From the Bookshelf of Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace…

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

Start date: January 1, 2013

Finish date: April 30, 2013

Discussion: Main Discussion Threads

Why we're reading this: “To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.”…more
[close] “To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.”

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Main Discussion Threads

Infinite Jest Discussion: pgs. 3-85
By Kris , Group Jester · 139 posts · 168 views

last updated Dec 30, 2014 02:05PM

Infinite Jest Discussion: pgs. 902-981
By Kris , Group Jester · 24 posts · 97 views

last updated Nov 14, 2013 01:14AM

What Members Thought

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

Shelves: favorites, to-re-read, w-for-wallace, prude-me-not, testing-patience-1-2-3, my-2-cents, wehmut, moments-of-huh, it-is-ok-to-feel-dumb, we-reads

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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Dec 01, 2012 Megan Baxter rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I feel like I just ran head-on into the brick wall that is Infinite Jest, and my head isn't quite clear enough to figure out what I thought yet.

I mean, it was a slow-motion run, given that I started this back in December and read it very, very slowly. I've taken a lot of time to think about it. Why don't I know what I think?

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, ...more

63 likes · Like · see review

Nov 30, 2012 Mala rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

"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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Dec 13, 2012 Ayaa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, dystopia, 1001, dfw, post-modernism

So to borrow from a great comment once on youtube, "Any motherfucking hipster think they got this, is motherfuckin lying!!"

Now that is out of the way, this is a massive 1079-page book with 200 pages of endnotes in tiny font and passages that goes on for ages. First time I started it it was last March I read the first 17 pages, closed the book, took a nap and woke up as good as new. Second time around took me 3 months to get past the first 250 pages and it was still this dense-I-have-no-idea-wha So to borrow from a great comment once on youtube, "Any motherfucking hipster think they got this, is motherfuckin lying!!"

Now that is out of the way, this is a massive 1079-page book with 200 pages of endnotes in tiny font and passages that goes on for ages. First time I started it it was last March I read the first 17 pages, closed the book, took a nap and woke up as good as new. Second time around took me 3 months to get past the first 250 pages and it was still this dense-I-have-no-idea-what-you-want-to-say, but then around like 320-350 page magic happened and I was hooked. It was still hard don't get me wrong specially to my english-isn't-my-native-language-self, but it was worth it. The first book i ever took a pen and kept writing in the margins all relevant and irrelevant ramblings. Good news is I'll read it again and again and again, bad news is I have to! you feel compelled once you hit the 981 page (yes the last 200 pages are endnotes i wasn't lying you know...) to go back to page 1! it's a dis-ease.
Helpful references:
http://www.wallacewiki.com/david-fost...
http://wiki.ursinus.edu/index.php/Inf...
and for the second reading may be:
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/...

To me it felt like two people have wrote Infinite Jest, this magnificent brilliant, messy, over detailed, beast. There is the pretentious Wallace that wants to write a hard book that is for the reader that actually reads (not the type that reads and runs according to Salinger), one of the best writers/voices of his generation and whats not. And then there is the DFW that is telling simple stories and observations about the world around him. Where everything is only vague and implied, some kind of a whisper in your ear and you're not entirely sure whether you heard it or not. His unique style of telling a story, his wicked sense of humor, all of his characters (there are dozen of them) that are so perfectly portrayed to show how imperfect they truly are, they are cruel and grotesque, nice and humble, they are able to make you lose your faith in humanity, and restore it in the same page. The way he tells a story is he finds the most complex way to tell it, he'll shove a simple situation down your throat, leave it there, hangs you to dry, goes and does his thing, drawn you in personalized descriptions, tells you their family history, going back and forth, mathematical equations, chemical expertise, some more family secrets, goes back to base touch up some details, by that point your own imagination of the scenes and those ridiculously humanized characters and his own subtle telling are so intertwined they are inseparable, like you both have built it from scratch, and you're emotionally attached to them all you wanna do is jump in and say it'll all be okay knowing full well it won't. And it changes the way you look at people, how much we don't actually know about all those who surround us, like what could be their stories and how much can you know someone, like really know someone.

So what is it all about? it's about entertainment and addiction and desire, desperation, witty, genius, and fart jokes(too many perhaps...), it has a plot, and subplots, and sub-subplots, a maddening conclusion. All in all it's a sad book about sad people, brutally honest, genuine and personal, by a brilliant writer, that knew about sadness himself (after all he eliminated his own map), which makes me really sad to even start to think about him.

What it kept coming back to (in toto), what all this was about, for me it was about empathy. how you are thrown into the back row of denial, with cigarette smoke in the air and an addict on the podium sharing their story, and it's teleportation you're no longer here holding a book and reading fiction, you are there, either sitting your face covered in linen in the back rows, or pore-range close, you take their stories and you sit their and you do, empathize. and it makes me think of Holden Caulfield asking the cabbie where do the ducks go when the pond freezes over?!

I read this book because of Jesse and Dean from Liberal arts (2012), and the raving reviews on Goodreads, but still mainly Jesse and Dean.
...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Rayroy rated it it was amazing

Life or Not-living or How Can You Live?

While there was a lot I didn't like about this book it like really got to me on so many fucking levels. There was the powered milk scene that was like the putrid milk scene from Don DeLillo's "End Zone" plus other scenes in the novel that play homage to American Post Modernist fiction writers like you can tell that Wallace was a lonely young man that read the likes of Pynchon, Gaddis, and Barth. This book while a lot of people's maps are just eliminated, ...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Rory Foye McCarthy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Absolutely incredible search on the nature of living in the modern world and the whole process of trying to survive when life is as it is, as well as an incredibly profound exploration on the nature of good and evil in real life.

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Jan 06, 2013 Macdaddysinfo rated it liked it · review of another edition

glad I read it. don't think it is the great work of fiction that some make it out to be. tough to recommend as it is not an easy read. easily the longest sentences and paragraphs I have ever experienced. some wonderful parts, and some tedious sections, too. if you are looking for a challenge, and want to see what all the hype is about, read this one; otherwise, you might want to look elsewhere... ...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Austen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

this book was like, stupid good. the characters were great, the writing was amazing, and bleak was its painting, but are not these dark times? and, when have there not been dark times? the only thing this book doesn't give is the answer, or, rather, the right answer (in my opinion). despite that last ambiguous statement, this book, if you have not read it, should be on the peak of your 'to read' mountain, hill, or slightly sloping whatever. ...more

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