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Infinite Jest
Somewhere in the not-so-distant future, the screwed-up residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the Enfield Tennis Academy search for the master copy of a movie so dangerously entertaining that its viewers die in a state of catatonic bliss. Explores essential questions about what entertainment is, why we need it, and what it...more
Somewhere in the not-so-distant future, the screwed-up residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the Enfield Tennis Academy search for the master copy of a movie so dangerously entertaining that its viewers die in a state of catatonic bliss. Explores essential questions about what entertainment is, why we need it, and what it says about who we are.(less)
Paperback, First Paperback Edition, 1079 pages
Published
February 1st 1997
by Back Bay Books
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ISBN
0316921173
(ISBN13: 9780316921176)
edition language
English
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May 22, 2013
Joshua Nomen-Mutatio
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
re-reading
While I don't actually have A Favorite Book (or Song, or Album, or Band, or Film, or Painting, or Sexual Position, or any other category of things that contain more than one equally great contender) Infinite Jest is the first book that immediately comes to mind when the idea of My Favorite Book arises.
As I've already alluded to and partially instantiated in a few scattered places around GoodReads, I feel that I read this book at the right time. The contingent particulars which culminated as the...more While I don't actually have A Favorite Book (or Song, or Album, or Band, or Film, or Painting, or Sexual Position, or any other category of things that contain more than one equally great contender) Infinite Jest is the first book that immediately comes to mind when the idea of My Favorite Book arises.
As I've already alluded to and partially instantiated in a few scattered places around GoodReads, I feel that I read this book at the right time. The contingent particulars which culminated as the temporal whole that was My Life converged with my reading of this book rather beautifully.
First of all, I had zero knowledge of the book and author before and throughout my reading. I came upon it as a babe in the woods in these regards. I was completely unaware of its popular and largely positive critical reception seven years prior in 1996. For this I am grateful. It's all too easy to hop on the backlash bandwagon when "critical darlings" and "it-people" of the moment emerge on your radar. I take great pains to try to avoid this kind of thing, but it's not easy.
I also was juggling a variety of ongoing, confused trains of thought about the basic subjects that the book focuses on—to boil them down as far as relevantly and reasonably possible: Addiction, Entertainment, and Western Culture, specifically that of the modern US of A. I was also deep in the trenches of "stomach-level sadness."{1}
____________________________________________
{1} What were you intending to do when you started this book?
I wanted to do something sad. I'd done some funny stuff and some heavy, intellectual stuff, but I'd never done anything sad. And I wanted it not to have a single main character. The other banality would be: I wanted to do something real American, about what it's like to live in America around the millennium.
And what is that like?
There's something particularly sad about it, something that doesn't have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It's more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness. Whether it's unique to our generation I really don't know. (Interview)
____________________________________________
I had borrowed the copy that I read the first time around from my best friend at the time, who I'd been close with since early childhood. I'd been confiding some existential angst to him about depression and the exacerbation of said depression with miscellaneous self-medicating behavioral patterns. He responded by solemnly handing me a thick book wrapped in the image of white cumulus clouds imposed upon a bright blue sky.
Cut to the summer of 2004: I'd just finished my first year of real (not community) college and was working on the buildings and grounds crew around the campus in exchange for eight dollars an hour and a free room. I spent the days doing all manner of maintenance and grunt work and my nights poring over this book and dramatically rediscovered the joys of falling head first into a fictional world and the redemptive value of communing with the consciousness of another person through reading and writing. I also found another artist to feel a deep kinship with and solely through the type of communion that is mediated by pulped trees and ink. Wallace was rather quickly inducted into the ever-expanding (and occasionally contracting) roster that is my pantheon of personal heroes, and as such also rapidly ascended through the ranks to sit somewhere vaguely near the zenith point (again, the trouble with ranking).
I was hooked in a big way by the time I hit upon the scene describing the torturously self-conscious, self-doubting thoughts of a cannabis addict named Ken Erdedy. This was well before the hundredth page mark. It perfectly captured the mind of a hyper-analytic depressive and compulsive THC ingestor. From the sorrowfully resigned glee (that all minutely self-aware addicts feel at various points along the path of Addiction) of planning a two week long "marijuana vacation"{2} to the descriptions of how depressing having sex with someone would be in such an excessively stoned and self-loathing state.{3}
____________________________________________
{3} Consisting mainly of drawing the blinds, shutting off the phone, being perpetually intoxicated with pot smoke, watching films, vigorously masturbating, and loads of fractally expanding and contracting shame and despair lurking beneath it all and frequently bursting through the surface for greedy gulps of oxygen and one-on-one time with the vacationer’s psyche. This planning is all being done in the context of desperately attempting to find a way to finally pluck the compulsive behavior (getting high) from his life—excessive use of the demonized substance is rationalized as the savior, the one thing that will finally make him disgusted enough to quit forever.
{3} "He had never once had actual intercourse on marijuana. Frankly, the idea repelled him. Two dry mouths bumping at each other, trying to kiss, his self-conscious thoughts twisting around on themselves like a snake on a stick while he bucked and snorted dryly above her, his swollen eyes red and his face sagging so that its slack folds maybe touch, limply, the folds of her own loose sagging face as it sloshed back and forth on his pillow, its mouth working dryly." (pp. 22-23)
____________________________________________
There's simply too much—too many amazing scenes and characters—to even begin the process of surgically removing them, holding them up to the light of the review, and rendering them vague enough to maintain some requisite mystery and yet contextualized enough to give each pinned down specimen some mouth-watering OOMPF! for the Dear Reader. It simply cannot be done. (People can cast their gaze in the direction of the myriad collegiate dissertations already written about this book and/or a book called Elegant Complexity if they want in-depth analysis.) Luckily, many of the people I know who will read this review have already read the novel.
So there's a terrible type of rumor that roams around about this book, and Wallace more generally, and these sentiments can be rounded up and boiled down to "It's all PoMo trickery and no heart." Wrong. So very, very wrong. I’ve always seen this book as the emergent property/locus of a web-like arrangement of profoundly emotionally compelling portraits of people, places and things. This is its core, its essence, its fundamental organizing principle. Yes, there are some gags, like footnotes and some funny names, but what the naysayers seem to overlook are the hundreds of seismically moving descriptions of human struggles and triumphs; from the head-clutchingly/jaw-gapingly dramatic to the very recognizably monotonous (which can be very edifying, this process of recognition); from the painfully, inherently private and singular to the monumentally universal and public.
Wallace's desire to write a sorrowful book is fully realized here. I think it’s safe to say that this a tragedy—in the Shakespearean{4} sense of the term—and that it, like the greatest tragedies, does not simply pummel you with darkness but pokes holes of humor and joy through the opaque veil to allow for some breathing room. Indeed, there are some extremely funny things going on in this book and it’s mostly a darker shade of humor that is employing them. Not at all like putting a clown nose on a prisoner being executed or anything—DFW is much more naturally funny than that—but a beautiful balance of the genuinely sad, the genuinely funny and the instances of absurdity where both overlap.
____________________________________________
{4} FYI: The title comes from a line in Hamlet, "Alas, poor Yorick!—I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
____________________________________________
I also think of this book as mostly embodying a style of realism, though there are occasionally some rather extraordinary things taking place as well. What I'm trying to stress is that it’s not some non-stop ride of wacky gimmicks and metafiction (which is strangely—and mistakenly—the impression some blurbs give of this book). Beneath the hilarious absurdity of things like business corporations annually purchasing the names of the year (which is a brilliant gag, by the way) there is a massive foundation of stark realism and humanism perched stoically beneath, and it's all just slightly, artfully tweaked in ways that makes you wonder how this or that instance of absurdity is really much different from the absurdity faced in your slice of the non-fictional world that you inhabit. I’ll go ahead and just state it plainly: referring to our units of measurement, like our neat bundles of 365 days, as things like "Year of the Adult Depends Undergarment" or "Year of the Trial-Sized Dove Bar" is less insane than the very real concept of corporate personhood.
As far as self-referentiality and the use of metafictional techniques are concerned, I simply see none of it. Nowhere are we "cleverly" "reminded" that we're reading a book—at least not explicitly. Nowhere is that little wink and nudge of "This is a book/I am an author writing a book" ever inserted into the prose. This was something Wallace very consciously avoided along with a species of irony that he’s referred to as being representative of "the song of a bird who’s come to love its cage."
I've discussed this with Bram before and he makes some mention of DFW’s self-consciousness seeping through the pages of Infinite Jest in his wonderful, if slightly less religiously devoted review. Bram’s point seems to be more so that Wallace’s voice throughout the novel is very much his voice (the same type of charge gets launched at DeLillo, as I briefly covered elsewhere). This is indisputable. The thing is this: it doesn’t bother me in the least because, as Bram writes on the subject of DFW’s voice, "Whatever his reason for writing this way, it works because this voice is such a joy to read." Amen, brother Bram.
Indeed, I found it to be such a joy that I didn’t even notice this fact about the prose-style in either my first or second reading. I don’t mind that the thoughts of a physically deformed and mentally challenged teenager are narrated with the same voice as the thoughts of a clinically depressed thirtysomething woman, or a wheelchair-bound Québécoise assassin, or the prettiest (veiled) girl of all time, or an alcoholic experimental filmmaker and his childhood self, et cetera.
The book is written from a completely third-person perspective, too. This is an important fact to note. Had Wallace tried to cram his voice into first-person perspectives of the characters it would’ve been an unpublishable disaster. But he didn’t, it wasn't, so let's get over it and just come to grips with what it means to write from the third-person perspective. In sum, this book is proof positive, by my lights, that characters don’t have to take on wildly different tones of voice and manners of thought and speech in order to be rendered deeply sympathetic and compelling.
For most of the book the prose is so pitch-perfect and the on-page action so arresting that I simply didn’t make a note of this just-now-mentioned technical stuff about perspective, tonal-shifts, and so on. There are some relative lulls, like some of the extended descriptions of tennis matches, but on the vastly larger slice of the pie chart the book remains extremely entertaining, thought-provoking, tear-duct-lubing, belly-tickling, soul-massaging, etc. The scenes at Ennett Recovery House and the AA meetings are flawless and much of it struck me quite strongly as being amazingly insightful and emotionally jarring. Upon my second reading of the novel I discovered where the cover image of the sky might possibly have come from:
"You are at a fork in the road that Boston AA calls your Bottom, though the term is misleading, because everybody here agrees it’s more like someplace very high and unsupported: you’re on the edge of something tall and leaning way out forward...." (p. 347)
Everything involving the Incandenza family is superb. Same with Joelle Van Dyne (aka Madame Psychosis, aka P.G.O.A.T {Prettiest Girl of All Time}). Same with Gately. Same with the entire conceptual-metaphorical apparatus behind the notorious film mostly known as "The Entertainment" (officially titled Infinite Jest) as well as the actual socio-political entanglements that surround it. Same with the brilliant conversational back 'n' forths between Marathe and Steeply, where some of the greatest insights into the three major themes of the novel occur. Same with Wallace's sheer talent with language, including the coining of highly memorable terms and idioms. There are now two phrases I use around fellow fans of this book when the moment is appropriate: "the howling fantods" (in reference to feelings of extreme nervousness and high-strung emotional strain) and "to eliminate one's map" (in reference to suicide). I could gush on and on and on and on...
This all just makes me want to settle into Round Three right this very second and read it all over again—and I just might. Infinite Jest has the quality of slowly unfurling in your memory, which makes sense considering the sheer length, the descriptive depth, and the broad spectrum of content. Each re-exposed detail symbiotically attaches itself into the larger, self-organizing, cumulative memory of how fucking amazing the book was and indeed still is.
When I met the tome's final sentence and finished it off I was left with an amazing set of feelings that's very difficult to describe satisfactorily. Basically, I felt a deep abiding sadness at the fact that it was now finished. I found myself somewhat frantically flipping between the final page and the "Notes & Errata" section, irrationally seeking more words—I may as well have been tearing the room apart looking for meth money. I felt a physiological craving confined and radiating within. I wanted more! More entertainment! More communion. More redemption. More identification. And then as I sat stunned and staring at the final paragraph it hit me: David Foster Wallace wanted the reader to feel this way.{5}
____________________________________________
{5} On some level all writers and artists and anyone trying to "sell" anything (ideas, feelings, books, etc) to other people all want those people to keep coming back for more, but there was more than that standard set of intentions going on in Infinite Jest. He was trying to show people something about themselves, namely that sad, funny, and strange spectacle of continually seeking pleasure and relief.
____________________________________________
He wanted the reader to acknowledge Craving. He turned the mirror of the Ennett House upon the reader and captured their reflection and left them with things to think deeply about outside of the book. My eyes widened and my jaw literally dropped open and the word "Genius" popped into my head, scattering the cognitive noise and bringing me one more brief moment of Thoughtless Bliss.(less)
As I've already alluded to and partially instantiated in a few scattered places around GoodReads, I feel that I read this book at the right time. The contingent particulars which culminated as the...more While I don't actually have A Favorite Book (or Song, or Album, or Band, or Film, or Painting, or Sexual Position, or any other category of things that contain more than one equally great contender) Infinite Jest is the first book that immediately comes to mind when the idea of My Favorite Book arises.
As I've already alluded to and partially instantiated in a few scattered places around GoodReads, I feel that I read this book at the right time. The contingent particulars which culminated as the temporal whole that was My Life converged with my reading of this book rather beautifully.
First of all, I had zero knowledge of the book and author before and throughout my reading. I came upon it as a babe in the woods in these regards. I was completely unaware of its popular and largely positive critical reception seven years prior in 1996. For this I am grateful. It's all too easy to hop on the backlash bandwagon when "critical darlings" and "it-people" of the moment emerge on your radar. I take great pains to try to avoid this kind of thing, but it's not easy.
I also was juggling a variety of ongoing, confused trains of thought about the basic subjects that the book focuses on—to boil them down as far as relevantly and reasonably possible: Addiction, Entertainment, and Western Culture, specifically that of the modern US of A. I was also deep in the trenches of "stomach-level sadness."{1}
____________________________________________
{1} What were you intending to do when you started this book?
I wanted to do something sad. I'd done some funny stuff and some heavy, intellectual stuff, but I'd never done anything sad. And I wanted it not to have a single main character. The other banality would be: I wanted to do something real American, about what it's like to live in America around the millennium.
And what is that like?
There's something particularly sad about it, something that doesn't have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It's more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness. Whether it's unique to our generation I really don't know. (Interview)
____________________________________________
I had borrowed the copy that I read the first time around from my best friend at the time, who I'd been close with since early childhood. I'd been confiding some existential angst to him about depression and the exacerbation of said depression with miscellaneous self-medicating behavioral patterns. He responded by solemnly handing me a thick book wrapped in the image of white cumulus clouds imposed upon a bright blue sky.
Cut to the summer of 2004: I'd just finished my first year of real (not community) college and was working on the buildings and grounds crew around the campus in exchange for eight dollars an hour and a free room. I spent the days doing all manner of maintenance and grunt work and my nights poring over this book and dramatically rediscovered the joys of falling head first into a fictional world and the redemptive value of communing with the consciousness of another person through reading and writing. I also found another artist to feel a deep kinship with and solely through the type of communion that is mediated by pulped trees and ink. Wallace was rather quickly inducted into the ever-expanding (and occasionally contracting) roster that is my pantheon of personal heroes, and as such also rapidly ascended through the ranks to sit somewhere vaguely near the zenith point (again, the trouble with ranking).
I was hooked in a big way by the time I hit upon the scene describing the torturously self-conscious, self-doubting thoughts of a cannabis addict named Ken Erdedy. This was well before the hundredth page mark. It perfectly captured the mind of a hyper-analytic depressive and compulsive THC ingestor. From the sorrowfully resigned glee (that all minutely self-aware addicts feel at various points along the path of Addiction) of planning a two week long "marijuana vacation"{2} to the descriptions of how depressing having sex with someone would be in such an excessively stoned and self-loathing state.{3}
____________________________________________
{3} Consisting mainly of drawing the blinds, shutting off the phone, being perpetually intoxicated with pot smoke, watching films, vigorously masturbating, and loads of fractally expanding and contracting shame and despair lurking beneath it all and frequently bursting through the surface for greedy gulps of oxygen and one-on-one time with the vacationer’s psyche. This planning is all being done in the context of desperately attempting to find a way to finally pluck the compulsive behavior (getting high) from his life—excessive use of the demonized substance is rationalized as the savior, the one thing that will finally make him disgusted enough to quit forever.
{3} "He had never once had actual intercourse on marijuana. Frankly, the idea repelled him. Two dry mouths bumping at each other, trying to kiss, his self-conscious thoughts twisting around on themselves like a snake on a stick while he bucked and snorted dryly above her, his swollen eyes red and his face sagging so that its slack folds maybe touch, limply, the folds of her own loose sagging face as it sloshed back and forth on his pillow, its mouth working dryly." (pp. 22-23)
____________________________________________
There's simply too much—too many amazing scenes and characters—to even begin the process of surgically removing them, holding them up to the light of the review, and rendering them vague enough to maintain some requisite mystery and yet contextualized enough to give each pinned down specimen some mouth-watering OOMPF! for the Dear Reader. It simply cannot be done. (People can cast their gaze in the direction of the myriad collegiate dissertations already written about this book and/or a book called Elegant Complexity if they want in-depth analysis.) Luckily, many of the people I know who will read this review have already read the novel.
So there's a terrible type of rumor that roams around about this book, and Wallace more generally, and these sentiments can be rounded up and boiled down to "It's all PoMo trickery and no heart." Wrong. So very, very wrong. I’ve always seen this book as the emergent property/locus of a web-like arrangement of profoundly emotionally compelling portraits of people, places and things. This is its core, its essence, its fundamental organizing principle. Yes, there are some gags, like footnotes and some funny names, but what the naysayers seem to overlook are the hundreds of seismically moving descriptions of human struggles and triumphs; from the head-clutchingly/jaw-gapingly dramatic to the very recognizably monotonous (which can be very edifying, this process of recognition); from the painfully, inherently private and singular to the monumentally universal and public.
Wallace's desire to write a sorrowful book is fully realized here. I think it’s safe to say that this a tragedy—in the Shakespearean{4} sense of the term—and that it, like the greatest tragedies, does not simply pummel you with darkness but pokes holes of humor and joy through the opaque veil to allow for some breathing room. Indeed, there are some extremely funny things going on in this book and it’s mostly a darker shade of humor that is employing them. Not at all like putting a clown nose on a prisoner being executed or anything—DFW is much more naturally funny than that—but a beautiful balance of the genuinely sad, the genuinely funny and the instances of absurdity where both overlap.
____________________________________________
{4} FYI: The title comes from a line in Hamlet, "Alas, poor Yorick!—I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
____________________________________________
I also think of this book as mostly embodying a style of realism, though there are occasionally some rather extraordinary things taking place as well. What I'm trying to stress is that it’s not some non-stop ride of wacky gimmicks and metafiction (which is strangely—and mistakenly—the impression some blurbs give of this book). Beneath the hilarious absurdity of things like business corporations annually purchasing the names of the year (which is a brilliant gag, by the way) there is a massive foundation of stark realism and humanism perched stoically beneath, and it's all just slightly, artfully tweaked in ways that makes you wonder how this or that instance of absurdity is really much different from the absurdity faced in your slice of the non-fictional world that you inhabit. I’ll go ahead and just state it plainly: referring to our units of measurement, like our neat bundles of 365 days, as things like "Year of the Adult Depends Undergarment" or "Year of the Trial-Sized Dove Bar" is less insane than the very real concept of corporate personhood.
As far as self-referentiality and the use of metafictional techniques are concerned, I simply see none of it. Nowhere are we "cleverly" "reminded" that we're reading a book—at least not explicitly. Nowhere is that little wink and nudge of "This is a book/I am an author writing a book" ever inserted into the prose. This was something Wallace very consciously avoided along with a species of irony that he’s referred to as being representative of "the song of a bird who’s come to love its cage."
I've discussed this with Bram before and he makes some mention of DFW’s self-consciousness seeping through the pages of Infinite Jest in his wonderful, if slightly less religiously devoted review. Bram’s point seems to be more so that Wallace’s voice throughout the novel is very much his voice (the same type of charge gets launched at DeLillo, as I briefly covered elsewhere). This is indisputable. The thing is this: it doesn’t bother me in the least because, as Bram writes on the subject of DFW’s voice, "Whatever his reason for writing this way, it works because this voice is such a joy to read." Amen, brother Bram.
Indeed, I found it to be such a joy that I didn’t even notice this fact about the prose-style in either my first or second reading. I don’t mind that the thoughts of a physically deformed and mentally challenged teenager are narrated with the same voice as the thoughts of a clinically depressed thirtysomething woman, or a wheelchair-bound Québécoise assassin, or the prettiest (veiled) girl of all time, or an alcoholic experimental filmmaker and his childhood self, et cetera.
The book is written from a completely third-person perspective, too. This is an important fact to note. Had Wallace tried to cram his voice into first-person perspectives of the characters it would’ve been an unpublishable disaster. But he didn’t, it wasn't, so let's get over it and just come to grips with what it means to write from the third-person perspective. In sum, this book is proof positive, by my lights, that characters don’t have to take on wildly different tones of voice and manners of thought and speech in order to be rendered deeply sympathetic and compelling.
For most of the book the prose is so pitch-perfect and the on-page action so arresting that I simply didn’t make a note of this just-now-mentioned technical stuff about perspective, tonal-shifts, and so on. There are some relative lulls, like some of the extended descriptions of tennis matches, but on the vastly larger slice of the pie chart the book remains extremely entertaining, thought-provoking, tear-duct-lubing, belly-tickling, soul-massaging, etc. The scenes at Ennett Recovery House and the AA meetings are flawless and much of it struck me quite strongly as being amazingly insightful and emotionally jarring. Upon my second reading of the novel I discovered where the cover image of the sky might possibly have come from:
"You are at a fork in the road that Boston AA calls your Bottom, though the term is misleading, because everybody here agrees it’s more like someplace very high and unsupported: you’re on the edge of something tall and leaning way out forward...." (p. 347)
Everything involving the Incandenza family is superb. Same with Joelle Van Dyne (aka Madame Psychosis, aka P.G.O.A.T {Prettiest Girl of All Time}). Same with Gately. Same with the entire conceptual-metaphorical apparatus behind the notorious film mostly known as "The Entertainment" (officially titled Infinite Jest) as well as the actual socio-political entanglements that surround it. Same with the brilliant conversational back 'n' forths between Marathe and Steeply, where some of the greatest insights into the three major themes of the novel occur. Same with Wallace's sheer talent with language, including the coining of highly memorable terms and idioms. There are now two phrases I use around fellow fans of this book when the moment is appropriate: "the howling fantods" (in reference to feelings of extreme nervousness and high-strung emotional strain) and "to eliminate one's map" (in reference to suicide). I could gush on and on and on and on...
This all just makes me want to settle into Round Three right this very second and read it all over again—and I just might. Infinite Jest has the quality of slowly unfurling in your memory, which makes sense considering the sheer length, the descriptive depth, and the broad spectrum of content. Each re-exposed detail symbiotically attaches itself into the larger, self-organizing, cumulative memory of how fucking amazing the book was and indeed still is.
When I met the tome's final sentence and finished it off I was left with an amazing set of feelings that's very difficult to describe satisfactorily. Basically, I felt a deep abiding sadness at the fact that it was now finished. I found myself somewhat frantically flipping between the final page and the "Notes & Errata" section, irrationally seeking more words—I may as well have been tearing the room apart looking for meth money. I felt a physiological craving confined and radiating within. I wanted more! More entertainment! More communion. More redemption. More identification. And then as I sat stunned and staring at the final paragraph it hit me: David Foster Wallace wanted the reader to feel this way.{5}
____________________________________________
{5} On some level all writers and artists and anyone trying to "sell" anything (ideas, feelings, books, etc) to other people all want those people to keep coming back for more, but there was more than that standard set of intentions going on in Infinite Jest. He was trying to show people something about themselves, namely that sad, funny, and strange spectacle of continually seeking pleasure and relief.
____________________________________________
He wanted the reader to acknowledge Craving. He turned the mirror of the Ennett House upon the reader and captured their reflection and left them with things to think deeply about outside of the book. My eyes widened and my jaw literally dropped open and the word "Genius" popped into my head, scattering the cognitive noise and bringing me one more brief moment of Thoughtless Bliss.(less)
204 likes · like · see review
I've finally reached the end of this amazing book. It's not an easy read, but after a while you discover that there are good reasons why it has to be the way it is.
The review is the mini-blog I kept while I was reading it. It sort of contains spoilers: I don't give away very much about the plot, but I do spend a lot of time speculating about what the overall point of the book is. So if that kind of thing bothers you, you probably shouldn't read on. Read Infinite Jest instead, then come back and...more I've finally reached the end of this amazing book. It's not an easy read, but after a while you discover that there are good reasons why it has to be the way it is.
The review is the mini-blog I kept while I was reading it. It sort of contains spoilers: I don't give away very much about the plot, but I do spend a lot of time speculating about what the overall point of the book is. So if that kind of thing bothers you, you probably shouldn't read on. Read Infinite Jest instead, then come back and see if you agree with me :)
The rest of this review is in my book What Pooh Might Have Said to Dante and Other Futile Speculations
(less)
The review is the mini-blog I kept while I was reading it. It sort of contains spoilers: I don't give away very much about the plot, but I do spend a lot of time speculating about what the overall point of the book is. So if that kind of thing bothers you, you probably shouldn't read on. Read Infinite Jest instead, then come back and...more I've finally reached the end of this amazing book. It's not an easy read, but after a while you discover that there are good reasons why it has to be the way it is.
The review is the mini-blog I kept while I was reading it. It sort of contains spoilers: I don't give away very much about the plot, but I do spend a lot of time speculating about what the overall point of the book is. So if that kind of thing bothers you, you probably shouldn't read on. Read Infinite Jest instead, then come back and see if you agree with me :)
The rest of this review is in my book What Pooh Might Have Said to Dante and Other Futile Speculations
(less)
87 likes · like · see review
Cecily
I like the blog-style of this review. It's a book I've heard so much about, and yet until now, I've never had a very clear idea of what it's about. I'...more
I like the blog-style of this review. It's a book I've heard so much about, and yet until now, I've never had a very clear idea of what it's about. I'm still unsure as to whether I want to read it, but you've piqued my interest.(less)
May 06, 2013 05:44am
May 06, 2013 05:44am
Manny
It was a real blog - I actually did compose it as a series of posts! Glad to hear I've got you interested :)
May 06, 2013 02:15pm
May 06, 2013 02:15pm
I've been waiting, panther-like, for the right combination of caffeine and personal gumption to strike, to attack writing about this, since it really is one of my favorite books ever-ever, and one of the most fascinating things I've ever read. I've read this book twice and I could care less what people say about it, because when I *do* care, I tend to grit my teeth over the ridiculous comments & reviews that tend to come up in discussing David Foster Wallace's work. People like to levy the c...more
I've been waiting, panther-like, for the right combination of caffeine and personal gumption to strike, to attack writing about this, since it really is one of my favorite books ever-ever, and one of the most fascinating things I've ever read. I've read this book twice and I could care less what people say about it, because when I *do* care, I tend to grit my teeth over the ridiculous comments & reviews that tend to come up in discussing David Foster Wallace's work. People like to levy the criticism that the book is "sloppy" or "digressive". Really? You think? An 1100 page book with 200 pages of small-print footnotes might be a little digressive or indulgent or maddening? It might stray a wee bit into uncharted, dark-woods territory? Jeez.
There is, in art, what I like to call the "crazy project". Once you go to work on the Crazy Project -- C.P. for short -- you don't leave the Crazy Project. You don't FINISH the crazy project. You can -- when you are really involved in it, I mean really involved -- scarcely even talk about it; you may not even realize you're involved in it. The C.P. involves being given a hammer (the only real tool of the artist), a mouthful of nails, and being sent "over yonder hill" and told to do AS MUCH DAMAGE AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN with the hammer you have been given. When working on the C.P., the creative force is one in the same as the destructive force, and your hammer is a useful tool regardless of which way you are swinging it.
I think DFW is one of the most fascinating authors alive -- he's doing work with the English language in the tradition of Kathy Acker, Bill Burroughs, or James Joyce. The marketplace demands "novels" and so people oblige, but there is a difference between a "novel" and a BOOK, and I would consider a book to be more interesting -- if more difficult and less "composed"-- and Infinite Jest is definitely a BOOK, and shouldn't be treated as a "novel" in the same way, say, "Life of Pi" is a novel (and I do think Life of Pi is terrific, don't get me wrong). But, if you want immaculately written works of fiction by Wallace, check out his short stories -- especially the ones in Girl w/ Curious Hair -- because these conform more to what you would expect from traditional notions of "reading fiction". If you want a beautiful, wildly ambitious, insanely indulgent, uncompromising mind-bending skull-violating MESS, one that comprises an entire Victorian manor of the Crazy Project, then Infinite Jest may well be worth your while.
The book is, definitely, a mess, let's not mince words. It is also obsessively-compulsively mathematical in the way that DFW seems to enjoy; there is an order to the chaos, and it did take reading it a second time to pull out some of the exquisitely crafted crystalline plot strands he was working at. Linearity & coherence of disparate plot elements is not what the book is interested in, be warned.
But before I make the case of this being some academic project with no soul, let me say that reading this, I was genuinely surprised and moved by how deep & real the characters in it become. The characters in here are terribly tragic, in a real Shakespearian sense (the book's title is after all a reference to Hamlet), and their tapestry in this book's pages is as intimate and heartrending as it is vast; this book is a language project but one that remains absolutely invested in the lives of the people involved in that "project".
The book is about a lot of things: American culture & the nature of desire, fathers and sons, art, addiction, institutions, drugs, consciousness, film & the nature of narrative . . . too much to go into. More than anything, I think, the book is about addiction, and how our desires are moderated and mediated by culture, and how desire & addiction are entwined, and how Westerners approach these things.
Infinite Jest is wildly funny and, like I mentioned above, almost unexpectedly moving: there is a kind of veneer between the reader and the characters; they are guarded and stoic people, for the most part, and "getting to know" them can be as frustrating as trying to "get to know" someone in your own life who is guarded and careful with their emotions. But over the course of hundreds of pages you learn the inner-workings of IJ's huge cast, and their emotional motivations and subtleties begin to resonate with you in ways that dig so deep I think they're almost frightening.
This book is dense enough -- to say the least -- that I think you can get out of it whatever you are willing to put into it. Isn't this true of most good art? But the depth here is incredible. To say I'm "biased" and a bit blinded to criticisms about this book is hardly the point -- I think its a marvel, I think its a mess, I think it taught me what the difference is between a book & a novel, and why I think BOOKS are what the front-line artists working on the Crazy Project are really hammering out.
update/addendum: I wrote this when DFW was still alive. It pains me to even go back and read this review -- "one of the most fascinating authors alive". I can reliably drop the last word of that now. DFW's suicide still stings like no other artist for me. I do know I'm not alone there, a lot of people who admire his work feel it. We were robbed -- it's selfish, incredibly so, but so is suicide.
Objectively, I still think Girl With Curious Hair is probably the best place to start, but I didn't start there, I started here, and it worked out okay. Just know this is a glorious mess, be patient with it, the book wants to be your daddy, but you have to be its daddy, let it teach you as you guide it it -- it's a living thing, this book, all the more precious now.(less)
There is, in art, what I like to call the "crazy project". Once you go to work on the Crazy Project -- C.P. for short -- you don't leave the Crazy Project. You don't FINISH the crazy project. You can -- when you are really involved in it, I mean really involved -- scarcely even talk about it; you may not even realize you're involved in it. The C.P. involves being given a hammer (the only real tool of the artist), a mouthful of nails, and being sent "over yonder hill" and told to do AS MUCH DAMAGE AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN with the hammer you have been given. When working on the C.P., the creative force is one in the same as the destructive force, and your hammer is a useful tool regardless of which way you are swinging it.
I think DFW is one of the most fascinating authors alive -- he's doing work with the English language in the tradition of Kathy Acker, Bill Burroughs, or James Joyce. The marketplace demands "novels" and so people oblige, but there is a difference between a "novel" and a BOOK, and I would consider a book to be more interesting -- if more difficult and less "composed"-- and Infinite Jest is definitely a BOOK, and shouldn't be treated as a "novel" in the same way, say, "Life of Pi" is a novel (and I do think Life of Pi is terrific, don't get me wrong). But, if you want immaculately written works of fiction by Wallace, check out his short stories -- especially the ones in Girl w/ Curious Hair -- because these conform more to what you would expect from traditional notions of "reading fiction". If you want a beautiful, wildly ambitious, insanely indulgent, uncompromising mind-bending skull-violating MESS, one that comprises an entire Victorian manor of the Crazy Project, then Infinite Jest may well be worth your while.
The book is, definitely, a mess, let's not mince words. It is also obsessively-compulsively mathematical in the way that DFW seems to enjoy; there is an order to the chaos, and it did take reading it a second time to pull out some of the exquisitely crafted crystalline plot strands he was working at. Linearity & coherence of disparate plot elements is not what the book is interested in, be warned.
But before I make the case of this being some academic project with no soul, let me say that reading this, I was genuinely surprised and moved by how deep & real the characters in it become. The characters in here are terribly tragic, in a real Shakespearian sense (the book's title is after all a reference to Hamlet), and their tapestry in this book's pages is as intimate and heartrending as it is vast; this book is a language project but one that remains absolutely invested in the lives of the people involved in that "project".
The book is about a lot of things: American culture & the nature of desire, fathers and sons, art, addiction, institutions, drugs, consciousness, film & the nature of narrative . . . too much to go into. More than anything, I think, the book is about addiction, and how our desires are moderated and mediated by culture, and how desire & addiction are entwined, and how Westerners approach these things.
Infinite Jest is wildly funny and, like I mentioned above, almost unexpectedly moving: there is a kind of veneer between the reader and the characters; they are guarded and stoic people, for the most part, and "getting to know" them can be as frustrating as trying to "get to know" someone in your own life who is guarded and careful with their emotions. But over the course of hundreds of pages you learn the inner-workings of IJ's huge cast, and their emotional motivations and subtleties begin to resonate with you in ways that dig so deep I think they're almost frightening.
This book is dense enough -- to say the least -- that I think you can get out of it whatever you are willing to put into it. Isn't this true of most good art? But the depth here is incredible. To say I'm "biased" and a bit blinded to criticisms about this book is hardly the point -- I think its a marvel, I think its a mess, I think it taught me what the difference is between a book & a novel, and why I think BOOKS are what the front-line artists working on the Crazy Project are really hammering out.
update/addendum: I wrote this when DFW was still alive. It pains me to even go back and read this review -- "one of the most fascinating authors alive". I can reliably drop the last word of that now. DFW's suicide still stings like no other artist for me. I do know I'm not alone there, a lot of people who admire his work feel it. We were robbed -- it's selfish, incredibly so, but so is suicide.
Objectively, I still think Girl With Curious Hair is probably the best place to start, but I didn't start there, I started here, and it worked out okay. Just know this is a glorious mess, be patient with it, the book wants to be your daddy, but you have to be its daddy, let it teach you as you guide it it -- it's a living thing, this book, all the more precious now.(less)
117 likes · like · see review
Stephen M
I love the idea of the C.P. and it is a brilliant way to respond to critics of the book. I think you've really nailed an important aspect about this b...more
I love the idea of the C.P. and it is a brilliant way to respond to critics of the book. I think you've really nailed an important aspect about this book and a lot of others w/r/t self-indulgence and rambling-ness. It seems like a necessity of massive artistic projects where the artist throws him/herself completely into that creative undertaking in order to carve a huge slice out of the world. Well done. This is making me reconsider some criticisms I've made of other huge, ambitious works.(less)
updated Jan 20, 2013 01:48pm
updated Jan 20, 2013 01:48pm
Leo Walsh
Excellent review. And inline with what I am thinking. There is no Italo Calvino tricks here. Just some excellent writing. And soe finely drawn charact...more
Excellent review. And inline with what I am thinking. There is no Italo Calvino tricks here. Just some excellent writing. And soe finely drawn characters. I am not done, but after nearly 600 pages in, I'm pretty sure it'll end up as a five-star review and on my favs shelf.
But I have an FYI. That could bum you out. You refer to Wallace as a great living writer. Unfortunately, he killed himself in 2008. What a loss. But it gives you a sense of why he wrote some of that dark, twisted stuff like Lenz and his animal thing so vividly...(less)
May 13, 2013 09:40pm
But I have an FYI. That could bum you out. You refer to Wallace as a great living writer. Unfortunately, he killed himself in 2008. What a loss. But it gives you a sense of why he wrote some of that dark, twisted stuff like Lenz and his animal thing so vividly...(less)
May 13, 2013 09:40pm
Mulholland Drive (M.D.) is the movie that made me a David Lynch fan. Infinite Jest (I.J.) is the book that has made me a DFW fan. I mention this because the first time I saw M.D., I immediately rewatched it. Likewise for I.J. - as soon as I finished it, I flipped to the beginning and started again. This is a book so fractured in structure that it needs serious re-examination and puzzling over. M.D. and I.J. break up the story rather than direct telling, dropping clues and hints along the way. Th...more
Mulholland Drive (M.D.) is the movie that made me a David Lynch fan. Infinite Jest (I.J.) is the book that has made me a DFW fan. I mention this because the first time I saw M.D., I immediately rewatched it. Likewise for I.J. - as soon as I finished it, I flipped to the beginning and started again. This is a book so fractured in structure that it needs serious re-examination and puzzling over. M.D. and I.J. break up the story rather than direct telling, dropping clues and hints along the way. They both are confusing and strange, and sometimes deeply chilling, but heartbreaking sadness is the ultimate effect.
Big Important Books (B.I.B.) always have many resources available to help us sort things out. But in the end there is no help - what the book is about is more than what the book is about - it is the experience. The jest is there to 'get', not explained. Be prepared for dissatisfaction, and be ready to search for answers - and not just within the text - but within yourself: life gone wrong, addiction, flesh and blood not put together in the right order, pain (psychic and physical), fears and phobias. Your spine rushes with pain synesthesia (the pain felt by the observer of another's pain) as DFW forces you to witness strange and cruel deaths. We get the howling fantods.
