Infinite Jest

Consuming, chaotic, pathologically sincere, profound, unflinching, difficult – but very rewarding. Probably, in all seriousness – as much as it pains me to add to the already-nauseating amounts of hyperbole surrounding this book – probably a work of actual genius. Despite all of that... and despite the inscrutable narrative structure, interminable footnotes and digressions, astonishingly expansive vocabulary, and mindnumbing amounts of incidental detail... it's also, somehow, just endlessly entertaining.

It's hard to say anything about the experience of reading this novel that hasn't been said before, and better. I spent six weeks reading it (and nothing else), and two more weeks pondering it, reading blog posts by armchair IJ scholars, and skimming back through the text to try to put all the pieces together.

In the end I can say it was not only a worthwhile journey, but that it left my perspective on the world irrevocably changed.

I wish you way more than luck.

This book is so epic, so well-written, and so thought-provoking that it may be the Odyssey of the millennial generation. The rich satire, creatively manufactured vocabulary, and exceptionally obscure but exceptionally human character development is enough to make any English major (or word-lover, book-lover, David Foster Wallace lover) drool. While not for the faint of heart (the book is over 1,000 pages including footnotes, has sentences that stretch over several pages, and a lexicon that would have even the most erudite Harvard professor scratching her head), it is more than a worthy read. It provides a lens straight into the darkest parts of the human psyche and exposes the addict that lives in all of us.

A fascinating commentary on our media-driven society, this book is so strange and fantastic and deeply sad and hilarious and so poignant that I would recommend it to anyone who might consider taking it on. This is definitely a text that will only continue to unveil itself with each reading, so I plan to keep it with me for a lifetime.

I'm both sad and relieved to be done, but already looking forward to the next time in my life I decide to pick this up to re-read, for all else I will uncover.

Note - especially pleasurable if you've ever lived in Boston. The Beantown satire is SPOT ON.

Fucking FINALLY.

And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form and void.
And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep.
And we said:
Look at that fucker Dance.

In 1996, Dave Eggers wrote a review of the recently published Infinite Jest. Eggers called the novel “frustrating” and said it buckled “under the weight of its own excess.” “Besides frequently losing itself in superfluous and wildly tangential flights of lexical diarrhea,” Eggers wrote, “the book suffers under the sheer burden of its incredible length.” Now, Eggers also extolled Infinite Jest for the potential rewards it offered a reader; further, Eggers praised Wallace for being “a consistently innovative, sensitive, and intelligent writer.” Nevertheless, the review largely painted the novel as a chore to get through.

Fast forward to 2006. The reaction to Infinite Jest went over pretty well. In ten years time, a cult of devout Wallace-loving fanatics has sprung up all over the map. Reviews are largely favorable and the fans have taken to guerrilla tactics, armed with a very thick book and a mission to convert the nonbelievers. Little, Brown and Company elects to publish a tenth-anniversary edition of Infinite Jest and invites none other than Eggers himself to write the introduction. Eggers' tone is different. “The book is 1,079 pages long and there is not one lazy sentence,” he writes. This new Eggers declares Infinite Jest is a pleasure to read and not one bit daunting.

Maybe Eggers had a change of heart. I mean, he wasn't completely snubbing the novel in ‘96, but to go from “lexical diarrhea” to “not only lazy sentence” is a drastic change. It's certainly possible that the text marinated in Eggers mind, he gave it another read, and he had a much different experience. It's also possible Eggers was influenced. For one, readers and academia had adopted Infinite Jest. The cult of Wallace was on the move. And I'm sure the publisher was offering a decent check for the five-page forward. And maybe Eggers just wasn't sure what he thought. It is a confusing work, unlike anything else. Maybe he read it and simultaneously loved it and hated it. Or perhaps I'm projecting my own reaction to Infinite Jest on Eggers. Such a grab bag of emotions possesses me. What did I think of Infinite Jest? Well, a little bit of everything.

⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆ - Though long and confusing, Infinite Jest is brilliant. Everything about it is wildly unique. The structure, the language, the methodology—it all comes together to make something original and untried. As Eggers' wrote in his foreword, “This book is like a spaceship with no recognizable components, no rivets or bolts, no entry points, no way to take it apart. ... If you could somehow smash it into smaller pieces, there would certainly be no way to put it back together again.” And while other authors may emulate the style with varied success, the fact is Infinite Jest will probably always be the only book of its kind. Whether you love it or hate it, such a distinction is significant.

⋆⋆⋆⋆ - The characters and scenes are memorable. Sure, there are long gaps devoid of these wonderfully drawn scenes where characters ramble on and on about nothing of importance, but the accumulation of the many parts are unforgettable. Although Infinite Jest is the sort of book no one could ever make a film based on (I said the same about Cloud Atlas once), there are scenes which impossible not to imagine on the big screen. They're so wonderfully drawn and the characters are so uniquely styled, that I often imagined the moments in a detail few other books elicit from me.

