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Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

Start date: October 1, 2024

Finish date: December 31, 2024

Discussion: New School Classics- 1915-2005

Why we're reading this: 4th Quarter 2024 Long Reads
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New School Classics- 1915-2005

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What Members Thought

Sep 03, 2016 Ian Anderson rated it it was ok

I finally did it. I loved this book at times, other times I had to push through, but overall it was a rewarding experience. It's impossible to take it all in on the first read. I have so many questions about it but it's so long I doubt I'm going to try again for a very long time. It's probably better the second time around though.

I was at the beach a week ago and was taking a break from Infinite Jest when I noticed a place that sold a virtual reality experience along the boardwalk. The customer walks into a room with walls made of screens that display any scene that's selected as if it's reality. It's like straight out of Black Mirror or something. A couple months ago I would have thought nothing more than that's pretty cool, expensive, but cool. Of course looking at it in that moment, with Infinite Jest fresh in my mind, all I'm thinking is what if David Foster Wallace was still around to see this. I would love to hear what he would say about it. His complex novel got me thinking about how heavily we rely on entertainment in an age where it's so convenient and addictive. This boardwalk thing is in low doses and simply fun for a few minutes, but now we can buy virtual reality headsets, put in our phones, and indulge for as long as we want without even leaving our couch. Better yet, with the convenience of the Internet we already do this with streaming services like Netflix. This is something he saw coming in an eerily similar depiction in the book.

Infinite Jest, published in 1996, takes place sometime in the near future. Basically where we are now If I had to guess. I suppose the main plot is about this video cartridge, known as The Entertainment, that's so addicting people who view it continue to until they stop caring about doing anything else and eventually die. No, this isn't like The Ring, it's much more complicated than that I promise you. It's absurd and amusing, but terribly tragic. There's not a clear beginning and end to the book, it's more like fragments of scenes all scrambled up and you have put them back together in your mind as you go along. It uncovers the question of what causes us as humans to get addicted to things that bring us nothing but temporary relief or false happiness. Why is it we choose to remove ourselves from reality with things that only make us more and more unhappy in the end. Whether it's drugs, gambling, food, sports, sex, entertainment, or something more noble, we all choose to escape. It's up to us whether this escape is in small doses or if it suffocates us by becoming the only thing we live for.

Man, I typed all of that and haven't even said how I felt about the book yet.

It's a tough book. It's tedious because of the vocabulary, the insane detail, the scrambled storyline, and the 100 pages of tiny endnotes which are essential in understanding the book. DFW also likes to show off a bit, but surprisingly it really was quite accessible once I got going. After the first couple hundred pages, it begins to flow and the endnotes aren't so frustrating, although I could have done without all the scientific names of every drug imaginable. It displays a crazy blend of influences from books like A Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to name a few. It features some of the strangest characters, including the unforgettable Incandenza family and my personal favorite Don Gately, a former drug addict who works at the Ennet Recovery House. So many scenes are brilliant. There were other times where my head began to wander, particularly at some of the political stuff that involves the entertainment cartridge. Even if its not my favorite book ever as I might have hoped it would be, I can see why people worship it, which is kind of ironic. I'm glad I read this beast because the whole journey was so memorable. I'm certainly keeping an eye out for more DFW when I'm out book hunting. ...more

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Oct 17, 2024 Franky rated it it was ok

Shelves: classics, 2024-reading-challenge, letdown, literary-fiction, american-dream, literary, philosophy, calling-it-a-day, closing-time, lifestooshort

I’m finding this behemoth of a novel a very difficult one to review.

I’ll give Infinite Jest some credit: it’s different for sure. Different than anything I’ve ever read. It seems to exist in so many genres and subgenres and is has a unique presentation. I had to pull the plug, though, because it was just too much of everything else.

Probably the one thing that this book has going for it is the moments of humor aimed at society. There were a few entertaining segments that are spot on, for instan I’m finding this behemoth of a novel a very difficult one to review.

I’ll give Infinite Jest some credit: it’s different for sure. Different than anything I’ve ever read. It seems to exist in so many genres and subgenres and is has a unique presentation. I had to pull the plug, though, because it was just too much of everything else.

Probably the one thing that this book has going for it is the moments of humor aimed at society. There were a few entertaining segments that are spot on, for instance, that are insightful and predictive of our future (there is a funny chapter dedicated to all of the problems of communication that reminded me quite a bit of the Zoom meetings we were forced to take part in during the 2020 lockdowns for instance). Also, the competitive tennis world scenarios were rather funny as well.

So why 2 stars? Basically, everything else. This book packs in various alternating storylines but within these storylines there is so much filler and superfluous, minute, overabundant nonsense thrown in that I literally had to skim over chapters just to get to something else. Footnotes and endnotes are everywhere as well. Alongside all the extraneous material, there was quite a bit of off-putting and/or depressing subject matter (drug use, mental health, etc.) that I just didn’t want to read about every day.

I stopped around the 400-page mark and it took me a month and a half to get there, and it feels like this book could have been trimmed down significantly. I could only read this book in small mouthfuls, 15 or 20 pages a day.

I watched a few interviews online with Wallace and he comes across well spoken and as some sort of genius. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean his writing will translate into a book people want to read. So I suppose the joke is on us. This was mostly a tedious and unrewarding read, not worth the investment in the long run.

That being said, I suppose I can see the appeal of this book to some readers. I am clearly not in this demographic though.
...more

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