Infinite Jest: A Novel

by David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest: A Novel

published	1997 by Back Bay Books
binding	Paperback
isbn	0316921173 (isbn13: 9780316921176)
pages	1088
description	In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novel The Broom of the System. Equal part...more [close] In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novel The Broom of the System. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our abilities to define ourselves.
date added	12-08-06 edit book

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Cap

Cap rated it:

05/12/08

Read in May, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

**Update -- After Finishing -- ****
So, I just finished the thing on like Friday, May 9? It took me almost 2 and a half months to read. And it was a long thinking book, but always kinda pushing the envelope of reality with really outlandish back stories and antagonists, but all really well written. Like the kinda well written that makes you want to set off phrases in brackets and just kinda enjoy them.

So, I guess the spoiler starts here, but I'll tell ya, I got to about 100 pages left ...more

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David

David rated it:

02/01/08

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....less

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Alex

Alex rated it:

06/19/07

bookshelves: favorites

recommends it for: anybody with a good chunk of time on his or her hands

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, o...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

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Michael

Michael rated it:

10/09/07

Read in September, 2007

“I wanted to do something real American, about what it's like to live in America around the millennium. 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.” says David Foster Wallace in an interview with Salon.com. His sp...more “I wanted to do something real American, about what it's like to live in America around the millennium. 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.” says David Foster Wallace in an interview with Salon.com. His sprawling novel, with multitudes of characters, narrators, tangential anecdotes, and endnotes, is an exploration of this very distinct and profound feeling. The result is exhilarating, earnest, and somehow cathartic.

Infinite Jest is set in a kind of near-future world in which the U.S. has annexed Canada and Mexico. The internet, telephones, television, and movies have merged into a single device which enables the middle-class to work, access all entertainment (ever), information, and contacts from their homes. The ensuing isolation which such complete availability causes leads to widespread psychological problems, a rise in the production of, use, and abuse of prescription drugs, and a rise in AA-type self help groups which try to restore faith and community. The story neatly juxtaposes a group of boys at an elite tennis academy who turn to drugs as an alternative to the Spartan lifestyle and oppressive purposiveness of their academy, and a halfway house where a group of addicts try to flee drug abuse through a stringently structured and dogmatic AA program.

The narrative structure is intentionally convoluted. Snippets of the story from various points in time are presented without apparent order, leaving the reader to actively construct a chronology. Years are no longer numbered, but subsidized and named after corporations, further obscuring the temporal setting. It is often unclear who exactly the narrator is. With a real virtuosity, the third person telling of a story will shift in tone from chapter to chapter to suggest a character already introduced, or more often being introduced or described. Throughout the novel there is a sort of supra-narrator who interjects comments, technical references, and sometimes entire tangential stories or conversations through extensive footnotes.

The ambiguity of narrator, time, morality, and ultimately of plot conclusion illustrates rather than explicates the sense of “lostness” which Wallace refers to, much the way a poem obliquely conjures a sentiment without any outright declaration of it. Through the patient introduction of a seemingly endless number of characters, and the minute details of their distresses and struggles, Wallace continually probes the “lostness”, and ultimately reveals it as a certain lassitude of modern society. Nothing is absolute. Each character struggles with a deep-seated psychological and emotional emptiness that comes from isolation, lack of purpose, and an inability to believe absolutely in anything. Through various characters, entertainment, drugs, financial success, athletic achievement, sexual gratification, intellectual achievement, grammatical activism, nationalism, and art are considered as meanings for life- all with disastrously fucked-up results. In fact the one character who doesn’t get a 90 plus page hearing is a mystical gym instructor who levitates in a sauna. Short of that, there really aren’t any answers in this story- just many important questions, and a very heavy, complex and immediate sensation throughout.

All that said, it’s thrilling, hilarious, and completely enjoyable to read. His writing is exuberant and masterful…
...less

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Andy

Andy rated it:

10/04/07

bookshelves: read-but-not-recommended

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in November, 1998

recommends it for: I would not recommend this book.

