Rating: 
Summary: Bizarre.....
Review: Yes, Bizarre. Utterly, yet delightfully bizarre. That is the only possible way I can attempt to sum up Infinite Jest in just a phrase.This sprawling (900 pages plus footnotes!) novel is set just outside Boston, and primarily takes place in a breeding ground for future tennis pros and a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. Wallace's non-linear storytelling makes for some confusion, especially at first when we know nothing about the new calendar used in the book, and makes for some interesting storytelling. Wallace uses a fascinating, involved story to comment on the interplay of addiction and entertainment in our society. He uses emotions and imagery ranging from stark and harsh to warm and familial.
Rating: 
Summary: A light heavy tome.
Review: On business trips I pack this block of pulp in lieu of iron dumbells. Great for preacher curls. Its contents though are lightweight. I, of course, speak in the realm of the postmodern spectrum. An introduction to the dreamscapes of plot-phobic, allusion-rich, tangent-frenzied postmodernists would surely use DFW as a takeoff point, if only to break literature's laymen into the more finely wrought and intellectual pointed works of Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo or even the significantly less talented William Vollman. By comparison, a pugilist should spar with Willie Pep(DFW) before stepping into the ring with Sugar Ray Robinson(Delillo) or Muhammed Ali(Pynchon). That I would use such an adversarial metaphor is part of the problem with IJ. You never quite endear yourself to the supplicants of this tome. The difficulty of course lies in the fact that it is troublesome trying to befriend cardboard cutouts. The characters hardly ring true as real people or even the shallow people from "reality" based shows such as "The Real World". They are more often than not no better than the punchline to some tedious joke. Sure, this is an experimental piece of work that may or may not rely upon conventional constructs of characters, but even in its unconventional manner, no depth is achieved. Slothtrop, Pirate, Mexico, et al of Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" invade my dreams without warrant whereas I can hardly recall the names of Wallace's creations. When comparing IJ with Michael Crichton sci-fi thrillers or romance novels graced with images of Fabio(as some other reviewers have done) it is easy to grant IJ a full five stars. However, to be fair and to be just, IJ must be measured against other postmodern epics to which it hopes to become colleagues with; "Gravity's Rainbow", "Underworld", etc. In that sense, it becomes nothing more than a little brother. Immature, bratty, self-centered and self-important.
Rating: 
Summary: Was actually sorry to finish it
Review: I knew this was a great book when, with about three hundred pages left, I started to feel sad. Like when you're on vacation, and you realize that you only have a few days of R&R left. This book truly becomes part of your life. The characters are so unforgettably human, with real faults and foibles that will endear them to you. I think that's what I liked best about the book - the sense of entering another world inhabited by wonderfully complex (and often hilariously entertaining) people. Yes, this book is long and it's not for the faint of heart. But it's also not one of those dry, academic-type books that feels like an insufferable chore. IJ is lively and entertaining. You will literally laugh out loud, which, if you read this book in public, may cause others to get the "howling fantods". Ignore them, and all the naysayers. IJ rewards patient and careful readers with a dense, multi-layered plot (yes, there is a plot - it's just not linear!). It's sad, funny, sweet, horrifying, cruel, wickedly smart, and, very often, quite wonderful. I highly recommend it. FYI, I gave a four (as opposed to five) star review simply because of what I felt were some major plot points and critical info buried deep within the footnotes. Get out your magnifying glass!
Rating:
Summary: HELP ME.
Review: So what exactly does happen to Hal in the interrum between the YDAU and the Year of Glad? He didnt see his fathers murderous entertainment else he would not be able to even articulate his thoughts. Could it just be a symptom of his Withdrawal from weed? Is it because of the barely hinted at digging up of the grave of his father? and what exactly do they extract from that grave that is held by hair? How come near the end of the novel Hal's personal map suddenly seems mirthful for no reason and beyond his control, and his peers keep noticing the bizarre grimaces of his face? if anyone can help me answer these question Email me! Oh yeah, this is the best book i have ever read etc.
Rating:
Summary: Not with a bang, but a whimper...