This dystopian-lite world is a messed up version of our own, slightly in the future. I can't overstate what a depressing effect subsidized time has: YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT. Y.D.A.U. Order and logic replaced by Kafkaesque commercial nonsense. And, O.N.A.N.!
I loved the long, leisurely scenes, detail after detail piled on. I loved the seemingly endless cast of characters.
There are three brothers, and a dead father. The Brothers Karamazov comes to mind. There are references to Hamlet, and obviously the title insists that we hold that as a constant. We cheer for Don Gately, a drug addicted killer with a ferocious and jolly elan, who finds redemption through the crime and punishment method.
This is a funny book. There is something hysterical on nearly every page. It is also a book of horrors.
There is an especially horrific moment where the cruel Wallace has primed us TO LAUGH when Hal screams "...something smelled delicious!".
Poor Hal: 'This boy is damaged.' 'Like a stick of butter being hit with a mallet.' 'A writhing animal with a knife in its eye.'
I.J. is lengthy. I cannot reread the whole book again right now...my hale and hearty nondelusional God-fearing Albertan's brain fears the danger of getting caught in a loop with no desire to read anything else. This is a book that could do that. Still, I can dip into it anywhere, browse the endnotes, read all about the Enfield Tennis Academy (E.T.A.), study the rules of Eschaton, the Boston AA meetings, Gately's memories of Mrs. Waite or his musings on figurants, read the outline for Blood Sister: One Tough Nun, or The Medusa vs. the Odalisque. The history of Video telephony, Eric Clipperton and his Glock 17. Examine the truth about Canadian-terrorism, the Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents - the fanatically patriotic Wheelchair Assassins of southern Quebec. The radical Edmonton Jesuits. A Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart kept in an Etienne Aigner purse. Yrstruly and everything like that.
There are riches to mine, so many perfect little jewels to examine more closely: urban legends, displacement-launch into the Great Concavity/Convexity, feral hamsters, Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House - and the hellish municipal deal where only one side of any street is legal for parking, and the legal side switches abruptly at 0000h. Stice's bed, the Wraith, DMZ, the lovely piece of mold, the black sail, nucks, tattoos and HOW DO YOU LIK YOUR BLUEYED BOY NOW MR DETH...
(less)
Big Important Books (B.I.B.) always have many resources available to help us sort things out. But in the end there is no help - what the book is about is more than what the book is about - it is the experience. The jest is there to 'get', not explained. Be prepared for dissatisfaction, and be ready to search for answers - and not just within the text - but within yourself: life gone wrong, addiction, flesh and blood not put together in the right order, pain (psychic and physical), fears and phobias. Your spine rushes with pain synesthesia (the pain felt by the observer of another's pain) as DFW forces you to witness strange and cruel deaths. We get the howling fantods.
This dystopian-lite world is a messed up version of our own, slightly in the future. I can't overstate what a depressing effect subsidized time has: YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT. Y.D.A.U. Order and logic replaced by Kafkaesque commercial nonsense. And, O.N.A.N.!
I loved the long, leisurely scenes, detail after detail piled on. I loved the seemingly endless cast of characters.
There are three brothers, and a dead father. The Brothers Karamazov comes to mind. There are references to Hamlet, and obviously the title insists that we hold that as a constant. We cheer for Don Gately, a drug addicted killer with a ferocious and jolly elan, who finds redemption through the crime and punishment method.
This is a funny book. There is something hysterical on nearly every page. It is also a book of horrors.
There is an especially horrific moment where the cruel Wallace has primed us TO LAUGH when Hal screams "...something smelled delicious!".
Poor Hal: 'This boy is damaged.' 'Like a stick of butter being hit with a mallet.' 'A writhing animal with a knife in its eye.'
I.J. is lengthy. I cannot reread the whole book again right now...my hale and hearty nondelusional God-fearing Albertan's brain fears the danger of getting caught in a loop with no desire to read anything else. This is a book that could do that. Still, I can dip into it anywhere, browse the endnotes, read all about the Enfield Tennis Academy (E.T.A.), study the rules of Eschaton, the Boston AA meetings, Gately's memories of Mrs. Waite or his musings on figurants, read the outline for Blood Sister: One Tough Nun, or The Medusa vs. the Odalisque. The history of Video telephony, Eric Clipperton and his Glock 17. Examine the truth about Canadian-terrorism, the Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents - the fanatically patriotic Wheelchair Assassins of southern Quebec. The radical Edmonton Jesuits. A Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart kept in an Etienne Aigner purse. Yrstruly and everything like that.
There are riches to mine, so many perfect little jewels to examine more closely: urban legends, displacement-launch into the Great Concavity/Convexity, feral hamsters, Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House - and the hellish municipal deal where only one side of any street is legal for parking, and the legal side switches abruptly at 0000h. Stice's bed, the Wraith, DMZ, the lovely piece of mold, the black sail, nucks, tattoos and HOW DO YOU LIK YOUR BLUEYED BOY NOW MR DETH...
Tuesday, November 15, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
(less)
81 likes · like · see review
B0nnie
Silly Lynch fans. It's one of the greatest movies ever! Greatest end credits too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfCCIb...
Sep 07, 2012 12:48pm
Sep 07, 2012 12:48pm
Arda
You had me at "Mullholland Dr."! I felt the same way about that film. Now I'm even more motivated to read this book. It appears as a thick and intimid...more
You had me at "Mullholland Dr."! I felt the same way about that film. Now I'm even more motivated to read this book. It appears as a thick and intimidating read, but you make it seem really worthwhile. Thanks for the review.(less)
Nov 19, 2012 01:48am
Nov 19, 2012 01:48am
Dec 20, 2010
brian
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
DAVID!
Recommended to brian by:
karen, fleshy, charles
the creative act is one born from the marriage of inspiration and perspiration; but as the former is a flighty bitch we really must rely on perspiration, eh? and boatloads of concentration. so gallons of coffee work as a kind of 'insperspiration' to my easily-influenced system: 1. it fights off the ADHD and focuses me (not to mention mucho perspiration), and 2. it offers an initial euphoria giving way to a kind of mindfuckededness which, for me, paves the road to inspiration. mindfucked art, at...more
the creative act is one born from the marriage of inspiration and perspiration; but as the former is a flighty bitch we really must rely on perspiration, eh? and boatloads of concentration. so gallons of coffee work as a kind of 'insperspiration' to my easily-influenced system: 1. it fights off the ADHD and focuses me (not to mention mucho perspiration), and 2. it offers an initial euphoria giving way to a kind of mindfuckededness which, for me, paves the road to inspiration. mindfucked art, at its best, turns us toward the mouth of plato's famous cave. it might not reveal the, or any, actual 'truth' re: the human condition, but can certainly offer something different and usually something stranger, more mysterious, deeper, darker. but the strange. yes, the strange is always better. the unfamiliar, the weird, the ghastly and the ghostly.
and if i follow through with this horribly tangled mixed dead & probably not too well thought out metaphor, infinite jest is a steaming pot of supercoffee, gallons of the black sludgy stuff mainlined right into one's veins. you've got the best of both worlds: 1. DFW's overthinking supercaffeinated brain and a 2. view of another world, one laid on top of ours, same shapes and textures, but seen through a different lens*** -- so, in a very real sense, this book totally locks into my own needs as a reader: it's intensely OCD and also offers a slight whiff of the ineffable. (and, really, as the resident GR paragon of great great taste, any book that resonates with me should really resonate with you.)
*** the world through "a different lens" : see bram's brilliant review. i can't be fucked to learn how to hyperlink so here ya go:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
as per (1) 'overthinking overcaffeinated' and 'OCD': if i've thought of my brain as borgesian, if i think in labyrinthian terms, if every thought is followed with an immediate afterthought, if i've thought of myself as dostoyevsky's famous mouse who cannot make a single move so bogged down is he with thought and doubt, if every afterthought spawns a dozen more, then i'm motherfucking george w. bush next to DFW. i mean, shee-it. DFW makes nicholson baker look like kowalski. DFW presses down with the pressure of an instant diamondizer and just doesn't let up. now, i've read about some of y'all not digging multiple paged descriptions of seemingly insignificant shit -- but therein lies the rub: there ain't no insignificant shit. DFW wrote a short story at the age of 9 from the POV of a teapot who gets banged about, scalded, scratched, and vomited into by a family, but, alas, he's their teapot and loyal he doth remain. part of DFW's trip is that all the stuff that makes up our world, well... it makes up our world. DFW don't delve down deep into the small stuff as some kinda literary pomo trickery, not at all; he duly delves down deep because this world of things which surrounds us deserves our attention -- and it's our brains, it's caring about the exact parabola of the tennis ball as much as barry loach's brother's search for man's (not very obvious) inherent goodness, is what makes us who/what we are. it's the world of ideas (applicable to everything) as they blow through the buttons of our coats, through the letters in our rooms, through the flowers in our tombs, blowing every time we move our teeth****, that makes us human.
(don't ya kinda feel that the title isn't only the film at the center of the book but also the joke played on the audience? yeah, DFW's down for hitchcockian audience stroking, but he's also the whore working half her regular rate: she'll stroke it, but won't even consider an orifice. our story surely covers a significant portion of our protagonist's lives but it's all a bit frustrated, eh? the goddamn wheelchair assassins piling into the school as gately rides us out with memories of ultraviolence? as per the book's core themes (and james' films), DFW fucks with our sense of fun and boredom and craving for resolution, for entertainment)
and (2) 'other world' & 'whiff of the ineffable': infinite jest is one of the aforementioned mindfucked works of art which functions as too much caffeine or cocaine or codeine -- a strange riff on our world, a peek at the infinite, of the known and unknown. like any other number of fictional worlds infinite jest offers a glimpse of the human soul not available in the real world. this book tells all the fucking retarded boring limited assholes on this site who groan on and on about contemporary fiction having no function where to shove it. in the ass, people, in the ass.
alright: in his terrific review, fleshy makes the case better than i can: despite a reputation by those, of course, who haven't read it, infinite jest ain't some eggheady meta-fictiony piece of turgid unfeeling dog poopoo. it's a deeply felt book about human sadness, about how we deal with sadness and loss and boredom; it's about a particularly american brand of sadness and loss, about sad people trying to make sense of their lives and their families and the sad stuff they do to fill the sad, empty holes.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
now.
as frank said best, "excuse me while i disappear."
**** thanks, zimmy!
(less)
and if i follow through with this horribly tangled mixed dead & probably not too well thought out metaphor, infinite jest is a steaming pot of supercoffee, gallons of the black sludgy stuff mainlined right into one's veins. you've got the best of both worlds: 1. DFW's overthinking supercaffeinated brain and a 2. view of another world, one laid on top of ours, same shapes and textures, but seen through a different lens*** -- so, in a very real sense, this book totally locks into my own needs as a reader: it's intensely OCD and also offers a slight whiff of the ineffable. (and, really, as the resident GR paragon of great great taste, any book that resonates with me should really resonate with you.)
*** the world through "a different lens" : see bram's brilliant review. i can't be fucked to learn how to hyperlink so here ya go:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
as per (1) 'overthinking overcaffeinated' and 'OCD': if i've thought of my brain as borgesian, if i think in labyrinthian terms, if every thought is followed with an immediate afterthought, if i've thought of myself as dostoyevsky's famous mouse who cannot make a single move so bogged down is he with thought and doubt, if every afterthought spawns a dozen more, then i'm motherfucking george w. bush next to DFW. i mean, shee-it. DFW makes nicholson baker look like kowalski. DFW presses down with the pressure of an instant diamondizer and just doesn't let up. now, i've read about some of y'all not digging multiple paged descriptions of seemingly insignificant shit -- but therein lies the rub: there ain't no insignificant shit. DFW wrote a short story at the age of 9 from the POV of a teapot who gets banged about, scalded, scratched, and vomited into by a family, but, alas, he's their teapot and loyal he doth remain. part of DFW's trip is that all the stuff that makes up our world, well... it makes up our world. DFW don't delve down deep into the small stuff as some kinda literary pomo trickery, not at all; he duly delves down deep because this world of things which surrounds us deserves our attention -- and it's our brains, it's caring about the exact parabola of the tennis ball as much as barry loach's brother's search for man's (not very obvious) inherent goodness, is what makes us who/what we are. it's the world of ideas (applicable to everything) as they blow through the buttons of our coats, through the letters in our rooms, through the flowers in our tombs, blowing every time we move our teeth****, that makes us human.
(don't ya kinda feel that the title isn't only the film at the center of the book but also the joke played on the audience? yeah, DFW's down for hitchcockian audience stroking, but he's also the whore working half her regular rate: she'll stroke it, but won't even consider an orifice. our story surely covers a significant portion of our protagonist's lives but it's all a bit frustrated, eh? the goddamn wheelchair assassins piling into the school as gately rides us out with memories of ultraviolence? as per the book's core themes (and james' films), DFW fucks with our sense of fun and boredom and craving for resolution, for entertainment)
and (2) 'other world' & 'whiff of the ineffable': infinite jest is one of the aforementioned mindfucked works of art which functions as too much caffeine or cocaine or codeine -- a strange riff on our world, a peek at the infinite, of the known and unknown. like any other number of fictional worlds infinite jest offers a glimpse of the human soul not available in the real world. this book tells all the fucking retarded boring limited assholes on this site who groan on and on about contemporary fiction having no function where to shove it. in the ass, people, in the ass.
alright: in his terrific review, fleshy makes the case better than i can: despite a reputation by those, of course, who haven't read it, infinite jest ain't some eggheady meta-fictiony piece of turgid unfeeling dog poopoo. it's a deeply felt book about human sadness, about how we deal with sadness and loss and boredom; it's about a particularly american brand of sadness and loss, about sad people trying to make sense of their lives and their families and the sad stuff they do to fill the sad, empty holes.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
now.
as frank said best, "excuse me while i disappear."
**** thanks, zimmy!
(less)
DJ Ian's Sunday Evening "Tell Me What You Really Think"
You're listening to Radio KCRCR, "Tell Me What You Really Think", where we listen to the critics and you talk back. That's if there's any time left after I finish my rant. Hehe.
A lot of listeners ask me about my namesake. What about that other Ian Graye, you say. The one on GoodReads. What do you think of him? And what did you think of his recent review of David Foster Wallace's magnum opus?
Well, let me reassure you: that other Ian Graye is...more DJ Ian's Sunday Evening "Tell Me What You Really Think"
You're listening to Radio KCRCR, "Tell Me What You Really Think", where we listen to the critics and you talk back. That's if there's any time left after I finish my rant. Hehe.
A lot of listeners ask me about my namesake. What about that other Ian Graye, you say. The one on GoodReads. What do you think of him? And what did you think of his recent review of David Foster Wallace's magnum opus?
Well, let me reassure you: that other Ian Graye is a wanker. Don’t trust his five star review of “Infinite Jest” (“IJ” for short, but not for long).
He is a classic pseudo-intellectual, who occasionally comes under the sway of people like Nathan, MJ and a few female Good Readers with brains and/or ambition, and tries unconvincingly to run with their small herd, while simultaneously feigning the impression of reading, appreciating and reviewing the big books that appeal to them. He is a post-capitalist lapdog of the tamest and most ineffectual kind.
This is what he would say, if he had the guts. Actually, it’s not what he would say, it’s what I'm saying.
He can wallow in pretension.
IJ is a dogs breakfast. Nobody has actually read it from cover to cover. Nobody has understood it on its own terms. Anybody who reckons they’ve read it or understood it is lying and needs to be exposed for the fibbers they are.
The sooner there is something that is post-postmodernism that we can get our hands and minds and kindles and iPatches on the better. No wait, it doesn’t matter.
Postmodernism was invented so that nerds could take money off other nerds.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world can eat, drink, snort, smoke, dance, party and have sex regardless and in spite of the postmodernist nerdfest going down, down, down in the library.
Length
Surely, it is enough to state the length of this book to condemn it.
If an author has 1,100 pages in them, then write four novels of 275 pages each.
Can Sting possibly be any better on the fourth day of his tantric sex than he is on the first?
What is the point? To achieve a target for the Guinness Book of Records? For as soon as you break the record, somebody else will want to beat you and your record will last for, how long, one year, at most?
Repetition
In a book that long, there must surely be a lot of repetition of themes and subject matter, if not dialogue and actual words.
As for a book whose ending simply takes you back to the beginning? That's not what I call recycling. Recycling is the yellow bin. Or, wishful thinking for charities, two copies sitting side by side in a second hand book store.
Self-Indulgence
See my comment about Sting. Beyond that, I risk being guilty of the post-modern crime of repetition. In fact, I might already be guilty. Damn. How ironic.
Irony
Show me somebody who really knows what irony means and I’ll show you a bullshit artist.
I mean, what does “an incongruity between the literal and the implied meaning” mean?
Is there any literal meaning that is not implied? Surely, DFW meant everything his words implied.
Therefore, they are not incongruous, they are deliberate and congruous.
This is starting to sound like that other Ian Graye, so I will stop.
Playfulness
OK, so they play tennis in this book. So what?
And so what if he plays with our minds? Writing this bloody book probably played with DFW’s own mind. How can you control something as gargantuan and prolix as this?
It plays with our minds, because it played with his. If he had won the game, it would have been a shorter, sharper, better book and a more pleasant experience for us.
There is a reason tennis has a tie-breaker. IJ needed a tie-breaker. Around 300 pages.
Black Humor
I like black humor, white humor and Jewish humor. I haven’t heard any other types yet. But I hope I do eventually.
However, I can’t remember any good jokes in IJ, nor can I remember LOL’ing.
Even if I could remember one, there’s no way I would ever tell a mate in a pub or print it on a t-shirt, which is my ultimate test of a good joke, well, an aphorism, anyway.
Intertextuality
I mean, are you serious? Who would invent a word like “intertextuality”, but a postmodernist wanker?
Did the English language really need this word? Did it have to be imported from France or Italy, or wherever?
Intertextuality…”the relationship between one text (a novel for example) and another or one text within the interwoven fabric of literary history…an indication of postmodernism’s lack of originality and reliance on clichés”.
Put two things next to each other, juxtapose them, as the other Ian Graye would say, and you have a relationship (a “juxtaposition”). So what?
If you want to refer to another book in your book, it’s a quote if it’s acknowledged or plagiarism if it’s not.
So what? Any graduate student can do this. We used to call it cheating.
As for cliches, we were taught to eschew them in my day. DFW uses truckloads of cliches, mostly old ones, but many new ones of his own creation. How pathetic. There are nearly as many cliches in IJ as there are in Hamlet. I mean, "To be, or not to be", if Shakespeare was half the writer he's supposed to be (or not to be), he would have steered clear of that old chestnut.
Pastiche
Once again, write your own bloody book. Don’t copy somebody else’s. Sampling is cheating. If I want to read the other book or listen to the other song, I’ll find it on iTunes.
Metafiction
Another word created by postmodernists for postmodernists. It’s like a secret handshake. A club for us and not for you. Because you won’t let us into your club, and your club is blockbuster, best-selling fiction with a home and a boat in the Bahamas.
Anybody who can write should strive for a home and a boat, better still, a houseboat. If you haven’t got it in you, don’t waste trees or cyberspace. Write a blog. Do your pathetic little reviews on GoodReads. Or pathetically long reviews, in the case of my namesake.
Fabulation
I mean, honest, we’re talking fiction here, and some critic has to introduce a synonym and pretend it means something different. A distinction without a difference. A high distinction without a job prospect. This is today’s academia for you.
Poioumena
This word makes me want to vomit.
I mean I love Maoris and their language, but words weren’t meant to consist of four consecutive vowels. It's inconsonant.
Historiographic Metafiction
Another one. What, aren’t the old words good enough for postmodernists? This would have been edited out of the wiki article if anybody knew what it meant or had the guts.
Instead, it’s left in, and college students in my wake will struggle to apply it correctly in a sentence for another 20 years.
If this term was a dog, it would be put down. In fact, this term is a dog. Bang.
Temporal Distortion
It gets worse. “Fragmentation and non-linear narratives”. In a word, drugs. Nobody used this language when the poison of choice was alcohol.
In the old days, the bell would ring, and you’d say, “Oh, is that the time?” Not temporal distortion.
Magic Realism
All the best drugs come from South America. Say no more. But put a frat boy in a broad brimmed hat and sit him on a horse and it doesn’t make him a gaucho or a magic realist.
Technoculture and Hyperreality
Doof doof. I can’t remember one computer in IJ. Unless you count microwaves and whatever they played the cartridges on. And, I mean, who remembers cartridges?
Paranoia
The only source of paranoia for me in IJ is the sense that DFW might have known what he was talking about and I didn’t get it. But if he did and I didn’t, then I’ve read all the other IJ reviews on Good Reads, and no two of them are the same, so quit the bullshit and admit it, nobody gets it. It’s time we fessed up, it can’t be got, we weren’t supposed to get it, DFW didn’t design it to be got, leave it alone.
IJ is a conspiracy by the paper manufacturing industry to consume paper, put it inside a hard cover and never let it see the light of day.
Yes, a paranoid conspiracy, I know, but guess what, it worked.
Maximalism
A big word for “long”.
Minimalism
A big word for a little idea. Incongruous, if not ironic, I know.
Encyclopaedic
Yes, IJ is long, but credit where credit is due, it contains a lot of words and meanings, about a lot of things, but let's face it, nobody ever reads an encyclopaedia from beginning to end, we all dip in one entry at a time, if not randomly, and we wouldn’t know shit about all the other bits that we didn’t read.
Let’s hope there's not a question about them in the exam.
Well, that's about it from me. Let me leave you with one more serious thought.
Party at my place. Come on.
KCRCR. Whatever will be will be. And whatever will not be will not be. That is the answer and there's the rub. Thanks, Bill. Can I have my bottle back now, please?
Oh, is that the time? Let's cross to Rupert for the news.
TAME AND INEFFECTUAL POST-CAPITALIST LAPDOG FIVE STAR REVIEW
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
NERDS ONLY PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL FIVE STAR REVIEW
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
THE "TELL ME WHAT YOU REALLY THINK" VOTE COUNT (AUDITED BY CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS NICE WATERCLOSET)
DJ Ian:
February 17, 2013
41 likes
Post-Capitalist Lapdog Review
February 17, 2013
38 likes
Nerd's Only Pseudo-Intellectual Review
February 17, 2013
27 likes
DJ Ian's one star review jennifer garnered more "likes" in 12 hours than either of the other five star reviews did in 10 months (they were posted in April 2012).(less)
You're listening to Radio KCRCR, "Tell Me What You Really Think", where we listen to the critics and you talk back. That's if there's any time left after I finish my rant. Hehe.
A lot of listeners ask me about my namesake. What about that other Ian Graye, you say. The one on GoodReads. What do you think of him? And what did you think of his recent review of David Foster Wallace's magnum opus?
Well, let me reassure you: that other Ian Graye is...more DJ Ian's Sunday Evening "Tell Me What You Really Think"
You're listening to Radio KCRCR, "Tell Me What You Really Think", where we listen to the critics and you talk back. That's if there's any time left after I finish my rant. Hehe.
A lot of listeners ask me about my namesake. What about that other Ian Graye, you say. The one on GoodReads. What do you think of him? And what did you think of his recent review of David Foster Wallace's magnum opus?
Well, let me reassure you: that other Ian Graye is a wanker. Don’t trust his five star review of “Infinite Jest” (“IJ” for short, but not for long).
He is a classic pseudo-intellectual, who occasionally comes under the sway of people like Nathan, MJ and a few female Good Readers with brains and/or ambition, and tries unconvincingly to run with their small herd, while simultaneously feigning the impression of reading, appreciating and reviewing the big books that appeal to them. He is a post-capitalist lapdog of the tamest and most ineffectual kind.
This is what he would say, if he had the guts. Actually, it’s not what he would say, it’s what I'm saying.
He can wallow in pretension.
IJ is a dogs breakfast. Nobody has actually read it from cover to cover. Nobody has understood it on its own terms. Anybody who reckons they’ve read it or understood it is lying and needs to be exposed for the fibbers they are.
The sooner there is something that is post-postmodernism that we can get our hands and minds and kindles and iPatches on the better. No wait, it doesn’t matter.
Postmodernism was invented so that nerds could take money off other nerds.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world can eat, drink, snort, smoke, dance, party and have sex regardless and in spite of the postmodernist nerdfest going down, down, down in the library.
Length
Surely, it is enough to state the length of this book to condemn it.
If an author has 1,100 pages in them, then write four novels of 275 pages each.
Can Sting possibly be any better on the fourth day of his tantric sex than he is on the first?
What is the point? To achieve a target for the Guinness Book of Records? For as soon as you break the record, somebody else will want to beat you and your record will last for, how long, one year, at most?
Repetition
In a book that long, there must surely be a lot of repetition of themes and subject matter, if not dialogue and actual words.
As for a book whose ending simply takes you back to the beginning? That's not what I call recycling. Recycling is the yellow bin. Or, wishful thinking for charities, two copies sitting side by side in a second hand book store.
Self-Indulgence
See my comment about Sting. Beyond that, I risk being guilty of the post-modern crime of repetition. In fact, I might already be guilty. Damn. How ironic.
Irony
Show me somebody who really knows what irony means and I’ll show you a bullshit artist.
I mean, what does “an incongruity between the literal and the implied meaning” mean?
Is there any literal meaning that is not implied? Surely, DFW meant everything his words implied.
Therefore, they are not incongruous, they are deliberate and congruous.
This is starting to sound like that other Ian Graye, so I will stop.
Playfulness
OK, so they play tennis in this book. So what?
And so what if he plays with our minds? Writing this bloody book probably played with DFW’s own mind. How can you control something as gargantuan and prolix as this?
It plays with our minds, because it played with his. If he had won the game, it would have been a shorter, sharper, better book and a more pleasant experience for us.
There is a reason tennis has a tie-breaker. IJ needed a tie-breaker. Around 300 pages.
Black Humor
I like black humor, white humor and Jewish humor. I haven’t heard any other types yet. But I hope I do eventually.
However, I can’t remember any good jokes in IJ, nor can I remember LOL’ing.
Even if I could remember one, there’s no way I would ever tell a mate in a pub or print it on a t-shirt, which is my ultimate test of a good joke, well, an aphorism, anyway.
Intertextuality
I mean, are you serious? Who would invent a word like “intertextuality”, but a postmodernist wanker?
Did the English language really need this word? Did it have to be imported from France or Italy, or wherever?
Intertextuality…”the relationship between one text (a novel for example) and another or one text within the interwoven fabric of literary history…an indication of postmodernism’s lack of originality and reliance on clichés”.
Put two things next to each other, juxtapose them, as the other Ian Graye would say, and you have a relationship (a “juxtaposition”). So what?
If you want to refer to another book in your book, it’s a quote if it’s acknowledged or plagiarism if it’s not.
So what? Any graduate student can do this. We used to call it cheating.
As for cliches, we were taught to eschew them in my day. DFW uses truckloads of cliches, mostly old ones, but many new ones of his own creation. How pathetic. There are nearly as many cliches in IJ as there are in Hamlet. I mean, "To be, or not to be", if Shakespeare was half the writer he's supposed to be (or not to be), he would have steered clear of that old chestnut.
Pastiche
Once again, write your own bloody book. Don’t copy somebody else’s. Sampling is cheating. If I want to read the other book or listen to the other song, I’ll find it on iTunes.
Metafiction
Another word created by postmodernists for postmodernists. It’s like a secret handshake. A club for us and not for you. Because you won’t let us into your club, and your club is blockbuster, best-selling fiction with a home and a boat in the Bahamas.
Anybody who can write should strive for a home and a boat, better still, a houseboat. If you haven’t got it in you, don’t waste trees or cyberspace. Write a blog. Do your pathetic little reviews on GoodReads. Or pathetically long reviews, in the case of my namesake.
Fabulation
I mean, honest, we’re talking fiction here, and some critic has to introduce a synonym and pretend it means something different. A distinction without a difference. A high distinction without a job prospect. This is today’s academia for you.
Poioumena
This word makes me want to vomit.
I mean I love Maoris and their language, but words weren’t meant to consist of four consecutive vowels. It's inconsonant.
Historiographic Metafiction
Another one. What, aren’t the old words good enough for postmodernists? This would have been edited out of the wiki article if anybody knew what it meant or had the guts.
Instead, it’s left in, and college students in my wake will struggle to apply it correctly in a sentence for another 20 years.
If this term was a dog, it would be put down. In fact, this term is a dog. Bang.
Temporal Distortion
It gets worse. “Fragmentation and non-linear narratives”. In a word, drugs. Nobody used this language when the poison of choice was alcohol.
In the old days, the bell would ring, and you’d say, “Oh, is that the time?” Not temporal distortion.
Magic Realism
All the best drugs come from South America. Say no more. But put a frat boy in a broad brimmed hat and sit him on a horse and it doesn’t make him a gaucho or a magic realist.
Technoculture and Hyperreality
Doof doof. I can’t remember one computer in IJ. Unless you count microwaves and whatever they played the cartridges on. And, I mean, who remembers cartridges?
Paranoia
The only source of paranoia for me in IJ is the sense that DFW might have known what he was talking about and I didn’t get it. But if he did and I didn’t, then I’ve read all the other IJ reviews on Good Reads, and no two of them are the same, so quit the bullshit and admit it, nobody gets it. It’s time we fessed up, it can’t be got, we weren’t supposed to get it, DFW didn’t design it to be got, leave it alone.
IJ is a conspiracy by the paper manufacturing industry to consume paper, put it inside a hard cover and never let it see the light of day.
Yes, a paranoid conspiracy, I know, but guess what, it worked.
Maximalism
A big word for “long”.
Minimalism
A big word for a little idea. Incongruous, if not ironic, I know.
Encyclopaedic
Yes, IJ is long, but credit where credit is due, it contains a lot of words and meanings, about a lot of things, but let's face it, nobody ever reads an encyclopaedia from beginning to end, we all dip in one entry at a time, if not randomly, and we wouldn’t know shit about all the other bits that we didn’t read.
Let’s hope there's not a question about them in the exam.
Well, that's about it from me. Let me leave you with one more serious thought.
Party at my place. Come on.
KCRCR. Whatever will be will be. And whatever will not be will not be. That is the answer and there's the rub. Thanks, Bill. Can I have my bottle back now, please?
Oh, is that the time? Let's cross to Rupert for the news.
TAME AND INEFFECTUAL POST-CAPITALIST LAPDOG FIVE STAR REVIEW
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
NERDS ONLY PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL FIVE STAR REVIEW
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
THE "TELL ME WHAT YOU REALLY THINK" VOTE COUNT (AUDITED BY CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS NICE WATERCLOSET)
DJ Ian:
February 17, 2013
41 likes
Post-Capitalist Lapdog Review
February 17, 2013
38 likes
Nerd's Only Pseudo-Intellectual Review
February 17, 2013
27 likes
DJ Ian's one star review jennifer garnered more "likes" in 12 hours than either of the other five star reviews did in 10 months (they were posted in April 2012).(less)
65 likes · like · see review
Ian Graye
Is it safe to infer that you have at least one demented review on the way?
May 13, 2013 09:28pm
May 13, 2013 09:28pm
Leo Walsh
Nah. My style is pretty much "straight review." Not sure why, since I love crazy, haphazard stuff. And when I write fiction, it gets slightly bent. Bu...more
Nah. My style is pretty much "straight review." Not sure why, since I love crazy, haphazard stuff. And when I write fiction, it gets slightly bent. But nothing as tongue in cheeks as your reviews of IJ. All of which are, taken at face value, completely valid.(less)
updated May 15, 2013 08:35am
updated May 15, 2013 08:35am
And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form, and void.Real life is a pain. Real life is a bitch. Real life slumps you together from a squiggly mess and shoots you out to a cold and unfeeling world, empty in mind and soul. So you scrounge around for meaning, whatever fulfills your personal definition of said meaning, eyes gaping for that next slice of indomitable thrills and chills, mouth pincering over a statue in r...more
And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep.
And We said:
Look at that fucker Dance
And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form, and void.Real life is a pain. Real life is a bitch. Real life slumps you together from a squiggly mess and shoots you out to a cold and unfeeling world, empty in mind and soul. So you scrounge around for meaning, whatever fulfills your personal definition of said meaning, eyes gaping for that next slice of indomitable thrills and chills, mouth pincering over a statue in repose, your next served up fresh and toasty piece of Entertainment ready and waiting to fulfill your infinitesimal spout of pure pleasure.
And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep.
And We said:
Look at that fucker Dance
And always you forget the trap, that whatever may keep your brain in thrall doesn't necessarily do anything for your heart, and you fill that deceivingly compact skull of yours with a weave of disappointed memories of the past and existential dread concerning the future. You don't even need to know what 'existential' means, it'll latch on to your cranium and enjoy itself in your spent neurons just as well. Knowing the word just makes your coping mechanisms developed in response to living seem a little more validated.
DFW knew this. Not only did he know this, he was courageous enough to proclaim that he knew this from the highest rooftop, spilling out a novel that scoffs, declaims, and drowns the old conventions of making life this easy whore that only requires adherence to paper to make itself completely tangible and understandable in every way. Newsflash: That is Entertainment, Entertainment with a capital E, followed by the Infinite Jest, long lines of seconds bleeding themselves dry with gags, jokes, puns, witty remarks, comedic outbursts, impressive logistical maneuverings of physical feats, "I got that reference!", grasping in the dark after a fleeting feeling of actually being able to feel. It is not Life.
We live in a country in continuous denial, this United States of ours, where the words "depression" and "suicide" are met with brief uneasy titters and a quick skittering to the nearest source of short stem happiness. I mean, really. Who could possibly be unsatisfied in this First World conglomerate of ours, where the water is cheap and the food cheaper, everything clean and crisp and catered and tailored and custom built for even the most persnickety of personalities? Oh, you say you're not feeling well? Well, your temperature's drawn up at the right line, your lungs are clear of fluid, no physical aches to be registered on any limb or crevice. No need for a tox screen, it's obvious that since you are athletic and intelligent and your family is well adjusted, it's impossible that you would even consider recreational drugs. It just wouldn't make sense.
And when these people are forced up close to those with intimate knowledge of the difference between hip-ennui and 'It'; the obvious mismatch of an unsatisfactory sex life and a rabid Spider masquerading as your own Personal Nightmare that has somehow escaped the sewers and lodged itself in your frontal lobe. A hawk in the sky and a handsaw on the nightstand. These people, they shame the "psychotically depressed", they box the sufferers up in a cynical outlook that doesn't allow them to treat their condition seriously, and the barest glimpse of a true outburst of "feeling" is quickly carted away and shut up in the walls of their own imagined loony bin. You call attempted suicides "Cries for Attention", after refusing to listen to anything else. And don't blame this on the availability of therapy. That's another bucket of worms entirely.
So what does the average, normal, not "psychotically depressed" individual do? Well, they have been blessed with a stable brain chemistry that is sufficiently satisfied with their addictions, enough to never entertain any ideas of going off the deep end, physically or otherwise. Course, they may feel the niggle of something not being right in their daily scheme, one that is vaguely persistent but easily squashed with another movie, another book, another morning run, another sandwich, another drink, another shot, another shooting up, another beating, another brown out, another black out, another spree of giving linear time the finger. It's hardly fair to complain about nonlinear narratives when you seem so desperate to avoid the concept yourself.
Life is a mess of half remembered instances and disjointed narratives, stream of conscious not being very concerned for its very few spectators. What good is a writing a novel portraying Life, if its main goal is to make sense?
Give me a ride compromised by emotion, drugs, unreliable narrators spilling their guts to a psychedelic riddle that crosses consciousness and space-time continuum. Give me unrelenting displays of cruelty and abuse and subsequent coping mechanisms whose effects are just as vicious as their causes, and sprinkle them with laugh out loud moments clouded by the memories of the aforementioned atrocities. Give me recognition that the brain is an organ just as unwieldy and unreliable as the heart or the kidney, and thinking your way out of something is sometimes the worst possible decision you could ever make. Give me the paragon of masculinity breaking down into snotty sobs in front of an openly weeping crowd of fellow human beings, in a system that cannot possibly work until it does. Give me the revival of hope in mankind, embodied in the briefest touch between one masquerading as the dregs of society, and one unaware of their hopeless plight to a heartrending degree. Give me miscommunication on a truly horrendous scale, conversers following their own narratives with minuscule attention paid to their conversees, many pairs of these circling in a room with no clear and singular "plot". Give me an apocalyptic attempt at righting this miscommunication. Give me a Truth that will have its way with me that I didn't realize I desperately craved until I am lying on the floor, breathless and aching with tears flowing freely down my cheeks, stunned in the realization that I am not the only one.
Keep your "Hipster Lit Flow Chart". It has no place here.(less)
56 likes · like · see review
Traveller
Astute, insightful, awesome review. Thank you for this, Aubrey.
In fact, i think i need to bookmark it.
*tips hat*
Feb 10, 2013 06:37am
In fact, i think i need to bookmark it.
*tips hat*
Feb 10, 2013 06:37am
Aubrey
Traveller wrote: "Astute, insightful, awesome review. Thank you for this, Aubrey.
In fact, i think i need to bookmark it.
*tips hat*"
Thanks, Traveller....more Traveller wrote: "Astute, insightful, awesome review. Thank you for this, Aubrey.
In fact, i think i need to bookmark it.
*tips hat*"
Thanks, Traveller. It's an honor to be bookmarked.(less)
Feb 10, 2013 10:38am
In fact, i think i need to bookmark it.
*tips hat*"
Thanks, Traveller....more Traveller wrote: "Astute, insightful, awesome review. Thank you for this, Aubrey.
In fact, i think i need to bookmark it.
*tips hat*"
Thanks, Traveller. It's an honor to be bookmarked.(less)
Feb 10, 2013 10:38am
There don’t appear to be enough reviews of Infinite Jest on Goodreads so I thought I’d go ahead and write another one.
Anyway, I kind of hated this book. I hated that its characters are essentially parodies of themselves which limited my ability to connect with them on any meaningful level. I hated the lack of linguistic nuance with which most of the characters speak, particularly given that the predominant speech pattern here is rife with superfluous clauses and multiple possessives, a pattern n...more There don’t appear to be enough reviews of Infinite Jest on Goodreads so I thought I’d go ahead and write another one.