I actually wrote and posted a review of David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest:

Nearly a decade after publication, David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest remains a literary ink-blot test. With its 1,079 pages (including nearly 400 footnotes), and its fondness for gags, drugs, cultural theory, recent US popular culture, scientific minutiae, and Latinate vocabulary, the novel still divides readers on matters of literary technique and the question of Wallace's literary tale...more I actually wrote and posted a review of David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest:

Nearly a decade after publication, David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest remains a literary ink-blot test. With its 1,079 pages (including nearly 400 footnotes), and its fondness for gags, drugs, cultural theory, recent US popular culture, scientific minutiae, and Latinate vocabulary, the novel still divides readers on matters of literary technique and the question of Wallace's literary talent.

I tend to believe the author's stylistic pyrotechnics are not bright enough to hide the comparatively dull substance of his writing; but I can't completely dismiss Wallace as a literary artist. Infinite Jest is not the Next Big Thing (except for the size of the tome itself), but it's not truly fodder for the Moronic Inferno, either, as Dale Peck and the rest would have it.

The novel's tragic flaw is its lack of emotion depth. Wallace seems more interested in inventing acronyms and an "après" filmography than in developing characters. The author's utilization of the language of pop psychology and millennial technological frenzy to portray teenage tennis phenoms is largely dead-on. Wallace hits definite false notes, however, in drawing the mostly lower-class residents of a halfway house as if they were operating from the same frames of reference as the junior tennis stars.

Focusing on such young, shallow characters violates the Big Rule of compelling fiction: There has to be something at stake. You may not forget Hal Incandenza, the teenage tennis and linguistic prodigy who is as close to a protagonist as this novel offers; but it is this implausible combination of natural gifts, not Wallace's rendering of character or of his story itself, that make Hal memorable. Hal's lower-class counterpart, a thirtyish petty thug and recovering addict named Don Gately, is more intriguing for the difficulty of his situation. But Wallace presents Gately as lacking self-awareness to a degree that kills whatever sympathy readers might otherwise hold for him.

Wallace's experimental style does not disguise the essential weakness of his writing here either. Few of the narratives coalesce, and it is often difficult to imagine why editors did not simply send certain passages off to the exosphere. The apparently arbitrary chronology works against any sort of pace Wallace might have established. And, though the novel wisely ends on an ambiguous note, this note is frustratingly oblique. It's difficult to imagine why a writer blessed with such intellectual gifts would offer up a shaggy dog story as his magnum opus. Infinite Jest feels like it should have ended at least 500 pages before it actually does, and yet it hasn't earned an ending.

Wallace should be commended for his attempt to add intellectual depth to modern American fiction without sacrificing the traditional literary devices of characterization and narrative, and to dramatize the effects on the consciousness, and the conscience, of our hydra-headed consumerism. But the difference between a laundry list of our contemporary social maladies and a novel that compellingly addresses these is all but infinite. ...less

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grantonio

grantonio rated it:

02/08/08

Read in January, 2008

I had mentioned previously that this was one of the best books I've read in recent years. At first, upon finishing this, I plopped it down and mulled my disappointment at the ending. But after settling down and mulling this over a bit, I don't see how I could give this anything but a perfect score.

Where to begin? I won't go to much into the bizarre plot itself, which, although it includes such things as tennis academies, 12-step programs, militant Quebecois separatist wheelchair assassins, a...more I had mentioned previously that this was one of the best books I've read in recent years. At first, upon finishing this, I plopped it down and mulled my disappointment at the ending. But after settling down and mulling this over a bit, I don't see how I could give this anything but a perfect score.

Where to begin? I won't go to much into the bizarre plot itself, which, although it includes such things as tennis academies, 12-step programs, militant Quebecois separatist wheelchair assassins, avant garde film, substance abuse, etc., is only a canvas for the maelstrom of poignant observations generally neatly bookended within the horizon of pages, if not paragraphs and sentences.

This quality is what first struck me. Wallace is erudite but hip, loquacious yet brusque, frequently all within the same sentence. He conveys little vignettes of crazed human behavior that only an inveterate people watcher could. And above all he does so with a wry, nerdy, smart-alecky sense of humor that I can only deign, well, vastly entertaining. I almost never laugh out loud at prose, even that which I find very funny, and this book made me do so almost every time I picked it up.

Alas, entertainment is one theme of this book; entertainment as a form of addiction, the primary theme. Not just rat-pushing-the-lever-for-more-cocaine addiction as seen in the street addict and halfway house portions of the plot, but mindless, ennui-stricken cognitive abeyance. The plot itself vaguely orbits the existence of a film said to be fatally entertaining: those who glimpse it lose their mental faculty and will almost instantly.

