The Inkiest Black

Barbara Balfour’s response to David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest takes the form of an artist’s book entitled The Inkiest Black. Comprised of Needs No Introduction, Long List, Qualified Colours, and White, Black, it pays particular attention to DFW’s vocabulary, his written descriptions of colours, and the various iterations of white and black in the novel, ending with Balfour’s favourite, “the inkiest black”. For those readers overwhelmed by the thought of a novel 1079 pages long, including footnotes, The Inkiest Black is a more compact tome that nonetheless points you in the direction of Infinite Jest.