Anyway, I kind of hated this book. I hated that its characters are essentially parodies of themselves which limited my ability to connect with them on any meaningful level. I hated the lack of linguistic nuance with which most of the characters speak, particularly given that the predominant speech pattern here is rife with superfluous clauses and multiple possessives, a pattern not normally attributable to prepubescent teens, especially. I hated the long, meandering passages that go nowhere and refuse to be ostensibly related to anything or be placed in any sort of clear context, much like this review. In fact, often times reading this book was like trying to follow a conversation wherein all the participants have attention deficit disorder. Infinite Jest is a book that needs like some major dose of Ritalin® stat.
But except so in spite of all that, Infinite Jest was still able to pretty much blow me away. Set in the over-commercialized, not-too-distant future, Infinite Jest is primarily about anhedonia and the psychological pathway that leads from it to its secondary effects: loneliness, depression, social detachment, obsession with whatever’s available to fill the void, and finally to addiction and dependency. There’s a passage in IJ about a M*A*S*H addict (yeah, you heard that right) who becomes slowly but increasingly reliant on his M*A*S*H episodes to displace the anhedonia from which he suffers until the point at which the M*A*S*H episodes actually become the sole focal point of his day rather than its mere highlight, and eventually his need to see M*A*S*H supplants all his other basic needs to the extent that his entire survival practically hinges upon his capacity to sit down and watch M*A*S*H. Along with the rest of the narrative, this passage is written with an underlying sense of humor that rounds off its depressing edge and makes the whole thing almost life-affirming.
What I loved about the M*A*S*H story is twofold. First, it serves as a junction box for the theme of addiction and its relation, not just to drug and alcohol dependency in Infinite Jest, but also to the characters’ reactions to James Incandeza’s lethal Entertainment. And second, it provides some understanding into my own addictive nature, specifically with this fucking website. Goodreads is like crack for an Extrovert, and while I’m not equating that type of addiction to one with drugs or alcohol, the reason I want to hug David Foster Wallace as much as I do is that he is generous with his inclusion criteria. He doesn’t say, “No, you’re not as bad off as the rest of us because you only chug NyQuil® occasionally when you’re in a rut.” He says, instead, “Yes, you can somewhat relate to where we’re coming from because you can identify with this one minor trait of dependency, so please come and join us!” And so but in the interest of avoiding the inevitable fate to which that M*A*S*H guy ultimately succumbs, I’m going to just log off Goodreads for a couple of weeks.
ESFJ out!(less)
Anyway, I kind of hated this book. I hated that its characters are essentially parodies of themselves which limited my ability to connect with them on any meaningful level. I hated the lack of linguistic nuance with which most of the characters speak, particularly given that the predominant speech pattern here is rife with superfluous clauses and multiple possessives, a pattern n...more There don’t appear to be enough reviews of Infinite Jest on Goodreads so I thought I’d go ahead and write another one.
Anyway, I kind of hated this book. I hated that its characters are essentially parodies of themselves which limited my ability to connect with them on any meaningful level. I hated the lack of linguistic nuance with which most of the characters speak, particularly given that the predominant speech pattern here is rife with superfluous clauses and multiple possessives, a pattern not normally attributable to prepubescent teens, especially. I hated the long, meandering passages that go nowhere and refuse to be ostensibly related to anything or be placed in any sort of clear context, much like this review. In fact, often times reading this book was like trying to follow a conversation wherein all the participants have attention deficit disorder. Infinite Jest is a book that needs like some major dose of Ritalin® stat.
But except so in spite of all that, Infinite Jest was still able to pretty much blow me away. Set in the over-commercialized, not-too-distant future, Infinite Jest is primarily about anhedonia and the psychological pathway that leads from it to its secondary effects: loneliness, depression, social detachment, obsession with whatever’s available to fill the void, and finally to addiction and dependency. There’s a passage in IJ about a M*A*S*H addict (yeah, you heard that right) who becomes slowly but increasingly reliant on his M*A*S*H episodes to displace the anhedonia from which he suffers until the point at which the M*A*S*H episodes actually become the sole focal point of his day rather than its mere highlight, and eventually his need to see M*A*S*H supplants all his other basic needs to the extent that his entire survival practically hinges upon his capacity to sit down and watch M*A*S*H. Along with the rest of the narrative, this passage is written with an underlying sense of humor that rounds off its depressing edge and makes the whole thing almost life-affirming.
What I loved about the M*A*S*H story is twofold. First, it serves as a junction box for the theme of addiction and its relation, not just to drug and alcohol dependency in Infinite Jest, but also to the characters’ reactions to James Incandeza’s lethal Entertainment. And second, it provides some understanding into my own addictive nature, specifically with this fucking website. Goodreads is like crack for an Extrovert, and while I’m not equating that type of addiction to one with drugs or alcohol, the reason I want to hug David Foster Wallace as much as I do is that he is generous with his inclusion criteria. He doesn’t say, “No, you’re not as bad off as the rest of us because you only chug NyQuil® occasionally when you’re in a rut.” He says, instead, “Yes, you can somewhat relate to where we’re coming from because you can identify with this one minor trait of dependency, so please come and join us!” And so but in the interest of avoiding the inevitable fate to which that M*A*S*H guy ultimately succumbs, I’m going to just log off Goodreads for a couple of weeks.
ESFJ out!(less)
68 likes · like · see review
Jason
Gary wrote: "Is being in the loop the same as reading reviews of IJ ad infinitum?"
No, you're confusing "in the loop" with "insane."
Apr 30, 2013 10:49am
No, you're confusing "in the loop" with "insane."
Apr 30, 2013 10:49am
I should have hated this book. 1079 pages of small text with loooooonnnnggggg paragraphs and little white space so it feels like you’re reading a newspaper from 1881. Plus, 96 goddamn pages of endnotes. *1 The plot, such as it is, doesn’t really come into focus until several hundred pages into it, and even though it’s set in the near future where something very strange has happened in North America, this doesn’t get explained until about mid-way through the book so you’re left feeling confused a...more
I should have hated this book. 1079 pages of small text with loooooonnnnggggg paragraphs and little white space so it feels like you’re reading a newspaper from 1881. Plus, 96 goddamn pages of endnotes. *1 The plot, such as it is, doesn’t really come into focus until several hundred pages into it, and even though it’s set in the near future where something very strange has happened in North America, this doesn’t get explained until about mid-way through the book so you’re left feeling confused and bewildered a lot of the time.
There’s an almost endless cast of characters. Long sections of the book have detailed descriptions of things that don’t seem crucial to the plot. *2 And then there’s the fact you have to use two bookmarks because you’re constantly going back to the endnotes. *3 Some of the endnotes contain long wandering passages that also don’t seem relevant to anything. *4
The ending isn’t very satisfying. *5 The main plot point about the search for a cartridge of ‘entertainment’ so good that it will literally make anyone who sees it immediately stop living their live and stay in front of the television until they die because they’ll refuse to do anything but watch it, including eating, drinking, using the toilet, etc. *6, isn’t given much resolution, either.
The book just kind of stops, and you have the distinct impression that DFW could have done another 1000 pages or so without breaking a sweat if he hadn’t eventually eliminated his own map. *7
So after all that, why was my first instinct after finishing it to go back and immediately start re-reading it? *8
I was completely engrossed when I was reading this book. No matter what weird detours it took, I was more than happy to just keep turning pages like one of those poor suckers who got snared by The Entertainment. If this book was endless *9, I probably would have spent my life cheerfully reading it and then asked for a copy on my deathbed just to try and squeeze a few more pages in.
I’m not sure why I liked it so much. In fact, the way this book got into my head gives me a slight case of the howling fantods *10 Considering it’s a book that deals a lot with obsession, this is more than a little unsettling.
I’m sure someone with an English degree could spend the rest of their life trying to deconstruct this book, but I don’t have the intelligence, skill or patience to even try. Wallace did something unique and crazy with this, and he had the talent to make it work. I don’t know how, and I think that figuring it out might be like when you learn how a magic trick was done so I’m just going to shelve it, always be glad that I took it on and managed to finish it, and re-read it someday once the memory of the endless pages of endnotes has faded. * 11
Oh, and I would have given it 5 stars, but you know, the endnote thing… *12
*1 - Yes, 96 goddamn pages.
*2 - I now know way more about tennis drills and Alcoholics Anonymous than I ever really wanted to learn.
*3 - Seriously, there are 388 endnotes in this freaking thing.
*4 - There’s an 8 page filmography listing all the movies that were supposed to have been made by one of the characters.
*5 - Somebody email me and explain what the hell happened.
*6 - The closest comparison would probably be a really kick-ass episode of The Wire or Battlestar Galactica.
*7 - ‘Eliminating maps’ is a slang phrase from the book meaning to either kill someone or kill yourself.
*8 - I didn’t. Mainly because I couldn’t bear the thought of dealing with the endnotes again.
*9 - And DFW did his best to make it that way…
*10 - ‘Howling fantods’ is another slang term from the book that means to get creeped out. E.g. Seeing Michael Jackson’s horrifically surgically altered face on magazine covers after his death gave me the howling fantods.
*11 - Some of the endnotes are so long that they have their own endnotes. That’s just messed up.
*12 - I’m not kidding. They are completely out of control.
(less)
There’s an almost endless cast of characters. Long sections of the book have detailed descriptions of things that don’t seem crucial to the plot. *2 And then there’s the fact you have to use two bookmarks because you’re constantly going back to the endnotes. *3 Some of the endnotes contain long wandering passages that also don’t seem relevant to anything. *4
The ending isn’t very satisfying. *5 The main plot point about the search for a cartridge of ‘entertainment’ so good that it will literally make anyone who sees it immediately stop living their live and stay in front of the television until they die because they’ll refuse to do anything but watch it, including eating, drinking, using the toilet, etc. *6, isn’t given much resolution, either.
The book just kind of stops, and you have the distinct impression that DFW could have done another 1000 pages or so without breaking a sweat if he hadn’t eventually eliminated his own map. *7
So after all that, why was my first instinct after finishing it to go back and immediately start re-reading it? *8
I was completely engrossed when I was reading this book. No matter what weird detours it took, I was more than happy to just keep turning pages like one of those poor suckers who got snared by The Entertainment. If this book was endless *9, I probably would have spent my life cheerfully reading it and then asked for a copy on my deathbed just to try and squeeze a few more pages in.
I’m not sure why I liked it so much. In fact, the way this book got into my head gives me a slight case of the howling fantods *10 Considering it’s a book that deals a lot with obsession, this is more than a little unsettling.
I’m sure someone with an English degree could spend the rest of their life trying to deconstruct this book, but I don’t have the intelligence, skill or patience to even try. Wallace did something unique and crazy with this, and he had the talent to make it work. I don’t know how, and I think that figuring it out might be like when you learn how a magic trick was done so I’m just going to shelve it, always be glad that I took it on and managed to finish it, and re-read it someday once the memory of the endless pages of endnotes has faded. * 11
Oh, and I would have given it 5 stars, but you know, the endnote thing… *12
*1 - Yes, 96 goddamn pages.
*2 - I now know way more about tennis drills and Alcoholics Anonymous than I ever really wanted to learn.
*3 - Seriously, there are 388 endnotes in this freaking thing.
*4 - There’s an 8 page filmography listing all the movies that were supposed to have been made by one of the characters.
*5 - Somebody email me and explain what the hell happened.
*6 - The closest comparison would probably be a really kick-ass episode of The Wire or Battlestar Galactica.
*7 - ‘Eliminating maps’ is a slang phrase from the book meaning to either kill someone or kill yourself.
*8 - I didn’t. Mainly because I couldn’t bear the thought of dealing with the endnotes again.
*9 - And DFW did his best to make it that way…
*10 - ‘Howling fantods’ is another slang term from the book that means to get creeped out. E.g. Seeing Michael Jackson’s horrifically surgically altered face on magazine covers after his death gave me the howling fantods.
*11 - Some of the endnotes are so long that they have their own endnotes. That’s just messed up.
*12 - I’m not kidding. They are completely out of control.
(less)
57 likes · like · see review
Gary McTiernan
This is terrific! It really captures the joys and frustrations of reading this amazing book. It took me several months to read it and I've been contro...more
This is terrific! It really captures the joys and frustrations of reading this amazing book. It took me several months to read it and I've been controlling my desire to read it again by reading other people's reviews.(less)
Mar 23, 2013 09:05am
Mar 23, 2013 09:05am
Kemper
Gary wrote: "This is terrific! It really captures the joys and frustrations of reading this amazing book. It took me several months to read it and I'v...more
Gary wrote: "This is terrific! It really captures the joys and frustrations of reading this amazing book. It took me several months to read it and I've been controlling my desire to read it again by reading oth..."
Thanks!(less)
Mar 23, 2013 06:09pm
Thanks!(less)
Mar 23, 2013 06:09pm
Jan 10, 2008
Herbie
added it
It's my habit to write on the inside sleeve of a book the words from the text that I can't define or don't understand. Here is the resulting list from the back inside sleeve of Infinite Jest:
apocopes
bolections
reglets
dipsomania
quincunx
varicoceles
simpatico
aleatory
experialist
agnate
pedalferrous
fulvous
louvered
sangfroid
gibbons
apercu
eidetic
murated
tumescent
recidivism
erumpent
rutilant
hale
purled
nacelle
sulcus
imprecated
tumbrel
comportment
scopophobic
asperity
rapacious
afflatus
bathetic
brachiform
strabismic
ascapart...more It's my habit to write on the inside sleeve of a book the words from the text that I can't define or don't understand. Here is the resulting list from the back inside sleeve of Infinite Jest:
apocopes
bolections
reglets
dipsomania
quincunx
varicoceles
simpatico
aleatory
experialist
agnate
pedalferrous
fulvous
louvered
sangfroid
gibbons
apercu
eidetic
murated
tumescent
recidivism
erumpent
rutilant
hale
purled
nacelle
sulcus
imprecated
tumbrel
comportment
scopophobic
asperity
rapacious
afflatus
bathetic
brachiform
strabismic
ascapartic
avuncular
adit
factota
chuffing
neuralgiac
tumid
eustacian
xerophagy
gynecopia
suborning
solecistic
lissome
ascapartic
anapestic
bradyauxetic
lordosis
corticate
mucronate
codicil
lume
nacreous
puerile
thanatoptic
spansules
hasp
prognathous
nonuremic
apothegm
apicals
selvaged
caparison
cunctations
aphasiac
etiology
prolix
chyme
amanuentic
falcate
jejune
catastatic
eschatology
declivity
mafficking
cuirass
vig
miasma
cordite
cirrhotic
reveille
tektitic
crepuscular
threnody
emery
mysticetously
anechoic
anorak
erumpent (again - apparently I didn't remember it from the first time)
aphasiac
reseau
diverticulitis
cathexis
skirling
dun
exaculates
aphasia
anodized
picayune
caprolaliac
verdigrised
coruscant
anaclitic
catexic
sybaritically
restenotic
malentendu
peripatetic
lordotic
rictal
thanatopic
olla podida
inguinal
sudoriferous
swart
emetic
parotitic
alacrity
sinciput
kyphotic
ciquatoxic
I didn't realize until later in the book that DFW often makes up words.
I will post a full review at my blog, meekadjustments.blogspot.com.(less)
apocopes
bolections
reglets
dipsomania
quincunx
varicoceles
simpatico
aleatory
experialist
agnate
pedalferrous
fulvous
louvered
sangfroid
gibbons
apercu
eidetic
murated
tumescent
recidivism
erumpent
rutilant
hale
purled
nacelle
sulcus
imprecated
tumbrel
comportment
scopophobic
asperity
rapacious
afflatus
bathetic
brachiform
strabismic
ascapart...more It's my habit to write on the inside sleeve of a book the words from the text that I can't define or don't understand. Here is the resulting list from the back inside sleeve of Infinite Jest:
apocopes
bolections
reglets
dipsomania
quincunx
varicoceles
simpatico
aleatory
experialist
agnate
pedalferrous
fulvous
louvered
sangfroid
gibbons
apercu
eidetic
murated
tumescent
recidivism
erumpent
rutilant
hale
purled
nacelle
sulcus
imprecated
tumbrel
comportment
scopophobic
asperity
rapacious
afflatus
bathetic
brachiform
strabismic
ascapartic
avuncular
adit
factota
chuffing
neuralgiac
tumid
eustacian
xerophagy
gynecopia
suborning
solecistic
lissome
ascapartic
anapestic
bradyauxetic
lordosis
corticate
mucronate
codicil
lume
nacreous
puerile
thanatoptic
spansules
hasp
prognathous
nonuremic
apothegm
apicals
selvaged
caparison
cunctations
aphasiac
etiology
prolix
chyme
amanuentic
falcate
jejune
catastatic
eschatology
declivity
mafficking
cuirass
vig
miasma
cordite
cirrhotic
reveille
tektitic
crepuscular
threnody
emery
mysticetously
anechoic
anorak
erumpent (again - apparently I didn't remember it from the first time)
aphasiac
reseau
diverticulitis
cathexis
skirling
dun
exaculates
aphasia
anodized
picayune
caprolaliac
verdigrised
coruscant
anaclitic
catexic
sybaritically
restenotic
malentendu
peripatetic
lordotic
rictal
thanatopic
olla podida
inguinal
sudoriferous
swart
emetic
parotitic
alacrity
sinciput
kyphotic
ciquatoxic
I didn't realize until later in the book that DFW often makes up words.
I will post a full review at my blog, meekadjustments.blogspot.com.(less)
349 likes · like · see review
Jennifer
I love that you do that with the list of words! I used to do that with Lawrence Durrell books, and what an education I gave myself :) These days the b...more
I love that you do that with the list of words! I used to do that with Lawrence Durrell books, and what an education I gave myself :) These days the books I read are not nearly so challenging, but I simply can't find the energy to get back into Infinite Jest.(less)
Jan 06, 2013 06:18am
Jan 06, 2013 06:18am
Syahira Sharif
some of it I know since there's medical term... I guess, its better on kindle since you get to look up immediately.
Feb 13, 2013 05:08pm
Feb 13, 2013 05:08pm
Know what they say about novels such as Infinite Jest: Don’t seek Perfection or Pleasure but rather seek the Infinite Possibilities.
I have a lot to say about this book but before that there’s a little I don’t want to say about it. Here it is:
☽This book is never ending.
☽It bored me at times too.
☽Some of the end notes were annoying.
☽At times I read other books when I was supposed to read this book.
☽Whenever somebody asked me what IJ was all about, I was unable to come up with a clear-cut answer.
☽I...more
Know what they say about novels such as Infinite Jest: Don’t seek Perfection or Pleasure but rather seek the Infinite Possibilities.
I have a lot to say about this book but before that there’s a little I don’t want to say about it. Here it is:
☽This book is never ending.
☽It bored me at times too.
☽Some of the end notes were annoying.
☽At times I read other books when I was supposed to read this book.
☽Whenever somebody asked me what IJ was all about, I was unable to come up with a clear-cut answer.
☽I skipped few lines here and there.
☽I think those who haven’t read this book or won’t read it, would have more or less incomplete existence as a reader.
☽I think those who have read the whole book and still think it’s no good are..well…just normal I guess.
☽No reason is good enough for not reading this book.
☽In spite of best of my efforts my mind diverted to DFW’s suicide.
☽I had thoughts of trying marijuana (it’s not really a big deal in India).
☽After reading few reviews here, I got panic attacks due to their awesomeness.
☽This review went out of hand and got a ‘bit’ long, so oops.
☽I don’t want to say cheesy lines like:
-If IJ was a country, I’d applied for a permanent residency; or
-If IJ was a drug, I’d get high forever; or
-If IJ was a guy, I’d marry him; or
-I’m already missing reading it.
☽I laughed when I said to myself after finishing it, “let me get my thoughts in order.”
☽The good news is you can read IJ again and again. The bad news is, you Have to read it again.
Here’s what I want to say
An Unexamined Life
E.M. Forster said, “One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.”
Though I’m sure he didn’t have a book like IJ in mind, but I agree with him to some extent. Reading a long book means devoting a substantial time of your life, a time which you value and there’s no way one would like to declare that he/she/it spent that time on something unworthy. But when the book is Infinite Jest, then it deserves every iota of praise bestowed upon it. Its reading experience is something like the author takes your hand, makes you sit in front of a mirror and whisper in your ear, “now see the magic” and lo, you’re sucked in by the mirror and the next moment you find yourself in a strange yet surprisingly familiar land and slowly the images, the scenery, the words starts unfolding themselves and you need to look out at each direction, else you’ll be lost. You need to examine a life, which was left unexamined for a long time.
Day of finishing Infinite Jest
Jan 25, 2013 at around 2200hrs, I finished reading this book, closed it and put it aside. I stared at it for a while, then logged on to goodreads, gave it 5stars, put it under my favorites shelf and asked myself, “Well what was that all about?” There was no answer in response but just an echo of words:
to write something that stabs you in the heart. That pierces you, makes you think you're going to die.
Day of starting reading Infinite jest
There was a loud knocking on the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, drowsily I thought. On checking that the time was 2a.m in the morning, I exclaimed! certainly not at this hour. I reluctantly went to answer the door. An adolescent boy of around 14yrs straightaway asked,”Do you want to get entertained? Huh..what the..? I banged the door on his face and went back to sleep. Few hours passed and a sudden sound of some commotion broke my sleep again. Annoyingly I came out and Goodness Gracious Me! there was this whole tennis court in front of me and two players were busy playing. There was a group of boys snorting coke. On the opposite stands, some kind of class was going on! I recognized it was Arthur Ashe stadium, but couldn’t place the players. I looked at the score board: Wal and Fed. Wal was apparently leading with 6-3, 7-6, 5-3. All of a sudden somebody tapped on my shoulder. He was the same boy. This time he handed me a book. It was so heavy, that it made me fall from my seat. I woke with a start. The alarm of my cell phone went off at that precise moment. I checked the date. December 1, 2012. I said to myself, Of course!
The days in between
Over the period of almost two months, I read IJ every day. Having read Girl with curious hair and A supposedly fun thing.., I experienced both fiction and non-fiction writing by Wallace and loved it. It proved to be a boon, coz if nothing else, the disjointed stories in IJ were something like short stories from Girl.. (although a lot more developed and maturely handled) and the long ramblings on different topics reminded me of essays in a Supposedly fun…so Yes! Reading Wallace’s other works before attempting this book did help a lot more than I expected. There was something that made him work for me, which not only provided enjoyment but became a great source of knowledge and information.
He is one writer about whom I read a great deal about for reasons quite apparent. He dominated most part of my reading year gone by and I’m sure a repeat would happen this year too. Amidst an ongoing group read, reading some great literature (other than this book) and various conflicting opinions w/r/t its content, plot, structure, etc, etc, I have found a book that shall remain with me both physically and emotionally throughout this modest and unexciting life of mine.
Infinite Jest is not a work of a genius. It’s the work of someone who was all set to change the definition of word genius as we know it. He created a world that was consistently dark, desolate and most of the times demented but also witty, ingenious and oh so funny. This magnum opus is incredibly challenging but at the same time surprisingly accessible. It won’t let the reader sit back, relax and enjoy it. It’s no beach read but want its readers to sit up and take notice about what is going on. You can’t afford to lose focus and track but the probability is that you’ll lose both anyways. It’s that kind of book, a literary equivalent of mobiusism, a never ending quest, a once in a lifetime experience. By expressing all this, I’m in no way glorifying its completion by me, but simply stating the facts. It’s not possible to overestimate this book.
Wallace took the most wretched situations and characters and created such amazing backdrops, that in spite of everything so seemingly hopeless, he would still be able to present you with a glimpse of hope. In face of lot of desperate moves, he would teach you a lesson or two in patience. With so many impossibilities going on one after the other, he would tell what all is possible if one try to do just one thing: realize.
His prose is exuberant with less scope of comfort. He won’t surround you with the sea of beautiful flowing writing to make you feel that he has stated something profound but rather something relentless and contemporary that you’re in a position to relate in both subjective and objective way, no matter how insane that way is. You’ll lose count of neologism, solecism, colloquialism, malapropism, and many other –isms DFW employed within IJ, which not only proves fascinating but gives you an idea about the extent to which he allowed himself to experiment in order to say whatever he wanted to and you’ll see how effortless it all looks as if DFW was telling something that’s always been there and getting our attention by a simple psst-look-here expression. Dave Eggers in his wonderful foreword rightly stated: A Wallace reader gets the impression of being in a room with a very talkative and brilliant uncle or cousin, who, just when he’s about to push it too far, to try our patience with too much detail, has the good sense to throw in a good low-brow joke.He has employed an allegorical structure to this novel and develops it to an extraordinary proportion taking cues from many of his influences namely Joyce, Pynchon, Shakespeare and Dante to name a few.
I don’t want to indulge much into plot(s), but just a brief and my practice in brevity, if I’m allowed. IJ primarily takes place in futuristic USA circa 2009-10 in Boston city. The setting for majority of the narration is based at Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA) and Ennet House, a drug and alcohol recovery house, where majority of the interesting characters reside, situating nearby ETA. ETA was founded by James. O. Incandenza, an avant-garde film maker, whose wife, Avril Incandenza heads the academy with their 2 sons, Mario and Hal being the current attendees of the ETA while their eldest brother, Orin being a previous attendee, now a punter in the NFL. Orin is a jerk, Mario is great and Hal is lonely. Avril is beautiful, very tall and delusional about her kids; James was taller, committed suicide and knew his kids just too well. He created a film known as The Entertainment, titled "Infinite Jest", which rumored to have ’qualities’ such that whoever saw it wanted nothing else ever in life but to see it again, then again and so on, rendering its audience fatally addicted to it. The quest of finding the master copy of this entertainment marks the entry of a group of Quebecois separatists in the book, known as Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents a.k.a Wheelchair Assassins or simply A.F.R, who wants to obtain a copy, which they called Samizdat , because of its lethal qualities that would make them dangerously powerful to meet their extremist goals. This group gave me creeps.
The book is mostly covered with Wallace commentary about drug addiction through myriad eccentric and bizarre characters at the Ennet House. Wallace presents the intake of drugs, its effects and substance withdrawal i.e. cold turkey in such merciless detail that one can’t help to actually empathize with those involved in substance abuse.Apart from drugs, there’s some wonderful description about depression, clinical depression to be precise. Here’s one of my favorite passage which I’ve tagged as spoiler (view spoiler)[ "The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling." (hide spoiler)]. At this point one can’t help feeling for David’s own struggle with depression and the justification of the eventual step he took.
With drugs and depression, there are AA meetings and telling of stories, some of which are so despicably ugly and dark that it would make you think that you were better off without reading them.Then of course there is tennis and the pressure this competitive game induces on young minds but also tells how a thin line exists that separates Tennis with real life: Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win.
At ETA, through characters like Hal and Michael Pemulis, one gets the picture of how youngsters so easily resort to wrong paths, which could adversely affect their coming lives a sample of which could be witnessed through Ennet House residents. So in my opinion it won’t be wrong to say that Wallace, in a masterful way presented a connection between past, present and future of different promising lives, which got destroyed because of the few choices wrongly made. At Ennet House, characters like Don Gately convey that despite being wrongdoers, they are good human beings at heart and are just a product of godforsaken circumstances amidst which they were born and at the same house there are people like Randy Lenz who are nothing less than a personification of devil.
While reading this book, one gets a fitting impression of David's capability and scope as a writer. There could be nothing more challenging in picking the most undesired and ugly elements of the universe and weave them together and creating characters and situations of such unbelievable contrast that the end product dwelling them makes even a stone heart to wail in sympathy or reach a point of such profound epiphany that brings a huge turn around in your life. He won’t present you with anything normal but something lovable nevertheless. What’s the most important thing that can happen after reading IJ? The world around you changes for better or for worse. One tends to acquire a whole new point of view of looking at people and can’t help thinking, Well, what could be their story?
The most incredible example of David’s talent can be seen through James O. Incandenza’s filmography that is dripping with excruciatingly weird but magnificently witty ideas. I admit that there was not much I could relate with in great depth. My love for tennis and movies (especially Lynchian) wasn’t the biggest support system and well, I’m not even American or Québécois, so all the more less relief, so my motivation mainly rest with David’s writing and the thought of reading a work of literature which is unique in a daunting yet immensely fulfilling manner. It’s true that this novel is full of extraneous ramblings but they are not invasive to the main text. If you learn to like his writing, you will love everything written by him, well almost everything. I had my small issues with few things but I’m ready to overlook them. Moreover a clever move by Wallace can be identifiable in the manner of his use of so many ‘errors’ in different context. I know they were mainly attributed to various characters, but again, in a book so huge, the margin of error automatically increases, which could easily be neglect during editing too. So instead of sifting such errors out, Wallace made them the part of his work. If I’ll give it a metaphoric angle as a result of some cogitation on my part, then it could also be seen as life, which can’t be led without its due share of some big errors. After all that’s what being human is all about.
One thing I can confidently say about his writing is that in this book, his prose though seemingly reckless at times, is an intentional move on his part. You’ll see the range and depth of his skills throughout. Agreed that most of the topics covered had some deep connection with David personal life but that's exactly it makes it all the more brilliant as we get to read someone who had a lucid and precise view of what he had to say. Though I have read that this thing doesn’t sit well with many, but that’s what reading DFW means. A blogger rightly commented: So many of his critics never realized the writer's relentless and extravagant prose was a deliberate and incredibly risky attempt to present reality as he experienced it, which was so vast and multi-layered as to make sharing it with another person who was experiencing a similar influx, an astonishing feat.
Infinite Jest, among many things is homage to sobriety, happiness, loneliness, sadness and truth. For some, staying sober is happiness and for some feeling is happiness. Some will be happy in knowing the truth and some, in telling of the truth.
The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.
He brilliantly captured the fatuous nature of residents of a country in this era of pop culture in a flamboyant yet amazingly restrained manner that one can’t help but feel the pain of the injury the text inflict upon the minds of its readers. It's like watching a reality sit-com over a surveillance camera, is one concise description I particularly like. A work of literature that was born to become immortal and shall teach you what all can be done with words and what power lies within the realm of writing.
My reading experience was more or less steady and enriching. Gradually through the main contents, I noticed the book weight shifting from my right hand to the left (though it happened a lot many times considering the endnotes) and reaching the last page and with that last page I realized, there’s plenty to come yet. Denouement and IJ doesn’t go together in the most conventional sense. There was a lot more left to ‘figure out’. Before referring to external sources, I wanted to put together as many pieces of this bizarre puzzle at their right places. It was getting unbearable somehow. I was getting afraid what if I would fail or what if after ‘getting the jest’ I won’t laugh. And it was then it dawned upon me that every reader of this book becomes a part of it in such a way, that it won’t let you fail. ‘A Failed Entertainment’ was the working title for David Foster Wallace's “Infinite Jest”; and I’m glad he didn’t go for that, because I think he produced an entertainment so painfully addictive that It won’t be easy to withdraw from it and consequently can't be regarded as a failure. One would carry one thing or the other out of it. There are many loose ends that are not being tied, may be because they are meant to be honored in isolation. The whole thing would turn up as fogged mirror, which only you can clean to see an image, either unbearably beautiful or unbearably ugly. Till that time, live accordingly to the image you want to see at the end. And here’s me hoping that one day I’ll ‘get the jest’ in toto. I'm so glad that this book exists.(less)
54 likes · like · see review
Dolors
You just convinced me to read IJ.
This might be the best review I've read about it...
Stunning.
May 02, 2013 12:12am
This might be the best review I've read about it...
Stunning.
May 02, 2013 12:12am
Garima
Dolors wrote: "You just convinced me to read IJ.
This might be the best review I've read about it...
Stunning."
I'm glad you liked it, Dolors. Thanks a l...more Dolors wrote: "You just convinced me to read IJ.
This might be the best review I've read about it...
Stunning."
I'm glad you liked it, Dolors. Thanks a lot!(less)
May 02, 2013 12:27am
This might be the best review I've read about it...
Stunning."
I'm glad you liked it, Dolors. Thanks a l...more Dolors wrote: "You just convinced me to read IJ.
This might be the best review I've read about it...
Stunning."
I'm glad you liked it, Dolors. Thanks a lot!(less)
May 02, 2013 12:27am
I feel like I just ran head-on into the brick wall that is Infinite Jest, and my head isn't quite clear enough to figure out what I thought yet.
I mean, it was a slow-motion run, given that I started this back in December and read it very, very slowly. I've taken a lot of time to think about it. Why don't I know what I think?
I enjoyed most of it a great deal. I liked every individual storyline. I appreciated the characters, and the varieties of writing style, and the footnotes, and the sheer inve...more I feel like I just ran head-on into the brick wall that is Infinite Jest, and my head isn't quite clear enough to figure out what I thought yet.
I mean, it was a slow-motion run, given that I started this back in December and read it very, very slowly. I've taken a lot of time to think about it. Why don't I know what I think?
I enjoyed most of it a great deal. I liked every individual storyline. I appreciated the characters, and the varieties of writing style, and the footnotes, and the sheer inventiveness and complexity.
And yet I didn't love it. I'm at the end of Infinite Jest and I'm just feeling like I missed something. I liked the book well enough, I'll probably read it again some day, but although individual sections moved me or entertained me, it's just not hanging together.
There was a point, about 200 pages from the end, when it all felt like it was starting to knit together, and never quite did.
When you get to this point with a proclaimed masterpiece, it's hard not to feel that you're just missing something. I feel like I'm missing something! How can all of these great pieces not quite hold up?
I'm pretty sure maybe it's me.
Infinite Jest is a kaleidoscope of characters, settings, and personal, political, national, international, and tennis intrigue. It circles around addiction. And entertainment. And communication or lack thereof. It's part dystopia, part character study, part comedy, part drama, part crazy shit.
I can't even begin to try to explain it. The writing is masterful, and those long paragraphs with little punctuation were hypnotic, always used for reason, and to great effect.
Dammit, there wasn't any part of this I didn't like! So why hasn't it taken that last leap and swept me away?
I'll reread this someday, and see if knowing what is to come helps put the rest in perspective, allows the book to finally knock me off my feet and dust me off with a whisk broom.
Crossposted at Smorgasbook(less)
I mean, it was a slow-motion run, given that I started this back in December and read it very, very slowly. I've taken a lot of time to think about it. Why don't I know what I think?
I enjoyed most of it a great deal. I liked every individual storyline. I appreciated the characters, and the varieties of writing style, and the footnotes, and the sheer inve...more I feel like I just ran head-on into the brick wall that is Infinite Jest, and my head isn't quite clear enough to figure out what I thought yet.
I mean, it was a slow-motion run, given that I started this back in December and read it very, very slowly. I've taken a lot of time to think about it. Why don't I know what I think?
I enjoyed most of it a great deal. I liked every individual storyline. I appreciated the characters, and the varieties of writing style, and the footnotes, and the sheer inventiveness and complexity.
And yet I didn't love it. I'm at the end of Infinite Jest and I'm just feeling like I missed something. I liked the book well enough, I'll probably read it again some day, but although individual sections moved me or entertained me, it's just not hanging together.
There was a point, about 200 pages from the end, when it all felt like it was starting to knit together, and never quite did.
When you get to this point with a proclaimed masterpiece, it's hard not to feel that you're just missing something. I feel like I'm missing something! How can all of these great pieces not quite hold up?
I'm pretty sure maybe it's me.
Infinite Jest is a kaleidoscope of characters, settings, and personal, political, national, international, and tennis intrigue. It circles around addiction. And entertainment. And communication or lack thereof. It's part dystopia, part character study, part comedy, part drama, part crazy shit.
I can't even begin to try to explain it. The writing is masterful, and those long paragraphs with little punctuation were hypnotic, always used for reason, and to great effect.
Dammit, there wasn't any part of this I didn't like! So why hasn't it taken that last leap and swept me away?
I'll reread this someday, and see if knowing what is to come helps put the rest in perspective, allows the book to finally knock me off my feet and dust me off with a whisk broom.
Crossposted at Smorgasbook(less)
48 likes · like · see review
Juanita Rice
Count me as one of those who absolutely loved the book. I finished it and then started at the beginning again immediately. I read many books that don'...more
Count me as one of those who absolutely loved the book. I finished it and then started at the beginning again immediately. I read many books that don't pretend the world can be resolved, and the problem with a book having a "denouement" is that there is always, always implicit a kind of moral fable. And Wallace couldn't make that affirmation; he could only, for once, tell the grittiest and worst as it really was. Now, true, I never again read the story about Fackelmann and the mobster/pusher's revenge. But the lesson of what's waiting if you push around with drugs, gambling, alcoholism, etc., should not be dismissed.
On the other hand, I think the sheer greatness I attribute to "Infinite Jest" is its total comprehension of the emptiness of contemporary life at the level of wanting and desiring and the extent to which Americans want to escape from their inner fears--whether those are dystopic emotional illnesses or a dream of being celebrity at all costs or being willing to ingest things to take the place of life. O well: plus I think the brilliance and difficulty of AA's response to addiction has never been so well portrayed.
I do not--repeat--do not, however, think others who don't agree with me are missing something. This just happened to be a book that utterly amazed me; I was always invigorated just by the sheer energy, brilliance and audacity of the writing and the imagination.(less)
Mar 05, 2013 04:44pm
On the other hand, I think the sheer greatness I attribute to "Infinite Jest" is its total comprehension of the emptiness of contemporary life at the level of wanting and desiring and the extent to which Americans want to escape from their inner fears--whether those are dystopic emotional illnesses or a dream of being celebrity at all costs or being willing to ingest things to take the place of life. O well: plus I think the brilliance and difficulty of AA's response to addiction has never been so well portrayed.
I do not--repeat--do not, however, think others who don't agree with me are missing something. This just happened to be a book that utterly amazed me; I was always invigorated just by the sheer energy, brilliance and audacity of the writing and the imagination.(less)
Mar 05, 2013 04:44pm
Roy Conner
It is a strange journey to read this book. I'm a big fan of David Wallace. Just finished the new book on his life.
Apr 12, 2013 12:36pm
Apr 12, 2013 12:36pm
100 Words in Search of Precision
In the spirit of "Star Trek”, DFW boldly wanders through the darkness of the modern world, holding a candle, recording everything he witnesses in minute, almost helmet-cam detail.
He isn’t just preoccupied by or satisfied with the absurdity and comic potential of the world.
He wants to scrutinise it, diagnose it and cure it.
Out of the minutiae comes meaning and illumination.
It’s up to the reader to sift through the minutiae, to discard the mullock and the fool’s gol...more 100 Words in Search of Precision
In the spirit of "Star Trek”, DFW boldly wanders through the darkness of the modern world, holding a candle, recording everything he witnesses in minute, almost helmet-cam detail.
