed by various definitions of addict and addiction. The first is taken from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, New College Edition, and the rest from Hal’s beloved Oxford English Dictionary, including some illustrative quotations. Two of the more relevant ones: “A man who causes grief to his family by addiction to bad habits” (Mill, Liberty) and “Each man to what sports and revels his addiction leads him” (Shakespeare, Othello 2.2.6). Wallace cut this Moby-Dick-like opening and decided to let Hal summarize his findings: “The original sense of addiction involved being bound over, dedicated, either legally or spiritually. To devote one’s life, plunge in. I had researched this” (IJ 900).

Here's the link: http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/ij_first.htm