Rating: 
Summary: Feel the Hype!
Review: Here's today's thesis (and I dare anyone to deny it): "Infinite Jest" isn't a novel at all. It is, rather, a publicity gimmick joined to an Oedipal struggle with Thomas Pynchon. Dare you to deny it.Wallace is an energetic writer, often a funny one, occasionally intelligent and moving. And Gately is a good, palpable presence. But what's on view here clearly has little to do with literature, indeed hardly anything to do with any kind of communication. The meretricious length, the super-meretricious technical language, the hyper-meretricious (and awfully quaint) structural shenanigans -- well, all this necessary invocation of the "m"-word can indicate only one thing: this baby was designed as a career-booster, and as such, as all the evidence shows, it has achieved its one unqualified success.
Rating:
Summary: one less starving artist
Review: "Infinite Jest" brings up the same sorts of questions and puzzles we face when we consider "Ulysses" -- can an unreadable book be worth writing? Worth publishing? Does it enrich our culture somehow, being out there, even if few will finish it? Of course, neither book is literally unreadable -- and there is an important difference: "Ulysses" is worth reading to the end, "Infinite Jest" is not. And yet I suspect that DFW is codgier than the rest of us on this -- I think he KNEW that the book was unreadable in the strong sense (i.e. not worth it); I think, in fact, that's part of his point. Which brings us back to the original question: is it possible that it might make sense for this book to be out there -- that it somehow enriches us by making us aware of it, by making us debate it, by making us face these same old tough questions once again? Whatever; one thing's for sure, whether or not it's enriched us, it's certainly enriched the bank account of David Foster Wallace. One less starving artist.
Rating: 
Summary: schizophrenic guru
Review: Infinite Jest: picked it up when I heard. David Foster Wallace is supposed to be the hip, new guru. A dictionary-sized novel. Enter stuttering prep school boy, a furtive pot addict, and other scorching souls. What I like about it is that it is so SCHIZOPHRENIC! I mean, have you ever heard anyone say that people with mental disorders cannot help but fill in ALL the tiny, little spaces when they draw? Well I do that. And I'm willing to bet so does David Foster Wallace. Not that he exhausts every point to no end. On the contrary, he gathers loose pieces of yarn and draws them into his story. Footnotes (I did not know until after I wrote my article) which tell bits and pieces of Wallace's mind--references to fact, often to fiction. Witty descriptions of films concepts, lists of pharmaceutical terms, and so on. A purging of the facts one carries with him/herself. Anyway it's not necessarily to a fault that this book is ruthlessly referenced in academia--Ezra Pound did it!--and it's rendered in such a beautifully, Carverian-clinical way!
Rating: 
Summary: A Very Long, Bad Joke
Review: Well,what a mind numbingly boring,pretentious book this was.I'm sorry but life is too short for such turgid prose as this,and I'm sick of books that are all just literary allusions,please,enough already..The only reason I trudged though the morass of DFW's 1,000 page plus post modern conceit was because I had wasted so much time already,also I had the perverse hope that the hype was about something.I was wrong.Don't buy this book,and if you do don't read it,use it for weight training or toilet paper or anything else.
Rating: 
Summary: Year of Glad
Review: That's about how long it took for me to read, and how long the feeling stays with you. Just as an example, I remember one night, when I was about 600 - 700 pages through the book, I had to get up early in the morning the next day. I started reading at about 1a.m. and couldn't put it down for hours. There was a scene so descriptive and energetic that I couldn't sit still either. A fight scene like nothing I've ever read in a book. I was nervous about reading the next line. As another reviewer stated, two years later I occasionally remember a section or character and stir up the feelings of reading this book. I loved it!
Rating:
Summary: what were you thinking ?
Review: this has to be the funniest most interesting piece of writing since patchen's journal of albion moonlight---don't get me wrong, i love gass and can suffer through delillo (joyce and pynchon are the obvious comparisons, but they're so old---(Salinger? Salinger? that i just don't see at all) and really dfw doesn't suffer for them) but this is a really beautiful piece of contemporary brain work--- his voice alone makes his shorter stuff worth reading but at this length his absolute insanity shines through--- nice to see contemporary lit finally catch up with contemporary art (dennis cooper, for all his understanding, just can't write).
Rating:
Summary: enough, already
Review: Over 1000 pages of pseudo-subersiveness. Skip it. DWF is desperately trying to emulate one of the century's greatest authors, and utterly fails. One star is too much. Sorry, DWF. Keep trying. Suggestion: lots of people have imitated Salinger, and have gotten away with it. Try something easier next time.
Rating:
Summary: Infinite Text
Review: If brevity is the soul of wit, is this the infinity of a soulless twit? Here's a suggestion: read 4 truly great books instead of one barely interesting prolix ramble. Screw the two stars, I want one back. This gets one star only.
Rating:
Summary: Addiction
Review: This book is about addiction in many forms. When I was reading it, I was LITERALLY addicted to it. Nobody could tear me away from it. I missed classes because I was reading this book. I still think about the characters in the book as friends, and I read it almost a year ago. It is extraoridinarily humorous, but at times it made me cry - the stories are tragic, but told with perspective and irony. If you like tennis, which I don't, you'll love this book. If you like drugs, which I don't, you'll love this book. If you like Quebecois separatists, which I don't necessarily, you'll love this book. I LOVE THIS BOOK
Rating:
Summary: The jest is on the reader
Review: I just finished Infinate Jest and the foremost thought in my mind is 'thank God I finished this monstrosity.' The style is very intriguing but the drawn way that DFW does NOT tell a story is very tirng. I put this book down two times and swore not to pick it back up but my curiosity got the best of me. Like a previous reviewer I was disappointed in the abrupt cessation of the story. Is resolution of the story lines such a bad characteristic of 'classical' literature that we must abandon it? I think not. Should you read Infinate Jest? I also think not. Send it to your best ex-friend. wchitt@ipa.net
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