Infinite Jest

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Average customer rating 4.9 (18 comments)

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It's probably a lot too late to rave about this swirling dystopian nightmare fantasy about entertainment, sobriety, tennis and the militant importance of grammar, but here I sit, clutching my well-loved copy, with dog eared pages bookmarks and web history full of Internet searches. The fractured fractalism of the stories, the narrative, the schizophrenic use of the language, the realism, the absurdity, the footnotes and errata, completely blew me away. I think this may have ruined reading forever, in the best possible way.

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Hilarious and incredibly sad, enormous and never-ending (you'll be glad that's so), the book that simply is sublime. This is the only book I have ever laughed out loud at, multiple times (and any book that uses the word "puppet-a-clef" is pro in my book); yet Wallace balances this with ideas so melancholy and moving. Read it. Love it. I urge you to.

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I first tried to read Infinite Jest in 1997. After perhaps 150 pages, I gave up, dismissing it as post-modern claptrap. Since then, it sat on one of my bookshelves, silently mocking me. I decided to read it this spring and was rewarded with some of the most beautiful, dense, allusive and painful writing that I have ever encountered. If to write a novel is to construct a world, then Wallace succeeded admirably. Read this patiently and you will be rewarded.

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This book is a beautiful meditation on addition, obsession, and suicide. Set around a tennis academy and the recovery center below it, a rambling narrative gradually centers in on an entertainment so absorbing that its viewers lose all interest in the rest of life. It's not a perfect book; it drops off abruptly (in the middle of a flashback!) with several characters' stories unresolved. But it's plenty good; if you enjoy the virtuoso 14-page setpiece that opens the book, you're good for the whole 978 pages.

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The work of a truly rare and inscrutable mind and an enormous heart. This novel is what you make it, and for me, it was immensely beautiful.

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Weaving between a tennis academy and a half-way house, David Foster Wallace knits a story frought with violence and drug addiction that will have the most somber reader caught between a grimace and grin.

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DFW has created a wonder of a novel. So many intertwining stories and themes that it's impossible to speak to them all. He does so many things beautifully in this novel: he casts our foibles into the light, while simultaneously writing with precision and accuracy about addiction and depression. The first chapter, "Year of Glad", is the best and most complete chapter in the entire novel. There is a strong contrast in what the characters are experiencing vs. what the narrator, Hal, and the reader are experiencing. It's nothing short of beautiful. DFW was a true literary genius. Reading his work makes it all the more clear just what the literary world lost when he died.

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Twisted and deep, this book had so many overlying plots I dreaded receiving the question "what is it about?" and could only answer, "a tennis academy and a drug rehab house". But truthfully, it's about a deceased genius scientist turned mediocre cinema auteur; an 18 year boy carrying the weight of being a tennis prodigy; several recovering drug addicts ranging from redeemable to out-right despicable to simply pathetic; a veiled woman who is either tragically beautiful or tragically hideous; a futuristic USA set in 2010 that is politically tied into a single organization with Canada and Mexico and has subsidized the naming of years to companies...and oh yeah a group of Quebecian wheelchair assassins trying to terrorize said political power to gain it's province back from the North American dumpster it has become under the new administration. It cannot be explained. It can only be read. And enjoyed.

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In addition to the grand satiric wit displayed, this book creates a beautiful and humane empathy for those in all manner of recovery.

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This late 20th century satirical and experimental novel defines "brilliant". It combines tennis, addiction, recovery and the metaphysical with a Cecil B. DeMille epic-ness in terms of scope. There is a huge population inhabiting the author's imagined re-aligned North America, turning politics and the map on its collective heads. The focus, for the most part, is on the Incnadanza family as a whole, and specifically on Hal, the young tennis phenom and his life at a ridiculously academically advanced tennis academy, but it's impossible to say who the main character is, if any, as later the book tends to shift its attention to a recovering thug named Gately. I won't go into much detail, because if I start I won't stop. I just want to rave how this book is laugh out loud funny throughout, yet maintains a level of introspection and pathos that keeps you thinking and feeling. To me, this is one of the best English language books of the 20th century, if not ever.

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Pure DFW = Pure Genius

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Wallace was clearly a tortured artist, a great talent. A huge complex of interwoven stories told by myriad voices in sentences that sometimes span whole pages, but that make easy sense. It was great fun to read. Beware that you will need to set aside a month or two. It's worth it.

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Wallace uses descriptive language that is uniquely wonderful. One paragraph has me laughing out loud then holding my breath in deep anxiety. This book reads like nonfiction, as the reader steps inside the minds of each character and it all becomes real.

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I have never read a book like this. I can't imagine I ever will (until I read this book again). Mr. Wallace's book is infinitely entertaining. Be prepared to give some time and effort and you will be rewarded.

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Infinite Jest is more than just a tale of the drug addicts with perfect teeth and the drug addicts without teeth: it's the most sophisticated and honest treatment I've seen of the pleasure drive. The zany political situation and the caustic wit of the precocious young athletes provides for great humor (and often very dark humor), but there is enormous brutality and sadness to provide a balanced picture. It's also a philosophical romp through the nature of motivation, satisfaction, irony, and what it means to be boring or dead inside. Unforgettable characters.

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dazzling

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Possibly the most intellectually courageous and complex book ever. The writing is superb, the philosophy was rigorous, and the range of subjects was so broad it boggles the mind. Definitely a challenge, but definitely worthy.

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Always buy 2 copies of David's books. One will be ready to read for your next generation. One you will carry with you, flip open in line at the bank, read something you have read before and find new meaning. This is the one you will underline in, write notes in, laugh at, cry with and completely consume as your own.