Review: What a disappointing book! It took me 4 years of picking it up, putting it down for extended periods, and then picking it up again to finally finish. The first 300 pages were slow, but I found myself getting increasingly hooked as I went along. By about the 600th page, I could barely put it down. The many plotlines were coming together slowly but surely, and it looked like it would reach a convoluted but amazing conclusion. So what went wrong? I dunno what was in Wallace's head, but he seems to have decided to cast aside this book's potential for greatness and just end it on a soft note. What a shame. Some elements of the book were great... the wry humor, the many exquisitely crafted plotlines, the zany future that Wallace's imagination cooked up (monstrous feral hamsters, lounge singer presidents, etc), and so on. But other parts were something of a turn off. The tennis academy narrative did not match the quality of the other plotlines, and Wallace's egomania concerning his own writing ability was a bit much. If an author is a genius, it will show subtly in his work (Mikhail Lermontov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, etc)... Wallace's brute force approach of beating the reader over the head with complex words and sentence structures is NOT the mark of genius. See especially the 200 pages of footnotes... the idea was cute, but when some of the individual footnotes are 10 to 20 pages each, you know he's gone too far. Anyway, I'm digressing from my main point, which is: this is a well written and entertaining book, but prepare to be let down considerably by the lack of a satisfactory conclusion... I must say that the "look, I didn't put an ending in!" trick is SOOOO cliche in post-modern literature, and the fact that Wallace thought the reader would see the lack of ending as somehow clever or original does not speak well for him. 1100 pages is too much to have to sit through for this kind of disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Midrash on the Reviews
Review: There are over 300 people who have written reviews of Infinite Jest on Amazon.com, and not only have I read DFW's postpostmodern tome, but I have also read all the reviews on this Web site; after which, it is fairly clear, to me, anyway, that a review written on March 23, 1999, entitled "you guys should have zero stars," was, in fact, written by DFW himself. Go check it out; tell me DFW wasn't getting a kick out of reading the volleying back and forth (pardon the pun) between Rave Review/Horrible Review, and decided to lob one more joke upon the English-reading public. Like "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" (and anything Pynchon ever wrote), "Infinite Jest" is a (sophisticated) joke--only DFW went so far as to tell us (IN THE TITLE!). Of course, there's nothing wrong with a joke--even a long one--as long as it's told well. (I do not, however, intend to tell you which I think it is--and please don't take my silence as a stance of disfavor.) I have nothing to add, good or bad, that other readers haven't already posited about IJ. But I do have something to suggest concerning the phenomenon of IJ: The 20th century began with Joyce and ended with DFW. Did we (Literature) ever get anywhere? This is to say, is it now (and perhaps forvever) the mark of a great writer to thrust at least one book upon the reading public that not only calls for the death of way too many trees, but which can only be appreciated by a very select-few readers in any given literate society? Was that the great leap in literature undertaken during arguably the most eventful century in human history? The 'point' of "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" was that no one ever needed to write something like that again; just as Samuel Beckett should be the only playwright to ever write a play that has no words! Once something like this has "been done," what's the point of repeating it? Look at Borges. Easily Joyce's equal, Borges only "invented" Ulysses-like epics in his short stories. To actually write such a book, after Joyce, was a waste of a decade of life. Novelists like Pynchon and DFW are drawing a picture of a person staring into a mirror who sees a person staring into a mirror who sees a person staring into a mirror who sees a person staring into a mirror of...Infinite Regress (Jest). Anyway, something to think about. Was/Is IJ really necessary? Ulysses, I believe, was. I would judge IJ, in part, based on DFW's other works. (Why? It seems only fitting, since anything he ever writes in the future will only be measured by IJ.) He's a lousy non-fiction writer, that's for sure, and, like Annie Dillard has promised to never write another novel, I hope DFW vows to never write another essay. As for DFW's fiction, he's somewhere in the middle of the road, definitely below Don DeLillo, and definitely above Douglas Coupland. That's why I gave this book 3 stars. P.S. If you're going to read a 1,000-page book, I would suggest Canopus in Argos or The Holy Bible. P.P.S. Of course, since the dawn of Catch-22, no one ever needed to write another word of fiction--ever; including me.
Rating:
Summary: Addicting
Review: When I picked up this book, I intended to read just the first few pages to see what it was about, and maybe finish some other time. 1100 pages later, I finally put it down. OK, I didn't read it all in one sitting, but the single mindedness you could call an addiction. Which is appropriate, because this book is about addiction in all sorts of forms: drugs, alcohol, athletics, entertainment, and so forth. The scope DFW attempts (and succeeds) is amazing: every page, every chapter is a constant surpise. DFW sets up his own kind of reality, and then stretches that reality to the breaking point. To try to summarize or encapsulate in a 1000 words is impossible. INFINITE JEST is comic and tragic, science fiction and mystery, socio-political commentary and literary fiction. Now for the bad news. Sometimes, the writing is....pretentious. The footnotes get to be a little much. It is as if DFW is showing off his virtuosity at wordplay for the sake of showing off. He actually addresses this criticism in a very good interview ................. INFINITE JEST is not an "easy read," but it is well worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: "What you expected" doesn't matter
Review: The sheer size of this book is enough to give many people pause. The scope turns out to be even greater than expected, and Wallace's brilliant style occasionally reaches a transcendent, joyful place in the mind. A full review would be longer than most novels, and in fact Wallace has been the subject of countless college papers since this book hit the shelves. All I can say is you have to read it to understand. Often compared to Nabakov, Wallace is in fact more the next step - the love child of Ellis, DeLillo, Barth, and Pynchon. The only real problem with the book is that it may be impossible for him to surpass it. The characters encompass almost every possible walk of life. Young tennis prodigies, drug addicts both recovering and active, political intrigue, and tortured artists only begin to scratch the surface. Elliptical in plot, anticlimatic, infuriating, wretched and sublime, the book takes you on a ride, which is something not many books can manage with today's cynical audience. Don't go into this book with any assumption. Whatever you may be expecting, even based on reviews, is off the mark. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Rating:
Summary: The "Ulysses" of The Late 20th Century
Review: If for no other reason, one should attempt the book for the shear power over language Wallace posses. His ability to write a single sentence that spans three pages, his unending vocabulary, and brilliant creation of sentence structure, is pure poetry for the reader who is tired and troubled by the current state of modern fiction. Infinite Jest will be in the Literary Canon. Enjoy it today!
Rating:
Summary: favorite novel ever.
Review: this book blew me away. twice. enormously intelligent, riding a fine line between being a terribly sad story and terribly funny one. a lot of the negative reviews on amazon seem fixated on the plot issue; most readers expect (even demand) that a novel's plot spiral inwardly to a nice tidy conclusion. well kids, the days of exposition, rising action, climax, crisis and denouement are long gone. this plot spirals outwards, does little squiggles and plays connect the dots. definately not your grandmother's favorite book. i read a novel a week, majored in comparative literature at college-- and i must say: this is it. the #1 big honcho helluva bestofalltime kick*ss novel. (followed by kafka's the trial and kundera's immortality.)
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