Infinite Jest: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: I love it, but what does it all mean?
Review: I'm done...I finally finished it last night! If you actually finish this novel, then I know you'll understand me completely when I say that it feels like I've vanquished a huge accomplishment of a beast. I loved it, but it does get tedious in spots. Now, as someone has previously said in one of their reviews, it's not so much about the ending of this novel as the beginning...very much like Joyce's Ulysses. The only question is, what does it all mean? I'm not looking for a complete answer to everything because that would impossible and pointless, but if someone out there has read this...drop me an e-mail and let me know what they think the ending means ... I'm dyin' here! [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Pure genius
Review: Say farewell, at least for a month or so, to your family, friends, and other hobbies. Figure out a way to fortify your fingers, wrists, and arms so you can hold this book up for hours at a time over a period of weeks. Reconfigure the lighting arrangement in your reading area for maximum glow. Find two sturdy bookmarks. Take a deep breath, let it out real slow, and you are ready to begin the monumental task of reading David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest." It took me three solid weeks to navigate a path through the byzantine structures of Wallace's magnum opus, three weeks of reading at least twenty pages a day (often more than that, of course) to get through the nearly 1,000 pages of text and the ninety plus pages of endnotes that make up this novel. If you have heard of Wallace before, and you probably have if you are checking out reviews for the book, you know "Infinite Jest" has quite a reputation in the literary world. You will see stuffed shirts tossing around words like "post post-modernism" and other academic jargon while referring to Wallace's oeuvre. Don't let these old fogies get you down; "Infinite Jest" is an immensely readable, hypnotically fascinating novel chock full of great humor, great sadness, and thought provoking themes.

The novel takes place in Enfield, Massachusetts in the near future. In the story, Canada, the United States, and Mexico formed a federation called the Organization of North American Nations (known as O.N.A.N.). The citizens of this confederation spend their time watching entertainment cartridges playable on their "teleputers," devices that came about when broadcast television went bankrupt. Advertisers predictably had a cow over the loss of television, so the government allowed companies to purchase calendar years and rename them. Hence, we have years called "The Year of Glad," and "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment." Not everyone is happy with the O.N.A.N. arrangement; Quebecois revolutionaries continue to seek an independent homeland from their Canadian masters, only now they have to deal with the United States as well. In a devious bid for independence, a group of terrorists known as "The Wheelchair Assassins" (!) are seeking a film cartridge that supposedly kills anyone who watches it by turning them into pleasure seeking zombies. Moreover, a new energy system called annular fusion requires the confederation to dump its toxic waste into a place called "The Great Concavity," an abandoned area encompassing most of Maine and other northeastern regions. The concavity borders Quebec, and the toxins flung there with giant catapults (!!) have leeched into surrounding areas, thus causing thousands of people to develop life-threatening deformities.

Wallace introduces dozens of oddball characters in the course of his narrative, with special emphasis placed on the students at the Enfield Tennis Academy and the addicts populating a drug rehab right down the hill called Ennet House. The primary character at Enfield is one Hal Incandenza, a genius and a tennis star with a growing addiction to marijuana. Living with Hal are his horribly disfigured brother Mario, his promiscuous but hyper intelligent mother Avril, and several fellow students who redefine our conceptions of the bizarre. Hal has difficulties dealing with his family due to, among other issues, the horrific suicide via microwave oven of his father James. Dad was a scientist who helped develop annular fusion before going into experimental filmmaking. It was, in fact, James Incandenza who made the fatal entertainment cartridge that is causing so many headaches. In opposition to the madhouse that is Enfield is the madhouse that is Ennet House, where drug addict Don Gately attempts to take things one day at a time. Gately lived a life of desperate abandon, burglarizing homes in order to pay for his addictions. The only thing harder than living on drugs is kicking the habit, and Wallace describes in minute detail the hard sought sobriety of Don Gately and his fellow addicts. I know this summary stinks, I know I'm leaving tons of stuff out, but place the blame on Wallace for constructing such a complex novel.