He isn’t just preoccupied by or satisfied with the absurdity and comic potential of the world.
He wants to scrutinise it, diagnose it and cure it.
Out of the minutiae comes meaning and illumination.
It’s up to the reader to sift through the minutiae, to discard the mullock and the fool’s gold, and to find the gold that DFW has placed there for us to find.
His works are incandescent, deeply philosophical and deeply socio-political.
REVIEW:
Because, like the cast of "Ben Hur", my Review exceeds the permitted number of characters, you can find it in My Writings here:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
Please visit if you're interested in reading some views about the political philosophy of the novel.
DJ IAN'S ONE STAR REVIEW:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
INFINITE HAIKU:
(Orin's Having) Too Much Fun
Horizontal eight.
Get the feeling you've been had?
What infinite jest!
[Sponsored by the Sex Pistols last gig, Winterland, January 14th, 1978]
The Sound of Young Boston
I can't see you, and
It's getting dark in my room.
God's not in the house.
[Apologies to Jonathan Richman and Paul Bryant]
The Secret's in the Service
Onward jesting servers,
Raise your ball and racquet more,
Don’t lob it to the fore.
Where Be Your Aces Now?
A lass for Yorick!
His backhand is as fancy
As his win/loss ratio.
P.G.O.A.T.
What became of the
Prettiest Girl of All Time?
Flawless 'neath her veil.
The Ghost of Jean-Paul Sartre Visits Boston AA
You know he is dead...
God as you understand him.
Can I bum a smoke?
Year of the Next Evolution in Vibrant Senior Living
I imagine us
Sharing some infinite jest,
Dignified and old.
[Apologies to Jonathan Richman and North Hill]
INFINITE BREAST:
----1----
---------
((((0))))
INFINITE TREKS:
Language, mind, time,
Space and fate:
The final frontier.
These are the voyages of the cartridge
“Entertainment”.
Its five-year mission:
To explore strange new worlds,
To seek out new life in old civilizations,
To boldly show what
No man has been shown before.
READING NOTES:
My Reading Notes start here:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
They are not intended to be comprehensive.
I used them to track themes that I was interested in.
INFINITE JEST VANITY PLATES:
Just for fun, I compiled a list of maxims and catchphrases used in the novel:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
SOUNDTRACK:
Here are some songs I was thinking of:
Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Astral Plane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVjmty...
The Modern Lovers - She Cracked [1972 demo]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4p3l...
The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgRYnc...
The Modern Lovers - Girlfriend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veNzHk...
Nick Lowe / Rockpile - Cracking Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0moGR...
The Soft Boys - My Mind Is Connected to Your Dreams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5bEkI...
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson - Hang On To Your Emotions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTAVBN...
Lou Reed - Hang On To Your Emotions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm934f...
Lou Reed - Who Am I (Tripitena's Song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYLj6G...
Lou Reed - Who Am I (Tripitena's Song) and "Perfect Day" (Live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iJa_n...(less)
In the spirit of "Star Trek”, DFW boldly wanders through the darkness of the modern world, holding a candle, recording everything he witnesses in minute, almost helmet-cam detail.
He isn’t just preoccupied by or satisfied with the absurdity and comic potential of the world.
He wants to scrutinise it, diagnose it and cure it.
Out of the minutiae comes meaning and illumination.
It’s up to the reader to sift through the minutiae, to discard the mullock and the fool’s gol...more 100 Words in Search of Precision
In the spirit of "Star Trek”, DFW boldly wanders through the darkness of the modern world, holding a candle, recording everything he witnesses in minute, almost helmet-cam detail.
He isn’t just preoccupied by or satisfied with the absurdity and comic potential of the world.
He wants to scrutinise it, diagnose it and cure it.
Out of the minutiae comes meaning and illumination.
It’s up to the reader to sift through the minutiae, to discard the mullock and the fool’s gold, and to find the gold that DFW has placed there for us to find.
His works are incandescent, deeply philosophical and deeply socio-political.
REVIEW:
Because, like the cast of "Ben Hur", my Review exceeds the permitted number of characters, you can find it in My Writings here:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
Please visit if you're interested in reading some views about the political philosophy of the novel.
DJ IAN'S ONE STAR REVIEW:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
INFINITE HAIKU:
(Orin's Having) Too Much Fun
Horizontal eight.
Get the feeling you've been had?
What infinite jest!
[Sponsored by the Sex Pistols last gig, Winterland, January 14th, 1978]
The Sound of Young Boston
I can't see you, and
It's getting dark in my room.
God's not in the house.
[Apologies to Jonathan Richman and Paul Bryant]
The Secret's in the Service
Onward jesting servers,
Raise your ball and racquet more,
Don’t lob it to the fore.
Where Be Your Aces Now?
A lass for Yorick!
His backhand is as fancy
As his win/loss ratio.
P.G.O.A.T.
What became of the
Prettiest Girl of All Time?
Flawless 'neath her veil.
The Ghost of Jean-Paul Sartre Visits Boston AA
You know he is dead...
God as you understand him.
Can I bum a smoke?
Year of the Next Evolution in Vibrant Senior Living
I imagine us
Sharing some infinite jest,
Dignified and old.
[Apologies to Jonathan Richman and North Hill]
INFINITE BREAST:
----1----
---------
((((0))))
INFINITE TREKS:
Language, mind, time,
Space and fate:
The final frontier.
These are the voyages of the cartridge
“Entertainment”.
Its five-year mission:
To explore strange new worlds,
To seek out new life in old civilizations,
To boldly show what
No man has been shown before.
READING NOTES:
My Reading Notes start here:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
They are not intended to be comprehensive.
I used them to track themes that I was interested in.
INFINITE JEST VANITY PLATES:
Just for fun, I compiled a list of maxims and catchphrases used in the novel:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
SOUNDTRACK:
Here are some songs I was thinking of:
Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Astral Plane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVjmty...
The Modern Lovers - She Cracked [1972 demo]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4p3l...
The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgRYnc...
The Modern Lovers - Girlfriend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veNzHk...
Nick Lowe / Rockpile - Cracking Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0moGR...
The Soft Boys - My Mind Is Connected to Your Dreams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5bEkI...
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson - Hang On To Your Emotions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTAVBN...
Lou Reed - Hang On To Your Emotions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm934f...
Lou Reed - Who Am I (Tripitena's Song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYLj6G...
Lou Reed - Who Am I (Tripitena's Song) and "Perfect Day" (Live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iJa_n...(less)
40 likes · like · see review
Gary McTiernan
I'm exhausted-but strangely exhilarated! Be my friend, please! (I wouldn't want you as my enemy...)
Mar 13, 2013 05:44pm
Mar 13, 2013 05:44pm
Ian Graye
Haha. You're not the first person to say that ;)
Enemies, I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention.
Mar 13, 2013 05:46pm
Enemies, I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention.
Mar 13, 2013 05:46pm
By the time I hit third grade and had still demonstrated absolutely no inclination toward athletic pursuits, my parents forced me into the township's local softball league. Because that's what you do when your bookworm daughter begs to take art lessons and possesses a nigh prodigious talent for falling up stairs, right? My first year of being a young ball player was punctuated by lots of praying for rain, daydreaming in the outfield and swinging at every pitch just because I liked how it felt: S...more
By the time I hit third grade and had still demonstrated absolutely no inclination toward athletic pursuits, my parents forced me into the township's local softball league. Because that's what you do when your bookworm daughter begs to take art lessons and possesses a nigh prodigious talent for falling up stairs, right? My first year of being a young ball player was punctuated by lots of praying for rain, daydreaming in the outfield and swinging at every pitch just because I liked how it felt: Somehow, despite my staggering disinterest and vast physical ineptitude, my team won the championship that season, heralding another god-awful year of my father's rabid commitment to an array of drills that still have phrases like "loosey goosey," "call for the ball" and "keep your HEAD in the GAME!" providing the hellishly looping soundtrack to my nightmares.
Miraculously still, I landed a spot on the all-star team my second year, which only led to more rigorous and more time-consuming practices after school, on the weekends, before games, after games, whenever there was even half an hour to spare in the pursuit of athletic greatness -- time I would have preferred to spend with my nose in a book. Any book. By my third year, I was pretty much self-sabotaging myself at every step of the game, eventually sacrificing the only thing I cared about: my beloved spot at second base. By the time I was a sullen eighth-grader and limply going through the motions I’d had mercilessly drilled into my rote memory for nearly five years, I made it pretty clear that my parents were wasting their time and money on misguided wishes that I’d conform to whatever young-athlete ideal they had mistakenly thought could be pinned on me. This was only a viable exit strategy because the one thing they hated more than relinquishing control over their children was throwing money at hopeless endeavors that would just end in (their, not my) public embarrassment.
But my doomed-to-fruitlessness years spent toiling at the batting cages and the local baseball diamonds and the front- and backyard were not why this book resonated deeply with and brutalized me as severely as it did. Though being forced into the arduous efforts of participating in a sport I didn't much care about save for the way it occasionally diverted the otherwise endless torrent of parental disappointment sure endeared Enfield Tennis Academy's students to me in a way I didn't see coming.
It's incidental that I gave up smoking pot about a month into the nearly three I spent reading this gargantuan tome. It's a cold-turkey move that was a long time coming, as I realized quite some time ago that my affinity for herbal refreshment stopped being an occasional comfort and grew to a full-blown, all-consuming vice. I won't go so far as to call it an addiction, as it was a habit I dropped with surprising ease. And I sure as hell didn't have half the troubles as I learned (thanks to this book, which I'm pretty sure the completion of is the equivalent of a master's degree in twelve-step programs) true addicts do. But when my coping method of choice in unwinding after a thoroughly demoralizing day at work, the thing I compulsively relied on to comfortably pass time and the way I eased myself into unfamiliar social situations started to look awfully similar, I couldn’t help but acknowledge the unfortunate reality that I was on the precipice of becoming a career stoner, sacrificing the pursuits and interests and friendships that I value far more that leaving my mind behind for a while instead of facing my trubles head-on.
For as easy and as shockingly non-disruptive my sudden cessation of a years-long habit was, you're goddamn right there were moments when my resolve almost caved -- not of weakness, really, but just because, meh, why not? That's about when I realized that the ritual of the vice was just as comforting as the substance itself. So I focused on the distance I put between myself and my last toke: One week without a visit from Mary Jane. Two weeks. One month. Now almost two months. And every time someone would pass me the bowl or the bong or a joint out of habit before apologizing profusely and sincerely whenever I declined (it’s weird, the odd deference I found myself receiving –- unknowing echoes of the very things I’d once said to those who abandoned the herb before me -- just for trying to kick a deeply ingrained habit: “Oh, man, you’re cleaning out? That’s awesome, congrats. I could never do that.”), it got a little easier to stay on the wagon.
Pardon the descent into clichéd territory for a second, but every journey of 1,000 miles begins with just one step: My attempt to shake a years-long bad habit began with one day of sticking to my guns. Just like conquering the beast that is “Infinite Jest” began with the turning of a single page. Both had their moments of me wondering just what the hell I’d signed up for but, even with their lesser moments, both efforts have been more than worth their comparatively few and fleeting pains.
I’ve made it abundantly clear before that I don’t give a leaping, prancing fuck about tennis but DFW sure made it interesting in the two essays he devoted to the sport in “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” Coming into this having read even one collection of his non-fiction ruined IJ for me from the beginning, as it is the man's non-judgmental but deeply, quietly observant presence in his writing that draws me to him the most. But it also made me realize that the guy could have rewritten the phone book and I would have vomited praise all over everything because he’s that good at honest storytelling.
There are truths pouring from every page in IJ, which do lend a certain familiar presence reminiscent of DFW's non-fiction: The AA meetings, the depression, the internal conflicts, the biggest truths coming from the most inconsequential moments and, yes, even the tennis all resounded with real-life personal experience. Even the characters I absolutely hated (like that fucker Lenz) were crafted in a way that made them so human and multidimensional that it was obvious they were intended to be victims of circumstance who demanded more than black-and-white consideration.
The ways DFW blurs the lines and draws parallels between seemingly at-odds concepts show how polar opposites aren’t even as far removed from each other as we like to tell ourselves, that perspective, motivation or a simple name are all that separate, say, physically brutal athletic training and mindlessly indulgent entertainment, as the former is shown to be just another means for an individual to deliver the latter to the many. Similarly, an elite tennis academy really isn’t that far removed from a rehabilitation program: It becomes screamingly clear that both house addicts of some kind when you’re forced to examine what really lies at the heart of each institution. Even, obviously, sexual encounters and the family of one's childhood are complicit in one's effect on the other(view spoiler)[, as seen in Orin’s tendency to seduce mothers and how his own mother, in turn, carries on an affair with a boy young enough to be her son and who is wearing a disturbingly familiar football uniform when their tryst is brought to the reader’s full awareness (hide spoiler)]. Because, really: Is the path to learned, painstakingly accrued greatness not all that different from a seizuring, pants-shitting junkie in the realm of addiction? Filling a void with finely honed talent that will one day destroy the body is revealed to not be entirely unlike filling that same void with a destructive substance that, too, renders the addicted vessel to a ticking time bomb of physical and mental ruin.
But in a time when one can no longer be certain of what the future holds -- the country is run by an increasingly unstable president, when something as indelible as a country’s topographical familiarity is eliminated, when one can’t even rely on the unfailing numerical certainty of what to call the next and all subsequent years -- is it any surprise that extremes are no longer separated by distinct boundaries and that the sweet escapist nectar of entertainment has ascended to such obsessive, pervasive heights? All people can be sure of is that the television show or movie that provides comforting relief from the unflagging instability of the real world is never more than an always-available cartridge away. In this regard, DFW presents a strange sort of dystopia where any addiction or superficial sense of microcosmic control is necessary to cope with a world whose only constant is perpetual upheaval.
It is that very instability that dominates the end of this book(view spoiler)[, as demonstrated by characters being (sometimes violently) uprooted from the surroundings that the reader has spent the length of three normal-sized novels relegating them to and replanted in wholly surprising locales: Hal is taken from the strictly regimented ETA where children are turned into perfectly performing machines and thrust into a regressive support group where adult men are encouraged to embrace their inner infants; the sanguine Remy descends from his southwestern heights to the rock-hard bottom of Ennet House’s desperate pursuit of getting life back on track; poor Gately is ripped from his more-or-less secure life of sober, middling authority to being completely dependent upon machines to keep him alive, where he is at constant odds with his rational mind to avoid all addictive substances no matter what necessary relief they bring while battling unimaginable physical pain; the less said about Orin's upturned world the better; even the long-deceased JOI returns to the mortal coil in a sense –- by the way, I could have happily read nothing but the interfacing between Gately and Himself the friendly wraith for 1,079 pages and been as happy as an addict on a weekend drug binge (hide spoiler)].
Life is not always interesting or without its flaws and, honestly, neither was this book. For me, IJ wasn’t a perfect novel, nor was it the absolute best thing I’ve read. But it was the most human, the most humbling and the most honest: As far as I’m concerned, those are much more difficult and far more noble superlatives to reach for, especially with a piece of fiction that manages to resonate with more desperate sincerity than some people can ever hope to manage.(less)
Miraculously still, I landed a spot on the all-star team my second year, which only led to more rigorous and more time-consuming practices after school, on the weekends, before games, after games, whenever there was even half an hour to spare in the pursuit of athletic greatness -- time I would have preferred to spend with my nose in a book. Any book. By my third year, I was pretty much self-sabotaging myself at every step of the game, eventually sacrificing the only thing I cared about: my beloved spot at second base. By the time I was a sullen eighth-grader and limply going through the motions I’d had mercilessly drilled into my rote memory for nearly five years, I made it pretty clear that my parents were wasting their time and money on misguided wishes that I’d conform to whatever young-athlete ideal they had mistakenly thought could be pinned on me. This was only a viable exit strategy because the one thing they hated more than relinquishing control over their children was throwing money at hopeless endeavors that would just end in (their, not my) public embarrassment.
But my doomed-to-fruitlessness years spent toiling at the batting cages and the local baseball diamonds and the front- and backyard were not why this book resonated deeply with and brutalized me as severely as it did. Though being forced into the arduous efforts of participating in a sport I didn't much care about save for the way it occasionally diverted the otherwise endless torrent of parental disappointment sure endeared Enfield Tennis Academy's students to me in a way I didn't see coming.
It's incidental that I gave up smoking pot about a month into the nearly three I spent reading this gargantuan tome. It's a cold-turkey move that was a long time coming, as I realized quite some time ago that my affinity for herbal refreshment stopped being an occasional comfort and grew to a full-blown, all-consuming vice. I won't go so far as to call it an addiction, as it was a habit I dropped with surprising ease. And I sure as hell didn't have half the troubles as I learned (thanks to this book, which I'm pretty sure the completion of is the equivalent of a master's degree in twelve-step programs) true addicts do. But when my coping method of choice in unwinding after a thoroughly demoralizing day at work, the thing I compulsively relied on to comfortably pass time and the way I eased myself into unfamiliar social situations started to look awfully similar, I couldn’t help but acknowledge the unfortunate reality that I was on the precipice of becoming a career stoner, sacrificing the pursuits and interests and friendships that I value far more that leaving my mind behind for a while instead of facing my trubles head-on.
For as easy and as shockingly non-disruptive my sudden cessation of a years-long habit was, you're goddamn right there were moments when my resolve almost caved -- not of weakness, really, but just because, meh, why not? That's about when I realized that the ritual of the vice was just as comforting as the substance itself. So I focused on the distance I put between myself and my last toke: One week without a visit from Mary Jane. Two weeks. One month. Now almost two months. And every time someone would pass me the bowl or the bong or a joint out of habit before apologizing profusely and sincerely whenever I declined (it’s weird, the odd deference I found myself receiving –- unknowing echoes of the very things I’d once said to those who abandoned the herb before me -- just for trying to kick a deeply ingrained habit: “Oh, man, you’re cleaning out? That’s awesome, congrats. I could never do that.”), it got a little easier to stay on the wagon.
Pardon the descent into clichéd territory for a second, but every journey of 1,000 miles begins with just one step: My attempt to shake a years-long bad habit began with one day of sticking to my guns. Just like conquering the beast that is “Infinite Jest” began with the turning of a single page. Both had their moments of me wondering just what the hell I’d signed up for but, even with their lesser moments, both efforts have been more than worth their comparatively few and fleeting pains.
I’ve made it abundantly clear before that I don’t give a leaping, prancing fuck about tennis but DFW sure made it interesting in the two essays he devoted to the sport in “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” Coming into this having read even one collection of his non-fiction ruined IJ for me from the beginning, as it is the man's non-judgmental but deeply, quietly observant presence in his writing that draws me to him the most. But it also made me realize that the guy could have rewritten the phone book and I would have vomited praise all over everything because he’s that good at honest storytelling.
There are truths pouring from every page in IJ, which do lend a certain familiar presence reminiscent of DFW's non-fiction: The AA meetings, the depression, the internal conflicts, the biggest truths coming from the most inconsequential moments and, yes, even the tennis all resounded with real-life personal experience. Even the characters I absolutely hated (like that fucker Lenz) were crafted in a way that made them so human and multidimensional that it was obvious they were intended to be victims of circumstance who demanded more than black-and-white consideration.
The ways DFW blurs the lines and draws parallels between seemingly at-odds concepts show how polar opposites aren’t even as far removed from each other as we like to tell ourselves, that perspective, motivation or a simple name are all that separate, say, physically brutal athletic training and mindlessly indulgent entertainment, as the former is shown to be just another means for an individual to deliver the latter to the many. Similarly, an elite tennis academy really isn’t that far removed from a rehabilitation program: It becomes screamingly clear that both house addicts of some kind when you’re forced to examine what really lies at the heart of each institution. Even, obviously, sexual encounters and the family of one's childhood are complicit in one's effect on the other(view spoiler)[, as seen in Orin’s tendency to seduce mothers and how his own mother, in turn, carries on an affair with a boy young enough to be her son and who is wearing a disturbingly familiar football uniform when their tryst is brought to the reader’s full awareness (hide spoiler)]. Because, really: Is the path to learned, painstakingly accrued greatness not all that different from a seizuring, pants-shitting junkie in the realm of addiction? Filling a void with finely honed talent that will one day destroy the body is revealed to not be entirely unlike filling that same void with a destructive substance that, too, renders the addicted vessel to a ticking time bomb of physical and mental ruin.
But in a time when one can no longer be certain of what the future holds -- the country is run by an increasingly unstable president, when something as indelible as a country’s topographical familiarity is eliminated, when one can’t even rely on the unfailing numerical certainty of what to call the next and all subsequent years -- is it any surprise that extremes are no longer separated by distinct boundaries and that the sweet escapist nectar of entertainment has ascended to such obsessive, pervasive heights? All people can be sure of is that the television show or movie that provides comforting relief from the unflagging instability of the real world is never more than an always-available cartridge away. In this regard, DFW presents a strange sort of dystopia where any addiction or superficial sense of microcosmic control is necessary to cope with a world whose only constant is perpetual upheaval.
It is that very instability that dominates the end of this book(view spoiler)[, as demonstrated by characters being (sometimes violently) uprooted from the surroundings that the reader has spent the length of three normal-sized novels relegating them to and replanted in wholly surprising locales: Hal is taken from the strictly regimented ETA where children are turned into perfectly performing machines and thrust into a regressive support group where adult men are encouraged to embrace their inner infants; the sanguine Remy descends from his southwestern heights to the rock-hard bottom of Ennet House’s desperate pursuit of getting life back on track; poor Gately is ripped from his more-or-less secure life of sober, middling authority to being completely dependent upon machines to keep him alive, where he is at constant odds with his rational mind to avoid all addictive substances no matter what necessary relief they bring while battling unimaginable physical pain; the less said about Orin's upturned world the better; even the long-deceased JOI returns to the mortal coil in a sense –- by the way, I could have happily read nothing but the interfacing between Gately and Himself the friendly wraith for 1,079 pages and been as happy as an addict on a weekend drug binge (hide spoiler)].
Life is not always interesting or without its flaws and, honestly, neither was this book. For me, IJ wasn’t a perfect novel, nor was it the absolute best thing I’ve read. But it was the most human, the most humbling and the most honest: As far as I’m concerned, those are much more difficult and far more noble superlatives to reach for, especially with a piece of fiction that manages to resonate with more desperate sincerity than some people can ever hope to manage.(less)
36 likes · like · see review
Meenakshi
Madeleine wrote: "Meenakshi wrote: "I'm just too difficult for my own good *sigh*. But I just started to smoke a couple of months ago, so I think I'll...more
Madeleine wrote: "Meenakshi wrote: "I'm just too difficult for my own good *sigh*. But I just started to smoke a couple of months ago, so I think I'll get there eventually."
Ha, I could have written that first sente..."
Thanks for the encouragement, Madeleine! you're super cool!(less)
Mar 05, 2013 04:32am
Ha, I could have written that first sente..."
Thanks for the encouragement, Madeleine! you're super cool!(less)
Mar 05, 2013 04:32am
Kyle
Um, wow. This is among the best book reviews (from anywhere, not just GR) I've ever read. You say the book is humbling, but I say this review is. Abso...more
Um, wow. This is among the best book reviews (from anywhere, not just GR) I've ever read. You say the book is humbling, but I say this review is. Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for writing it.(less)
Apr 06, 2013 11:06pm
Apr 06, 2013 11:06pm
Jan 12, 2011
MJ Nicholls
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to MJ by:
Stuart Kelly
In his 1967 postmodernist primer The Literature of Exhaustion, John Barth says: “A labyrinth . . . is a place in which, ideally, all the possibilities of choice are embodied and . . . must be exhausted before one reaches the heart.”
Thirty years later, as postmodernism twitches through its death throes, DFW publishes the labyrinthine Infinite Jest, where all possibilities are exhausted while shattering the heart. The novel is structured around a Sierpinski Gasket, a complex series of triangles mu...more In his 1967 postmodernist primer The Literature of Exhaustion, John Barth says: “A labyrinth . . . is a place in which, ideally, all the possibilities of choice are embodied and . . . must be exhausted before one reaches the heart.”
Thirty years later, as postmodernism twitches through its death throes, DFW publishes the labyrinthine Infinite Jest, where all possibilities are exhausted while shattering the heart. The novel is structured around a Sierpinski Gasket, a complex series of triangles multiplied through variable fractals and superfractals. (DFW was a maths whiz before being a lit whiz). This means the book is long because of rigid mathematical constraints set by Mr. Wallace, and complaints about the size will be countered with like diagrams and equations. So there.
Plot? Well. There are like a few.
James O. Incandenza is responsible for producing an entertainment so lethal the viewer is vegetated with pleasure. (Not unlike the Japanese Ringu series but with a no shrieking schoolgirls). His presence comes to dominate the inner lives of Hal and Avril and Mario and Orin who discuss and deride and avoid and confront this “après-garde” filmmaker—sort of a Bostonian Richard Kern, with Joelle Van Dyne as his Lung Leg. Hal is the protagonist (of sorts) in the book: a precocious tennis wizard with a bulging brain.
The most compelling narrative for me takes place at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, revolving around the life of former small-time muscle Don Gately, who I can’t help but picture as Jared Leto but with like narrower eyebrows. There are too many scenes to remember across this ten-book-sized book but coming straight from reading I can assert that Gately is rendered with explosive pain and cruelty during a pivotal fight scene, the incendiary flashbacks, and the drudgery-of-recovery scenes.
The paraplegic assassins (Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents) are a wackier detour—like a cross between The Simpsons and like Ingmar Bergman—and for me, comprise the boring boggy bits where DFW wields banality as part of his grand stratagem for reinventing the novel. The sheer volume of acronyms across these chapters becomes unbearably tedious after a while and most readers will want to wheel these people off the mountain before long. (Except towards the end when DFW redeems the lead wheelman in a frightening and touching exchange).
Good things: the writing is unbelievable. There are pages of exhilarating aliveness and genius and speed and strength and sentences that build to crescendos of tension and tragedy. The lexicon is stellar and sublime, brimming with wordplay and revelling in the sheer delight of language. The book basically meets every criteria. It is good and bad and happy and sad and silly and serious and entertaining and tedious. It’s not short, though.
Bad things: there’s nothing other than the structural choice DFW made to defend this book’s outrageous length. It really is far loo long. I also feel sometimes the narrative voice could use a little variety. Each narrative uses the same DFW register, with only a few forays into first-person or (once) dialect experiment. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone—no one apart from like lit-geeks will read novels this long.
DFW wanted to write something sad. I think he achieved this, though Infinite Jest is more about what Will Self called the slapstick of addiction. Although we’re made to like feel deeply for these people when it counts—spiralling in and out of addictions, their lives falling from them—the breathless energy and imagination of this book reaches a pitch of relentless satirical cleverness that enslaves the narrative. When DFW read in public he hurled words from his throat like a bullet train and this book has the endless splurge of a storyteller letting loose the confines of his remarkable mind to an exhaustive extent. So this isn’t a ‘moving’ book as such, though it is the size of ten books so it does move occasionally. It's not the literature of exhaustion, but it is bloody exhausting.
Indulgence, genius, madness, a worrying addiction to language: this has like the lot.(less)
Thirty years later, as postmodernism twitches through its death throes, DFW publishes the labyrinthine Infinite Jest, where all possibilities are exhausted while shattering the heart. The novel is structured around a Sierpinski Gasket, a complex series of triangles mu...more In his 1967 postmodernist primer The Literature of Exhaustion, John Barth says: “A labyrinth . . . is a place in which, ideally, all the possibilities of choice are embodied and . . . must be exhausted before one reaches the heart.”
Thirty years later, as postmodernism twitches through its death throes, DFW publishes the labyrinthine Infinite Jest, where all possibilities are exhausted while shattering the heart. The novel is structured around a Sierpinski Gasket, a complex series of triangles multiplied through variable fractals and superfractals. (DFW was a maths whiz before being a lit whiz). This means the book is long because of rigid mathematical constraints set by Mr. Wallace, and complaints about the size will be countered with like diagrams and equations. So there.
Plot? Well. There are like a few.
James O. Incandenza is responsible for producing an entertainment so lethal the viewer is vegetated with pleasure. (Not unlike the Japanese Ringu series but with a no shrieking schoolgirls). His presence comes to dominate the inner lives of Hal and Avril and Mario and Orin who discuss and deride and avoid and confront this “après-garde” filmmaker—sort of a Bostonian Richard Kern, with Joelle Van Dyne as his Lung Leg. Hal is the protagonist (of sorts) in the book: a precocious tennis wizard with a bulging brain.
The most compelling narrative for me takes place at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, revolving around the life of former small-time muscle Don Gately, who I can’t help but picture as Jared Leto but with like narrower eyebrows. There are too many scenes to remember across this ten-book-sized book but coming straight from reading I can assert that Gately is rendered with explosive pain and cruelty during a pivotal fight scene, the incendiary flashbacks, and the drudgery-of-recovery scenes.
The paraplegic assassins (Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents) are a wackier detour—like a cross between The Simpsons and like Ingmar Bergman—and for me, comprise the boring boggy bits where DFW wields banality as part of his grand stratagem for reinventing the novel. The sheer volume of acronyms across these chapters becomes unbearably tedious after a while and most readers will want to wheel these people off the mountain before long. (Except towards the end when DFW redeems the lead wheelman in a frightening and touching exchange).
Good things: the writing is unbelievable. There are pages of exhilarating aliveness and genius and speed and strength and sentences that build to crescendos of tension and tragedy. The lexicon is stellar and sublime, brimming with wordplay and revelling in the sheer delight of language. The book basically meets every criteria. It is good and bad and happy and sad and silly and serious and entertaining and tedious. It’s not short, though.
Bad things: there’s nothing other than the structural choice DFW made to defend this book’s outrageous length. It really is far loo long. I also feel sometimes the narrative voice could use a little variety. Each narrative uses the same DFW register, with only a few forays into first-person or (once) dialect experiment. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone—no one apart from like lit-geeks will read novels this long.
DFW wanted to write something sad. I think he achieved this, though Infinite Jest is more about what Will Self called the slapstick of addiction. Although we’re made to like feel deeply for these people when it counts—spiralling in and out of addictions, their lives falling from them—the breathless energy and imagination of this book reaches a pitch of relentless satirical cleverness that enslaves the narrative. When DFW read in public he hurled words from his throat like a bullet train and this book has the endless splurge of a storyteller letting loose the confines of his remarkable mind to an exhaustive extent. So this isn’t a ‘moving’ book as such, though it is the size of ten books so it does move occasionally. It's not the literature of exhaustion, but it is bloody exhausting.
Indulgence, genius, madness, a worrying addiction to language: this has like the lot.(less)
32 likes · like · see review
I have written a more substantial but no more real review than the little blurb that used to sit here. The original blurb written on the day I heard DFW died follows this lengthy and self-indulgent exercise.
Within a year of each other two works of entertainment were released that have been pretty darn influential to me. One is this book, and the other was Jawbreaker's album Dear You. Both are relatively polarizing works, people either seem to love it or hate it*.
Jawbreaker's album was a momento...more I have written a more substantial but no more real review than the little blurb that used to sit here. The original blurb written on the day I heard DFW died follows this lengthy and self-indulgent exercise.
Within a year of each other two works of entertainment were released that have been pretty darn influential to me. One is this book, and the other was Jawbreaker's album Dear You. Both are relatively polarizing works, people either seem to love it or hate it*.
Jawbreaker's album was a momentous failure. It alienated just about everyone who had any expectations for the band. Their penultimate album, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy had been vehemently anti-corporate. For a time, Jawbreaker were seen as the poster-children for DIY punk second only to Fugazi. They were producing great music and doing it on their own terms. After the release of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy Jawbreaker would open for Nirvana on the In Utero tour. Accusations of sell-out flew, and people began looking at the band with the beady little suspicious eyes that the punk world loves peering at the world through. Rumors started flying that in no time the band would be signed to DGC the label that Nirvana was on, that this was the first step to their own rockstardom, and of course the chorus of sell-out grew louder. One defender of the band, Ben Weasel who still hasn't been excommunicated from Maximum RocknRoll for the heretical charges of allowing a song of his to appear on a major label produced soundtrack stood by the band and wrote in his column that he'd eat his hat if Jawbreaker signed to a major label. He ended up eating the hat. The band signed to DGC and released their most polished album. The album was a spectacular flop. The punk world turned their collective back on the band and the mainstream world didn't give a shit. It didn't help that the video and single the band released was for one of the two weakest songs on the album. The band ended up succumbing lackluster sales, criticism and infighting. Eventually one member of the band spat gum at another in the middle of an argument and that spat gum ended the band (I'm only adding this fact to show the evils of gum. Bad Blake!).
I'm slowly going somewhere with all of this. If Jawbreaker had released this song instead of "Fireman" I think they would have been huge. It would have been the anthem that songs like "Smells like Teen Spirit" and "Cherub Rock" were. The reason for all of this preamble is to share these couple of lines that come towards the end of "Save Your Generation":
You have to learn
to learn from your mistakes.
You can afford
to lose a little face.
The things you break,
some can't be replaced.
A simple rule:
every day be sure you wake.
One of the things DFW liked to point out in interviews is that we are bombarded with a massive amount of information and part of our goal is to make sense of all that information. The problem isn't how to absorb all of the information, because that is an impossible feat, it's how to choose what information we choose to filter in and out of our consciousness and what we choose to do with that information. I'm not talking about what kind of use value we can take from the information bombarding us, what the pragmatic value of the information is. That is an easy way to solve the problem, but it's not necessarily an option for everyone. It also leads to an alienation and objectification of the entire world. Everything is turned into a tool. This is a fine way to live, many people do it. Some people can't do this though, people who see the world in this way would never like this book, but that's ok because they probably will one day own really nice things. Another way out of the problem is to bombard oneself with something so endlessly diverting that no other information is necessary. Both solutions are putting tremendous limits on the uptake of information, and either deliberately or unconsciously limiting the world around us into super-easily manageable nuggets. At the other extreme is to be affected by everything and be so overwhelmed by the world that everything becomes white noise. Unfiltered receptions. Instead there has to be some kind of middle ground. And one could add, the middle ground needs to be made with awareness. One needs to remind oneself to wake up everyday.
I'd suggest that the structure of the book is designed to make the reader conscious of not necessarily the fact that s/he is reading a book, but to think about what the reader is reading. An easier book could be read in the way that the boys at the tennis academy squeeze the tennis balls constantly. There is no thought to the exercise. They are developing exaggerated muscles but it is through a mindlessness and it is a very localized improvement. One of my favorite passages (of which there are many) is the second person (ok, I could be wrong about this, maybe it's not in the second person, my memory of it is, but my memory is also very fallible) description of what it takes to succeed at tennis. The pain and repetition involved. The filtering out of everything aside from the focus at succeeding. Someone in this position reduces the world to a very manageable number of bytes a day, the success at tennis bytes. Just like the obsessive pothead reduces the world to a very manageable, things I need to do to smoke a shit ton of pot this weekend bytes. Just like the person watching The Entertainment reduces everything to the this is fucking entertaining (whatever It is) bytes.
This book is massive and overwhelming. It's a total onslaught of information. And the information is presented in a jarring manner. There is the non-sequential order of the narrative, there is the long sentences, the difficult language and of course the endnotes. A lot is put in front of the reader, there are a lot of characters to keep track of, thinking about when a scene is taking place in relation to other scenes in the books and this is made even more difficult by the use of corporate names to designate years. It's information overload.
And then the information the reader is presented with is hammered with the details DFW chooses to give. As expansive as the novel is it is also incredibly claustrophobic at times in it's interiority.
This novel isn't for everyone. I'd never recommend it to someone. I'm fairly certain I've never recommended it to anyone**. I think it takes a particular type of person to enjoy this book, and I think that this type of person is defined by how they experience the world and by what goes on in their head. Most importantly by what happens inside a person's head. I'm probably just projecting here, and I know that there are other types of people than myself that love this book too, but I don't think it's necessarily a happy and healthy person who is the type that this book is written for. I don't think happy and healthy people experience or want to slog through a barrage of reflexiveness. I'm not putting into words really what I'm thinking here. I'm missing the words right now. But this comes back to my ongoing repetition of the question why does one read?
For me, reading is work. Rarely, do I read for pure enjoyment, or to just kill some time or to escape. I don't find reading a sort of punishment and I enjoy it more than I enjoy anything else in this stupid world. I think of reading as an active activity, it's not something to narcotize to, and maybe that is a reason why I am baffled whenever I hear that someone reads when they are drunk or fucked up in someway. For me, being in a state like that would be to be too unaware. It might be really pathetic but my real experience with the world I live in is through books, they are frankly more interesting than most people, and the inner conversations and thoughts I have with the books I read are much more interesting than the ones I have with other flesh and blood people. This is my own failing, I'm a generally uninteresting person to talk to, I don't hold up my own weight in conversations, I stammer and I mispronounce words that I can hear correctly in my head but which my tongue wants nothing to do with, I pull verbal punches, my shitty hearing does a shitty job at making sense of everything other people say, my sentences stop abruptly mid-way through a thought as if I expect that whomever is talking to me will be able to fill in the gaps, I fail to say what I'm thinking and end up feeling like an idiot when I speak***. In a way of thinking reading is escapism for me, but it's an escape from the difficulties of dealing with real live people and having the kinds of dialogs I'll rarely have in real life (with maybe the exception of some of these reviews, but those aren't dialogs, those are rants and one-sided diatribes, but where the idea of votes are important not because I want to be popular but because they are the only way to know if some other person (possibly, it's always a possibility that all the votes are just clicked on without anyone having read a word of the review)) has read them, that the thoughts have been heard by another.
To leave my self-deprecating blabbering aside, or to use it for uses of good instead of just wallowing, it's partially because of the reasons I read that I find Infinite Jest to be so fucking good. It's a thousand plus pages of small details, of forcing myself to be even more aware than I usually am when reading, it's unanswered questions and openness in the text and clues. It's a self-contained world that can be read without having to bring any of the outside world necessarily into it (yes it helps to have say Hamlet in the back of your mind when reading certain scenes, but I was a shitty student in my English classes in High School so I totally missed the glaring Shakespeare reference in the title, or in Hal's name or in the graveyard scene. Facts like this just add some more richness to the book, but it's not necessary knowledge to enjoying the book), everything you need for the book is inside it. Unlike say Ulysses you don't need to have a firm background in Irish History to know what the hell is even going some of the time, everything and more is constructed and presented to the reader. Presented might be the wrong word. Presented makes it sound like everything is handed to the reader on a silver platter, which it's not, everything needed for the book is given to the reader but the reader has to meet the book at least half-way in putting it all together.
