I would have loved to have a more thorough experience with AA before having read IJ, I struggled with addiction some when I was younger, and have seen many people go down that path and never come back, so those parts were particularly striking for me. But the Kirkegaardian "leap of faith" and "what you practice is who you are" theme was beautifully done throughout the entire novel.

Also, I never read/saw Hamlet. Apparently I should reallllly do that.

There's definitely the strong presence of the lines between entertainment and addiction overlapping in an unhealthy way, and if you haven't read it, E Unibus Pluram was an article he wrote before IJ was published, and is probably derived from a lot of what he was thinking about while working on IJ, but with focus on television viewership and writing.

I think the book has done a remarkably good job at mostly not becoming dated

Oh man, yeah, it was totally astounding how just, with so much distance socially and technologically we have between the 90s and now, it was still on pointe. I especially found the section about how video-telephoning was a commercial failure, while it wasn't so prescient as to have actually happened, the comments on confusion and mixing of private/public life is spot-on.

if I don't think about something for a few months or more, even if I really do like it, almost everything about it becomes fuzzy in my memory.

I'm really glad I'm not alone on this. I will pile through things, make notes, re-read, highlight, do external reading, and two months later I couldn't quote a line to save my life.

There's a bunch of resources on howlingfantods.com, but,if you want a lil refresher (which did wonders for me considering I hadn't read the beginning section in like 3-4 months now, and jesus christ so much important stuff happened in the first 100 pages that didn't make any sense initially) this is a page-by-page summary and this is it in chronological order.

As for general pomo: It's a vague net cast on a lot of stuff, but, for lit, it's legacy has cast a strange shadow for younger authors trying to move it forward, which was what Franzen addressed in Why Bother?, but I think DFW pulled off beautifully with IJ. Even then, that was still 20 years ago, and I'm at a loss to say what's happening now cause I'm honestly just trying to get through my reading list in my free time.

biiig Pynchon fan, haven't read Gaddis but he's on my list, Burroughs is a developed taste, DeLillo is good, but not like, incredible. I think that contemporary and experimental Latin/South American lit def should be included, like Savage Detectives and Hopscotch, although my exposure and knowledge about that niche is a little limited.

I would def check out Crying of Lot 49 if you haven't, that's usually my go-to when recommending.