Several themes thread their way through the novel. The most notable is the theme of addiction and recovery represented by Hal Incandenza and Don Gately. Another theme is the role of entertainment in American society, something Wallace sees as a calamity of epic proportions that will only end in death. If you tire of looking for deeper meaning in "Infinite Jest," don't worry. You can laugh yourself sick over the humorous aspects of the book or stare in open-mouthed awe at the numerous digressions from the main story. Wallace is a powerful writer, capable of infusing seemingly banal situations like filmmaking and sports with amazing energy. Check out the story about Hal's brother Orin punting in his first football game, or the Eschaton disaster at the academy, or James Incandenza's filmography in one of the endnotes for proof of this assertion. I especially loved the filmography and the endnote explaining the origins of the Wheelchair Assassins, two of the funniest, most wildly inventive things I have ever read. Most of the book is as equally brilliant even as it veers off in a dozen different directions.

"Infinite Jest" is intricate, with its multitude of subplots, OED inspired vocabulary, and tragic characters, yet the book still entertains because Wallace knows how to drape a compelling, easily understood story over all of the complexities. I'm under no illusions that I picked up on more than a fraction of the many things Wallace was attempting to say, but who cares? I had a heckuva a ride through this book, and hopefully you will too. Remember, take your time, breathe easy, and don't worry too much about carpal tunnel syndrome.

P.S. Allston Rules.

Rating:
Summary: Soooo self-aware
Review: I thought the book was an interesting experiment and I enjoyed the feeling that I was a part of the whole experiment in writing and being ingulfed in his (clearly) vast and diverse knowledge. So post-post-modernist. I felt like it never fused as a story, though. That's not necessarily an indictment, but I fault the book because I think that it could have been all brought together and been more valuable because of it. But, again, I'm sure Wallace is pleased with his product and doesn't want us to feel satisfied in the least. So, it's worth a read, but don't expect to feel changed after all of the hours you spend with it.

Rating:
Summary: Who's the butt of this Jest?
Review: I've seen a lot of people showering Infinite Jest with glowing praise, much of which claims that it "expands our idea of what a novel can be". Well, I think that the people who make these claims might actually be the butt of DFW's Infinite Jest. The fact that he doesn't actually finish the novel, but rather simply stops writing in the middle of the narrative strikes me less as some new, avant-garde stylistic mechanism, and more as a lack of discipline on the part of the writer - he simply let the story get away from him. But the other alternative, and by far the more interesting one, is that he did it on purpose for the same reason that one of his characters - Dr. Incandenza - creates a "new" style of film - to simply make fun of all the reviewers and psuedo-intellectuals who are afraid to admit that they don't understand something, and so imbue it with deep meaning when none is present. And if that's the case, then my hat's off to him, because, judging by the reviews I've read, he has succeeded admirably.

But don't get me wrong - it was fun to read. Much of the book is very well written, addresses a wide range of interesting topics in an intriguing way, and there are several bits that are laugh-out-loud funny. But there are also parts that are ponderously long-winded and appear to have no real connection to the "plot" (term used very loosely). I liked DFW's style up to a point, and then it appeared laboured and over self-conscious, kind of like a very bright child showing off.

The upshot of this is yes, it was fun to read, but it was more like reading a series of really interesting articles and short stories than a novel per se. Many will and do call this a new style - but I guess I'm just old fashioned, because it seemed too disjointed too me. It seemed to make a lie out of the line on the cover of Infinite Jest that claim it was "a novel".

And I don't appreciate reading through 900+ pages of someone's private joke, even when it was as funny and well written as much (not all) of Infinite Jest was.

Rating:
Summary: Yes
Review: If you've ever done drugs, been depressed, loved great stories, been obsessed with something, hated the classics, loved television and/or been made crazy by the global corporate miasma, you'll love this book. Give it a few weeks, and you'll be trying to work the words "annular" and "postprandial" into your cocktail conversations. Don't be afraid to tell people you read all 100 pages of endnotes and that you're sad the book was whittled down from 1700 pages (which included 400 pages of notes).

Wallace is without peer when it comes to telling inventive stories. And, like Pynchon, he sees that the most interesting way to tie everything in a novel together is through a hallucinogenic conspiracy. There are geniuses and idiots, and confluences of both in the same person, often at the same time.

If the world makes you want to live in a box and drink cough syrup, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Generic Pynchon...
Review: I'll quickly get to the point, which is something that Wallace himself is incapable of: utter crap! Now just imagine how many trees could have been saved at the expense of this man's career...

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: David Foster Wallace's maximalist opus is as fun to read as it is daunting to start. Every chapter, footnote, and sub-footnote is grandly, weirdly, and wildly funny - they are cornucopiae filled with the energy and deliberate, second-order prescience of a comic and literary genius.

