Infinite Jest in On Paths Unknown

Nov 16, 2012 Garima rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: its-not-you-its-meta-or-gfhrytyt, sui-generis, channeling-challenge, miles-to-go-before-i, w-for-wallace, prude-me-not, my-2-cents, we-reads, testing-patience-1-2-3, favorites

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.

☽I read many 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 ski ...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Sarah (Presto agitato) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books

This is a book you really have to finish. Through much of it, I enjoyed it well enough. There are funny moments, though the humor tends to be dark (at times very dark). The depictions of addiction, depression, obsessive-compulsions, phobias, and hyper-competitiveness are insightful and at times have a searing, painful realism. But I felt a lot of the time that in a way it was aimed at a slightly different demographic from me. I could think of a lot of people I’ve known who would be all over this This is a book you really have to finish. Through much of it, I enjoyed it well enough. There are funny moments, though the humor tends to be dark (at times very dark). The depictions of addiction, depression, obsessive-compulsions, phobias, and hyper-competitiveness are insightful and at times have a searing, painful realism. But I felt a lot of the time that in a way it was aimed at a slightly different demographic from me. I could think of a lot of people I’ve known who would be all over this (though I don’t know anyone in real life who has read it). A definable demographic: U.S. males, middle to upper middle class, intelligent, educated, nerdy, probably born sometime between 1965-1985. Don’t get me wrong, I know and love that demographic. As a reader, though, I initially felt like this book was aiming near me, but not quite at me. More important than which group Infinite Jest targeted was the fact that targeting any group at all made it smaller and less universal. A Good book, but not a Great book. Four stars, not five stars.

This is a novel with many flashes of brilliance as well as sustained passages of great writing, but there are also ugly moments. Some were necessary to the story, but at other times I felt like DFW was exorcising his own repellent, obsessive thoughts (view spoiler) by inflicting them onto me. Darkly humorous or not, the more he did it, the less I appreciated it. There were gratuitous cheap horror show tricks and gags that dragged out longer than necessary.

But somewhere around 600 pages or so, I was finally sucked in. Wallace gradually gathers the threads of his myriad story lines together, letting the reader experience epiphany after epiphany as the pieces of the puzzle start to slide into place. It’s a fun feeling when we are finally allowed to step back from a large canvas that we’ve been looking at too closely, to see that the beautifully detailed scenes he has created eventually make sense as parts of a whole.

Then the story starts to get stranger, but proportionally more intriguing. (view spoiler) It’s wild, initially subtle but gradually more obvious, and leaves plenty of questions. Incredibly, at the end of more than 1,000 pages, the natural instinct is to turn back to the beginning to try to figure it all out, in a recursive loop of a story it’s hard to turn away from. That says a lot for a writer who has challenged his readers with frustration, ugliness, and mirrored roadblocks.

Comments on the ending (I am spoiler-tagging this):
(view spoiler) ...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Mala rated it it was amazing

Shelves: best-sellers, american-writers, post-modern-fiction, all-time-favourites

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."

Disclaimer: This is not a proper meat & potatoes review discussing plot, spoilers, alternate reality etc, etc, rather this is like Gately's shoddy cooking- boiled hot dogs, dense damp meat loaf...my poor food for thought!

The IJ experience:

I'll confess at the outset that, there were times, when this book gave me the screaming meemies, the howling fantods- but true to my completist pledge; just like Don Gately, I plodded on.

Cons ...more

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Mar 30, 2014 Paul rated it really liked it

Shelves: dfw

How to review a book like Infinite Jest? Adding to the massive volume of superlatives would seem superfluous and there is a virtual industry involved in the analysis of it. Would I dare to add a note of criticism in relation to the sacred and adored text?
Infinite Jest is certainly a literary masterpiece, well constructed and beautifully written. I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to write and keep the myriad cast of characters in the proper relationship.
It is nearly 1000 pages long, an How to review a book like Infinite Jest? Adding to the massive volume of superlatives would seem superfluous and there is a virtual industry involved in the analysis of it. Would I dare to add a note of criticism in relation to the sacred and adored text?
Infinite Jest is certainly a literary masterpiece, well constructed and beautifully written. I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to write and keep the myriad cast of characters in the proper relationship.
It is nearly 1000 pages long, and yes there are footnotes, over 200 pages worth. Some of the footnotes are twenty pages long, and yes, some of the footnotes have footnotes. There are clever references throughout; Beatles, Shakespeare, numerous film and tennis references. There is even a scholarly article comparing the brothers Incadenza to the Brothers Karamazov!!
The novel is set in a semi-dystopian future and revolves around a tennis academy, a rehab centre and the search for the master copy of a tape called Infinite Jest, a film so compulsive and thrilling that those who watch it are totally absorbed by it and eventually die.
Many of my friends here absolutely love this; I didn’t. It’s a great book, a literary and post modern masterpiece, but give me Pynchon, Gass or Gaddis any day.
Here’s what troubled me;
1)There’s way too much tennis in this for my liking! Any self-respecting post-modern masterpiece should avoid tennis.

2)I read it straight after reading The Recognitions and that didn’t help because I thought The Recognitions was better.

3)The comments about Linda McCartney towards the end were cruel and unnecessary.

4)The use of the N word. There may be some deep philosophical reason for this and meaning behind it; I didn’t see it. This isn’t the 19th century or even the 1950s and I wouldn’t accept it from lesser writers, so why should I from DFW, even though he is a genius.

5)I was also irritated by the phrase “Dworkinite Female Objectification Prevention and Protest Phalanx”. Again this may be a small point, but I knew the picture he was trying to paint and found it offensive.

6)Too many teenage boys (need I say more).

Despite the above it is a great book and worth going along for the ride. I also wonder whether being British, I missed some of the cultural nuances.
...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Gary the Bookworm rated it it was amazing

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

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.