There is no clear start date for Infinite Jest. Pieces of the novel date back to 1986, when Wallace may have written them originally as stand-alone stories. 15 The work contains all three of Wallace’s literary styles, beginning with the playful, comic voice of his Amherst years, passing through his infatuation with postmodernism at Arizona, and ending with the conversion to single-entendre principles of his days in Boston. These three approaches correspond roughly to the three main plot strands of the book: the first, the portrait of the witty, dysfunctional Incandenza family; the second, the
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