Can we become so caught up in entertaining ourselves, titillating our synapses to produce certain firing patterns, that the comparison to substance addiction is warranted? Should we be frightened of the 7+ hours a day that the average household has their television running? Are books off the hook? It should make us shudder to think that all of our activities, even ones we think are altruistic, are ultimately devoted to repeating pleasurable sequences of brain activity for a few hours a day, until said brain dies and rots.

Wallace doesn't offer much in the way of cure, either. Religion is scarcely mentioned, although Wallace may see it as an ultimately substanceless palliative - more of a mantra than anything - by way of comparison to the nebulous "higher power" of AA (for some reason this oft-mentioned phrase in this Boston-set novel reminds me of the song Higher Power by the band Boston, which addresses some of these themes, albeit in a cheesy manner. Also, the song contains the Serenity Prayer, also repeated in the book. Ah.). That we lack something and try to fill it with various distractions - substances, religion, entertainment - is not a particularly novel or thrilling thesis. What Wallace has created, though, is an in-depth scrutiny of some of the manifestations of existential flailing.

In the end, this novel is not "about" any one thing, beyond the superficial level. Realizing this helped me to better accept the ending, or lack thereof. It also makes me feel better about the nagging suspicion that the novel itself was designed as an entertainment similar to the film of the same name in the book; Wallace loves meta- anything, and the book about the film may be morally equivalent to the film itself.

This makes it onto my very short list of books to reread again in my life. ...less

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Matt

Matt rated it:

12/05/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in November, 2007

Wow, What an undertaking. It's not so much the sheer size of this novel, but it's Pynchon-esque language and pacing tend to slow one down a bit.
The beginning of the novel (i.e. the first 300 pages) can be somewhat confusing. Wallace introduces characters without really explaining or foreshadowing what their possible roles may be. Also, the novel is set in a sort of "alternate future" and Wallace doesn't explain any of what the references are in this future until the middle of the nov...more Wow, What an undertaking. It's not so much the sheer size of this novel, but it's Pynchon-esque language and pacing tend to slow one down a bit.
The beginning of the novel (i.e. the first 300 pages) can be somewhat confusing. Wallace introduces characters without really explaining or foreshadowing what their possible roles may be. Also, the novel is set in a sort of "alternate future" and Wallace doesn't explain any of what the references are in this future until the middle of the novel. For example, Instead of years being numerically named in the Anno Domini Common Era tradition, They have funny names such as: "The year of the Depends Adult Undergarment." It is later revealed that this is because the government sold naming rights to time. Catchy, brilliant but confusing.

Once the ball is rolling, the novel really takes off however. Each character is vivid and engaging, the humor dry and ironic. Wallace paints a pretty vivid picture of Life in Boston.

The novel is 2 - 3 very distinct plots which Wallace attempts to weave together. The first part of the story takes place in an all boys tennis academy, seen through the eyes of one of its students. The son of the founder of the academy. The other plot revolves around a halfway house down the road for recovering drug addicts. The rest involves a complicated tete a tete between Canadian Quebecois separatists and everybody else in the novel.

The descriptions of the academy - competitive tennis, lifestyles and the protagonist's (named Hal, btw) bizarre, dysfunctional, eccentric family is extremely vivid and engaging. The students all have their own quirks and fallibilities and Wallace captures the life of a gifted child quite appropriately. The halfway house descriptions are intense with the introduction of some of the most fucked up stories that you could possibly hear unless you've been in AA for quite some time.

Unfortunately I can't tell you my main criticism of this book without spoiling it. It really baffled me why as well. Essentially, when I finished the novel, I was dumbfounded and actually checked the spine to see if the final 200 or so pages may have been ripped out. Other criticisms include: Wallace's writing style seems rather self-aggrandizing. He is one of these post-modern author's who want to "Break the mold" by writing poorly, or in a vernacular or say, ending a book on high-rising action without a climax and then being self-referential about it. Wallace used the word "lurid" once a page for like, 100 pages. Oh no. Now I'm doing it. He like, used the simile "like" indiscriminately yet, intentionally, consummately in the voice of a 15 year-old. Another extremely frustrating aspect is Wallace's 'clever' use of footnotes. There are a little over 400 footnotes (2 -3 per page) which are indexed at the end of the novel. This can be rather annoying when the reader needs to flip hundreds of pages between two places in the novel. The notes themselves may be merely one-sentence literary devices ("Frankly, I have no idea why he did that either") or pages long expositions interrupting the story flow.

