Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

Our kids, my generation’s kids, they… now you, this post-Brando crowd, you new kids can’t like us or dislike us or respect us or not as human beings, Jim. Your parents. No, wait, you don’t have to pretend you disagree, don’t, you don’t have to say it, Jim. Because I know it. I could have predicted it, watching Brando and Dean and the rest, and I know it, so don’t splutter. I blame no one your age, boyo. You see parents as kind or unkind or happy or miserable or drunk or sober or great or near-great or failed the way you see a table square or a Montclair lip-red. Kids today… you kids today somehow don’t know how to feel, much less love, to say nothing of respect. We’re just bodies to you. We’re just bodies and shoulders and scarred knees and big bellies and empty wallets and flasks to you. I’m not saying something cliché like you take us for granted so much as I’m saying you cannot… imagine our absence. We’re so present it’s ceased to mean. We’re environmental. Furniture of the world. Jim, I could imagine that man’s absence. Jim, I’m telling you you cannot imagine my absence. It’s my fault, Jim, home so much, limping around, ruined knees, overweight, under the Influence, burping, nonslim, sweat-soaked in that broiler of a trailer, burping, farting, frustrated, miserable, knocking lamps over, overshooting my reach. Afraid to give my last talent the one shot it demanded. Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. Use i...