Continued thoughts/impressions and the like:
I've re-read R.A.W. & R.S.'s "Illumiatus!" trilogy five or six times over the years.
So reading IJ feels like finding a distant cousin in spirit. They're similarly encyclopedic (I've collected the full list of band names from the Lake Totenkopf festival of anyone is interested!), they both switch between POVs (present/past, inner/outer monologues, etc.), they both contain full vaguely related storylines where some cross paths only on the final pages, they both take place in imagined, remembered, hallucinated and "real" situations, they both revolve around odd public and secret organizations, they both contain oddly gratuitous "Mord und Totschlag" and more...
In my opinion, one of the biggest differences I found was that the trilogy goes into action right away while I feel like I've spent 500 pages in IJ carefully observing the status quo and getting a deep, deep, DEEP brief into "But and this is how we got here..." (BTW I love DFW's sentences starting with "But so/and...")
I'm at 65%, discounting the appendix, and I would say, the first actual action started exactly at the 50% mark. The unfolding of the Eschaton game chaos felt like a "OMG finally something is actually happening!".
And, well, if manifesting the "Eschaton" on a tennis court is not a nod to the trilogy, I don't know what is.
Now, one of the ways, that IJ is gaining a very special place in my heart is that I've never read an author with DFW's level of "Aufnahmevermögen", meaning his ability to observe and verbalize all kinds of inner thoughts that, once he's written them down, made me think "Oh, shit. I've had that exact thought or feeling dozens of times but didn't even notice them!"
Currently it's those incredibly microscopic bylines that have kept me coming back most. I'll find and share some examples later.