The novel is engaging and entertaining but not a traditional story by any means and an overall letdown due to the poor ending. I find it hard to recommend a 1,000 page novel for that very reason. ...less

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Shane

Shane rated it:

04/26/08

recommends it for: people who've read a few big "difficult" books, because this will seem worlds easier by comparison

I'll probably review more in depth later, but this will focus on my initial response to the ending and my thoughts of the book on whole.

I read this in maybe a month or more. For about 95% of the book, I found it a highly enjoyable read, and during most of the book, not a lot SEEMS to be happening, which is the most amazing thing, and it still manages to keep me interested. It's filled with silly/philosophical conversations and scenes that are so vividly painted by the Wallace that you can't...more I'll probably review more in depth later, but this will focus on my initial response to the ending and my thoughts of the book on whole.

I read this in maybe a month or more. For about 95% of the book, I found it a highly enjoyable read, and during most of the book, not a lot SEEMS to be happening, which is the most amazing thing, and it still manages to keep me interested. It's filled with silly/philosophical conversations and scenes that are so vividly painted by the Wallace that you can't help but see them. It almost requires no imagination because Wallace paints everything with such color and animation in movements and facial expressions. Despite the fact that tons of people have called this work "pretentious," I personally felt that couldn't have been further from the truth. Not only was it NOT pretentious, but an incredibly sensitive, and in a way, positive book, totally self-aware in its own vulnerability the way a lot of Postmodern works are self-aware of their actual text.

I've heard many people compare this work to Pynchon, in particular, Gravity's Rainbow, which I did find some similarities in first, but the further I went through the book, it seemed less similar. In some the teasing, fragmentary way of letting the story unfold reminded me of one of Wallace's big heroes, William Gaddis.

There's been a lot of talk about the ending of this book and how there isn't one. Everyone makes it sound like the ending is something to ignore because the rest of the book has enough redeeming qualities to do so. If that were the case, this book would immediately get one star for author-laziness. It didn't come across as laziness at all. I was also under the impression that the ending might have been a cop-out, like Wallace wants you to be dissapointed because "that's the point." I don't think that's the case either. I think many people were expecting an explosive ending like Moby Dick or Gravity's Rainbow, and in a way, I WANTED it to be that way despite the fact I knew it wouldn't, simply because I thought this work stood up with books just like that with big explosive endings. (If it helps at all, the first chapter is actually the last, but with that said, I'm still confused). But after turning the last page, it had a very different effect on me than any of those works. The effect had more likeness to what I felt after watching David Lynch's Mulholland Drive; like I almost understood it but there was just enough tweaked variables to require me to watch/read again. Wallace himself said that he thought he left it pretty obvious what was going to happen next. As I thought about it, I thought this book stood more with works like Pale Fire and The Sound and the Fury; perhaps it's size was what fooled people. But I felt the sense that all the indications of the end were somewhere earlier in the text, and that somewhere in the mess of endnotes and innuendos within the density of information, that everything was hidden and in need of arranging like peices of a puzzle. The novel is only about twelve years old now but it will be interesting how poeple view it thirty or forty years from now. ...less

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Adam

Adam rated it:

02/14/08

Read in January, 2001

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

with paragraph structure as intimidating as the Borg on star Trek, A strong and vast spectrum of vernacular, and interstingly voiced characters (of which there are about thirty) this story daunts many people into putting it down -- mostly people you want reading this stuff anyway. The book is huge. over 1000 pages with 370+ endnotes that are all (for the time) in accordance with grammatical guidelines and everylittle possible thing that could be done "in case this needs to be done" wit...more with paragraph structure as intimidating as the Borg on star Trek, A strong and vast spectrum of vernacular, and interstingly voiced characters (of which there are about thirty) this story daunts many people into putting it down -- mostly people you want reading this stuff anyway. The book is huge. over 1000 pages with 370+ endnotes that are all (for the time) in accordance with grammatical guidelines and everylittle possible thing that could be done "in case this needs to be done" with endnotes, is basically done in this book.