We, as a society, don't generally like things that put a demand on us to do that much of the work. There is no reason that anyone should feel they have to do that kind of work just to read a book. Even for the literary minded there is no reason that one should feel like they have to do that kind of work. It's a matter of wanting to read books that demand something of the reader of wanting to read something that demands our attention. There are plenty of excellent books out there that don't put these kinds of demand on us. Even personally I don't always want to be put through the rigmarole that a writer like DFW is asking for. Probably, almost every book of literature can be read with the demands that DFW is asking of the reader, but not every book is explicitly asking the reader to do so. Like, I'm sure The Corrections can be read really actively and a bunch of things can be pulled out of the text that a casual perusal of the book would miss, but it's also a book that can be read relatively passively. It's not a book asking much from us.
As a society, we like things to be given to us already in their manageably sized bytes.
In my parents downstairs, 'guest', bathroom there is a framed advertisement from the early 1960's for some Volvo (ignore the fact that there is a picture of a car in the bathroom for a moment). This ad isn't necessarily remarkable in anyway, but it is standing in for any advertisement from that era. The thing about the advertisement that stands out is the wordiness, there are paragraphs!!! of text to get the point across about the high level of safety concerns about Sweden and how those carry over into their automobiles. Paragraphs!!!. The advertisement takes a little bit of time to read. This is unheard of now. This advertisement is demanding a very low level of work from the viewer but still much more work to get to the message it's trying to convey than a modern ad in a magazine.
As a society, we like things to be given to us in very manageably sized bytes. Just think of the theory behind Twitter marketing where information is given to us in tiny little tweets****. When there is so much already half-digested bits of information already floating around just waiting for our retinas to pass over them and absorb the message without even having to break our stride why would someone stop to tackle something difficult and that demands we help out in the conveying of the information?
Infinite Jest is not a pragmatic book. It's not going to make you a better person for reading it. It won't answer life's questions, and it will possibly leave you with more questions coming out of it than going in. It's not an easy and light fun read. It probably wouldn't be the book you want to bring on the beach. It's tough to read on the subway and it's heavy so traveling with it can be a problem. You can't even easily say what the book is about when a curious person asks you "Whatcha reading?"
I'm going to wrap up this failure of a review. I wanted to write a positive review of Infinite Jest, I had actually been challenged to write a review of why I loved the book but I don't think I did that. I don't know exactly what this review is, maybe a long rambling something or other about the importance of paying attention to the world around you, to look at the details, to try to remember to wake up everyday even though it is easier to sleep off five year chunks at a time, and that there are loads of ways to do this seemingly simple task and in a way this book is a giant exercise in telling us to be more aware, to engage, to see the details even if sometimes the details just are the what the chemical compounds are in some commonly taken drug, it's the act of having to see there is something more than the commonly known, easily overlooked and empty-ish words to the world around us. And sometimes what we find there isn't that important but it's the act that is, not the guaranteed pragmatic results.
*In the case of Jawbreaker the love/hate relationship is generally only seen in the bands fans. In the case of DFW his fans generally love Infinite Jest and it is other works that are held in different opinions. While I acknowledge someone can be a big DFW fan and only like his non-fiction I personally think an enjoyment of Infinite Jest is essential to saying you like DFW.
**I could easily be wrong about this fact though.
*** FYI, I'm not fishing for compliments or for someone to say, no you aren't like that at all.
**** I was under the idea that a tweet was 256 characters of less, but I'm sure everyone knows that it is actually 140 characters or less. I was going to make a point about this being the reduction of manageable bytes down to one byte, where a byte is made up of 8 bits, and in the binary system this leads to there being 256 permutations of ones and zeros in a byte. Based on this metaphor though the manageable number of bytes in a tweet is less than a byte.
-------------------------------------
This is my original 'review'
I just read a comment on the LA Times story about his suicide, and it said, "the world's a shittier place now." I couldn't agree more. One of our true geniuses kills himself and some asshole douche bag like James Patterson or Nora Roberts will continue pumping out three or four novels a year. Fuck. The world is a shittier place.
(less)
Within a year of each other two works of entertainment were released that have been pretty darn influential to me. One is this book, and the other was Jawbreaker's album Dear You. Both are relatively polarizing works, people either seem to love it or hate it*.
Jawbreaker's album was a momento...more I have written a more substantial but no more real review than the little blurb that used to sit here. The original blurb written on the day I heard DFW died follows this lengthy and self-indulgent exercise.
Within a year of each other two works of entertainment were released that have been pretty darn influential to me. One is this book, and the other was Jawbreaker's album Dear You. Both are relatively polarizing works, people either seem to love it or hate it*.
Jawbreaker's album was a momentous failure. It alienated just about everyone who had any expectations for the band. Their penultimate album, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy had been vehemently anti-corporate. For a time, Jawbreaker were seen as the poster-children for DIY punk second only to Fugazi. They were producing great music and doing it on their own terms. After the release of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy Jawbreaker would open for Nirvana on the In Utero tour. Accusations of sell-out flew, and people began looking at the band with the beady little suspicious eyes that the punk world loves peering at the world through. Rumors started flying that in no time the band would be signed to DGC the label that Nirvana was on, that this was the first step to their own rockstardom, and of course the chorus of sell-out grew louder. One defender of the band, Ben Weasel who still hasn't been excommunicated from Maximum RocknRoll for the heretical charges of allowing a song of his to appear on a major label produced soundtrack stood by the band and wrote in his column that he'd eat his hat if Jawbreaker signed to a major label. He ended up eating the hat. The band signed to DGC and released their most polished album. The album was a spectacular flop. The punk world turned their collective back on the band and the mainstream world didn't give a shit. It didn't help that the video and single the band released was for one of the two weakest songs on the album. The band ended up succumbing lackluster sales, criticism and infighting. Eventually one member of the band spat gum at another in the middle of an argument and that spat gum ended the band (I'm only adding this fact to show the evils of gum. Bad Blake!).
I'm slowly going somewhere with all of this. If Jawbreaker had released this song instead of "Fireman" I think they would have been huge. It would have been the anthem that songs like "Smells like Teen Spirit" and "Cherub Rock" were. The reason for all of this preamble is to share these couple of lines that come towards the end of "Save Your Generation":
You have to learn
to learn from your mistakes.
You can afford
to lose a little face.
The things you break,
some can't be replaced.
A simple rule:
every day be sure you wake.
One of the things DFW liked to point out in interviews is that we are bombarded with a massive amount of information and part of our goal is to make sense of all that information. The problem isn't how to absorb all of the information, because that is an impossible feat, it's how to choose what information we choose to filter in and out of our consciousness and what we choose to do with that information. I'm not talking about what kind of use value we can take from the information bombarding us, what the pragmatic value of the information is. That is an easy way to solve the problem, but it's not necessarily an option for everyone. It also leads to an alienation and objectification of the entire world. Everything is turned into a tool. This is a fine way to live, many people do it. Some people can't do this though, people who see the world in this way would never like this book, but that's ok because they probably will one day own really nice things. Another way out of the problem is to bombard oneself with something so endlessly diverting that no other information is necessary. Both solutions are putting tremendous limits on the uptake of information, and either deliberately or unconsciously limiting the world around us into super-easily manageable nuggets. At the other extreme is to be affected by everything and be so overwhelmed by the world that everything becomes white noise. Unfiltered receptions. Instead there has to be some kind of middle ground. And one could add, the middle ground needs to be made with awareness. One needs to remind oneself to wake up everyday.
I'd suggest that the structure of the book is designed to make the reader conscious of not necessarily the fact that s/he is reading a book, but to think about what the reader is reading. An easier book could be read in the way that the boys at the tennis academy squeeze the tennis balls constantly. There is no thought to the exercise. They are developing exaggerated muscles but it is through a mindlessness and it is a very localized improvement. One of my favorite passages (of which there are many) is the second person (ok, I could be wrong about this, maybe it's not in the second person, my memory of it is, but my memory is also very fallible) description of what it takes to succeed at tennis. The pain and repetition involved. The filtering out of everything aside from the focus at succeeding. Someone in this position reduces the world to a very manageable number of bytes a day, the success at tennis bytes. Just like the obsessive pothead reduces the world to a very manageable, things I need to do to smoke a shit ton of pot this weekend bytes. Just like the person watching The Entertainment reduces everything to the this is fucking entertaining (whatever It is) bytes.
This book is massive and overwhelming. It's a total onslaught of information. And the information is presented in a jarring manner. There is the non-sequential order of the narrative, there is the long sentences, the difficult language and of course the endnotes. A lot is put in front of the reader, there are a lot of characters to keep track of, thinking about when a scene is taking place in relation to other scenes in the books and this is made even more difficult by the use of corporate names to designate years. It's information overload.
And then the information the reader is presented with is hammered with the details DFW chooses to give. As expansive as the novel is it is also incredibly claustrophobic at times in it's interiority.
This novel isn't for everyone. I'd never recommend it to someone. I'm fairly certain I've never recommended it to anyone**. I think it takes a particular type of person to enjoy this book, and I think that this type of person is defined by how they experience the world and by what goes on in their head. Most importantly by what happens inside a person's head. I'm probably just projecting here, and I know that there are other types of people than myself that love this book too, but I don't think it's necessarily a happy and healthy person who is the type that this book is written for. I don't think happy and healthy people experience or want to slog through a barrage of reflexiveness. I'm not putting into words really what I'm thinking here. I'm missing the words right now. But this comes back to my ongoing repetition of the question why does one read?
For me, reading is work. Rarely, do I read for pure enjoyment, or to just kill some time or to escape. I don't find reading a sort of punishment and I enjoy it more than I enjoy anything else in this stupid world. I think of reading as an active activity, it's not something to narcotize to, and maybe that is a reason why I am baffled whenever I hear that someone reads when they are drunk or fucked up in someway. For me, being in a state like that would be to be too unaware. It might be really pathetic but my real experience with the world I live in is through books, they are frankly more interesting than most people, and the inner conversations and thoughts I have with the books I read are much more interesting than the ones I have with other flesh and blood people. This is my own failing, I'm a generally uninteresting person to talk to, I don't hold up my own weight in conversations, I stammer and I mispronounce words that I can hear correctly in my head but which my tongue wants nothing to do with, I pull verbal punches, my shitty hearing does a shitty job at making sense of everything other people say, my sentences stop abruptly mid-way through a thought as if I expect that whomever is talking to me will be able to fill in the gaps, I fail to say what I'm thinking and end up feeling like an idiot when I speak***. In a way of thinking reading is escapism for me, but it's an escape from the difficulties of dealing with real live people and having the kinds of dialogs I'll rarely have in real life (with maybe the exception of some of these reviews, but those aren't dialogs, those are rants and one-sided diatribes, but where the idea of votes are important not because I want to be popular but because they are the only way to know if some other person (possibly, it's always a possibility that all the votes are just clicked on without anyone having read a word of the review)) has read them, that the thoughts have been heard by another.
To leave my self-deprecating blabbering aside, or to use it for uses of good instead of just wallowing, it's partially because of the reasons I read that I find Infinite Jest to be so fucking good. It's a thousand plus pages of small details, of forcing myself to be even more aware than I usually am when reading, it's unanswered questions and openness in the text and clues. It's a self-contained world that can be read without having to bring any of the outside world necessarily into it (yes it helps to have say Hamlet in the back of your mind when reading certain scenes, but I was a shitty student in my English classes in High School so I totally missed the glaring Shakespeare reference in the title, or in Hal's name or in the graveyard scene. Facts like this just add some more richness to the book, but it's not necessary knowledge to enjoying the book), everything you need for the book is inside it. Unlike say Ulysses you don't need to have a firm background in Irish History to know what the hell is even going some of the time, everything and more is constructed and presented to the reader. Presented might be the wrong word. Presented makes it sound like everything is handed to the reader on a silver platter, which it's not, everything needed for the book is given to the reader but the reader has to meet the book at least half-way in putting it all together.
We, as a society, don't generally like things that put a demand on us to do that much of the work. There is no reason that anyone should feel they have to do that kind of work just to read a book. Even for the literary minded there is no reason that one should feel like they have to do that kind of work. It's a matter of wanting to read books that demand something of the reader of wanting to read something that demands our attention. There are plenty of excellent books out there that don't put these kinds of demand on us. Even personally I don't always want to be put through the rigmarole that a writer like DFW is asking for. Probably, almost every book of literature can be read with the demands that DFW is asking of the reader, but not every book is explicitly asking the reader to do so. Like, I'm sure The Corrections can be read really actively and a bunch of things can be pulled out of the text that a casual perusal of the book would miss, but it's also a book that can be read relatively passively. It's not a book asking much from us.
As a society, we like things to be given to us already in their manageably sized bytes.
In my parents downstairs, 'guest', bathroom there is a framed advertisement from the early 1960's for some Volvo (ignore the fact that there is a picture of a car in the bathroom for a moment). This ad isn't necessarily remarkable in anyway, but it is standing in for any advertisement from that era. The thing about the advertisement that stands out is the wordiness, there are paragraphs!!! of text to get the point across about the high level of safety concerns about Sweden and how those carry over into their automobiles. Paragraphs!!!. The advertisement takes a little bit of time to read. This is unheard of now. This advertisement is demanding a very low level of work from the viewer but still much more work to get to the message it's trying to convey than a modern ad in a magazine.
As a society, we like things to be given to us in very manageably sized bytes. Just think of the theory behind Twitter marketing where information is given to us in tiny little tweets****. When there is so much already half-digested bits of information already floating around just waiting for our retinas to pass over them and absorb the message without even having to break our stride why would someone stop to tackle something difficult and that demands we help out in the conveying of the information?
Infinite Jest is not a pragmatic book. It's not going to make you a better person for reading it. It won't answer life's questions, and it will possibly leave you with more questions coming out of it than going in. It's not an easy and light fun read. It probably wouldn't be the book you want to bring on the beach. It's tough to read on the subway and it's heavy so traveling with it can be a problem. You can't even easily say what the book is about when a curious person asks you "Whatcha reading?"
I'm going to wrap up this failure of a review. I wanted to write a positive review of Infinite Jest, I had actually been challenged to write a review of why I loved the book but I don't think I did that. I don't know exactly what this review is, maybe a long rambling something or other about the importance of paying attention to the world around you, to look at the details, to try to remember to wake up everyday even though it is easier to sleep off five year chunks at a time, and that there are loads of ways to do this seemingly simple task and in a way this book is a giant exercise in telling us to be more aware, to engage, to see the details even if sometimes the details just are the what the chemical compounds are in some commonly taken drug, it's the act of having to see there is something more than the commonly known, easily overlooked and empty-ish words to the world around us. And sometimes what we find there isn't that important but it's the act that is, not the guaranteed pragmatic results.
*In the case of Jawbreaker the love/hate relationship is generally only seen in the bands fans. In the case of DFW his fans generally love Infinite Jest and it is other works that are held in different opinions. While I acknowledge someone can be a big DFW fan and only like his non-fiction I personally think an enjoyment of Infinite Jest is essential to saying you like DFW.
**I could easily be wrong about this fact though.
*** FYI, I'm not fishing for compliments or for someone to say, no you aren't like that at all.
**** I was under the idea that a tweet was 256 characters of less, but I'm sure everyone knows that it is actually 140 characters or less. I was going to make a point about this being the reduction of manageable bytes down to one byte, where a byte is made up of 8 bits, and in the binary system this leads to there being 256 permutations of ones and zeros in a byte. Based on this metaphor though the manageable number of bytes in a tweet is less than a byte.
-------------------------------------
This is my original 'review'
I just read a comment on the LA Times story about his suicide, and it said, "the world's a shittier place now." I couldn't agree more. One of our true geniuses kills himself and some asshole douche bag like James Patterson or Nora Roberts will continue pumping out three or four novels a year. Fuck. The world is a shittier place.
(less)
91 likes · like · see review
Jason
oh, ok. we posted at the same time! that was in response to message 150, but anyway. I'm off to read the master and margarita now...
Sep 04, 2012 05:20pm
Sep 04, 2012 05:20pm
Jason
Jason wrote: "oh, ok. we posted at the same time! that was in response to message 150, but anyway. I'm off to read the master and margarita now..."
......more Jason wrote: "oh, ok. we posted at the same time! that was in response to message 150, but anyway. I'm off to read the master and margarita now..."
...which was awful, by the way.(less)
Oct 02, 2012 08:22am
......more Jason wrote: "oh, ok. we posted at the same time! that was in response to message 150, but anyway. I'm off to read the master and margarita now..."
...which was awful, by the way.(less)
Oct 02, 2012 08:22am
In 1863 Abraham Lincoln decided that the fourth Thursday of each November would be recognized nationally as Thanksgiving. Today happens to be the fourth Thursday in November. Happy Thanksgiving.
I would like to give thanks to the fact that I finished this mother-effing book today.
It's now 9:40 EST as I start to write this review. I finished reading approximately five hours ago. Since then I have polished off almost an entire bottle of Chardonnay. It's taken me this long to a) get a nice enough bu...more In 1863 Abraham Lincoln decided that the fourth Thursday of each November would be recognized nationally as Thanksgiving. Today happens to be the fourth Thursday in November. Happy Thanksgiving.
I would like to give thanks to the fact that I finished this mother-effing book today.
It's now 9:40 EST as I start to write this review. I finished reading approximately five hours ago. Since then I have polished off almost an entire bottle of Chardonnay. It's taken me this long to a) get a nice enough buzz on, and b) have any desire to update my review to this book. My desire to review this book is equal to the desire I had to read this book - both seem like a really good idea, but in the process of either I sort of feel like I'd probably be better off wrangling a squirrel with my bare hands. But, okay, to be fair, there were times while I read this that I really enjoyed it. My wrists never actually enjoyed holding the book, but my mind was amused once in a while at the mental gymnastics which were required to get through some of the passages. Other times my mind told my eyeballs they were really effing dumb to keep looking at the page. Those were the times in which the book was set off to the side and wasn't picked up again for sometimes weeks at a time. It sat next my bed for the most part. I hated this book during those times. It was there when I went to sleep at night and it was there when I woke up in the morning. It might as well have had eyes because I felt it constantly looking at me. I think one morning it even handed me my glasses.
Infinite Jest became a third roommate. One that wasn't even paying rent, but it gives okay head so I kept it around.
I read 37 other books in the time that I spent also reading Infinite Jest. Another GR friend read only 24 other books during her reading of this book. No, I'm not judging myself. Okay, maybe I am a little bit. Excuse me, I need another glass of wine.
I know, I know. This whole review is completely unstable. Why rate a book so high if the review itself sounds so low? I never take almost four months to read a book that I love, so that fact alone must mean I really hated this, right?
Oh, if only it were that easy.
I don't love Infinite Jest. I think a part of me hates it. Actually, a large part of me hates it. I hate that it took me almost four months to read it, and I hate that it consumed so much of my time and energy. I hate that I so very much wanted to know how it ended, preventing me from abandoning it entirely. I hate that there were so many endnotes, and sometimes those footnotes went on for a really long time and may as well have been whole chapters in and of themselves. The different story lines? Hated them. I can't tell you how many times I swore at the book, how many times I swore at the memory of David Foster Wallace himself for writing such a book, how many times I argued with myself, "Summabitch, this is like postmodernist fiction - no, it's worse than postmodern literature... this is like... post-postmodern literature..." At times I thought that maybe I should give Ulysses another read because in comparison it's like reading those Dick and Jane books. (BTW, reading Joyce is nothing like reading Dick and Jane books, and Infinite Jest is really no more difficult than reading Ulysses. I'm just waxing hyperbolic here.)
But there were some really incredible aspects to Infinite Jest, and I would be wrong not to give some shout-outs to those things as well. The story lines that I hated? I also sort of loved them. There's really no good way of giving the story line any sort of true justice here. There's a reason the book is over a thousand pages - you're crazy if you think I'm going to even try to sum it up here. Don't be lazy, read it yourself. Anyway, I loved the stories, which only makes me hate the book even more. Hi, I'm a woman, get over it.
Incidentally, at the same time I've been reading this I've also been reading some crazy modern French philosophy dudes, and secretly I've been making comparisons between the two books. Which is why when I reached this passage (highly edited to hurry along my point for this purpose, bold fonts are mine for emphasis) on page 792 I sort of vomited a little in my mouth before screaming and passing out a bit:
On page 838-9:
In case you were wondering, the other book I am reading at this time is A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Deleuze and his buddy, Guattari. Hello! Coincidence!? That's pretty crazy. That requires another glass of wine to process.
Seriously, Deleuze and Guattari are written all over this Wallace guy. I know very little about Wallace. I know he wrote books like Infinite Jest, had a rough life, died way too young at his own hand, and... well, that's pretty much it. I haven't read anything else by him, though I might. The point is I don't know how much he was into those crazy Frenchies, but I would say he had to have read them, studied them, or maybe, like myself, was a part of a really pretentious book club in which they spend almost five hours dissecting three chapters of A Thousand Plateaus at a time. The thought actually made me feel a little closer to Wallace.
But then I remembered how angry I've been at Deleuze and Guattari as well over the past few months and decided they're all back on the bus. (The Bus, btw, is just a pretend bus inside my head where I imagine putting people that I don't like onto said bus and then eventually driving them all off a cliff. A really high cliff.)
At the same time, it's genius. Wallace was genius for writing this book, a non-traditional dystopia which, I might add, also sort of gets me all hot and bothered because I do like a well-written dystopia. He was genius for making all these connections to things like Deleuze and Guattari, things that a lot of people don't really read; it made me wonder what other references he made that I'm not familiar with and therefore I missed completely. I was happy to at least catch that one.
It seems this is the sort of book that people either love or hate - there's very little middle-ground on this one. It seems people read this more than once, though for the life of me I can't imagine ever wanting to read it again. I'm glad I read it once, for sure. And when I say "glad" I mean it in the same way that I mean it when I say I'm "glad" my mom made me eat really nasty vegetables when I was a kid. I didn't like them but they were good for me. That's sort of what Infinite Jest is. A giant, thousand-+-page vegetable that you know is good for you but it doesn't really taste that great, and putting ketchup on it doesn't help. I'm just a healthier reader because I was able to stomach it.
But it didn't change my life. I refuse to say that it did. It will, however, stick with me. And there again is that stupid genius of Wallace. He wrote a big spanking book that manages to really stick with a reader. But, like I ask constantly, especially when it comes to Deleuze and Guattari - was it necessary??
I sort of feel like that Rip Van Winkle guy in that Washington Irving story. Like I've been asleep for a really long time (in this case, it's been since August 2nd when I started reading Infinite Jest) and now I'm awake and holy crap, things have changed with the rest of the world. I would read Infinite Jest before going to bed at night, and then wake up suddenly only to realize I had been dreaming about reading Infinite Jest. There was no break between putting the book down, turning off the light and falling asleep. It all just continued in my head. And it seems this is the kind of book that people remember where they were while they were reading this more than they can actually remember what it's about. I remember where I was when I heard Kurt Cobain had died. I remember where I was in my life while I was reading Infinite Jest. The finer details of my life are actually a little blurry during this reading though because it consumes so much energy to read it that it sort of overshadows everything else.
So that was my Thanksgiving. I knew part of my plan for the day was to get totally trashed on wine and finish Infinite Jest, which is mostly why I didn't invite my brother over to celebrate the day with us. (Sorry bro!) Now I've been sitting here giving two big middle fingers to the copy of Infinite Jest beside me. Eventually maybe we'll make up, but for now it's time for bed because, alas, I have to work in the morning and I have to sleep this Wallace-Jest-Chardonnay-buzz off. If you read all the way down to this sentence then you're awesome and you are probably worthy and capable of reading Infinite Jest on your own. I wish you well. Tip: Read all of the endnotes.(less)
I would like to give thanks to the fact that I finished this mother-effing book today.
It's now 9:40 EST as I start to write this review. I finished reading approximately five hours ago. Since then I have polished off almost an entire bottle of Chardonnay. It's taken me this long to a) get a nice enough bu...more In 1863 Abraham Lincoln decided that the fourth Thursday of each November would be recognized nationally as Thanksgiving. Today happens to be the fourth Thursday in November. Happy Thanksgiving.
I would like to give thanks to the fact that I finished this mother-effing book today.
It's now 9:40 EST as I start to write this review. I finished reading approximately five hours ago. Since then I have polished off almost an entire bottle of Chardonnay. It's taken me this long to a) get a nice enough buzz on, and b) have any desire to update my review to this book. My desire to review this book is equal to the desire I had to read this book - both seem like a really good idea, but in the process of either I sort of feel like I'd probably be better off wrangling a squirrel with my bare hands. But, okay, to be fair, there were times while I read this that I really enjoyed it. My wrists never actually enjoyed holding the book, but my mind was amused once in a while at the mental gymnastics which were required to get through some of the passages. Other times my mind told my eyeballs they were really effing dumb to keep looking at the page. Those were the times in which the book was set off to the side and wasn't picked up again for sometimes weeks at a time. It sat next my bed for the most part. I hated this book during those times. It was there when I went to sleep at night and it was there when I woke up in the morning. It might as well have had eyes because I felt it constantly looking at me. I think one morning it even handed me my glasses.
Infinite Jest became a third roommate. One that wasn't even paying rent, but it gives okay head so I kept it around.
I read 37 other books in the time that I spent also reading Infinite Jest. Another GR friend read only 24 other books during her reading of this book. No, I'm not judging myself. Okay, maybe I am a little bit. Excuse me, I need another glass of wine.
I know, I know. This whole review is completely unstable. Why rate a book so high if the review itself sounds so low? I never take almost four months to read a book that I love, so that fact alone must mean I really hated this, right?
Oh, if only it were that easy.
I don't love Infinite Jest. I think a part of me hates it. Actually, a large part of me hates it. I hate that it took me almost four months to read it, and I hate that it consumed so much of my time and energy. I hate that I so very much wanted to know how it ended, preventing me from abandoning it entirely. I hate that there were so many endnotes, and sometimes those footnotes went on for a really long time and may as well have been whole chapters in and of themselves. The different story lines? Hated them. I can't tell you how many times I swore at the book, how many times I swore at the memory of David Foster Wallace himself for writing such a book, how many times I argued with myself, "Summabitch, this is like postmodernist fiction - no, it's worse than postmodern literature... this is like... post-postmodern literature..." At times I thought that maybe I should give Ulysses another read because in comparison it's like reading those Dick and Jane books. (BTW, reading Joyce is nothing like reading Dick and Jane books, and Infinite Jest is really no more difficult than reading Ulysses. I'm just waxing hyperbolic here.)
But there were some really incredible aspects to Infinite Jest, and I would be wrong not to give some shout-outs to those things as well. The story lines that I hated? I also sort of loved them. There's really no good way of giving the story line any sort of true justice here. There's a reason the book is over a thousand pages - you're crazy if you think I'm going to even try to sum it up here. Don't be lazy, read it yourself. Anyway, I loved the stories, which only makes me hate the book even more. Hi, I'm a woman, get over it.
Incidentally, at the same time I've been reading this I've also been reading some crazy modern French philosophy dudes, and secretly I've been making comparisons between the two books. Which is why when I reached this passage (highly edited to hurry along my point for this purpose, bold fonts are mine for emphasis) on page 792 I sort of vomited a little in my mouth before screaming and passing out a bit:
...the entire perfect-entertainment-as- Liebestod myth surrounding the purportedly lethal final cartridge was nothing more than a classic illustration of the antinomically schizoid function of the post-industrial capitalist mechanism, whose logic presented commodity as the escape-from-anxieties-of-mortality-which-escape-is-itself-psychologically-fatal, as detailed in perspicuous detail in M. Gilles Deleuze's posthumous Incest and the Life of Death in Capitalist Entertainment...
On page 838-9:
To concoct something the gifted boy couldn't simply master and move on from to a new plateau.
In case you were wondering, the other book I am reading at this time is A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Deleuze and his buddy, Guattari. Hello! Coincidence!? That's pretty crazy. That requires another glass of wine to process.
Seriously, Deleuze and Guattari are written all over this Wallace guy. I know very little about Wallace. I know he wrote books like Infinite Jest, had a rough life, died way too young at his own hand, and... well, that's pretty much it. I haven't read anything else by him, though I might. The point is I don't know how much he was into those crazy Frenchies, but I would say he had to have read them, studied them, or maybe, like myself, was a part of a really pretentious book club in which they spend almost five hours dissecting three chapters of A Thousand Plateaus at a time. The thought actually made me feel a little closer to Wallace.
But then I remembered how angry I've been at Deleuze and Guattari as well over the past few months and decided they're all back on the bus. (The Bus, btw, is just a pretend bus inside my head where I imagine putting people that I don't like onto said bus and then eventually driving them all off a cliff. A really high cliff.)
At the same time, it's genius. Wallace was genius for writing this book, a non-traditional dystopia which, I might add, also sort of gets me all hot and bothered because I do like a well-written dystopia. He was genius for making all these connections to things like Deleuze and Guattari, things that a lot of people don't really read; it made me wonder what other references he made that I'm not familiar with and therefore I missed completely. I was happy to at least catch that one.
It seems this is the sort of book that people either love or hate - there's very little middle-ground on this one. It seems people read this more than once, though for the life of me I can't imagine ever wanting to read it again. I'm glad I read it once, for sure. And when I say "glad" I mean it in the same way that I mean it when I say I'm "glad" my mom made me eat really nasty vegetables when I was a kid. I didn't like them but they were good for me. That's sort of what Infinite Jest is. A giant, thousand-+-page vegetable that you know is good for you but it doesn't really taste that great, and putting ketchup on it doesn't help. I'm just a healthier reader because I was able to stomach it.
But it didn't change my life. I refuse to say that it did. It will, however, stick with me. And there again is that stupid genius of Wallace. He wrote a big spanking book that manages to really stick with a reader. But, like I ask constantly, especially when it comes to Deleuze and Guattari - was it necessary??
I sort of feel like that Rip Van Winkle guy in that Washington Irving story. Like I've been asleep for a really long time (in this case, it's been since August 2nd when I started reading Infinite Jest) and now I'm awake and holy crap, things have changed with the rest of the world. I would read Infinite Jest before going to bed at night, and then wake up suddenly only to realize I had been dreaming about reading Infinite Jest. There was no break between putting the book down, turning off the light and falling asleep. It all just continued in my head. And it seems this is the kind of book that people remember where they were while they were reading this more than they can actually remember what it's about. I remember where I was when I heard Kurt Cobain had died. I remember where I was in my life while I was reading Infinite Jest. The finer details of my life are actually a little blurry during this reading though because it consumes so much energy to read it that it sort of overshadows everything else.
So that was my Thanksgiving. I knew part of my plan for the day was to get totally trashed on wine and finish Infinite Jest, which is mostly why I didn't invite my brother over to celebrate the day with us. (Sorry bro!) Now I've been sitting here giving two big middle fingers to the copy of Infinite Jest beside me. Eventually maybe we'll make up, but for now it's time for bed because, alas, I have to work in the morning and I have to sleep this Wallace-Jest-Chardonnay-buzz off. If you read all the way down to this sentence then you're awesome and you are probably worthy and capable of reading Infinite Jest on your own. I wish you well. Tip: Read all of the endnotes.(less)
64 likes · like · see review
El
Wow, thanks, Alex! This was certainly one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories. I only remember writing parts of this review.
Sep 26, 2012 04:23am
Sep 26, 2012 04:23am
Julia
I've been kicking around the idea of reading this book, and, while I'm not much closer to deciding to read it or not, I thouroughly enjoyed reading th...more
I've been kicking around the idea of reading this book, and, while I'm not much closer to deciding to read it or not, I thouroughly enjoyed reading this review. I felt much the same way after slogging my way through "The Faerie Queen" when I first started college.(less)
Oct 10, 2012 10:17pm
Oct 10, 2012 10:17pm
May 28, 2012
Stephen M
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone who loves to read.
Recommended to Stephen M by:
Too many people to name.
Inelegant Brevity
Upon finishing this tome, I held it clutched between my victorious hands and shook the 1000 page-plus behemoth over my head, making some atavistic, phlemish noises from deep within my chest. It had been two months of struggling through a seemingly impenetrable wall of prose and esoteric jargon. DFW has quite the hankering for specialized knowledge, inside vernacular, nicknames, neologisms, innitialisms and acronyms. Couple that with 100+ pages of endnotes and this makes for a he...more Inelegant Brevity
Upon finishing this tome, I held it clutched between my victorious hands and shook the 1000 page-plus behemoth over my head, making some atavistic, phlemish noises from deep within my chest. It had been two months of struggling through a seemingly impenetrable wall of prose and esoteric jargon. DFW has quite the hankering for specialized knowledge, inside vernacular, nicknames, neologisms, innitialisms and acronyms. Couple that with 100+ pages of endnotes and this makes for a hell of experience, especially the beginning and the end. But the pain and struggle are worth it. The phrase “this book changed my life” is thrown around a whole lot these days, so all that I will say is that you will not be the same after reading this book. If you are on the fence about whether or not to read this then I implore you, read this book now. Have at it! You will laugh, cry and revel in all of those sappy clichés. DFW was a genius and I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you take the time—a whole lot of time that is—to get through it, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be worth your while. (I have marked the rest of this review as a spoiler, because everything before is all that really needs to be said. The rest of this review is really for myself. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you don’t read it. That being said, if you would like to see all my thoughts then continue on!)
