J.T. Wilson’s Reviews > Infinite Jest > Status Update

Regarding this book’s reputation among assholes, I think the thing is that IJ itself is like Hal Incandenza but the reputation and influence of the book is on people who are more like Michael Pemulis.

“It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject on purpose and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe.”

Copies of the Entertainment are not the Entertainment

The very long tennis game

Propitiating the Infant

Year Of The Tesla Exploding Dumpster

The Risk expy game as a metaphor for actual war

“They’re all potent this, sinister that. Nothing with any specifics. And jumbly polysyllabes out the ass. Whole thing gave me a migraine.”

Just reads like a smart guy who’s read Vonnegut and ‘Illuminatus’, but the familiarity of the style is, I now realise, because it was mirrored by all sorts of aren’t-I-clever pseuds in the years that immediately followed, specifically ranting internet writers and music journalists.