It's about many things. but mostly this: Hal Incandenza is a tennis star and academic genius at the school his parents founded for academic geniuses and tennis all star kids, he's addicted to one-hitters of weed. his older brother is a punter for a football team and a ladies man, and his younger brother is the perfect human being the only problem is, he's severely crippled and very ugly (but he's the most lovable character). the other part of the book is in a halfway house up the street for crack addicts, narcotics and alcohol addicts who are trying to beat the drug.

essentially the story is about entertainment, how we cope with needing it, being it, and not having it. There is a hilarious political agenda going on where the USA is called ONAN organization of north american nations (onan was the first biblical character to masterbate), in which our country is guilty of experialism: we keep giving away our land, but only conveniently after we've catapaulted toxic waste north of ticondaroga. Quebecois separatists are the world's most lethalterrorists, and they are all in wheelchairs. Point is Hal's afther is an independent film maker as well. he some how made a film called infinite jest, that's so entertaining, that it kills anyone who watches it. the film creeps around the background of the dramas and little stories that populate the pages of the book (which literally goes off in so many directions in more than needed words).

But once you get into it, you're as addicted as the guys in the halfway house, or the terrorists who arelooking for the movie the book is named for. and you're wondering in Hal's older brother is gonna accidently hook up with the secret agent man dressed like a woman trying to get info from him, or discover if his ex, the star of the film, is truly the most beautiful woman alive, or the most hideous.

The chapters are all out of chonology. time has been subsidized int he book so each year advertizes a new product, of course, once you get to page 500 or something he finally reveals what the order is in a small list you have to remember.

I love this book, having read it. i sometimes pic it up and read any random page because it's written so neurotically, so obsessively. I think you may trudge through some of it (i took 4 months to actually read it all, but i was putting it down alot), but once you read it, you'll kind of love having so much stuff to talk about....less

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Frank

Frank rated it:

05/04/08

Read in August, 2000

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996, Little Brown) is quite the novel. Weighing in at 1079 pages (hardback, including copious footnotes) it is probably the kind of book one either loves or hates. Me, I'm a lover of this amazing book. So much so that I'm typing this review while only on page 714, with still a third of the book in front of my devouring eyes.

I started out just reading a page or two, before bed. Soon I was reading whole chapters at a time. Now I find myself taking breaks f...more Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996, Little Brown) is quite the novel. Weighing in at 1079 pages (hardback, including copious footnotes) it is probably the kind of book one either loves or hates. Me, I'm a lover of this amazing book. So much so that I'm typing this review while only on page 714, with still a third of the book in front of my devouring eyes.

I started out just reading a page or two, before bed. Soon I was reading whole chapters at a time. Now I find myself taking breaks from work so I can sneak in a few more reads on the job.

Situated primarily in Boston, the main characters spend most of their time in a tennis academy and an AA halfway house, with secret agents of the Canadian and US government also playing major roles. The author posits a future Organization of North American Nations, consisting of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. A seminal character, Dr. James O. Incandenza [1], founder of Enfield Tennis Academy and a prolific independent filmmaker, has a filmography (printed as footnote 24) which takes up over 8 entertaining pages of fine print.

Footnotes[2] frequently eclipse the narrative in this novel about addiction, entertainment, politics, tennis and the pursuit of happiness. I laughed; I cried. What more can I say? Wallace can write. He occasionally gets carried away, and some passages are violent enough to give me the howling fantods, but it's worth almost every word because the bulk of IJ is by turns powerful and entertaining. It's also probably the funniest book I've read in years.

OK, what's the most interesting method you can think of for eliminating your own map (suicide)? Dr. Incandenza is pretty creative in this regard. Creativity is a recurring face in this book; take, for instance, the A.F.R. (Les Assasins De Roullents), a.k.a. Wheelchair Assasins, cult terrorist organization with which you do not want to fuck. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that men will probably enjoy this book more than women.

The street slang of Boston, either Wallace has got it or he invented it, but either way it's pretty darn interesting/amusing. And entertainment, that's a major item in this book here. Plots drip off Wallace's fingers like drops of water after stepping out of the shower. I now realize that a plot is just a plot, not necessarily the prime mover in a novel. In fact, what's the big deal about novels anyway?

Please excuse me, I've got a couple hundred more pages to read.