(view spoiler)[
Infinite Impressions
(Suggested listening/if you don’t want to read this review and listen to this instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P0V5R...). I have never had a reading experience even close to the one that I dipped in and out of for the two months it took to scale Mount Jest. And now that I’ve finally reached the summit and planted my glorious five stars on Goodreads, I feel the strangest let down. I dedicated hours and hours battling its multi-lined sentences and multipage paragraphs for such stretches of time that it became more than just a familiar reading project and a habit; it became a comforting compulsion. I know what you must be thinking. Well, let me explain one thing first, if you can’t tell where I’m clodhopping towards—I became just as addicted to the book as the people in the book to their various vices. I’m going to backtrack a bit. This book circles around three main stories; the first is of a tennis academy of 12-20 year olds, mostly boys, led by a dictator of a tennis coach. This provides the bulk of the humor that most people talk about w/r/t this book and DFW’s wit. DFW so perfectly captured the sub-culture of male sports teams—or groups of males for that matter—that every irreverent joke, sexual innuendo and idiosyncrasy of middle/high-school social life is launched into the stratosphere of wit. DFW, if nothing else, knew people well. There is a lot of attention dedicated to neurosis, anxiety and depression, but it never engulfs the text. DFW’s range extends well beyond just this niche of mental disorder that writer after writer has beaten audiences to death with. DFW gives a new kind of life to the oft-written topic of gloomy depression. DFW’s brilliance is not just in the morose Hal Incadenza, a habitual cannabis smoker, but also Pemmulis, Ortho Stice, John Wayne and brother Mario Incadenza. All give much different views and dispositions on life—especially Mario, my second favorite character in the book. They all help to flesh out the IJ world. Their thoughts, foibles and motivations deal little with the drug addiction/mental illness of the rest of the characters. These issues possess the majority of the other storyline, the Ennett drug and recovery house. This features my first favorite character, Don Gately, who is a recovering narcotic and Demerol addict, that as the novel develops, grows in prominence. He is something of the appointed leader in the Ennet house. The kinds of struggles that this character goes through struck me as so genuine and real that I don’t really buy any accusation that IJ has flat characters. Don struggles to keep a hold of not just his own addiction but of the addiction of all the other recovering addicts. A great deal of Gately’s struggle comes to a head in the many AA meetings, talks and group therapy sessions. DFW said that for research he would drop into open AA/NA meetings and listen to the stories that everyone would tell. I have no idea which AA stories in IJ were real, partially-real or a complete fabrication of Wallace’s mind but they are powerful—like some of the most powerful stories that I have ever read. One story details, in length about a sexually abusive father and the child that has to pretend to sleep while his brother is violated. DFW set out to write an extremely sad book and in these moments, he more than succeeds in this endeavor. He plunges into the depths all the things that make life suck. And whether it was because of Wallace’s brilliant structure—he hints at all the ideas in his novel before presenting them, giving refracted forms of what is to come—or because I read the book so diligently, I never felt completely lost. It is all held together by some well placed scenes, especially conversations between the two characters Remy and Helen, who give a type of commentary on the entire novel. They are in the third story line which, along with many other converging threads I deem: “all the rest”. These different threads have at least some part to do with the quebecois wheelchair assassins—a terrorist group that formed after the union between U.S., Canada and Mexico. I have never read any Thomas Pynchon, but I imagine this part of IJ is the most Pynchonesque. The terrorist group wrecks all kinds of havoc on the populace, including a trick with a mirror and a highway. They hold up large mirrors in the middle of the road so an oncoming car thinks their lights in the reflection of the mirror is another car’s headlights driving straight towards them. The cars play chicken with their reflection of their own headlights until most drive off the edge of the highway and crash. For their latest scheme of terror, they are chasing after the rumor of a cartridge—kind of like a DVD in the current, Y.D.A.U. year. The rumor of this cartridge serves as the center of this story, if there could be a center. The cartridge is said to be so entertaining, engrossing and pleasurable that whoever watches it becomes instantly addicted to watching it. Their bodies shut down without the extreme pleasure that the cartridge gives the viewer. Most of this information is dolled out through Remy Marathe and Helen Steeply, a mismatched pair, one, a transsexual reporter and the other a triple agent for the O.N.A.N. government. The government wants to get a hold of the Entertainment, as it’s called, before the wheelchairs do. What becomes so brilliant about the entire conceit of the promised “Entertainment” is that it hardly exists. In a small moment at the end of the book, the star of the movie—the lovable and mysterious Joelle Van Dyne (third favorite character)—reveals that the Entertainment is a complete fabrication. All that exists is the rumor of its addicting qualities and not the movie itself. It was made by Hal Incandenza’s father—a multi-talented tennis pro and avant guarde film maker. The majority of his films are up the wazoo in pretensions and experimentalism. So it’s no surprise that the film ends up being a fluke and not the promised addictive entertainment it’s made out to be. This expounds upon the readers’ own hedonistic desire to find out about this movie. DFW carefully sets out each plot thread with the promise of resolution so that it entices the reader’s desire to get that narrative completion. But of course, he doesn’t give you the completion. In no other book I have seen such an enactment of structure play that works in direct conjunction with narrative intent. The problem with a lot of meta pomo work is that the gimmicks of narration feel contrived and unjustified. DFW’s structure is so justified that it couldn’t be any other way. And the structure does so much that I did and didn’t notice, that one could never stop writing about it. It looks like someone wrote a 600+ page book about IJ. Well, it deserves it. It deserves all the praise it gets. David Foster Wallace is truly the writer of his generation and I’m sorry to all of those who don’t like his work or are sick of the hype, but it’s completely how I feel. In an interview, DFW talks about his main intention was to connect to people on an emotional level. Infinite Jest is like the wisest friend you’ve ever had—not just in a erudite, intellectual way, but in a deep human intelligent way that glows with warmth and understanding for the human race. And if I could sum up this review in one word, it would be feeling. I felt so much, the entire fucking spectrum of human emotions. I marked the book every time some scene would enact some peak in my emotional register. Half the book has been marked. All those moments shook me to my core all the way from the moment that Kate Gombert gave her description of unipolar depression until the final page. My emotions tied around this book are so wrapped up with my emotions about the author that I can hardly speak about IJ without directing all of it towards DFW as well. Because there are a lot of things about this book that you can’t help but extrapolate to the great man himself. He wanted people to read an extremely sad work and grip their hearts. I know that some think of Infinite Jest as a really funny book, but I found it to be unrelentingly serious and sad. Sure, there was a lot of brilliant humor, but for me I was touched by it like no other book I’ve ever read. Because at it’s core, DFW had a lot of heartfelt things to convey. He conveyed them well, but they were buried under the weight of all that jargon and endnotes. Then, I started to realize the subtle genius behind the difficulty in Infinite Jest. DFW ultimately wanted to make you sappy, goo-prone and generally pathetic but he was afraid to come across as contrived and overly sentimental. The work not only justifies the sappy moments, but it weeds out everyone who wouldn’t accept or understand the deeply personal things DFW wanted to convey. If somehow someone had the patience and wherewithal to sift through all those words and those huge paragraphs, hey maybe that person would be okay with hearing about his most deep and guarded thoughts. The book is stuffed with those moments that reduce you to goo. And so many moments have been indelibly stamped into my brain. What makes him so great, understandable and powerful is the fact that deep down, DFW was a very sensitive guy. So am I. I’d say I’m the most sensitive person that I know. And I’m not the most put together person that I know either. The reason that I was reduced to a such a state so frequently is because I’ve had a bit of troubles of my own. When I was in sixth grade, I was diagnosed with depression and panic anxiety and given S.S.R.I.’s to deal with it. Sixth grade. It seems absurd that a person so young could even have access to such feelings. But it has stayed strong in me ever since. It’s extremely difficult to convey how terrible and awful acute anxiety attacks are, but DFW does a brilliant and accurate job of it: “the dark shape began rising out of my mind’s corner on its own. I dropped the violin again and ran from the room once again, clutching my head at the front and back, but this time it did not recede. . . It was as if I’d awakened it and now it was active. It came and went for a year. I lived in horror of it for a year, as a child, never knowing when it would rise up billowing and blot out all light. After a year it receded. I think I was ten. But not all the way. I’d awakened it somehow. Every so often. Every few months it would rise inside of me. . . The last time it ever rose up billowing was my second year of college. . . One sophomore night it came up out of nowhere, the black shape, for the first time in years.’ / ‘But there was an inevitability-feeling about it too, when it came.’ / ‘It is the most horrible feeling I have ever imagined, much less felt. There is no possible way death can feel as bad. It rose up. It was worst now that I was older. . . I thought I’d have to hurl myself out of my dormitory’s window. I simply could not live with how it felt. . . Some boy I hardly knew in the room below mine heard me staggering around whimpering at the top of my lungs. He came up and sat up with me until it went away. It took most of the night. We didn’t converse; he didn’t try to comfort me. he spoke very little, just sat up with me. . . I understood the term hell as of that summer day and that night in the sophomore dormitory. I understood what people meant by hell. . . From that day, whether I could articulate it satisfactorily or not. . . I understood on an intuitive level why people killed themselves. If I had to go for any length of time with that feeling I’d surely kill myself” (651). I have yet to find a more chilling or accurate description of it. The constant life of absolute terror. The millions of irrational phobias. And the debilitating effect it has had on my life. Not to mention the inevitable depression that piggy-backs along with it. It’s not easy to live with a mind that hates itself so much. One that looks in the mirror every morning only to spew some shit about how fat your ass is, and even though you lost forty pounds two summers back, you still have these thick thighs that are embarrassingly disproportioned to the rest of your body and that you’re going bald and you’re only nineteen fucking years old, and that no one could ever love a person with that kind of acne, the kind that diffuses across your entire forehead in tiny bumps, even though you use that shit that the dermatologist prescribed you twice a day that seems to do nothing but not that that would matter even the slightest because you are awkward in conversation and you always purposefully talk way over everyone else’s head when all that people want to have is a fucking normal conversation and you insist on talking about this or that philosophical issue so it wouldn’t even matter if you looked like Ryan fucking Gosling, you’d still be at the bottom of the pool of potential partners and you spend all this time thinking and thinking when are you ever going to do something and when are you going to become a relatable person, when are you ever going to overcome these insecurities; you are insecure about being insecure and no one would ever love a person with such a laundry list of fucked up shit; even the few girls that could stand to be with you for any more than twenty minutes wouldn’t even dare consider being with you because anything that a person really wants is just a person who will be even-keeled and not a person that needs so much damn work and to be taken care of because that’s what you’d have to be; you can’t escape who you are, you never can; you are stuck inside this sad excuse for a body that will be filled with facts, names, places, figures, ideas, numbers, theorems, excuses, promises, beliefs, desires, hopes and fears, more so than anything else, it seems, fears, packed until you can’t even breath because there’s so many fears crammed into such a small place, and you’re stuck until you finally die. And you try so hard to justify all this unhappiness to yourself and it seems like a huge waste of time because as much as you can make out of these distractions—film, literature, videos games, television, conversations—you think you wouldn’t need any of them if you weren’t so goddamn neurotic all the time. And everything begins to reek of justification and rationalization. Even the zen platitudes like we can only experience something good if we know what it is to be bad, makes all positive experience seem like a not-pain and a not-suffering, a mere negation of so many terrible, awful things. And movies and books with some deep connected meaning is only meaningful because you’ve been through all this self-pitying, self-aggrandizing depression bullshit so you were able to understand the same pointless shit that the writer went through and conveyed in his work. Is that supposed to be meaningful? Is that supposed to make you feel better? Just because someone else tortures themselves like you do doesn’t make it any more profound. And here comes Infinite Jest, with the promise to break through this adamantine wall of cynicism. And you begin to read through it and experience the same thing you always do when faced with a writer who has had a taste for depression and anxiety. You breath heavy and say to yourself, don’t I know it? I know exactly what you are talking about. You, just you, only you. And you drift over review after review of this book and start to see more people talking about this same experience. You start to realize how much Infinite Jest has touched so many other people’s lives in this deep profound way. Your protective layer of cynicism still feeds your mind with that same bitter story. The one that says all human experience is ultimately subjective and arbitrary. So the value that you get from these stories is only valuable because you’ve happened to be in similar shitty situations. And the people who write these reviews must be that same marginalized person that you are. And then, the insanity of it all hits you. How many more times can you rationalize away other people’s emotions? How many more heartfelt, beautiful reviews can you read and still make it all in terms of yourself? DFW brings out this feeling—that you insist is so much your own—in almost everyone who reads it. You realize how not alone and special you make yourself out to be. You are still a person, if nothing else. And to be a person is to be occasionally sad, fucked-up and narcissistic. And all these things that make you feel so non-human, marginalized, alienated, depressed and extremely anxious is exactly what it means to be a human being on the planet earth. And you realize that DFW understood all of this. And you realize some important things about life. Like you can hate yourself all you want and you can slip into that solipsistic wasteland of self-doubt. Or you can accept that this is part of being a human being. That all this suffering is still suffering and it’s still horrible but maybe you can accept it, because what would life be otherwise? You are not nearly as alone and tortured as you think. Every person experiences what you experience to some degree or another. So you can either retreat to your fortress of self-justification and pity or you can say I’m a human being who lives on the planet earth and you can thank David Foster Wallace for chronicling it so well and giving you one giant slap across your self-possessed face. Can I go live finally? Only if you’ll let yourself. And I think, yeah, I think I’m ready to go live, with all the anxiety and depression that it means for me. No matter what kinds of emotional extremes it takes me, I want to be a sensitive, thinking human being who revels in the miracle of consciousness. I’m going to walk outside on a beautiful spring afternoon, play some tennis and re-read my favorite passages of Infinite Jest (hide spoiler)](less)
Upon finishing this tome, I held it clutched between my victorious hands and shook the 1000 page-plus behemoth over my head, making some atavistic, phlemish noises from deep within my chest. It had been two months of struggling through a seemingly impenetrable wall of prose and esoteric jargon. DFW has quite the hankering for specialized knowledge, inside vernacular, nicknames, neologisms, innitialisms and acronyms. Couple that with 100+ pages of endnotes and this makes for a he...more Inelegant Brevity
Upon finishing this tome, I held it clutched between my victorious hands and shook the 1000 page-plus behemoth over my head, making some atavistic, phlemish noises from deep within my chest. It had been two months of struggling through a seemingly impenetrable wall of prose and esoteric jargon. DFW has quite the hankering for specialized knowledge, inside vernacular, nicknames, neologisms, innitialisms and acronyms. Couple that with 100+ pages of endnotes and this makes for a hell of experience, especially the beginning and the end. But the pain and struggle are worth it. The phrase “this book changed my life” is thrown around a whole lot these days, so all that I will say is that you will not be the same after reading this book. If you are on the fence about whether or not to read this then I implore you, read this book now. Have at it! You will laugh, cry and revel in all of those sappy clichés. DFW was a genius and I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you take the time—a whole lot of time that is—to get through it, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be worth your while. (I have marked the rest of this review as a spoiler, because everything before is all that really needs to be said. The rest of this review is really for myself. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you don’t read it. That being said, if you would like to see all my thoughts then continue on!)
(view spoiler)[
Infinite Impressions
(Suggested listening/if you don’t want to read this review and listen to this instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P0V5R...). I have never had a reading experience even close to the one that I dipped in and out of for the two months it took to scale Mount Jest. And now that I’ve finally reached the summit and planted my glorious five stars on Goodreads, I feel the strangest let down. I dedicated hours and hours battling its multi-lined sentences and multipage paragraphs for such stretches of time that it became more than just a familiar reading project and a habit; it became a comforting compulsion. I know what you must be thinking. Well, let me explain one thing first, if you can’t tell where I’m clodhopping towards—I became just as addicted to the book as the people in the book to their various vices. I’m going to backtrack a bit. This book circles around three main stories; the first is of a tennis academy of 12-20 year olds, mostly boys, led by a dictator of a tennis coach. This provides the bulk of the humor that most people talk about w/r/t this book and DFW’s wit. DFW so perfectly captured the sub-culture of male sports teams—or groups of males for that matter—that every irreverent joke, sexual innuendo and idiosyncrasy of middle/high-school social life is launched into the stratosphere of wit. DFW, if nothing else, knew people well. There is a lot of attention dedicated to neurosis, anxiety and depression, but it never engulfs the text. DFW’s range extends well beyond just this niche of mental disorder that writer after writer has beaten audiences to death with. DFW gives a new kind of life to the oft-written topic of gloomy depression. DFW’s brilliance is not just in the morose Hal Incadenza, a habitual cannabis smoker, but also Pemmulis, Ortho Stice, John Wayne and brother Mario Incadenza. All give much different views and dispositions on life—especially Mario, my second favorite character in the book. They all help to flesh out the IJ world. Their thoughts, foibles and motivations deal little with the drug addiction/mental illness of the rest of the characters. These issues possess the majority of the other storyline, the Ennett drug and recovery house. This features my first favorite character, Don Gately, who is a recovering narcotic and Demerol addict, that as the novel develops, grows in prominence. He is something of the appointed leader in the Ennet house. The kinds of struggles that this character goes through struck me as so genuine and real that I don’t really buy any accusation that IJ has flat characters. Don struggles to keep a hold of not just his own addiction but of the addiction of all the other recovering addicts. A great deal of Gately’s struggle comes to a head in the many AA meetings, talks and group therapy sessions. DFW said that for research he would drop into open AA/NA meetings and listen to the stories that everyone would tell. I have no idea which AA stories in IJ were real, partially-real or a complete fabrication of Wallace’s mind but they are powerful—like some of the most powerful stories that I have ever read. One story details, in length about a sexually abusive father and the child that has to pretend to sleep while his brother is violated. DFW set out to write an extremely sad book and in these moments, he more than succeeds in this endeavor. He plunges into the depths all the things that make life suck. And whether it was because of Wallace’s brilliant structure—he hints at all the ideas in his novel before presenting them, giving refracted forms of what is to come—or because I read the book so diligently, I never felt completely lost. It is all held together by some well placed scenes, especially conversations between the two characters Remy and Helen, who give a type of commentary on the entire novel. They are in the third story line which, along with many other converging threads I deem: “all the rest”. These different threads have at least some part to do with the quebecois wheelchair assassins—a terrorist group that formed after the union between U.S., Canada and Mexico. I have never read any Thomas Pynchon, but I imagine this part of IJ is the most Pynchonesque. The terrorist group wrecks all kinds of havoc on the populace, including a trick with a mirror and a highway. They hold up large mirrors in the middle of the road so an oncoming car thinks their lights in the reflection of the mirror is another car’s headlights driving straight towards them. The cars play chicken with their reflection of their own headlights until most drive off the edge of the highway and crash. For their latest scheme of terror, they are chasing after the rumor of a cartridge—kind of like a DVD in the current, Y.D.A.U. year. The rumor of this cartridge serves as the center of this story, if there could be a center. The cartridge is said to be so entertaining, engrossing and pleasurable that whoever watches it becomes instantly addicted to watching it. Their bodies shut down without the extreme pleasure that the cartridge gives the viewer. Most of this information is dolled out through Remy Marathe and Helen Steeply, a mismatched pair, one, a transsexual reporter and the other a triple agent for the O.N.A.N. government. The government wants to get a hold of the Entertainment, as it’s called, before the wheelchairs do. What becomes so brilliant about the entire conceit of the promised “Entertainment” is that it hardly exists. In a small moment at the end of the book, the star of the movie—the lovable and mysterious Joelle Van Dyne (third favorite character)—reveals that the Entertainment is a complete fabrication. All that exists is the rumor of its addicting qualities and not the movie itself. It was made by Hal Incandenza’s father—a multi-talented tennis pro and avant guarde film maker. The majority of his films are up the wazoo in pretensions and experimentalism. So it’s no surprise that the film ends up being a fluke and not the promised addictive entertainment it’s made out to be. This expounds upon the readers’ own hedonistic desire to find out about this movie. DFW carefully sets out each plot thread with the promise of resolution so that it entices the reader’s desire to get that narrative completion. But of course, he doesn’t give you the completion. In no other book I have seen such an enactment of structure play that works in direct conjunction with narrative intent. The problem with a lot of meta pomo work is that the gimmicks of narration feel contrived and unjustified. DFW’s structure is so justified that it couldn’t be any other way. And the structure does so much that I did and didn’t notice, that one could never stop writing about it. It looks like someone wrote a 600+ page book about IJ. Well, it deserves it. It deserves all the praise it gets. David Foster Wallace is truly the writer of his generation and I’m sorry to all of those who don’t like his work or are sick of the hype, but it’s completely how I feel. In an interview, DFW talks about his main intention was to connect to people on an emotional level. Infinite Jest is like the wisest friend you’ve ever had—not just in a erudite, intellectual way, but in a deep human intelligent way that glows with warmth and understanding for the human race. And if I could sum up this review in one word, it would be feeling. I felt so much, the entire fucking spectrum of human emotions. I marked the book every time some scene would enact some peak in my emotional register. Half the book has been marked. All those moments shook me to my core all the way from the moment that Kate Gombert gave her description of unipolar depression until the final page. My emotions tied around this book are so wrapped up with my emotions about the author that I can hardly speak about IJ without directing all of it towards DFW as well. Because there are a lot of things about this book that you can’t help but extrapolate to the great man himself. He wanted people to read an extremely sad work and grip their hearts. I know that some think of Infinite Jest as a really funny book, but I found it to be unrelentingly serious and sad. Sure, there was a lot of brilliant humor, but for me I was touched by it like no other book I’ve ever read. Because at it’s core, DFW had a lot of heartfelt things to convey. He conveyed them well, but they were buried under the weight of all that jargon and endnotes. Then, I started to realize the subtle genius behind the difficulty in Infinite Jest. DFW ultimately wanted to make you sappy, goo-prone and generally pathetic but he was afraid to come across as contrived and overly sentimental. The work not only justifies the sappy moments, but it weeds out everyone who wouldn’t accept or understand the deeply personal things DFW wanted to convey. If somehow someone had the patience and wherewithal to sift through all those words and those huge paragraphs, hey maybe that person would be okay with hearing about his most deep and guarded thoughts. The book is stuffed with those moments that reduce you to goo. And so many moments have been indelibly stamped into my brain. What makes him so great, understandable and powerful is the fact that deep down, DFW was a very sensitive guy. So am I. I’d say I’m the most sensitive person that I know. And I’m not the most put together person that I know either. The reason that I was reduced to a such a state so frequently is because I’ve had a bit of troubles of my own. When I was in sixth grade, I was diagnosed with depression and panic anxiety and given S.S.R.I.’s to deal with it. Sixth grade. It seems absurd that a person so young could even have access to such feelings. But it has stayed strong in me ever since. It’s extremely difficult to convey how terrible and awful acute anxiety attacks are, but DFW does a brilliant and accurate job of it: “the dark shape began rising out of my mind’s corner on its own. I dropped the violin again and ran from the room once again, clutching my head at the front and back, but this time it did not recede. . . It was as if I’d awakened it and now it was active. It came and went for a year. I lived in horror of it for a year, as a child, never knowing when it would rise up billowing and blot out all light. After a year it receded. I think I was ten. But not all the way. I’d awakened it somehow. Every so often. Every few months it would rise inside of me. . . The last time it ever rose up billowing was my second year of college. . . One sophomore night it came up out of nowhere, the black shape, for the first time in years.’ / ‘But there was an inevitability-feeling about it too, when it came.’ / ‘It is the most horrible feeling I have ever imagined, much less felt. There is no possible way death can feel as bad. It rose up. It was worst now that I was older. . . I thought I’d have to hurl myself out of my dormitory’s window. I simply could not live with how it felt. . . Some boy I hardly knew in the room below mine heard me staggering around whimpering at the top of my lungs. He came up and sat up with me until it went away. It took most of the night. We didn’t converse; he didn’t try to comfort me. he spoke very little, just sat up with me. . . I understood the term hell as of that summer day and that night in the sophomore dormitory. I understood what people meant by hell. . . From that day, whether I could articulate it satisfactorily or not. . . I understood on an intuitive level why people killed themselves. If I had to go for any length of time with that feeling I’d surely kill myself” (651). I have yet to find a more chilling or accurate description of it. The constant life of absolute terror. The millions of irrational phobias. And the debilitating effect it has had on my life. Not to mention the inevitable depression that piggy-backs along with it. It’s not easy to live with a mind that hates itself so much. One that looks in the mirror every morning only to spew some shit about how fat your ass is, and even though you lost forty pounds two summers back, you still have these thick thighs that are embarrassingly disproportioned to the rest of your body and that you’re going bald and you’re only nineteen fucking years old, and that no one could ever love a person with that kind of acne, the kind that diffuses across your entire forehead in tiny bumps, even though you use that shit that the dermatologist prescribed you twice a day that seems to do nothing but not that that would matter even the slightest because you are awkward in conversation and you always purposefully talk way over everyone else’s head when all that people want to have is a fucking normal conversation and you insist on talking about this or that philosophical issue so it wouldn’t even matter if you looked like Ryan fucking Gosling, you’d still be at the bottom of the pool of potential partners and you spend all this time thinking and thinking when are you ever going to do something and when are you going to become a relatable person, when are you ever going to overcome these insecurities; you are insecure about being insecure and no one would ever love a person with such a laundry list of fucked up shit; even the few girls that could stand to be with you for any more than twenty minutes wouldn’t even dare consider being with you because anything that a person really wants is just a person who will be even-keeled and not a person that needs so much damn work and to be taken care of because that’s what you’d have to be; you can’t escape who you are, you never can; you are stuck inside this sad excuse for a body that will be filled with facts, names, places, figures, ideas, numbers, theorems, excuses, promises, beliefs, desires, hopes and fears, more so than anything else, it seems, fears, packed until you can’t even breath because there’s so many fears crammed into such a small place, and you’re stuck until you finally die. And you try so hard to justify all this unhappiness to yourself and it seems like a huge waste of time because as much as you can make out of these distractions—film, literature, videos games, television, conversations—you think you wouldn’t need any of them if you weren’t so goddamn neurotic all the time. And everything begins to reek of justification and rationalization. Even the zen platitudes like we can only experience something good if we know what it is to be bad, makes all positive experience seem like a not-pain and a not-suffering, a mere negation of so many terrible, awful things. And movies and books with some deep connected meaning is only meaningful because you’ve been through all this self-pitying, self-aggrandizing depression bullshit so you were able to understand the same pointless shit that the writer went through and conveyed in his work. Is that supposed to be meaningful? Is that supposed to make you feel better? Just because someone else tortures themselves like you do doesn’t make it any more profound. And here comes Infinite Jest, with the promise to break through this adamantine wall of cynicism. And you begin to read through it and experience the same thing you always do when faced with a writer who has had a taste for depression and anxiety. You breath heavy and say to yourself, don’t I know it? I know exactly what you are talking about. You, just you, only you. And you drift over review after review of this book and start to see more people talking about this same experience. You start to realize how much Infinite Jest has touched so many other people’s lives in this deep profound way. Your protective layer of cynicism still feeds your mind with that same bitter story. The one that says all human experience is ultimately subjective and arbitrary. So the value that you get from these stories is only valuable because you’ve happened to be in similar shitty situations. And the people who write these reviews must be that same marginalized person that you are. And then, the insanity of it all hits you. How many more times can you rationalize away other people’s emotions? How many more heartfelt, beautiful reviews can you read and still make it all in terms of yourself? DFW brings out this feeling—that you insist is so much your own—in almost everyone who reads it. You realize how not alone and special you make yourself out to be. You are still a person, if nothing else. And to be a person is to be occasionally sad, fucked-up and narcissistic. And all these things that make you feel so non-human, marginalized, alienated, depressed and extremely anxious is exactly what it means to be a human being on the planet earth. And you realize that DFW understood all of this. And you realize some important things about life. Like you can hate yourself all you want and you can slip into that solipsistic wasteland of self-doubt. Or you can accept that this is part of being a human being. That all this suffering is still suffering and it’s still horrible but maybe you can accept it, because what would life be otherwise? You are not nearly as alone and tortured as you think. Every person experiences what you experience to some degree or another. So you can either retreat to your fortress of self-justification and pity or you can say I’m a human being who lives on the planet earth and you can thank David Foster Wallace for chronicling it so well and giving you one giant slap across your self-possessed face. Can I go live finally? Only if you’ll let yourself. And I think, yeah, I think I’m ready to go live, with all the anxiety and depression that it means for me. No matter what kinds of emotional extremes it takes me, I want to be a sensitive, thinking human being who revels in the miracle of consciousness. I’m going to walk outside on a beautiful spring afternoon, play some tennis and re-read my favorite passages of Infinite Jest (hide spoiler)](less)
50 likes · like · see review
Stephen M
Thank you so much Aubrey. Hugs right back.
This book has stuck with me. I reminisce about it all the time. I'm so glad that you were able to read it an...more Thank you so much Aubrey. Hugs right back.
This book has stuck with me. I reminisce about it all the time. I'm so glad that you were able to read it and write such a powerful review. Wonderful job.(less)
Dec 24, 2012 01:32am
This book has stuck with me. I reminisce about it all the time. I'm so glad that you were able to read it an...more Thank you so much Aubrey. Hugs right back.
This book has stuck with me. I reminisce about it all the time. I'm so glad that you were able to read it and write such a powerful review. Wonderful job.(less)
Dec 24, 2012 01:32am
Anthony Vacca
I think you nailed Wallace's intent on the head. I also think this is a pretty emotional book for all the people who love it. Nicely done review.
Jan 25, 2013 11:44am
Jan 25, 2013 11:44am
![[P]](http://d.gr-assets.com/users/1368277303p2/3355797.jpg)
I've picked up and put down this novel so many times over the last couple of years that I now have arms like Charles Atlas [seriously, I could take you all in an arm wrestle; these biceps, baby, are bulging], and this see-sawing between reading and not-reading clearly indicates an attitude of ambivalence.
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
...like picking pretty petals from a flower.
My mother taught me that if you’re going to, oh I don’t know, call someone an idi...more I've picked up and put down this novel so many times over the last couple of years that I now have arms like Charles Atlas [seriously, I could take you all in an arm wrestle; these biceps, baby, are bulging], and this see-sawing between reading and not-reading clearly indicates an attitude of ambivalence.
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
...like picking pretty petals from a flower.
My mother taught me that if you’re going to, oh I don’t know, call someone an idiot then you ought to say something nice or complimentary first. With that in mind, despite having ignored this advice for the majority of my existence, I’ll do my mother proud and begin with the positives [which means you can put your robe back on Yoda, you’re not needed yet].
I’m enjoying it
Infinite Jest is a big book. If you’ve read any of my previous reviews then you’ll know how I feel about big books; they arouse me to such an extent that I could turn the pages with my penis if I felt so inclined. Just look at the thing: one could never accuse Wallace of lacking effort. Over 1000 pages long, with footnotes? Yeah, I’m on board with that David.
Infinite Jest is, in places, very funny. Ha Ha funny. Ell oh ell funny. Often when books are described as being funny what this really means is that they may make you smile, or smirk, or, at best, titter.
Oh monsieur Proust, what a marvelous bon mot!
Wallace had a fine sense of humour; his writing was able to draw ugly sounds from your throat, and his book ought to be cherished for that.
A number of the characters are charming and likable [the central family in particular, who, with their precocious children, reminded me of the Tenenbaums]. Wallace too, in interviews, came across as a charming likable and interesting man. Generally speaking, I don’t care about the author, his life, or his personality, outside of his writing; indeed, I find the overwhelming majority of authors unutterably tedious. Yet, there was a magnetic affability about Wallace, something admirably human and engagingly eccentric, and this filters through into his work.
I’m not enjoying it
Here’s an acronym for you David: M.A.R.T.I.N.A.M.I.S. It struck me, just before I gave up on the book, that DFW suffers from the same deficiencies as Marty, in that he can be funny, can occasionally write beautifully, but too often his ideas are naff and the prose either a mess or laboured.
There are too many of what I call ‘boom moments.’
A boom moment refers to when a boom mic becomes visible during a tv show or film. When this happens the spell is broken, you, as the viewer, are brought back to reality, are reminded that you are watching a tv show etc. Boom moments in literature work in much the same way; they are the occasions when something the author does takes you out of the book, brings you back into the room [or wherever you are reading] and makes you aware of, say, how tired you are or how much your foot hurts or whatever. I don’t want to list all of IJ’s boom moments, but, for example, they include the setting of the novel in the not-too-distant-future and the guff that came with it. I really struggle to understand the point of the future element of the novel; it feels tacked on, irrelevant, ill-thought out.
OK, so Yoda, you ready hun?
A mess the writing, it is.
Despite my endless moaning on the subject, Wallace's sentences, his syntax and grammar, weren't as much of an issue for me as they had been previously, or as much as I had anticipated they would be this time around. This was mostly due to the fact that I managed to convince myself that it was intentional, primarily on the basis of an interview I read with the author where he spoke about his mother and how she was a grammar Nazi. Wallace said that when he made a mistake at the dinner table his mother would cough until he corrected it. So, obviously, he knew his apples. It would be churlish to suggest otherwise, but this doesn't mean that reading his work, his sentences [intentionally ugly or not], is actually enjoyable.
My second, related, objection is aimed at his supposedly 'conversational style.' I get the whole conversational thing, that it can be engaging, but does anyone actually speak how Wallace wrote? Not to my mind, or ear. I would also like to state just how fucking irritating I found the Ray Tony [or Tony Ray or Sugar Ray Leonard or whatever he was called] episode, which is when Wallace attempted to write in what I imagine was meant to be black American dialect. If he were still alive I'd be advising DFW to steer the fuck clear of this kind of thing in future, because it felt contrived and unconvincing and borderline offensive.
So, that's it, folks. You like some, you lose some. I'll probably return to Infinite Jest one day, if only to work on my arms a little bit more. (less)
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
...like picking pretty petals from a flower.
My mother taught me that if you’re going to, oh I don’t know, call someone an idi...more I've picked up and put down this novel so many times over the last couple of years that I now have arms like Charles Atlas [seriously, I could take you all in an arm wrestle; these biceps, baby, are bulging], and this see-sawing between reading and not-reading clearly indicates an attitude of ambivalence.
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
I’m enjoying it
I’m not enjoying it
...like picking pretty petals from a flower.
My mother taught me that if you’re going to, oh I don’t know, call someone an idiot then you ought to say something nice or complimentary first. With that in mind, despite having ignored this advice for the majority of my existence, I’ll do my mother proud and begin with the positives [which means you can put your robe back on Yoda, you’re not needed yet].
I’m enjoying it
Infinite Jest is a big book. If you’ve read any of my previous reviews then you’ll know how I feel about big books; they arouse me to such an extent that I could turn the pages with my penis if I felt so inclined. Just look at the thing: one could never accuse Wallace of lacking effort. Over 1000 pages long, with footnotes? Yeah, I’m on board with that David.
Infinite Jest is, in places, very funny. Ha Ha funny. Ell oh ell funny. Often when books are described as being funny what this really means is that they may make you smile, or smirk, or, at best, titter.
Oh monsieur Proust, what a marvelous bon mot!
Wallace had a fine sense of humour; his writing was able to draw ugly sounds from your throat, and his book ought to be cherished for that.
A number of the characters are charming and likable [the central family in particular, who, with their precocious children, reminded me of the Tenenbaums]. Wallace too, in interviews, came across as a charming likable and interesting man. Generally speaking, I don’t care about the author, his life, or his personality, outside of his writing; indeed, I find the overwhelming majority of authors unutterably tedious. Yet, there was a magnetic affability about Wallace, something admirably human and engagingly eccentric, and this filters through into his work.
I’m not enjoying it
Here’s an acronym for you David: M.A.R.T.I.N.A.M.I.S. It struck me, just before I gave up on the book, that DFW suffers from the same deficiencies as Marty, in that he can be funny, can occasionally write beautifully, but too often his ideas are naff and the prose either a mess or laboured.
There are too many of what I call ‘boom moments.’
A boom moment refers to when a boom mic becomes visible during a tv show or film. When this happens the spell is broken, you, as the viewer, are brought back to reality, are reminded that you are watching a tv show etc. Boom moments in literature work in much the same way; they are the occasions when something the author does takes you out of the book, brings you back into the room [or wherever you are reading] and makes you aware of, say, how tired you are or how much your foot hurts or whatever. I don’t want to list all of IJ’s boom moments, but, for example, they include the setting of the novel in the not-too-distant-future and the guff that came with it. I really struggle to understand the point of the future element of the novel; it feels tacked on, irrelevant, ill-thought out.
OK, so Yoda, you ready hun?
A mess the writing, it is.
Despite my endless moaning on the subject, Wallace's sentences, his syntax and grammar, weren't as much of an issue for me as they had been previously, or as much as I had anticipated they would be this time around. This was mostly due to the fact that I managed to convince myself that it was intentional, primarily on the basis of an interview I read with the author where he spoke about his mother and how she was a grammar Nazi. Wallace said that when he made a mistake at the dinner table his mother would cough until he corrected it. So, obviously, he knew his apples. It would be churlish to suggest otherwise, but this doesn't mean that reading his work, his sentences [intentionally ugly or not], is actually enjoyable.
My second, related, objection is aimed at his supposedly 'conversational style.' I get the whole conversational thing, that it can be engaging, but does anyone actually speak how Wallace wrote? Not to my mind, or ear. I would also like to state just how fucking irritating I found the Ray Tony [or Tony Ray or Sugar Ray Leonard or whatever he was called] episode, which is when Wallace attempted to write in what I imagine was meant to be black American dialect. If he were still alive I'd be advising DFW to steer the fuck clear of this kind of thing in future, because it felt contrived and unconvincing and borderline offensive.
So, that's it, folks. You like some, you lose some. I'll probably return to Infinite Jest one day, if only to work on my arms a little bit more. (less)
26 likes · like · see review
Josh Wade
I'm almost 300 pages in but thus far I concur with you review to the T. The laugh out loud funny parts to me are usually rehab related because the are...more
I'm almost 300 pages in but thus far I concur with you review to the T. The laugh out loud funny parts to me are usually rehab related because the are so true, especially where Day is driven mad by the 12-Stepisms. I find that I can be completely absorbed for a substantial number of pages then out of seemingly nowhere I am completely bored and uninterested and put it down for a day or two. Writing in vernacular in general drives me mad and DFW is no Mark Twain. The Ray Tony section I almost skipped completely but decided to trudge through it anyway.(less)
May 09, 2013 03:12pm
May 09, 2013 03:12pm
[P]
Josh wrote: "The Ray Tony section I almost skipped completely but decided to trudge through it anyway."
You have my deepest sympathy. After giving up o...more Josh wrote: "The Ray Tony section I almost skipped completely but decided to trudge through it anyway."
You have my deepest sympathy. After giving up on Jest, I came away with the opinion that if only he'd lived to realize that he didn't need all the baubles of experimentation and po-mo jiggery-wankery, that he wasn't actually any good at that stuff, and that his future greatness lay in simplicity. But then I attempted The Pale King, which is much more straightforward, or so I'm led to believe, and I realized that I just hate his writing; a funny man but as a writer I can't run with him. Good luck with IJ though, I hope you get more out of it than I did.(less)
May 09, 2013 03:24pm
You have my deepest sympathy. After giving up o...more Josh wrote: "The Ray Tony section I almost skipped completely but decided to trudge through it anyway."
You have my deepest sympathy. After giving up on Jest, I came away with the opinion that if only he'd lived to realize that he didn't need all the baubles of experimentation and po-mo jiggery-wankery, that he wasn't actually any good at that stuff, and that his future greatness lay in simplicity. But then I attempted The Pale King, which is much more straightforward, or so I'm led to believe, and I realized that I just hate his writing; a funny man but as a writer I can't run with him. Good luck with IJ though, I hope you get more out of it than I did.(less)
May 09, 2013 03:24pm
You Look Like You Could Use a Cold One: or How to Prepare a Glass of Coca-Cola® with Ice
Items needed:
1 - 8 oz. glass*
1 - 12 oz. can of Coca-Cola®*
1 - cube of ice*
____
(* or to taste)
I'm so bored I've even stopped wondering why ppl like it. Im so bored I dont even care why they all give it 5 stars. I'm so bored I don't even slam the book closed any more, I sleepily and nonchalantly place it back on the shelf and pretend it never happened. -- Mary R.
Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tenni...more
You Look Like You Could Use a Cold One: or How to Prepare a Glass of Coca-Cola® with Ice
Items needed:
1 - 8 oz. glass*
1 - 12 oz. can of Coca-Cola®*
1 - cube of ice*
____
(* or to taste)
I'm so bored I've even stopped wondering why ppl like it. Im so bored I dont even care why they all give it 5 stars. I'm so bored I don't even slam the book closed any more, I sleepily and nonchalantly place it back on the shelf and pretend it never happened. -- Mary R.
Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. Tennis. TENNIS. TENNIS. TENNIS. TENNIS. TENNIS.
Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. Alienation. ALIENATION. ALIENATION. ALIENATION.
Hope.
Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. ANXIETY. ANXIETY. ANXIETY.
Chiaroscuro, he thinks. Yes. "The camera, mount it under the floorboards." "The floorboards?" "Yes." "We--the camera will not pick up the scene if we place it under the floorboards." "Do you question my directorial vision?" "..."
The needle should be clean. If the needle is soiled one should procure a gallon of bleach, available at any corner grocery store for $1.75, ninety-five cents if one "goes" generic (the nature of the 'gallon' being the same as that elucidated in the Steve Martin movie-remake, Father of the Bride, in which the character George Stanly Banks goes on a rampage, brought on by marital and fatherly stress, inside a corner grocery store and in which he claims that the 'hot dog companies got together with the bun companies and decided they were going to "screw us" by putting extra hot dog buns inside the stay-fresh plastic wrap, while selling us (and our penchant for mass consumerism, which is not mentioned as such in said film) a quantity of two too few processed meat-sticks). The needle should be placed into the bleach for five seconds, no more, no less, ensuring that all hazardous bodies are "snuffed." One should take special care the needle does not fall into the small mouth of the bleach jug by holding the needle between thumb and forefinger, or thumb and middle-finger, or thumb and 'ring-finger,' or thumb and 'pinkie' as one sees fit, though Heaven® knows why one would want to hold a sharp, pointy object in the precarious position between thumb and 'pinkie'--but 'there's a joker in every deck,' as they say.
Barbara F., between nods:
People say G.G. acted that way because he had a tiny dick. I knew G.G. Yes he had a tiny dick. So fuckin what? I tell people-- [Nod duration: approx 5 mins, 26 seconds] --G.G. acted that way because the fuckin skag, see? Drugs. "He died with the needle in his arm," did they tell you that? Yeah, right. He died with the plunger hangin out his asshole, the needle jammed into the lining of his colon. I knew G.G. And he was the best lover I ever had. But he needed to-- [Nod duration: 1 mins, 2 seconds] --get the fuck clean.