⋆⋆⋆ - Infinite Jest is horribly wordy. Sometimes it works for it—it is part of the style that makes it unique—and sometimes it just drags. While some of the scenes are interesting in themselves, the detail in which they're described is both refreshing and excruciating. Could Infinite Jest have been shorted? Hell yes. But doing so would've robbed it of much of its uniqueness and allure. Does this justify its “lexical diarrhea”? That probably depends on the reader.

⋆⋆ - The end notes are ridiculous. I've read reviews or guides regarding Infinite Jest where the author stated every end note was vital and worth reading. 388 end notes spread out over 96 pages. How many were important in my opinion? Only a handful. Not only that, but I didn't understand why specific scenes (such as the phone conversation between Hal and Orin) were end notes in the first place. The text is already saturated with these long conversations. Why were some made into ten-page end notes? Why separate them from the text? If I ever find myself reading Infinite Jest again (unlikely, but I won't rule it out), I'm skipping the end notes. I really didn't need them.

⋆ - That's some racist bullshit. I see racism in literature for what it is. A work written at a much earlier time may be riddled with racism, and I can accept that without embracing it, because I realize it is a product of the time. A work written with racist characters or tones is also understandable if it is relevant to the story. Certainly, we should not simply cover up and ignore humanity's flaws. The problem here is, I don't think Infinite Jest qualifies for either of these conditions. Its setting is the near future and the characters have no obvious reason to be so incredibly bigoted. We're not dealing with a single narrator with a chip on his shoulder here. Infinite Jest is peopled with eccentric, but otherwise average, New Englanders and Canadians. Maybe I just missed something, but I don't think the rampant racism was relevant to the story. It's more than the name calling (ie, chinks, spics, ragheads, etc.), it's the stereotype. The black characters (rarely referred to as anything but the n-word) are a bunch of dumpster-diving, fighting, illiterate hoodlums. I'd be more forgiving if these were merely the thoughts of one ignorant character, but even the more intelligent, open-minded characters seem quite bigoted. For what aim? At least the honkies had their issues with substance abuse—I'd hate for them to seem too perfect. (Did someone say misogyny? Yeah, there's that too.)

So, yeah, I'm confused as to how I felt about Infinite Jest. It was good and it was bad. It seems I'm not alone in my confusion. I'm glad I read it if for no other reason than to know it. Maybe in another ten years my tune will change and I'll sing its praises with fervor and without hesitation. I hear it's happened before.

Man this book...it was a journey. First the end-notes..good god the end notes! As annoying as they were they really helped shape a lot of the anecdotes and characters. Although we didn't really “connect” with the characters, I think they were meant to be a reflection of ourselves in all their myriad faults.

A great novel, and for it's time absolutely legendary. A great reflection on America and the West at the turn of the millennium and oddly prescient about how the world was shaping up for the new one. The most intense introduction to DFW, after years of procrastinating but highly recommended for any true lover of literature. The prose can be a bit much at times, thank god for dictionaries but in the end it probably expanded my own. At the end we're left wondering... what the fuck just happened here! Much like while reading the book, I think I need a little while to gather my thoughts after the long slog (although enjoyable).

Really wanted to like this book. It is certainly not an easy book to read. The many characters and the way the book is structured (together with the footnotes) makes reading this book hard work. Which in a sense diminished my enjoyment of the book. However, there are many passages and sections that I adore here. Overall, I'd say it's a love and hate relationship with this book for me. Maybe I need to read it again, but that's for another time.

Un libro esagerato, in molti sensi, nel bene e nel male... Ho trovato dei brani di un intensità unica, altri davvero esilaranti, altri così complessi da essere quasi illegibili, al punto da farmi pensare che Wallace abbia deliberatamente deciso di “sfidare” il lettore ad arrivare alla fine di questo gigante di 1200 pagine. Comunque sono contento di essere arrivato alla fine, ne è valsa la pena.

Too much to write about in this little box.

Read it as a participant in http://infinitesummer.org/ which was a great experience.

SO good. I was a little worried about reading this book, since it's always SO highly-acclaimed, and since I had read Broom of the System and not been bowled over by it. But there's a reason Infinite Jest gets talked about way more than Broom of the System, and it's because it's better. It really is That Good. I really want to read some critical analyses of the book, though. As much as I liked it and puzzled over it and read all the footnotes I still feel like there's more I can dig out of this. But still, so fun and bizarrely wise.

“NNYC's harbor's Liberty Island's gigantic Lady has the sun for a crown and holds what looks like a huge photo album under one iron arm, and the other arm holds aloft a product. The product is changed each 1 Jan. by brave men with pitons and cranes.”

“We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately – the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. Flight from exactly what? These rooms blandly filled with excrement and meat? To what purpose? This was why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions why and to what grow real beaks and claws. It was kind, in a way.”