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.