The sign said, "Open Mic Nite." It was a crumby white piece of posterboard that someone had handpainted in oddly smooth-curving letters. Orin Incadenza did not like mics. Or nites. Or anything that was too wide open--though Orin, as far as he knew, as not agoraphobic. Okay, maybe he was. Still. He could use a cold one. The bar, The Alphabet Mime, was smoky. A thick cloud, Swisher Sweet-scented, blurred his vision. Or maybe it was the hint of a tear. No, it was just the smoke, that was all. His girlfriend, Joelle, had recently run off with his father, Himself. Not himself-himself, as in Orin, but his father, Himself: capital h. At the back of the bar a small elevated stage, no wider than the vans he used to take to tennis competitions back at E.T.A, cornered the patrons' attention. A young woman, blond, should-length hair, button nose, cherub cheeks, twirled a flaming baton. She said her name was Toni, lowercase i. While she twirled she talked. About life. Love. Where one could buy the best cinnamon east of the Mississippi.
"Doctor, twenty more just walked in." "The same thing?" the Doctor asked. "Yes," said the nurse, "all holding their wrists at crooked angles. I think--" she paused, "I think it's the book."
Sometimes in life, son, you won't get things. You won't understand. You'll thumb life's pages and you'll look up its words and you'll picture its scenes inside your head: and sometimes after all that you'll sit there an scratch your yourself cause either you ain't got the life experiences to make its connections, or you and life's author there, you jest don't see eye to eye--or head to head, so to speak. And that's okay. But then you'll have them other times when things'll come to you crystal clear. You'll see to the bottom like it's the clear blue sea. You'll paddle and wade and even dive down in it, get your head wet. Hell, maybe even find yourself baptized. But what you see staring back you from the crystal clear blue is nothing but empty space. And son, lemme tell you: that's because there's nothing there. And there never was to begin with.
ActionNews7 - On The Scene® - Rachel Bendel, reporting: "Like I was saying, I was twelve minutes in to my allotted fifteen -- I have this act where I bring in an old television set, one of those with the tripod legs and rabbit ears up top, and I roll it in, set it up on stage, bring one of the stools from the bar and sit it a couple feet away from the set; then I turn on the tv and the static blares and I sit on my stool and I gaze at the static for fifteen minutes; ideally I would do it for four hours but fifteen minutes is all you get at the XXX; it's like, a comment on the lack of creativity in television, ya know, like you're saying, 'Fuck you, I'd rather watch static than anything you have!' -- no, it's not too bad on my eyes; well, sometimes, but it's worth it, you know -- get my message out there -- so I'm twelve minutes in and all of a sudden I hear this commotion behind me and I don't like to break character, ya know, I want to give people the real experience -- by real experience? oh, you know, like how we're all drones and shit sitting their watching the old idiot box -- so this commotion's going on and I'm about to turn around like cause I gotta see what's going on -- nobody ever fucks with someone while they're on stage, man: it's religious up there -- so just as I'm about to turn around this guy storms the stage and punts my ass right off the stoll and I think as I fly that I'm about to go head-first through tha fuckin tv -- oh, yeah, sorry about the f-bomb, ha -- but instead of going through it I fly right over the f-- the thing, and lemme tell you, that motherfucker -- sorry -- that guy could kick! Punted my ass like he was kicking it into the stands, man. So yeah, my ass is pretty sore -- what? oh, sorry, yeah -- and the proctologist says he's gonna be pulling divets outta my ass for -- oh fuck off with your shhhes: you got your interview - for a week and I've got this little blow-up thing I'm supposed to use whenever I sit down, so yeah. Dude went fuckin apeshit, I'm here to tell ya. Orin. They said his name was Orin. Never seen the guy before."
She say he don't know her like she know him. They good together she say. He don't say nothing. She sit there on the couch. She watch the TV where news report say man done had his ass kick. She say to him sitting across from her in his chair I know you better you think. He don't say nothing. The TV say this man on TV got his ass kick while he sitting on a stage watching TV. This man say he afraid his head go through the TV while he on stage and flying. She look at him sit in his chair. He got big grin on his face like he so smart. I know you she say. He don't say nothing. She say I gonna kick you ass too. She go kick his ass. He head hit the TV. He out cold. He lay there and still smile. She tired of that smile. She go get the phone book under the couch. It been holding the couch up since that night. She take the phone book over to him. She look down. Phone book look down too. Phone book say infinite jest but it no matter cause she don't read. She gone wipe that smile off he face.
The shovel says, Chink, chink, chink.
Before she became G.G.'s groupie, touring the B.S. pre-O.N.A.N in back of an Econoline with a shit-smeared floor and a faulty fan belt, Barbara Fallon was a cheerleader for Mississippi State, the Fighting Bulldogs. When she looked at it now, it wasn't a far leap from cheerleading guys who threw a football to cheerleading a guy who threw his own feces. Not really. On the one hand, you got to dress up in skimpy one-pieces, your legs fitting through the built-in bloomer the skirt surrounded, while of course all the guys in the stands (and maybe some of the women) and all the guys on the team (when they weren't wrestling each other to the ground) were trying to look up your skirt to see your panties, which ha-ha were unvisible. So you trade that in for a leather bra and leather skirt that barely covers your ass and you forget to wear panties when you go to a G.G. gig because he may want to have sex with you right there on-(off?)stage or out in the audience and far be it from you to deny the Great Hedonist so really it wasn't that big a deal dry-humping (hell, fucking) the squatty gnome with his bald, bloody head peppered with cuts, gouges, scrapes and his sweat tumbling off his shiny forehead and into your eyes where it burns and stings and you close your eyes to remember where you once were and you convince yourself that it's not really that different from where you are right this minute. Not really.
"And?" said But. "Are you following me?" And said, "But, I'm not. But I thought you were following me." So sat in a corner twiddling his serifs.
Clip. . . Clop. . . . Clip. . . .Clop. . .Clip.. HUH! Fault!
It's been a few weeks since I last picked this up. Tolstoy. Markson. A sentient breast, parading past in the meantime.
Removed from it, I can conjure the scenes without all Wallace's bullshit. Because the man had a bad tendency to overwrite. Maybe some people like that, wading through a sea of words to find any resemblance to a story or character. I tend to fall on the opposite side of the literary spectrum. Give me a miniscule Raymond Carver short story that in three pages can rip your heart out and throw it at a wall, and I'm seventh heaven.
Removed from the bullshit, Jest is not too bad. It's not as terrible as I felt it to be while I was reading it. I find myself re-viewing moments. They're not bad. A couple characters even stand out. The guy who has that scene on the subway, Poor Tony. I like the guy. My interest perked whenever his scenes rolled round, which sadly was not very often. But there's a problem in this that has nothing to do with the few and far between. The problem is that I like this character Poor Tony because he reminds me of Georgette, a similar character with a similar background from one of my all-time favorite reads, Hubert Selby's Last Exit To Brooklyn. If you haven't read it, give it a try. Selby manages in a fifth the space to conjure and wring from it more energy, heart, and stream-of-consciousness narrative than Wallace could ever hope to. And this has been a problem I've run into throughout Jest. Every scene or character I stumble upon has a staleness that comes from seeing its literary progenitor waving a huge red hand at me. The drug shit, this is also done infinitely better in Selby's Exit.
"Doctor," said the nurse, "do you have the jumper cables? I think this one's in a coma! Doctor, come quick! Come quick! I think he stopped breathing! The book has killed him! He's dead!"
"Oh, cut the hysterics, Bernice. He's not dead. He's just sleeping. . . . Albeit very soundly. Ready!? Clea---son of a bi--, e's really dead. I've never seen a book kill someone before. Huh. Um. Huh. Well."
Whiiii, wheeeewwwww, Whiiiiiiii, Whewwwwwwwwwww. The feather floats and tumbles through the air. Comes to a gentle rest on her supple lips. Rests there for half a second. Just long enough for the plum lipstick to dapple the individual barbs before it takes flight again Whiiiii, whhhheeeewwwwww, Whiiiiiiii, Wheewwwwwww
Doc says, "It's the old ticker. It's ticking too quick. Tickin too loud. Ole ticker just tick, tick, ticks. Skip a beat, can't get it back. Just tick, tick, ticks." The fish in the bowl on the exam table, the one with all the tongue depressors and the cotton balls, the fish says, Blop. Orin's old now. Doc says, again, "It's the old ticker. Just tick, tick, ticks." The Doc's face is a clock. Orin had heard of people sometimes wearing clocks around their necks, kitchen clocks, clocks with no hands, what was time anyway? But the Doc had a clock for a face. And he said, "Tick, tick, tick," to everything Orin asked him. "How long I got?" Orin asked. The Doc's face said, "Tick, tick, tick." Orin would have to tell Barbara when he got back. "It was the old ticker," he would say. The Doc said again, "The old ticker. Just tick, tick, ticks." The yard outside was freshly cut, spotlessly kept. Most of that was Barbara but Orin helped out now and then. Since the injury, his right leg didn't let him do an awful lot. He saw Barbara sitting on the porch swing when he pulled up into the driveway. "Well?" she said. Orin said, "Tick, tick, tick. The ole ticker."
David's brain's neurons' synapses pistoned his shoulder's arm's hand's fingers onto the pencil's shaft's lead's point and pushed it across the paper's blue-red-lined, white surface, taking a moment to note the left-hand's side's three, punched holes, and his shoulder's arm's hand's fingers wrote, "Sometimes I think it might be possible to see the forest's trees' leaves' veins. And sometimes I don't."
In which the novel Infinite Jest reviews one of its readers: One
A theme song plays. Over the stage lights rise, become Brite® white. On a lifted stage, a foot high, twelve by twelve square, sit two orange cantilever chairs. In the chairs sit two males, one upright, one slouching, both equidistant from the other. The theme song fades out: "And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made..."
For this round Infinite Jest has chosen, at random, reader Mark McKee from Dyersburg. Hi Mark, good to have you. Hey there. So, are you excited? I guess so. You don't sound so sure. Well, I didn't like this book so I'm not sure what the book will say about me. Ohh, I see. That should make things fun for the viewers at home if not for yourself, eh? I kid. Jest, are you ready? It looks like Jest is ready, ladies and gentleman, so if you'll all get comfortable we'll get started. But first, can be have a round of applause for Mr. McKee for being a good sport, eh? That's fine, that's fine indeed. So, alright then, are we ready?(less)
22 likes · like · see review
Madeleine
I thought I liked this already so I clicked the little grey button and GR was all "ERROR!" and I was like "WHAT NO" so I read your review again and wo...more
I thought I liked this already so I clicked the little grey button and GR was all "ERROR!" and I was like "WHAT NO" so I read your review again and would not let this site give me "NO HAHA YOU CANNOT HAS SUCCESSFUL LIKE" for an answer.
This review is still freaking amazing. I love it so.(less)
Apr 02, 2013 12:51pm
This review is still freaking amazing. I love it so.(less)
Apr 02, 2013 12:51pm
Mark
Thank you, Madeleine! Those finicky felines, up to their tom(cat)foolery! I wish I could have been the in the camp that had as much fun reading the bo...more
Thank you, Madeleine! Those finicky felines, up to their tom(cat)foolery! I wish I could have been the in the camp that had as much fun reading the book as I did playing about with this review ;D(less)
Apr 02, 2013 01:59pm
Apr 02, 2013 01:59pm
Dang! I didn't see this coming. I hadn't expected to be giving up on Infinite Jest out of boredom, of all things. I mean I have seen people mention its length, its complex structure, non-linear timeline and all of that, but I don't hear people talking about how boring this can get. We know the kind of reputation Infinite Jest and Wallace enjoy on Goodreads. I can't think of another book which has elicited reviews as passionate and personal as this one does. I feel any one of those reviews has mo...more
Dang! I didn't see this coming. I hadn't expected to be giving up on Infinite Jest out of boredom, of all things. I mean I have seen people mention its length, its complex structure, non-linear timeline and all of that, but I don't hear people talking about how boring this can get. We know the kind of reputation Infinite Jest and Wallace enjoy on Goodreads. I can't think of another book which has elicited reviews as passionate and personal as this one does. I feel any one of those reviews has more heart than what I've read in IJ so far. Of course there were parts that I enjoyed and which made me feel something, even stirred a personal memory once. But then Wallace is too eager to jump to a different thread and impress us with may be an essay or a tech report or some political news story. That's not what I read fiction for. Give me an opportunity to connect with the characters, give the characters some space to develop. Or at least, spare me large chunks of dry prose, give me something engaging. Based on the overall vibe of the reviews I've read, I was expecting it be a a bit more character driven. It has lot more plot than I care for at the moment. I didn't mind the footnotes (and Kindle does make it very easy to flip back and forth), of which I've read more than 50 so far. But majority of them seem unnecessary to me. I am sure it has something redeeming further in. But from the impression I've so far, I don't want to invest the time to look for that tiny diamond in the haystack.
Though if I were stranded on a deserted island with nothing but IJ, sure I'll read it. Or perhaps my curiosity about it's status in the little Goodreads universe will get the better of me one day.(less)
29 likes · like · see review
When I started thinking about this book yesterday after I finished it. I mostly thought about it in my own head, my experience of the book and my understanding of the book. I don’t think this was wrong. I don’t think it was wrong when it was recommended that I quit reading the book in a status update I declined the invitation. I don’t think that It is reasonable to assume for any reason that everyone will like this book, or that there is even something fundamentally wrong with some or some’s rea
...moreWhen I started thinking about this book yesterday after I finished it. I mostly thought about it in my own head, my experience of the book and my understanding of the book. I don’t think this was wrong. I don’t think it was wrong when it was recommended that I quit reading the book in a status update I declined the invitation. I don’t think that It is reasonable to assume for any reason that everyone will like this book, or that there is even something fundamentally wrong with some or some’s reading style who didn’t enjoy this book as much as you did. My favorite book, yeah I just actively have one (and it has been since I was 15 about I think), is the stranger by albert camus. Sometimes I get this wrong, but if I say another book I made a mistake, my favorite book hasn’t changed. I bring this up because I know plenty of people who fundamentally dislike this book, I don’t understand exactly why they didn’t like this book, but I do as a general rule assume that their dislike is justified. I am not at this moment feeling like my opinions on this book are being respected in the same way that I would prefer all opinions are respected. Yeah I’m being a bit stupid pointing this out, but it has been bothering me since even just a couple hundred pages into the book. Whatever, moving on. I’d like to actually look through, outline a review and well if people are still angry there is nothing more that can be done after that, and I won’t have the energy to care if you are pissed at me anymore I’m expending it all here in an attempt to make people less angry. [On finishing the rewrite if you were angry with the first one do us both a favor and don’t read this one, while I think it is clearer for future readers I have never met, I think it is more negative than the last one and will be more upsetting for people I know who are already angry, but feel free to rescind any and all votes]
So I guess the best way to talk about the book is to talk about what DFW actually says are his goals with the book and how he thinks the book should work. I watched some interviews while thinking about this book and what I found was Wallace says in regard to this book that the avant-garde has a responsibility to make a reader want to read the book. Great he and I agree here, you can’t just do something weird and new you have to do it in a way that makes the reader enjoy it and want to be involved in it. Now I read the new foer book and that is avant-garde and for me that really met this criterion. I read the book and I immediately wanted to sit down and read it again. Now maybe you think foer is stupid, maybe you think that isn’t at all the same, maybe you think foer stole the idea and it doesn’t even really count, but this is my review and my rules. I learned something really important from this book. I learned that even after hundreds of pages a book can surprise you, I learned that even in the darkest moment of reading a book there can be moments of beauty and light. And you know, I learned that I actually want to go back and see if maybe Gaddis and I just needed a break. I mean after all I liked so much of that book before I got frustrated and annoyed, maybe he could pull it back. On the other hand I learned from this review that I don’t know that I want to tell anyone that I’m reading it again. In the case of infinite jest, well there are these things in psychology called reinforcement schedules. There are a bunch of types. The most effective type is something called intermittent reinforcement. This means that an animal is reinforced periodically but not on any kind of a set schedule. This book felt like that for me. There were these scenes that I loved, the first eredy scene, the first Kate scene, the first real explanation of Mario’s place in the family, the explanation of avril’s manipulation of her children (almost every time this became a topic). Every time this happened, even when 40 pages from the end of the book I had one of these moments I thought, yes, Wallace is bringing it all together I’m going to enjoy the rest of this book, whatever it was that was causing the distance we’ve bridged it, we’ve fixed it, thank god. Then it would fall apart again, the book would move back into these long sequences of things that weren’t quite interesting to me and I would read huge numbers of pages, waiting hoping, maybe next time I can sustain it, maybe next time I can figure out how to keep loving the book after those 10 pages. And I guess Wallace succeeded sort of I kept reading the book. He also says he wanted people to want to reread the book, at least in my case I don’t think that was a rousing success.
For me personally the experience of reading this book had super intense ups and downs. It was like when you are on a roller coaster and you go down one of those straight hills and your stomach drops out from under you. Connor has been trying to convince me this is important to the novel, it is suppose to be like this, it needs to be like this. I actually do buy the first half of that. Wallace definitely did it on purpose the man isn’t stupid. I don’t think it’s necessary. So the argument I was given for why this happens is that the highs wouldn’t be so high without the lows. Okay this is not something that is good enough for me. The fact is that the highs aren’t going to be in relation to the lows in the book in an overall perspective they are going to be in relation to my overall lows and the fact is whether or not Wallace included his lows I would have read torn and the highs would have seemed awesome compared to that. Maybe there is something about the non-existence of all outside reality in the perspective of the novel, but I buy that as much as I buy the death of the author, so I’m just going to go ahead and walk away from that one. I think a reasonable argument for what’s happening in the book is that the book is on some level making an attempt to mimic life. Life has highs and lows, and life has ups and downs, so the book does. Of course the books has ups and downs like a rapid cycling bipolar not like a normal person, if you intend to mimic life I think you have to include the slide from low to high. I suppose there could be some kind of argument that the book is actually shooting up and maybe the book is gately and when I find it boring is when he’s on Demerol. I’m trying to remember if in any of the main scenes of this book anyone was on anything to explain the highs in this book, Lenz does cocaine, there is at least mention of mdma. I’m not really sure, I might be hanging out with the wrong drug addicts but the highs still feel way more manic than drug addled to me. I’m just not really sure even trying to imagine a scenario where a person would cycle the way this book cycles hurts my head. Maybe this is the problem maybe I’m not enough of an addict to understand why the book insists on doing this. I kind of want to insert this entire thing about hans fallada and the drinker and writing the hungover mind and that open library book, but I don’t know that I should actually bother you with that, so I’m not going to at this point.
The other thing that Wallace says I find interesting is that art is about loneliness and conversation between human beings. I am totally onboard here. I mean I really think I feel this in books like the jenn ashworth. I mean what is it really like to connect to really be there with a person who is maybe just a little bit wrong, a little bit off. This is totally it, I read books to connect to human beings, just like I listen to music to connect to human beings. I think I haven’t been this onboard with a theory of fiction in quite some time. Stephen Pinker, yeah I’m quoting him even if I’m not really a fan, says "Fiction is empathy technology." We connect to human beings through fiction because we are confronted with the raw humanity of another person and we are asked to accept that person maybe even to love that person. We somehow have to find a way to relate to that person, probably on a level that we don’t walk around relating to people on a daily basis, to forgive them for flaws we wouldn’t usually forgive to tell them things we wouldn’t tell our closest friends. A book is a better thing to chat with than anything else on the planet. But what happens when you read a book and you find that you can’t have empathy for a character for whatever reason. The book ends up failing you, or perhaps you fail it, if you can’t be there with the character well you can’t converse with the book. But what if you can be there experiencing the overwhelming horizontality with Hal, if you can experience the intense craving with Eredy, if you can understand the choice between principles and pain with Don Gately, if you understand the fear Joelle has of revealing herself to gately, but then you just fall out of the relationship. Well can you maintain? I think that this probably differs on a person to person basis, but I know for myself that I had to constantly reestablish that relationship with every character in the book except eredy, probably because he was in the book so little, and here is the thing in the real world after you try to empathize with someone and you get slapped enough times you stop trying, or at least I stop trying, and when you have the opportunity to empathize you have to put in so much effort that you resent the person you are trying to empathize with, and then you feel like a terrible person. Yeah there that’s one of the fundamental problems, reading this book makes me feel like a horrible awful terrible person. Maybe this is the point maybe Wallace wants me to feel the way a drug addict feels (drug addicts have trouble recognizing any facial expression besides contempt because it is the only one they tend to see). So do I congratulate him for making me hate myself, and I’m not fucking around he really did I have been more depressed in the two weeks I spent reading this book than I have been since I was in high school, I don’t blame him directly but it was book related. Okay, that isn’t an experience I like, maybe if I had been given this at 15 I would have liked that about it, maybe it would have made me feel justified in self hatred and I would have loved the book. In this circumstance, that didn’t occur. Instead the book and I have developed a beautiful cycle of mutual hatred, this is not a conversation. On the other hand, as he says his goal was to write a sad book, job well done. This is what I was talking about in the last review when I said the book leaked sadness.
Okay now what I actually thought I was going to talk about when it comes to the conversations this book attempts is that as far as the ones I am interested in they felt extremely one sided. Now when I actually sit down with my friends and engage about a topic, not like fucking around over beers like actually talking, I tend to sort of fall into a more motivational interviewing approach to the world. I don’t like to just look at the world from my side no matter what it looks like to people. I do know people see me that way. But I brought up in my last attempt that the papers I’ve written on AA have all been about the positive aspects of AA, when I write about disorders I writing about how to define and treat disorders, I don’t actually fundamentally agree with either of these positions I just think it is so important to unpack positions to really think about them and understand them. I didn’t just flippantly dislike this book without thinking about it and I didn’t do that to gaddis either and it kind of bothers me that people would assume that I had done that. But that isn’t the point. The fact is that there were so many really great issues that came up in this book AA was just one of them, an example, there was the metaphor of the cartridge for drug abuse, there was the sense of defining identity of any single human being outside their personal actions, etc. Now I get that maybe my last review misrepresented, maybe it seemed like I was saying my problem was that I disagreed with Wallace and it is true on most of these issues I do. But that isn’t my problem, my problem is if I am going to sit down and really compose myself and commit to a thousand pages about these types of issues, I want to really unpack these issues I want to really look at them from all angles. I want to pick up the carpet and see what’s under there. I didn’t feel like I got that here. I felt like what I got was at best a Nietzschesque aphorism. Like hey look suicide, and then I was left to sit down and think through suicide myself. Hey look AA. And yeah I did get a really solid one sided view on some of these issues but I really think there was enough room in this book for both sides. This is the problem for me not “dude likes X” it’s “dude didn’t thoroughly consider the issues associated with all positions on X.” And you know I might be being picky cause I’ve read his essays, but the DFW that wrote host, I just didn’t feel like I was interfacing with the same person at all. I felt like at best I was being lectured to and at worst I was being given discussion topics for a speed dating session where the date never showed up.
You know it’s really fine with me if people think I’m too stupid to get this book, or I’m not putting in enough effort, or I’d be happier sitting around reading sophie kinsella. I’m confident in who I am as a human being and I don’t think this is going to shake that. I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed everybody and I’m sorry you don’t like my opinions, but the fact is they are my opinions and I don’t really see them changing based on peer pressure.
Okay so on the endnotes. I still don’t like endnotes, this doesn’t mean I can’t like a book with endnotes. And yes I have considered when the endnotes where there and honestly I came up with nothing except what I said in my other review, (paraphrased as to fuck up the smoothness of my reading experience). Well I googled till I found David Foster Wallace talking about the endnotes and he says that the point is that reality is fractured and they are suppose to mess with the flow of the novel. So not only did I consider it, but I actually had the purpose of the footnotes right. Wallace says that he needed the right amount so they fractured the novel but weren’t completely disorienting. Here is my problem. I found them completely disorienting. Probably this is related to my dislike of end notes and therefore my complete lack of practice using them. And maybe there is some way that I could have read the chapter and the end notes and then reread the chapter, and then reread the chapter and the endnotes and fixed this, but considering the reading experience I was having this doesn’t seem like something that I would have been likely to do now does it? I think a lot of this could have been solved by making the definitional endnotes footnotes on the pages. I’ve said, I didn’t mind the long endnotes, I got the point and I liked them even the filmography one, but the flipping back and forth four times in a paragraph so the meanings of abbreviations, I’m sorry I can’t do it, and I’m not going to apologize for the fact that it severely disturbed my reading experience, it isn’t like Wallace didn’t know that was a possibility.
***********************
When I was probably about 16 I had been playing the clarinet for something like seven years (and the harp for 11, so I mean I was entrenched in the whole music performance thing) my band instructor, Daniel Granholm gave a lecture about how you can tell if you have played a piece of music well. The main point being if the audience starts clapping the second the music ends you have performed poorly. If you play a song well the audience should get lost in the music and it should take them a second or two to come out of that to applaud for you at the end of a song. If they applaud exactly when a song ends it means they are waiting for the song to be over (in the case of our orchestra because listening to them was painful, but that is long story about some intense mistakes in the organization of the orchestra rehearsals, and of course the retarded lack of talent of most high school string players).
How is this relevant to mr. Wallace, well I have been looking forward to the end of this book, since, well not exactly since, more like mostly during all the words in the book. Now don't get me wrong I think there is a really amazing 200-300 page book buried in there (I didn't mark he pages I thought were good, I kind of think I should have now). In between those, lets estimate high and ignore the footnotes for the moment, there were 681 pages that I read wishing they weren't there at all, or that I took long naps while reading so I wouldn't have to read them anymore (I will give this book credit, I have slept more while reading this book than I have in probably 15 years). I spent most of this book skimming ahead for stops asking myself, "how much more of this do I have to read before I can take a break?"
Okay this book was actually not recommended to me by greg and Karen, although I think greg recommended it once. This book and dfw in general were recommended to me by Connor multiple times, over a couple years, in a specific order (which I didn’t follow, but I know enough about sports so he stuff about tennis didn’t bother me). This is Connor’s favorite book.Correction this is a book connor really likes. Connor is now reading Ulysses. Ulysses is not my favorite book (which I can’t specify at the moment but he hasn’t read any of the choices) but it is seriously up there. I love Ulysses because it is not a novel of things it is a novel of thoughts. What I mean is, I read Ulysses as joyce’s personal quest to define his own identity is he bloom or is he Stephen. And the conflict of uniting these two characters, or these two aspects of his personality is impossible. No matter how many times he brings them together one insists on fundamentally rejecting the other. I could go on for days. On the other hand, dfw. Okay I don’t like most of these characters, I don’t really think they have a whole fuck of a lot going on inside their heads. I do see a bit of Wallace spread out among maybe 3 of the characters, but it seems heavily accidental and not actually imbedded in the plot line. Here is where Wallace and I differ, I love the scenes that he gives almost no importance in the book. I love the explanation of Kate’s depression, I love the description of Eredy trying to get high, I love Mario trying to figure out how to interact with other people. I don’t like pemulis. Michael specifically, I like Matt a lot. I don’t think he has a whole lot going on as a human being, if he came up to me on the street I wouldn’t talk to him, so why the fuck is he in the book so much more than all the interesting character. Right, so connor doesn’t like joyce like I do, and he doesn’t get why I like it so much. I’m in a more complicated place, I get why people like Wallace, I just don’t get why this book wasn’t edited better and why anyone would want to read a version that was less edited. Why is the game of eschaton an obsessive topic in the book. Okay, I don’t like action in books I know this is weird. I like stories, and philosophy and the whole debate about where the snow is really falling, but I don’t need to be reminded ever ten pages that someone got hit in the head with a tennis ball. I just don’t give a flying fuck alright. Punish them whatever, but I’m not terribly interested.
(less)
24 likes · like · see review
Jasmine
Bird Brian wrote: "Jasmine wrote: "Just so you know my mom asked me if we were getting married because there is a picture of you me and a sandwich on...more
Bird Brian wrote: "Jasmine wrote: "Just so you know my mom asked me if we were getting married because there is a picture of you me and a sandwich on Facebook and in crazyland san..."
Wait... so now it's off?"
no we just can't tell my mom, she's against polygamy(less)
Jan 20, 2012 09:18pm
Wait... so now it's off?"
no we just can't tell my mom, she's against polygamy(less)
Jan 20, 2012 09:18pm
Jasmine
Bird Brian wrote: "Jasmine wrote: "no we just can't tell my mom, she's against polygamy."
at least she gets the sandwich thing; that's a start."
very tr...more Bird Brian wrote: "Jasmine wrote: "no we just can't tell my mom, she's against polygamy."
at least she gets the sandwich thing; that's a start."
very true(less)
Jan 20, 2012 09:19pm
at least she gets the sandwich thing; that's a start."
very tr...more Bird Brian wrote: "Jasmine wrote: "no we just can't tell my mom, she's against polygamy."
at least she gets the sandwich thing; that's a start."
very true(less)
Jan 20, 2012 09:19pm
A few days ago I was reading this at the gym while on the elliptical, sweating copiously, and a girl yelled at me from across the room "how do you even keep your place in that book?", to which I responded, "I use three bookmarks: one for where I'm actually reading in the text, one in the place where it explains the chronology of the book, and one in the endnotes." Her method was to buy two copies of the book and keep one open to the main body of the text and one open to the footnotes. Anyway, wh...more
A few days ago I was reading this at the gym while on the elliptical, sweating copiously, and a girl yelled at me from across the room "how do you even keep your place in that book?", to which I responded, "I use three bookmarks: one for where I'm actually reading in the text, one in the place where it explains the chronology of the book, and one in the endnotes." Her method was to buy two copies of the book and keep one open to the main body of the text and one open to the footnotes. Anyway, when one brings up Infinite Jest, this is surely the conversation that ensues: not of the book itself, but one's practical experience of reading the book.
"Man, those endnotes were really killer. I swear, my thumb muscles are ginormous now from all the flipping back and forth."
"It took me four attempts to actually finish Infinite Jest."
"It takes me like ten minutes to read a single page, those letters are so small."
"That book's like five thousand pages long."
But from here on out, I want to avoid talk of people's reactions to the structure and physicality of the book. The important questions are not "how long does it take to read?" or "are the endnotes really necessary?" Instead, let's talk about the characters, the plot, and the world Wallace created in this diarrhetic-genius book of his.
(image copyright 2012 Idiot Genius)
Wallace is a master world builder. In the near-dystopian near future, the United States, Mexico and Canada have joined to form the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). Much of New England is a nuclear wasteland, forcibly ceded to Canada and known as the Great Concavity or Great Convexity, depending on which side of the border you reside. There are various separatist groups who do not support this interdependence treaty, chief among them Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.), a group of legless, wheelchair-bound Quebecois assassins hellbent on acquiring a superweapon that'll really show the Americans who's boss. I won't share how all of these assassins became wheelchair-bound; that's a delight you'll have to read for yourself. Oh, and instead of referring to years as 2007, 2008, etc., each year is sponsored by a product, e.g. The Year of the Whopper, The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, etc.
The weapon at the center of this novel, around which everything revolves, is the master copy of a film titled Infinite Jest, directed by one James Orin Incandenza. This film, referred to variously as The Entertainment or the samizdat is fatal in that its viewers become so invested in it that they lose all desire to eat, sleep, remain continent. The Entertainment becomes their world. (Social commentary, anyone?)
The filmmaker in question was the patriarch of the Incandenza family, one of the most endearingly messed-up families in all of literature. James was a renaissance man of sorts, dabbling successfully in art house films, optic science, the creation of tennis academies for gifted youngsters, etc. Unfortunately, he committed suicide in a very gruesome way, leaving behind three sons, Orin the professional football punter and ladykiller, Hal the extremely talented and intelligent but emotionally stunted tennis star, and Mario the profoundly physically defective but incredibly lovable protege of his father's filmic aspirations, and a tall, beautiful, agoraphobic wife, Avril, who gives and gives of herself to her family, yet has some dark not-so-secrets (as does almost everyone in this novel).
The characters are what makes this novel worthwhile. There are no secondary characters in this novel, in the sense that each gets a full quirk-infested and heartbreaking treatment from Wallace. Even the most minor of characters receives a moving and thoughtful backstory. Extant from the Incandenza family, the best character is Don Gately, a recovering Demerol-addict with a humongous head. While he's not as essential to the plot as some others, his story is one that is somehow essential to the book; without the descriptions of his monstrous addiction, his drudgery as the live-in Staff at Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (redundancy sic), and the terrible things this mostly gentle beast is capable of, Infinite Jest would feel incomplete.
The book is hilarious. It's also deeply, deeply saddening. Wallace is a master of dark comedy and he employs it to great effect; without the humor, the things reported in Infinite Jest would be unbearably grievous. In Wallace's own words, "Wittgenstein believe that the most serious and profound problems and questions and issues could be discussed only in the form of jokes. In U.S. lit there's a tradition called black humor, which is a very kind of sardonic, sad type of humor. There are forms of humor that offer escapes from pain and there are forms of humor that transfigure pain."
It's not all so complex or grandiose or silly, either, though. Some of the best moments in Infinite Jest are when one of Wallace's characters gives a simple, yet profound take on love or devotion or heartbreak. Take for instance Hal's intense desire for something to give himself to: "It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly." (p. 900) It's moments like this where all of Wallace's characteristic complicated syntax is stripped away and what's left is a deep understanding of the human condition.
Many parts of Infinite Jest are boring. Anyone who tells you they enjoyed every word is lying. For instance, do the reader really need the manufacturing and historical details of every prescription medication mentioned (and there are a lot of them)? Why provide thirty pages of description of the Boston AA program when five pages would have done just as well? But it's okay to say that some of it is boring, I think Wallace would agree with that statement. In his extremely popular This Is Water, Wallace highlights that much of adult life is trudging through the boring, aggravating doldrums of a life that simply isn't always exciting and happy. In Infinite Jest, he's provided the full experience of life, even the not-fun parts, which non-intuitively make it an even richer reading experience.
(image copyright 2010 Jonny)
And but so the real question in a review is: Is the reading of this book really worth it? Well, you've already seen that I gave it five-stars, so the preliminary answer is "yes". But this is not the type of book I'd ever hand to someone and say "Read this. Now." The flowchart above shows the elegant complexity of the novel. Check out a larger version at the link provided. The book's super long, it's super difficult, and if you don't put every fiber of your being into understanding the plot, you won't be able to connect the loose strands of story into a cohesive whole. It's like the Bible in many ways. Everyone knows it's a great book, but how many have actually read it? And like the Bible, if you read Infinite Jest, it will have been worth your time.(less)
"Man, those endnotes were really killer. I swear, my thumb muscles are ginormous now from all the flipping back and forth."
"It took me four attempts to actually finish Infinite Jest."
"It takes me like ten minutes to read a single page, those letters are so small."
"That book's like five thousand pages long."
But from here on out, I want to avoid talk of people's reactions to the structure and physicality of the book. The important questions are not "how long does it take to read?" or "are the endnotes really necessary?" Instead, let's talk about the characters, the plot, and the world Wallace created in this diarrhetic-genius book of his.
(image copyright 2012 Idiot Genius)
Wallace is a master world builder. In the near-dystopian near future, the United States, Mexico and Canada have joined to form the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). Much of New England is a nuclear wasteland, forcibly ceded to Canada and known as the Great Concavity or Great Convexity, depending on which side of the border you reside. There are various separatist groups who do not support this interdependence treaty, chief among them Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.), a group of legless, wheelchair-bound Quebecois assassins hellbent on acquiring a superweapon that'll really show the Americans who's boss. I won't share how all of these assassins became wheelchair-bound; that's a delight you'll have to read for yourself. Oh, and instead of referring to years as 2007, 2008, etc., each year is sponsored by a product, e.g. The Year of the Whopper, The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, etc.
The weapon at the center of this novel, around which everything revolves, is the master copy of a film titled Infinite Jest, directed by one James Orin Incandenza. This film, referred to variously as The Entertainment or the samizdat is fatal in that its viewers become so invested in it that they lose all desire to eat, sleep, remain continent. The Entertainment becomes their world. (Social commentary, anyone?)
The filmmaker in question was the patriarch of the Incandenza family, one of the most endearingly messed-up families in all of literature. James was a renaissance man of sorts, dabbling successfully in art house films, optic science, the creation of tennis academies for gifted youngsters, etc. Unfortunately, he committed suicide in a very gruesome way, leaving behind three sons, Orin the professional football punter and ladykiller, Hal the extremely talented and intelligent but emotionally stunted tennis star, and Mario the profoundly physically defective but incredibly lovable protege of his father's filmic aspirations, and a tall, beautiful, agoraphobic wife, Avril, who gives and gives of herself to her family, yet has some dark not-so-secrets (as does almost everyone in this novel).
The characters are what makes this novel worthwhile. There are no secondary characters in this novel, in the sense that each gets a full quirk-infested and heartbreaking treatment from Wallace. Even the most minor of characters receives a moving and thoughtful backstory. Extant from the Incandenza family, the best character is Don Gately, a recovering Demerol-addict with a humongous head. While he's not as essential to the plot as some others, his story is one that is somehow essential to the book; without the descriptions of his monstrous addiction, his drudgery as the live-in Staff at Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (redundancy sic), and the terrible things this mostly gentle beast is capable of, Infinite Jest would feel incomplete.
The book is hilarious. It's also deeply, deeply saddening. Wallace is a master of dark comedy and he employs it to great effect; without the humor, the things reported in Infinite Jest would be unbearably grievous. In Wallace's own words, "Wittgenstein believe that the most serious and profound problems and questions and issues could be discussed only in the form of jokes. In U.S. lit there's a tradition called black humor, which is a very kind of sardonic, sad type of humor. There are forms of humor that offer escapes from pain and there are forms of humor that transfigure pain."
It's not all so complex or grandiose or silly, either, though. Some of the best moments in Infinite Jest are when one of Wallace's characters gives a simple, yet profound take on love or devotion or heartbreak. Take for instance Hal's intense desire for something to give himself to: "It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly." (p. 900) It's moments like this where all of Wallace's characteristic complicated syntax is stripped away and what's left is a deep understanding of the human condition.
Many parts of Infinite Jest are boring. Anyone who tells you they enjoyed every word is lying. For instance, do the reader really need the manufacturing and historical details of every prescription medication mentioned (and there are a lot of them)? Why provide thirty pages of description of the Boston AA program when five pages would have done just as well? But it's okay to say that some of it is boring, I think Wallace would agree with that statement. In his extremely popular This Is Water, Wallace highlights that much of adult life is trudging through the boring, aggravating doldrums of a life that simply isn't always exciting and happy. In Infinite Jest, he's provided the full experience of life, even the not-fun parts, which non-intuitively make it an even richer reading experience.
