Rating: 
Summary: Why live up to the title?
Review: Parts of this work are magnificent; others are sheer boredom. I wouldn't compare this to Pynchon. DFW could have broken this into three separate novels and saved his readers their sanity. The Don Gately story could be its own novel. The Hal Incandenza story seems like DFW was being paid by the word. I hope DFW will restrain himself in the future. He does have talent though.
Rating: 
Summary: Infinite Jest
Review: Infinite Jest is one of the greatest books ever written. It rambles through lives and through meanings, giving no final answer but displaying many. It's as depressing as it is enlightening. Wallace is obviously a genius -- his knowledge and understanding on the topics of drugs, the athletic mind, AA, twisted psyches, etc. is overwhelming. The only comment I would make to the author would be to make his world less far away; although it is clearly taken from reality and it draws from aspects of everyones' lives, it seems distant -- he has an excellent point, but sometimes it doesn't hit as hard as it ought to, letting us escape from thinking too hard about its connection to us personally.
Rating:
Summary: The other dimension of my life.
Review: How is it that one novel can cause half its readers to put ZERO STARS - I HATE THIS BOOK and the other half to write I WISH I HAD 100 STARS TO GIVE? I am, obviously, in the second category. I found a copy in an outlet bookstore for 6 bucks and thought, "What the hell?" Since I am a literature student and already have to read 3-4 novels a week, it took me months to finish, but now that it's over, I am genuinely sad. The entire time I was reading it, I felt like my life had another dimension that was going on while I attended my university classes, saw friends, etc. Everyone I spoke to knows a couple of the plotlines of Infinite Jest because that's all I could talk about. So many of the readers who did not love this book from deep in their hearts (as I do) want to compare and categorize and throw off Wallace as being pretentious. How sad! Unlike pretentious referential authors like Joyce, everything you need to understand Infinite Jest is there on the page. Sure, maybe it helps if you have some basic knowledge of theoretical physics and mathematics, but any reading on any topic requires a different level of previous experience, and that experience is not even necessary to enjoy the beautiful, sensitive, funny, HUMAN stories in IJ. This is not a cold scientific something -- this is pure human compassion and frustration and reminds me of what it means to be an American at the turn of the new century. (This is, of course, to say nothing of Wallace's prose, which sends me, as a writer, into alternating fits of jealousy and lust.) I'm not trying to sell this book to all people everywhere -- it is a fact that most people over a certain age will find this book philosophically and structurally incomprehensible. I am 20 years old, and this kind of writing and the themes it deals with are closer and more real to me than hundreds of years of historical fiction. Having grown up in an age when entertainment is fast and hard and omnipresent (a fact which, like Wallace, I am slow to comdemn harshly), a novel like this reaffirms my belief in the medium. We haven't outgrown our literary past, and, much as films are becoming less linear (making less sense to the old and so much more to the young -- see "Magnolia"), the novel itself is learning, through authors like Wallace, to become the new animal that the upcoming generation needs to allow the medium to survive. The old avant-garde is tired now and needs to be put to bed. Thank God for David Foster Wallace. Its because of him that I haven't quit writing yet.
Rating:
Summary: Not sure yet
Review: After I read this a couple more times, it'll either be a five or a one. Not sure yet.
Rating:
Summary: the best novel of the 90s
Review: clever. hip. difficult? yes. worth it? absolutely. the setting: near future. the subject: an elite tennis academy, quebec seraratist terrorists, and a drug rehabilitation halfway house become entwined in the search for an avant-garde movie that's so incredibly entertaining viewers are unable to do anything besides watch it. the plot takes quite awhile to start to come together (hundreds of pages), and lack of certain info (i.e., a narrative gap of an entire year's events) can be quite befuddling. reading through the other reviews, it seems that this atypical narrative arrangement seems to be the cause of some unrest. all i can say is: sorry boys and girls, the days of exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement are long gone. read it. love it. and for god's sake use 2 bookmarks. a postmodern masterpiece. quite possibly the best novel of the 90s.
Rating: 
Summary: don't read this book.
Review: if not the, then all-but-the saddest book I have ever read. challenging, involving, and horrifying. I read this book almost two years ago and sometimes I still laugh thinking about it and sometimes I still feel awful thinking about it. Don't read it.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore morons below!
Review: This book is not for stupid people. Read the reviews below and see for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: A grand splendid messy book
Review: I have read this novel three times, and have never failed to be moved and entertained. Yes, it can be difficult, and yes, even irritating. But there are giant sections of this giant novel that are as deeply moving and riotously funny as anything I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Muddled Nonsense
Review: I was half way through this publicity stunt before realizing the joke was on me and any other fool who purchased this "novelity." It should have been titled "Private Joke," because only the author and his therapist know what the hell the point of this book is.
Rating:
Summary: Infinitely Annoying
Review: This is the worst book I have ever read. Don't fall for the lofty praise lavished upon it.
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