Footnotes:
1. Who's wife Avril and three sons Hal, Orin and Mario are fascinating characters themselves.
2. In fact, I used two bookmarks with this book; one for the text and the other for the footnotes....less

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Herbie

Herbie added it

01/10/08

Read in January, 2008

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
scopophob...more

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grant

grant rated it:

05/07/07

Read in December, 2005

David Foster Wallace's USA is "A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness." Shtitt thinks this on page 83.

And this sloppy intersection of desires and fears is pretty clearly one of the main themes of the book.

I think DFW's belief in our perp...more David Foster Wallace's USA is "A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness." Shtitt thinks this on page 83.

And this sloppy intersection of desires and fears is pretty clearly one of the main themes of the book.

I think DFW's belief in our perpetually hanging, bifurcated between desires and fears, is why he chooses such an unsatisfying way to end his book, because his point is not that life is hard and then you get to the conclusion and it's good, it's that life is hard and we all do everything we can to forget that, but ultimately life finds a way of making sure that we remember it's hardness.

I'm not positive I believe that's a fair point for him to come to after 1,200 pages.
Why write a book in an wryly comic tone, with almost a magical realism type element of zaniness, and then come to a conclusion completely infested with bitterness? Hal's spiraling despondence towards the end, mirror's the book's, and perhaps DFW's. And I quote Hal/DFW on page 900:

"It now lately sometimes seemed a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or a pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe."

There are undoubtedly great parts to this book, like the history of the videophone on 140-151, or the expository essay on 694-- "sentiment equals naivete on this continent" -- that mirrors the point of the second essay in "A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again," but the beautiful prose is mixed too liberally with such an appalling ugliness that his point, the conclusion; the purpose for such a big, grand book needs to have some hope in it. But it doesn't.

We find ourselves in a sloppy intersection of desires and fears. Why? Because we are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. Are we in time? Do we make it? Does it work out?
And I believe DFW answers this question on page 934 when Gately, drunk on pain, sees a vision of "the sad kid holding something terrible up by the hair and making the face of somebody shouting in panic: Too Late." ...less

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Emirate

Emirate rated it:

08/21/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in February, 2006

recommends it for: people that like roller coasters with loops/that almost make you throw up

If you read through online reviews of the book, Infinite Jest seems to have divided the fiction reading world largely into two camps: those that are in it (it="the reading of fiction") for the satisfaction that comes from having witnessed an author deftly tie together a narrative; and those that seem to be in it for the simple exposure to moments of humanity and new ideas (regardless of subject matter) (nuggets, if you will).

Normally, I kind of consider myself to straddle this line...more If you read through online reviews of the book, Infinite Jest seems to have divided the fiction reading world largely into two camps: those that are in it (it="the reading of fiction") for the satisfaction that comes from having witnessed an author deftly tie together a narrative; and those that seem to be in it for the simple exposure to moments of humanity and new ideas (regardless of subject matter) (nuggets, if you will).

Normally, I kind of consider myself to straddle this line - or rather to look for that rare work that exists in the shaded portion of the venn diagram. However, in spite of the fact that, yes, Jest does leave a bunch of loose ends and that, yes, I was moved to throw the book against the wall as a way of dealing with the sense of injustice at (what I would then have called) Foster Wallace's abdication of his responsibilities to his audience (I didn't throw the book for fear that the impact of the tome would simply have shattered my rare collection of antique porcelain mice (I'm just kidding, I'm incredibly poor) (but seriously, the book is fucking enormous)), that rage was calmed quickly by some ensuing thoughts: it's a great read; it's got intricate and beautifully imagined characters that put you quickly in touch with some powerful themes (addiction, redemption, struggle, meaning, modernity, etc) all in a way that's so fun, intelligent, creative and fucking 'hip' that it might almost be called subversive. You have no idea how much you goddamn care - really - until that last word.

To me, whether DFW tied the remaining strands of the plot together (and let's face it, he just let them hang; perhaps because he was just more focused on the internal struggles of his cast, yes, but please don't make the argument that this is some post-modern work of blah blah blah - he just fucking let the plot float away), he certainly reached out and pulled me closer to some incredibly human figures (I'm crying as I write this). All books and narratives end, but the moments from this one just seem to stick with you (now I'm just weeping uncontrollably; i'm so happy no one's here to see this.)