(image copyright 2010 Jonny)
And but so the real question in a review is: Is the reading of this book really worth it? Well, you've already seen that I gave it five-stars, so the preliminary answer is "yes". But this is not the type of book I'd ever hand to someone and say "Read this. Now." The flowchart above shows the elegant complexity of the novel. Check out a larger version at the link provided. The book's super long, it's super difficult, and if you don't put every fiber of your being into understanding the plot, you won't be able to connect the loose strands of story into a cohesive whole. It's like the Bible in many ways. Everyone knows it's a great book, but how many have actually read it? And like the Bible, if you read Infinite Jest, it will have been worth your time.(less)
27 likes · like · see review
Steve
Christopher wrote: I'm thinking maybe we could direct a special movie that upon watching will tap into the neurology of the average American and disab...more
Christopher wrote: I'm thinking maybe we could direct a special movie that upon watching will tap into the neurology of the average American and disable those particular synapses.
I like it. Do you think the P.G.O.A.T. should feature (presumably in her veil)?(less)
Aug 04, 2012 12:31pm
I like it. Do you think the P.G.O.A.T. should feature (presumably in her veil)?(less)
Aug 04, 2012 12:31pm
1 JANUARY,NEW YEAR’S DAY 2013,THE YEAR OF MARCEL PROUST
Today I fell upon a realisation while reading Proust’s first volume of In Search Of Lost Time, Sawnn’s Way - Infinite Jest and In Search Of Lost Time are similar in their overwhelming, euphoric and encyclopedic trawl through human consciousness:
Infinite Jest is an entire universe of a book formed of head-bendingly-encyclopedic magnitudes of ideas and detail. There is a core to this universe of ideas -of literature, mathematics, philosophy, c...more 1 JANUARY, NEW YEAR’S DAY 2013, THE YEAR OF MARCEL PROUST
Today I fell upon a realisation while reading Proust’s first volume of In Search Of Lost Time, Sawnn’s Way - Infinite Jest and In Search Of Lost Time are similar in their overwhelming, euphoric and encyclopedic trawl through human consciousness:
Infinite Jest is an entire universe of a book formed of head-bendingly-encyclopedic magnitudes of ideas and detail. There is a core to this universe of ideas -of literature, mathematics, philosophy, comedy, science and humanity- which is inherently tragic - of people lost in their time, searching... Grappling with ‘what it is to be a fucking human being’.
And the debris of what it is to be a human being, in this incredible book, is magnified, dragged into the light for every pore to be exposed; every complex, core or ancillary detail; every astonishingly beautiful and devastatingly brutal, hideous and abhorrent detail of the minutiae of existence and consciousness exposed like a raw mass of nerves to be prodded and poked - to extract a mere giggle or, a life changing realisation.
It’s also devastatingly hilarious, full of depth and compassion; is profoundly moving and ridiculously rewarding. For everything good about life and art is in here... This is, for me, what literature is and does.
Infinite Jest’s back-of-book-blurb reads:
‘Somewhere in the not so distant future residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of Infinite Jest, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss’
And so at the heart of the book is a quest for the ‘master copy of Infinite Jest’.
Readers of Infinite Jest are themselves questing - connecting disparate plot strands, which echo through the episodic pieces, with the shifting chronology; the narrative perspective and the location(s). The master copy of Infinite Jest is the gravitational pull in this universe. An invisible force - for it is mainly absent throughout the story. What is omnipresent throughout is the interaction of reader and text and this is what makes it so ‘addictive’ and so compelling to read.
In a radio interview DFW explained that Infinite Jest is structurally based on a fractal object called a Sierpinski Gasket - smaller triangles inside other triangles:
http://www.zeuscat.com/andrew/chaos/s...
...although apparently ‘after editing’ is was, according to DFW ‘a sort of lopsided Sierpinski Gasket’.
This book -thematically and structurally- is utterly compelling. Infinite Jest shook me out of a malaise; took me out of myself and lifted me up to see many aspects of my life in the same gruesome detail. I’m a better person for reading it - I hope.
Engaging with this beautifully-strange, complex and inventive book Is time well spent. My first reading was a dizzying enthralling experience - I couldn’t comprehend everything but I was enthralled. I complimented this first reading with research. With a deeper understanding of the book now, and of the literary tricks-’n-tools used, I’m veryveryvery much looking forward to revisiting this mad and fantastic universe of ideas. (I’m making a heart shape sign with my hands)
10 stars.
(less)
Today I fell upon a realisation while reading Proust’s first volume of In Search Of Lost Time, Sawnn’s Way - Infinite Jest and In Search Of Lost Time are similar in their overwhelming, euphoric and encyclopedic trawl through human consciousness:
Infinite Jest is an entire universe of a book formed of head-bendingly-encyclopedic magnitudes of ideas and detail. There is a core to this universe of ideas -of literature, mathematics, philosophy, c...more 1 JANUARY, NEW YEAR’S DAY 2013, THE YEAR OF MARCEL PROUST
Today I fell upon a realisation while reading Proust’s first volume of In Search Of Lost Time, Sawnn’s Way - Infinite Jest and In Search Of Lost Time are similar in their overwhelming, euphoric and encyclopedic trawl through human consciousness:
Infinite Jest is an entire universe of a book formed of head-bendingly-encyclopedic magnitudes of ideas and detail. There is a core to this universe of ideas -of literature, mathematics, philosophy, comedy, science and humanity- which is inherently tragic - of people lost in their time, searching... Grappling with ‘what it is to be a fucking human being’.
And the debris of what it is to be a human being, in this incredible book, is magnified, dragged into the light for every pore to be exposed; every complex, core or ancillary detail; every astonishingly beautiful and devastatingly brutal, hideous and abhorrent detail of the minutiae of existence and consciousness exposed like a raw mass of nerves to be prodded and poked - to extract a mere giggle or, a life changing realisation.
It’s also devastatingly hilarious, full of depth and compassion; is profoundly moving and ridiculously rewarding. For everything good about life and art is in here... This is, for me, what literature is and does.
Infinite Jest’s back-of-book-blurb reads:
‘Somewhere in the not so distant future residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of Infinite Jest, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss’
And so at the heart of the book is a quest for the ‘master copy of Infinite Jest’.
Readers of Infinite Jest are themselves questing - connecting disparate plot strands, which echo through the episodic pieces, with the shifting chronology; the narrative perspective and the location(s). The master copy of Infinite Jest is the gravitational pull in this universe. An invisible force - for it is mainly absent throughout the story. What is omnipresent throughout is the interaction of reader and text and this is what makes it so ‘addictive’ and so compelling to read.
In a radio interview DFW explained that Infinite Jest is structurally based on a fractal object called a Sierpinski Gasket - smaller triangles inside other triangles:
http://www.zeuscat.com/andrew/chaos/s...
...although apparently ‘after editing’ is was, according to DFW ‘a sort of lopsided Sierpinski Gasket’.
This book -thematically and structurally- is utterly compelling. Infinite Jest shook me out of a malaise; took me out of myself and lifted me up to see many aspects of my life in the same gruesome detail. I’m a better person for reading it - I hope.
Engaging with this beautifully-strange, complex and inventive book Is time well spent. My first reading was a dizzying enthralling experience - I couldn’t comprehend everything but I was enthralled. I complimented this first reading with research. With a deeper understanding of the book now, and of the literary tricks-’n-tools used, I’m veryveryvery much looking forward to revisiting this mad and fantastic universe of ideas. (I’m making a heart shape sign with my hands)
10 stars.
(less)
19 likes · like · see review
Kalliope
GR will get me to read this... but cannot do it at the same time as dear Proust.
Feb 07, 2013 11:07am
Feb 07, 2013 11:07am
Nick Craske
Kalliope wrote: "GR will get me to read this... but cannot do it at the same time as dear Proust."
Yes it definitley deserves a chunk of dedicated time...more Kalliope wrote: "GR will get me to read this... but cannot do it at the same time as dear Proust."
Yes it definitley deserves a chunk of dedicated time. Also deserves all the love and obsession it evokes. So much fun it's ridiculous.(less)
Feb 07, 2013 01:46pm
Yes it definitley deserves a chunk of dedicated time...more Kalliope wrote: "GR will get me to read this... but cannot do it at the same time as dear Proust."
Yes it definitley deserves a chunk of dedicated time. Also deserves all the love and obsession it evokes. So much fun it's ridiculous.(less)
Feb 07, 2013 01:46pm
Infinite Jestis an extraordinary accomplishment, for both its author, David Foster Wallace and his readers, most of whom demonstrate some degree of compulsion to stay with it. Difficult to categorize, it clocks in at almost 1100 pages and has been hailed as a post-modern classic. Told in what appears to be randomly-arranged episodes, it recounts the travails of the epically dysfunctional Incandenza family, founders of an elite tennis academy, sometime in the near-future, and their neighbors, a...more
Infinite Jestis an extraordinary accomplishment, for both its author, David Foster Wallace and his readers, most of whom demonstrate some degree of compulsion to stay with it. Difficult to categorize, it clocks in at almost 1100 pages and has been hailed as a post-modern classic. Told in what appears to be randomly-arranged episodes, it recounts the travails of the epically dysfunctional Incandenza family, founders of an elite tennis academy, sometime in the near-future, and their neighbors, addicts of every stripe and color who inhabit a rehab center down the hill from them. Reading it is something like channel-surfing in a time machine.The Incandenza patriarch, a film maker, is responsible for an entertainment video so powerful that viewers expire as they watch it. A group of Québécois terrorists seek to gain control of the video for political reasons. Countering their effort is the government of ONAS (Organization North American States) a corporate-dominated conflation of the former nations of the US, Canada, and Mexico. Subsidized Time has replaced the months of the year and the president of this reconstituted entity is a pop singer-turned-politician named Gentile who demonstrates both intellectual deficits and ethical lapses.
The narration shifts as each of a seemingly endless array of characters takes center stage. As disparate as they seem, discernible patterns emerge as we read about them. Most share terrifying personal histories and, in order to ameliorate their emotional pain, they have developed debilitating drug dependencies and a host of neuroses and/or depression. Wallace spares us nothing as he conjures up the various treatment options for substance abuse and the events leading up to it. We read about harrowing tales of child abuse, incest, addiction, denial, exploitation and betrayal. Part of his artistry is that he assumes a tone which suggests both irony and earnestness-a kind of sarcastic sincerity which seems to be both appropriate-and wildly inappropriate-at the same time.
As I read, I couldn't stop thinking about Walt Whitman and his Leaves of Grass. Whitman's barbaric yawp was a celebration of the promise of America in the Nineteenth Century. Wallace's vision of America at the close of the Twentieth Century is dramatically different. Whitman's individualism has morphed into a desperate alienation. Drug addiction has gone mainstream. Suburban Moms are as apt to abuse drugs as ghetto teenagers. 12-Step programs are available for overeaters, alcoholics, gamblers, compulsive shoppers and a myriad of other obsessives. Sports figures use dope-and deny it-as they strive for mastery only to discover that their achievements are hollow. For Wallace, the one common thread in contemporary America is the sense that something critical-perhaps undefinable-is lacking. His dystopian vision of the future seems eerily prescient. While he avoids preaching, he isn't afraid to pose some very tough questions in this harrowing, intermittently hilarious, and, ultimately, heartbreaking journey into the soul of modern America.
(less)
So, so far....
I know what I weigh. I brush my teeth, paint my toes, wash my hair. I dress up my tote of skin as best I can. I do all this, spend all this time on my outside because I care about what other people think and see and smell and hear about me. But the real me, the unique substance that resides inside my skin and bones and fluids, that many call a soul, doesn’t get the same treatment. And it should. It really should.
It is so much more important than my freckled flesh. But I don’t know...more So, so far....
I know what I weigh. I brush my teeth, paint my toes, wash my hair. I dress up my tote of skin as best I can. I do all this, spend all this time on my outside because I care about what other people think and see and smell and hear about me. But the real me, the unique substance that resides inside my skin and bones and fluids, that many call a soul, doesn’t get the same treatment. And it should. It really should.
It is so much more important than my freckled flesh. But I don’t know what my soul weighs. I’m not as attentive to its image. But if it covered me, if it was the first thing someone saw when they met me, perhaps I would pay more attention to it and less to my physical being. And a part of me trembles to think of what would happen if, instead of placing a best foot forward, it was requirement that a side of your soul took a promenade. What would the watermark of myself look like? It worries me what would be on display. I have rotten spots, neglected areas. Dark desires. Places where I’ve stuffed bad memories, hoping that no one, not even myself, would ever remember them.
And maybe I’m wrong, maybe not everyone is scared of living in their soul’s shadow. Perhaps this
Isn’t an everyman type of problem; it’s a me-because-I’m-fucked-up-problem, and it is an indicator
Of how bad off I am that I imagine that everyone feels this way.
And then in walks David Foster Wallace and I start to think that maybe if not everyone worries
“Am I fucked up, and if so, how bad?” certainly he or his characters by extension do. And now,
Thanks to DFW, I have also started theorizing instead that if people don’t ask themselves how fucked up they
are then they are really and truly fucked.
(less)
I know what I weigh. I brush my teeth, paint my toes, wash my hair. I dress up my tote of skin as best I can. I do all this, spend all this time on my outside because I care about what other people think and see and smell and hear about me. But the real me, the unique substance that resides inside my skin and bones and fluids, that many call a soul, doesn’t get the same treatment. And it should. It really should.
It is so much more important than my freckled flesh. But I don’t know...more So, so far....
I know what I weigh. I brush my teeth, paint my toes, wash my hair. I dress up my tote of skin as best I can. I do all this, spend all this time on my outside because I care about what other people think and see and smell and hear about me. But the real me, the unique substance that resides inside my skin and bones and fluids, that many call a soul, doesn’t get the same treatment. And it should. It really should.
It is so much more important than my freckled flesh. But I don’t know what my soul weighs. I’m not as attentive to its image. But if it covered me, if it was the first thing someone saw when they met me, perhaps I would pay more attention to it and less to my physical being. And a part of me trembles to think of what would happen if, instead of placing a best foot forward, it was requirement that a side of your soul took a promenade. What would the watermark of myself look like? It worries me what would be on display. I have rotten spots, neglected areas. Dark desires. Places where I’ve stuffed bad memories, hoping that no one, not even myself, would ever remember them.
And maybe I’m wrong, maybe not everyone is scared of living in their soul’s shadow. Perhaps this
Isn’t an everyman type of problem; it’s a me-because-I’m-fucked-up-problem, and it is an indicator
Of how bad off I am that I imagine that everyone feels this way.
And then in walks David Foster Wallace and I start to think that maybe if not everyone worries
“Am I fucked up, and if so, how bad?” certainly he or his characters by extension do. And now,
Thanks to DFW, I have also started theorizing instead that if people don’t ask themselves how fucked up they
are then they are really and truly fucked.
(less)
Jun 19, 2007
Alex
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anybody with a good chunk of time on his or her hands
Shelves:
favorites
Heart-breaking, hilarious, and ultimately all-too-human.
Infinite Jest is a mammoth slice of American pie, tipping the scales at 1079 pages, including 388 endnotes. Some of the endnotes have footnotes, too. A book of these proportions is bound to have its nay-sayers, from people who believe verbosity to be a sin akin to gluttony, to those who got lost somewhere in the mid-500s and never found their way out.
I had some reservations; I'd heard the book was overwritten, overclever, overconfident, and...more Heart-breaking, hilarious, and ultimately all-too-human.
Infinite Jest is a mammoth slice of American pie, tipping the scales at 1079 pages, including 388 endnotes. Some of the endnotes have footnotes, too. A book of these proportions is bound to have its nay-sayers, from people who believe verbosity to be a sin akin to gluttony, to those who got lost somewhere in the mid-500s and never found their way out.
I had some reservations; I'd heard the book was overwritten, overclever, overconfident, and overpostmodern. But I can emphatically say, none of these is actually the case. In the end, after roughly three months of getting through this beast, I can report that it was worth every word and superscripted numeral.
In IJ, David Foster Wallace wants to get at this Janus-faced überAmerican dual-concept of Addiction/Entertainment. Each of the characters has some form of addiction, be it to alcohol, marijuana, television, tennis, cleaning, sex, lying, or addiction-recovery meetings. The characters use their addictions as escapes from their selves, as something Other to focus their powers on so as to avoid the pain of true self-scrutiny.
One of the two main characters is Hal Incandenza, junior tennis star and secret savorer of THC. He is the youngest of the three Incandenza brothers, and the most promising regarding a future playing competitive tennis. But he's also an empty young man. And it's this emptiness that his covertly getting high fills. It's this emptiness that his father feared was making his son mute before the old-man suicided.
The other main character is Don Gately, a live-in staffer at an addiction halfway house and ex-break-and-entering specialist with a recovering penchant for Demerol. Gately offers the book access to the other side of the proverbial coin from Hal's juvenile dependence on marijuana; a look into the sphere of Boston AA and drug-addiction environs and a cast of characters trying to learn how to fill that emptiness without their Substances of choice.
That said, Wallace doesn't just set these two characters up on intersecting narrative arcs and let the story play out like we expect it to. In many ways, Infinite Jest is a refutation of exactly that sort of passive expectation that American culture has taught us to bring to our Entertainment. The author, in fact, goes out of his way to chop up the accustomed flow of the book and makes the reader work, in a way, to "get it". Hence the endnotes, disrupting the linear aesthetic we expect, and the use of non-numerical years (the book takes place after the advent of "Subsidized Time", in which each year is given the name of the highest-bidding sponsor).
While this could come across as chaotic or desultory, it actually lends the text a delightful experiential quality. It lacks the big-picture central truths that some might demand of literature, but it does so in the same way that life, at least in late-twentieth-century America, does. Truth is rather constructed through bits of memory and tangents of thought. The book does not have a climax, though in retrospect one might be constructed by connecting some dots. By defying literary formality, Wallace is doing more than just pulling some intellectual-postmodern stunt; he's reasserting the human element, placing real emotion and desire at the fore. The result is heart-felt and eschews the hipness of glib irony admirably.
In all, Infinite Jest is the best account of the cable-television era that we now live in, of a strange America seemingly on the verge of suicide-by-hedonism. But most of all, it's just an extremely touching and deliciously unironic book with some of the best-developed characters I've ever met, and worth a couple months out of anybody's examined life.(less)
Infinite Jest is a mammoth slice of American pie, tipping the scales at 1079 pages, including 388 endnotes. Some of the endnotes have footnotes, too. A book of these proportions is bound to have its nay-sayers, from people who believe verbosity to be a sin akin to gluttony, to those who got lost somewhere in the mid-500s and never found their way out.
I had some reservations; I'd heard the book was overwritten, overclever, overconfident, and...more Heart-breaking, hilarious, and ultimately all-too-human.
Infinite Jest is a mammoth slice of American pie, tipping the scales at 1079 pages, including 388 endnotes. Some of the endnotes have footnotes, too. A book of these proportions is bound to have its nay-sayers, from people who believe verbosity to be a sin akin to gluttony, to those who got lost somewhere in the mid-500s and never found their way out.
I had some reservations; I'd heard the book was overwritten, overclever, overconfident, and overpostmodern. But I can emphatically say, none of these is actually the case. In the end, after roughly three months of getting through this beast, I can report that it was worth every word and superscripted numeral.
In IJ, David Foster Wallace wants to get at this Janus-faced überAmerican dual-concept of Addiction/Entertainment. Each of the characters has some form of addiction, be it to alcohol, marijuana, television, tennis, cleaning, sex, lying, or addiction-recovery meetings. The characters use their addictions as escapes from their selves, as something Other to focus their powers on so as to avoid the pain of true self-scrutiny.
One of the two main characters is Hal Incandenza, junior tennis star and secret savorer of THC. He is the youngest of the three Incandenza brothers, and the most promising regarding a future playing competitive tennis. But he's also an empty young man. And it's this emptiness that his covertly getting high fills. It's this emptiness that his father feared was making his son mute before the old-man suicided.
The other main character is Don Gately, a live-in staffer at an addiction halfway house and ex-break-and-entering specialist with a recovering penchant for Demerol. Gately offers the book access to the other side of the proverbial coin from Hal's juvenile dependence on marijuana; a look into the sphere of Boston AA and drug-addiction environs and a cast of characters trying to learn how to fill that emptiness without their Substances of choice.
That said, Wallace doesn't just set these two characters up on intersecting narrative arcs and let the story play out like we expect it to. In many ways, Infinite Jest is a refutation of exactly that sort of passive expectation that American culture has taught us to bring to our Entertainment. The author, in fact, goes out of his way to chop up the accustomed flow of the book and makes the reader work, in a way, to "get it". Hence the endnotes, disrupting the linear aesthetic we expect, and the use of non-numerical years (the book takes place after the advent of "Subsidized Time", in which each year is given the name of the highest-bidding sponsor).
While this could come across as chaotic or desultory, it actually lends the text a delightful experiential quality. It lacks the big-picture central truths that some might demand of literature, but it does so in the same way that life, at least in late-twentieth-century America, does. Truth is rather constructed through bits of memory and tangents of thought. The book does not have a climax, though in retrospect one might be constructed by connecting some dots. By defying literary formality, Wallace is doing more than just pulling some intellectual-postmodern stunt; he's reasserting the human element, placing real emotion and desire at the fore. The result is heart-felt and eschews the hipness of glib irony admirably.
In all, Infinite Jest is the best account of the cable-television era that we now live in, of a strange America seemingly on the verge of suicide-by-hedonism. But most of all, it's just an extremely touching and deliciously unironic book with some of the best-developed characters I've ever met, and worth a couple months out of anybody's examined life.(less)
22 likes · like · see review
Sharon
brilliant review, thanks! I was about to write one because I'm new to the site and I think everyone who loves books should at least give Infinite Jest...more
brilliant review, thanks! I was about to write one because I'm new to the site and I think everyone who loves books should at least give Infinite Jest a chance, but your review is so much better than anything I would have written that I'm just going to refer people to it instead. (less)
Jul 31, 2007 11:00am
Jul 31, 2007 11:00am
Dec 19, 2012
Paquita Maria Sanchez
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
All the Smartest Boys in Kansas.
Shelves:
literature,
favorites
No review today. Just a short ramble:
I don't know a thing about the best book ever written because, shockingly, I haven't read every book ever written. (Yet!) That said, this is by far the best book that little ol' me has ever read. Definitely take my opinion with a grain of salt being that I don't know everything, but still take it. This novel is a more than worthwhile investment of absurd amounts of time and focused attention, and that is putting it mildly on all accounts.
5 (million) stars.
19 likes · like · see review
Kemper
All the Smartest Boys in Kansas.
I'm just gonna go ahead and include myself in that group.
Dec 19, 2012 02:52pm
I'm just gonna go ahead and include myself in that group.
Dec 19, 2012 02:52pm
Infinite Jest is about suicide, which gets mentioned 56 times, or about once every 20 pages. So it's tempting, given that - spoiler - Wallace totally demapped himself, to see it as a suicide note. But it's about all this other shit too, right? Addiction, and mothers, and the weight of potential, and assassins in wheelchairs, and tennis. If Wallace had suddenly become a tennis star instead of dead we would look back on this book and be like man...we should have seen that coming. That shit was all...more
Infinite Jest is about suicide, which gets mentioned 56 times, or about once every 20 pages. So it's tempting, given that - spoiler - Wallace totally demapped himself, to see it as a suicide note. But it's about all this other shit too, right? Addiction, and mothers, and the weight of potential, and assassins in wheelchairs, and tennis. If Wallace had suddenly become a tennis star instead of dead we would look back on this book and be like man...we should have seen that coming. That shit was all about tennis.
It's about everything, as all magnum opi* are. And it's great. Now I'll convince you that it's great.
DFW could write some shit
Check out two similar scenes. In one, Hal & Orin have a long phone call where they tackle a bunch of important family history, and during most of it Pemulis is standing around getting impatient because Hal is supposed to go do something with his friends, and it adds this weird indirect tension that makes the scene pop. In the other, Pemulis goes into this long-ass description of annulation, which is some kind of expository "this happens in the future" shit, and it would be boring but the kid he's talking to is blindfolded and has to pee wicked bad (don't ask) and again there's this palpable tension from the weirdest source. What this is is a magic trick. It's a pretty good one.
Wallace doesn't avoid his pop influences. Dude likes Stephen King. The fight scene featuring Gately - as far as pure plot goes, the climax of the book - is straight up thrilling. Riveting. If Wallace wanted to (and had like a million fewer demons), he could have just been a potboiler writer and sold a million books.
He's a virtuoso and he gets virtuosic sometimes, okay. There's a lengthy scene in the cafeteria, describing things like the way muscles look when they chew, that's just..."Okay bitches, here is some motherfucking writing." He describes basically the entire cafeteria, its social structure, everyone in it, the history of the things on the walls, down to the way chewing...look, I love Eruption, which happened solely because Eddie Van Halen was capable of doing it. Go on with one's bad self, right? You can't do it, so shut up. You're watching something happen here.
No seriously DFW was smart
The math in IJ is generally accurate; here's a rundown of the few mathematical errors in it. Wallace wrote a nonfiction book about infinity and I guess reviewed a couple of math books; he knew his stuff. And there's the dizzying display of medical expertise on display, which made me suspect he was pre-med at some point. (He was not.) A real old-school polymath here, huh?
And of course he was pretty good at English...here's a Slate piece on his apparently famous syllabi (links to actual PDFs included in article). And here's a list of all the words someone learned from the book, including the note that "my spellchecker is telling me that 129 of these words aren’t real words." Not sure if that number is accurate - spellcheck often misses difficult words - but we can all confirm that he did make words up with impunity.
Infinite Jest is the shit
Ending spoilers: (view spoiler)[It ends fine, shut up. You know as much as you need to. What, you've never read a book that didn't end with that freeze-frame shit from Animal House? (hide spoiler)]
Okay, I was a little disappointed at Chekhov's Giant Mutant Toddler's failure to appear. Although I guess that was just Gately anyway? Whatever: I wanted a literal Giant Mutant Toddler.
It's as good as it's supposed to be, and with the weight of its reputation that's really good. It's funny and terrifying and Wallace lays himself right open: it's an absolute refusal to be coy or ironic or guarded. It's a rock-you-on-your-heels book. It's the shit.
This is my point:
Infinite Jest took me two full weeks longer to read than fucking Bleak House did, and Bleak House has many more slow parts. This isn't a minor commitment. Some books you get to just fuck and leave; you will have to go down on Infinite Jest. Infinite Jest wants to meet your parents, and it's gonna be awkward because it's got this weird shit about mothers. But it is worth it, man. Make this book a part of your life.
Yeah, I dug it. It was pretty cool.
* Read this book on Kindle. Don't worry about the footnotes. I mean, read them, but don't worry about it being hard on Kindle; it'll be fine. More importantly, Kindle will let you look up all the words you don't know, and if you think you know all the words you are an asshole. And the point is, "opi" is probably not a word but if Wallace can make shit up so can I, which isn't true.
(less)
It's about everything, as all magnum opi* are. And it's great. Now I'll convince you that it's great.
DFW could write some shit
Check out two similar scenes. In one, Hal & Orin have a long phone call where they tackle a bunch of important family history, and during most of it Pemulis is standing around getting impatient because Hal is supposed to go do something with his friends, and it adds this weird indirect tension that makes the scene pop. In the other, Pemulis goes into this long-ass description of annulation, which is some kind of expository "this happens in the future" shit, and it would be boring but the kid he's talking to is blindfolded and has to pee wicked bad (don't ask) and again there's this palpable tension from the weirdest source. What this is is a magic trick. It's a pretty good one.
Wallace doesn't avoid his pop influences. Dude likes Stephen King. The fight scene featuring Gately - as far as pure plot goes, the climax of the book - is straight up thrilling. Riveting. If Wallace wanted to (and had like a million fewer demons), he could have just been a potboiler writer and sold a million books.
He's a virtuoso and he gets virtuosic sometimes, okay. There's a lengthy scene in the cafeteria, describing things like the way muscles look when they chew, that's just..."Okay bitches, here is some motherfucking writing." He describes basically the entire cafeteria, its social structure, everyone in it, the history of the things on the walls, down to the way chewing...look, I love Eruption, which happened solely because Eddie Van Halen was capable of doing it. Go on with one's bad self, right? You can't do it, so shut up. You're watching something happen here.
No seriously DFW was smart
The math in IJ is generally accurate; here's a rundown of the few mathematical errors in it. Wallace wrote a nonfiction book about infinity and I guess reviewed a couple of math books; he knew his stuff. And there's the dizzying display of medical expertise on display, which made me suspect he was pre-med at some point. (He was not.) A real old-school polymath here, huh?
And of course he was pretty good at English...here's a Slate piece on his apparently famous syllabi (links to actual PDFs included in article). And here's a list of all the words someone learned from the book, including the note that "my spellchecker is telling me that 129 of these words aren’t real words." Not sure if that number is accurate - spellcheck often misses difficult words - but we can all confirm that he did make words up with impunity.
Infinite Jest is the shit
Ending spoilers: (view spoiler)[It ends fine, shut up. You know as much as you need to. What, you've never read a book that didn't end with that freeze-frame shit from Animal House? (hide spoiler)]
Okay, I was a little disappointed at Chekhov's Giant Mutant Toddler's failure to appear. Although I guess that was just Gately anyway? Whatever: I wanted a literal Giant Mutant Toddler.
It's as good as it's supposed to be, and with the weight of its reputation that's really good. It's funny and terrifying and Wallace lays himself right open: it's an absolute refusal to be coy or ironic or guarded. It's a rock-you-on-your-heels book. It's the shit.
This is my point:
Infinite Jest took me two full weeks longer to read than fucking Bleak House did, and Bleak House has many more slow parts. This isn't a minor commitment. Some books you get to just fuck and leave; you will have to go down on Infinite Jest. Infinite Jest wants to meet your parents, and it's gonna be awkward because it's got this weird shit about mothers. But it is worth it, man. Make this book a part of your life.
Yeah, I dug it. It was pretty cool.
* Read this book on Kindle. Don't worry about the footnotes. I mean, read them, but don't worry about it being hard on Kindle; it'll be fine. More importantly, Kindle will let you look up all the words you don't know, and if you think you know all the words you are an asshole. And the point is, "opi" is probably not a word but if Wallace can make shit up so can I, which isn't true.
(less)
25 likes · like · see review
Update 5/7...Man, I don't know if I can write this. Here is one thought I don't think I've seen before: a rationale for the cloud design on the cover:
(p. 509) "And also the overenhanced blue of the wallpaper's sky, which the wallpaper scheme was fluffy cumuli arrayed patternlessly against an overenhancedly blue sky, incredibly disorienting wallpaper . . . No one's sure what C.T.'s choice of wallpaper is supposed to communicate, especially to parents who come with prospective kids in tow to scout...more Update 5/7...Man, I don't know if I can write this. Here is one thought I don't think I've seen before: a rationale for the cloud design on the cover:
(p. 509) "And also the overenhanced blue of the wallpaper's sky, which the wallpaper scheme was fluffy cumuli arrayed patternlessly against an overenhancedly blue sky, incredibly disorienting wallpaper . . . No one's sure what C.T.'s choice of wallpaper is supposed to communicate, especially to parents who come with prospective kids in tow to scout out E.T.A., but Hal loathes sky-and-cloud wallpaper because it makes him feel high-altitude and disoriented and sometimes plummeting."
(p. 347) "You are at a fork in the road that Boston AA calls your Bottom, though the term is misleading, because everybody here agrees it's more like someplace very high and unsupported: you're on the edge of something tall and leaning way out forward . . ."
Coincidence?
Review soon.
Update 4/15: So it's common knowledge among people who've had a certain reaction to Infinite Jest that the book is supposedly structured like a Sierpinski Gasket. What I haven't seen, and badly want to, is a gigantic diagram of a Sierpinski Gasket with details or scenes or characters from IJ written into their proper (or at least a plausible) place. Has anyone done this?
Edit: Reading this for the fifth time starting tonight (April is the cruelest month). More substantial review, and probably some sort of ongoing status-update-related thing, coming at some point pretty soon.
Old review, because I still sort of like it:
If you're looking for a big, smart, well-written, sad-but-funny book about addiction, tennis, depression, film, the Quebecois separatist movement, loneliness, entertainment, therapy, drugs, hospitals, politics, America as seen by other countries, America as seen by its own lunatic fringe, the environment, the future, Oedipal complexes, thinly veiled Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky references, preternaturally smart high schoolers, Boston, and the 20th century as seen through a brick, then you will like Infinite Jest.(less)
(p. 509) "And also the overenhanced blue of the wallpaper's sky, which the wallpaper scheme was fluffy cumuli arrayed patternlessly against an overenhancedly blue sky, incredibly disorienting wallpaper . . . No one's sure what C.T.'s choice of wallpaper is supposed to communicate, especially to parents who come with prospective kids in tow to scout...more Update 5/7...Man, I don't know if I can write this. Here is one thought I don't think I've seen before: a rationale for the cloud design on the cover:
(p. 509) "And also the overenhanced blue of the wallpaper's sky, which the wallpaper scheme was fluffy cumuli arrayed patternlessly against an overenhancedly blue sky, incredibly disorienting wallpaper . . . No one's sure what C.T.'s choice of wallpaper is supposed to communicate, especially to parents who come with prospective kids in tow to scout out E.T.A., but Hal loathes sky-and-cloud wallpaper because it makes him feel high-altitude and disoriented and sometimes plummeting."
(p. 347) "You are at a fork in the road that Boston AA calls your Bottom, though the term is misleading, because everybody here agrees it's more like someplace very high and unsupported: you're on the edge of something tall and leaning way out forward . . ."
Coincidence?
Review soon.
Update 4/15: So it's common knowledge among people who've had a certain reaction to Infinite Jest that the book is supposedly structured like a Sierpinski Gasket. What I haven't seen, and badly want to, is a gigantic diagram of a Sierpinski Gasket with details or scenes or characters from IJ written into their proper (or at least a plausible) place. Has anyone done this?
Edit: Reading this for the fifth time starting tonight (April is the cruelest month). More substantial review, and probably some sort of ongoing status-update-related thing, coming at some point pretty soon.
Old review, because I still sort of like it:
If you're looking for a big, smart, well-written, sad-but-funny book about addiction, tennis, depression, film, the Quebecois separatist movement, loneliness, entertainment, therapy, drugs, hospitals, politics, America as seen by other countries, America as seen by its own lunatic fringe, the environment, the future, Oedipal complexes, thinly veiled Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky references, preternaturally smart high schoolers, Boston, and the 20th century as seen through a brick, then you will like Infinite Jest.(less)
17 likes · like · see review
David Lentz
Picked up an incredible link to the Sierpinski Gasket on BirdBrian's review, just below, which sheds light on the dizzying fractal of the character th...more
Picked up an incredible link to the Sierpinski Gasket on BirdBrian's review, just below, which sheds light on the dizzying fractal of the character threads: http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/...(less)
May 15, 2012 10:58am
May 15, 2012 10:58am
Joshua Nomen-Mutatio
I own that poster. It's the best. Here's the scanned image of my certificate of authenticity along with my complimentary pin that came with it:
May 15, 2012 04:39pm
May 15, 2012 04:39pm
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infinite Spring/S...: Day 31, May 23rd - page 327 | 1 | 1 | 7 minutes ago | |
| Infinite Spring/S...: Day 30, May 22nd - page 316 | 1 | 6 | May 22, 2013 08:21am | |
| Infinite Spring/S...: Day 29, May 21st - page 305 | 1 | 3 | May 21, 2013 01:23pm | |
| Infinite Spring/S...: How To Read Infinite Jest | 4 | 42 | May 20, 2013 01:49pm | |
| Infinite Spring/S...: Day 28, May 20th - page 295 | 1 | 5 | May 20, 2013 08:09am | |
| Infinite Spring/S...: Day 27, May 19th - page 284 | 1 | 3 | May 20, 2013 07:48am | |
| Infinite Spring/S...: Day 25, May 17th - page 263 | 1 | 8 | May 17, 2013 12:08pm |
[close]
Infinite Jest (Hardcover)
First Edition isbn: 0316920045
isbn13: 9780316920049
format: Hardcover
First Edition isbn: 0316920045
isbn13: 9780316920049
format: Hardcover
David Foster Wallace worked surprising turns on nearly everything: novels, journalism, vacation. His life was an information hunt, collecting hows and whys. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it fe...more
David Foster Wallace worked surprising turns on nearly everything: novels, journalism, vacation. His life was an information hunt, collecting hows and whys. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it feels like to live." Readers curled up in the nooks and clearings of his style: his comedy, his brilliance, his humaneness.
His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination. Wallace was an A student through high school, he played football, he played tennis, he wrote a philosophy thesis and a novel before he graduated from Amherst, he went to writing school, published the novel, made a city of squalling, bruising, kneecapping editors and writers fall moony-eyed in love with him. He published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive in the contemporary world, accepted a special chair at California's Pomona College to teach writing, married, published another book and, last month[Sept, 2008], hanged himself at age 46.
-excerpt from The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky in Rolling Stone Magazine October 30, 2008.
Also see the related interview with the writer of the piece above: Getting to Know David Foster Wallace by Sean Woods, Rolling Stone Magazine, October 30, 2008.
Among Wallace's honors were a Whiting Writers Award (1987), a Lannan Literary Award (1996), a Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction (1997), a National Magazine Award (2001), three O. Henry Awards (1988, 1999, 2002), and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.
More:
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw(less)
More about David Foster Wallace...
His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination. Wallace was an A student through high school, he played football, he played tennis, he wrote a philosophy thesis and a novel before he graduated from Amherst, he went to writing school, published the novel, made a city of squalling, bruising, kneecapping editors and writers fall moony-eyed in love with him. He published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive in the contemporary world, accepted a special chair at California's Pomona College to teach writing, married, published another book and, last month[Sept, 2008], hanged himself at age 46.
-excerpt from The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky in Rolling Stone Magazine October 30, 2008.
Also see the related interview with the writer of the piece above: Getting to Know David Foster Wallace by Sean Woods, Rolling Stone Magazine, October 30, 2008.
Among Wallace's honors were a Whiting Writers Award (1987), a Lannan Literary Award (1996), a Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction (1997), a National Magazine Award (2001), three O. Henry Awards (1988, 1999, 2002), and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.
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