Of note:

1) Eschaton: just the rules for this aptly-named game (in the notes, of course) are as wonderful as the entire 'debacle' itself.

2) 'Les assassins de fauteuil roulant' - brain aneurysmically (in a good way) funny, esp. the bit wherein Orin notices the statistically improbable numbers of men in wheelchairs following him.

3) There is just too much more to ever hope to detail.

Moving on to the literary value of the work: while it is currently very trendy to knock Wallace, most criticism from outside the lit. crit. circle deals exclusively with what most consider an exclusivity in his writing; i.e., difficulty engendered by (mainly) word choice. This does not seem to be a valid criticism, as anyone who has read, say, Gaddis's "A Frolic of His Own" realizes that it makes "Infinite Jest" look like "Harry Potter II: The Quickening."

Which is not to say that "IJ" can't be tough; it can. It is to say that it's much easier than one might think. And as for the lack of resolution at the end? Just read the first chapter again - trust me.

"Infinite Jest" is worth it. Every single word. Other quick Amazon picks include: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez, [e-mail] by Tom Grimes -- a glorious post-post modern romp/satire through consumerism culture, which is joyously hilarious!

Rating:
Summary: i am reading the body, and subsequently the notes
Review: some people don't like wallace. some facts: his vocabulary most likely exceeds our collective vocab. his tendency to use footnotes probably exceeds our collective tendency in this direction. his talents as a writer most likely exceed our abilities (as, i might point out, exemplified by this review). the vocabulary seems to incline some to call dfw pretentious. the footnotes seem to incline others to call him rediculously academic. the talent inclines most of us to thoroughly enjoy his work.

the parallel stories of the jest are, in and of themselves, interesting to follow. the happenings at an elite tennis academy on a hill, and the lives in a half-way house at the bottom of said hill. the way in which these are interspersed is remarkable. the further inclusion of secret agents and assassins, as you might imagine, makes the book that much better.

wallace is quite the nice writer, inasmuch as he is nice to the reader. there are various "puzzles" that one can play with and try to figure out, but eventually he simply explains what is happening. thus, for anyone that enjoys joyce's writings but want something a bit more modern, the jest is an excellent choice. for anyone that likes logic/word games, this is truly a treasure trove.

as for range: wallace's telling of a.a. stories can be surrealy depressing, his "recounting" of a game called eschaton (i appologize if i have mispelt that, i don't have the book handy) is disastrously hilarious, and his explanation of the mean-value theorem for integrals is witty and accessible, even for people lacking second semester/real analysis. if you want it, it's in here.

quite frankly, if you're looking for an exceptional literary experience on par with pynchon or delillo but were hoping for a self-contained package, this is it. the jest is just that and so much more. besides, how couldn't you love a book with a main character brighter than your average physicist that pulls his friend's frozen-to-the-window head away without running some cool water over the point of contact first? see? i can feel your love for the book already.

Rating:
Summary: This Book Stays With You (and not as a doorstop)
Review: My title lies. This book didn't stay with me -- it has traveled to many of my friends who wanted to read it for themselves. I think that it's currently somewhere in the South Pacific. I finished this book at least four years ago, and I still complain about it. This causes my friends to borrow it. Why?

My chief complaint: I actually liked this book, maybe even loved it.

I really wanted to hate it. I really hated lugging it on the subway to read. I hated breaking a sweat if I carried it anywhere during those summer months. I hated everyone who stopped me as I read and said, "Infinite Jest... I started that, but it's too long to finish. What page are you on?" I hated the tiny print, the endnotes (don't skip them), and the two bookmarks.

But the book itself was worth it. It is a book that you want to buy. I won't give you a plot overview because an overview of a book of this length is a bit silly and I can't do better than what has already been done. Also, I believe that you should take your time and read the book -- be naive and don't skip ahead. Good books of this length should be savored.

What I will do is predict that, eventually, you will want to read Infinite Jest again. I still remember the characters in that book better than some of the men I dated. While I may be trying to forget those men, I am now readying myself for the second reading of Infiinte Jest because certain aspects are getting hazy -- and this is one book deserving so much more than that.

Rating:
Summary: You need two bookmarks
Review: I'd guess you won't like this book if you don't enjoy that first chapter (available free here.)

First book I've read by someone my own age that I'd rank among the best writers. Strange to see great writing by someone that grew up watching cartoons.