If you're the kind that could see yourself writing that last line, I'd say this is the brick for you....less

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Matt

Matt rated it:

03/21/08

Read in March, 2008

This is a freaking long book. Frustratingly long at points, but it's also something I appreciated about the novel. I can't comprehend the amount of time put into something like this. I really admire and appreciate the effort.

It's kind of a mixed bag sort of book. Neat story, a few memorable characters, laugh out loud funny at certain points. But then there are characters that are, more or less, forgotten about. The introduction to Ken Erdedy, in the first 100 pages or so, is one of the...more This is a freaking long book. Frustratingly long at points, but it's also something I appreciated about the novel. I can't comprehend the amount of time put into something like this. I really admire and appreciate the effort.

It's kind of a mixed bag sort of book. Neat story, a few memorable characters, laugh out loud funny at certain points. But then there are characters that are, more or less, forgotten about. The introduction to Ken Erdedy, in the first 100 pages or so, is one of the best things I've ever read. Erdedy is addicted to marijuana, and we meet him while he waits, filled with anxiety and near-obsessive-compulsive disorder, for a delivery that's a few hours late. If this section had been standalone, it would have been one of the best short stories I've ever read, really an amazing look into this guy's mind. I was really interested in seeing what happened to this character. Unfortunately, he all but disappears over the remaining 900 pages, downgraded to not even secondary character status, I'd say tertiary or whatever a fourth level would be called, only a few small sections relate to him with any kind of detail, while instead we're flooded with the minutiae of other (less interesting) characters lives.

Overall, though, I did enjoy the book, though I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to recommend it to anyone, unless they were really interested in reading something about addiction. The sheer size might scare anyone off. The book is very funny, several of the characters are memorable and I enjoyed how well it was written. If you don't necessarily like authors who are extremely descriptive, this won't be a book for you. The book was worth my time, and all the effort.

Major spoiler below - beware

The book ends very abruptly, without resolving the issue of the video tape, which is one the key plot points of the book, as well as leaving the fate of most of the main characters up in the air. I almost thought for a second that there was a Volume II out there somewhere, because there are so many unresolved questions left to the imagination of the reader. That didn't bother me very much, but it could be an issue for many readers....less

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Tara

Tara rated it:

03/29/08

I only wish I could give it zero stars. Infantile, smug, and, most importantly, bad, Infinite Jest is a symptom of a deeper sickness. It's neither a work of genius, nor is it insightful. There are so many things wrong with this novel that I want to tear hair out of my head; my anger towards this type of shitty writing is volcanic. My mind stutters as it is drawn in a thousand directions while pondering it's deep flaws. I think the bigger problem here is why anyone, anywhere, thinks this is bril...more

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Ryan

Ryan rated it:

07/30/07

Read in July, 2007

This book is a massive 1100 pages, but nearly every page made me laugh. Wallace has insight into what is currently going on in our society. Loneliness and addiction and the lack of an ability to feel sincere about anything being a few major motifs in the novel. I would recommend this book for anyone whose looking to read something unlike anything else they've read. I can guarantee that. The structure of the novel is unconventional, but you spend so much time with the Incandenza family and wi...more

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Nicholas

Nicholas rated it:

12/28/06

recommends it for: everyone

Infinite Jest, a novel by David Foster Wallace, is quite possibly the most dense and literate book I've read (of my own choice) thus far in my life (and keep in mind, I've read The Silmarillion.) But don't let that fool you: I loved it.

Obstenibly a "sci-fi" story (though not in any way I would say), Infinite Jest is about (alternately) a tennis academy, a drug/alcohol treatment house, avant-garde cinema, game theory, addiction, nationalism, love, abuse, damaged childhoods, the conn...more

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Curmudgeonlybumbly

Curmudgeonlybumbly rated it:

05/13/08

Read in May, 2008

This week, after months of heavy reading, I finally finished Infinite Jest. Finishing was sad. I feel like I've lost my best friend.

At first reading the book gave me the howling fantods. Why was the author so hostile to the reader? Why use a bunch of invented acronyms without defining them? Why write in gigantic multi-page blocks of paragraph free text? Why publish in a format that makes it physically painful to hold the gigantic book? Why use words whose definition was surely unknown...more

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Maya

Maya rated it: