Infinite Jest in Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

Mar 05, 2012 B0nnie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourite-books

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

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Aug 02, 2011 Jason rated it really liked it

Shelves: groupthink, for-kindle, reviewed

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 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! ...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Madeleine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: there-s-no-i-in-group-read, blogophilia, tooting-my-own-muted-horn, our-libeary, peer-pressure, maybe-it-s-time-to-live, 2013, books-with-buttons, my-kingdom-for-a-desert-island, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book

ETA, 5 Sept. 13: To say I've been thinking about this book all summer would be a lie, as I have been thinking about this book since I finished it in February. Obsessively. A novel hasn't stuck with me and invaded my thoughts like I gave it a key to the place since Gravity's Rainbow. And I can honestly say, with nary a trace of exaggeration, that it has absolutely changed how I look at people, all for the better. Where was that fifth star? It was waiting for me to realize how deeply IJ's characte ...more

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Aug 18, 2011 Steve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

All David, All the Time

I suspect anyone who scales this mountainous tome will confess to some level of obsession for having done so. For me it took the form of extra reading time walking the sidewalks from the train to the office. I noticed I was given a wide berth when people saw the size of the prow coming their way. With such preoccupation you might imagine I was lost in the story, but it was more like getting lost in thoughts about the author himself. He and his sprawling intellect loomed la ...more

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May 22, 2011 Nick rated it it was amazing

Shelves: rightly-revered-ritings

An encyclopaedic 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’, living with addiction. It's a tale about the pernicious nature of addiction, the human con An encyclopaedic 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’, living with addiction. It's a tale about the pernicious nature of addiction, the human condition of solitude, and the pursuit of connection and purpose in a world that often appears inexplicable and absurd.

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 but 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. ...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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Jun 02, 2011 Jenn(ifer) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: beach-reads, the-tops, read-in-2011, 5-f-ing-stars, you-should-read-this, giggles, own, re-read, gr-friends-recommend

Reading this novel is the literary equivalent of completing a triathlon. I'm exhausted, but it was so worth it! I've spent the past four months with all of these bizarre, tortured, exceptional characters and think, strange as it may sound, I will miss them quite a bit.

ps~ you will need 2 book marks, 3 if you want to keep the time line straight.
pps~ don't read the last 40 pages or so if you have a weak stomach.

oh, and to the late Mr. Wallace: ummm... what the f@ck?!? ...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Matthew rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, read-in-2012, gnostic, cinema, media-studies, encyclopedic-melancholic, the-cave, encyclopedic-narratives, american, dfw

A recollection

Infinite Jest may very well be one of the best books of the last 30 years. It concerns the elusive search for entertainment in our lives, elusive because entertainment becomes commodity and lacks meaning in many lives, and sometimes distracts from looking for meaning in our lives. And yet, a novel is meant to distract, to seduce, to pull you in to its world. In Wallace's future everyone is trying to escape it seems, one way or the other, from the horrifying face of reality and dea ...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Moira marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, on-the-kindle, goodreads-group-reads, infinite-christmas

Yes, I just got a copy of this on Kindle because it will be easier to look up references for the readthrough because I am just that lazy. Also, I have bad RSI in both wrists and elbows and holding open that giant paperback is like wrestling with pillows filled with sand.

I am Dubious about being able to hold open three or more places at once, though - and footnotes on the Kindle generally suck so much I don't know if they'll work on this. Much less the footnotes to the footnotes? But hey, I was j ...more

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