Rating: 
Summary: A tad much
Review: What kind of ego must one have to alter the form of the novel that has worked for,gosh,a few centuries now to accommodate his own footnote fetish. This gets old real quick in Infinite Jest. I'm sure there is quality here but I got tired of watching the author show off. Length,bulk and dense writing can be O.K.,but must be backed up with substance. As Lloyd Bentson might have put it "I knew Thomas Pynchon, I've read Thomas Pynchon - and Mr. Wallace you're no Thomas Pynchon."
Rating: 
Summary: Is anyone else dying to know what happened to Don?
Review: Though I agree that the first 200 or so pages are a slog, once I got further into it I was hooked. Occasionally I am impressed with an author's wit and verbal pyrotechnics (Nabokov). Other times with a book's emotion and compassion (recently in Elizabeth McCracken). I've never read anything that combined the two the way that this novel does. It's almost shocking the way that DFW can write about something so unspeakably awful (e.g., an addict carrying around her dead baby until it smells), yet try to make you laugh at the same time. I felt like a fungus laughing out loud while these poor folks sat around in AA meetings describing the depths to which they had sunk. I had dreams about Mario and his squelching pelvis smeared with burn ointment. And was rooting for Hal with all my heart. My only quibble is that we don't get a more cathartic ending. A thousand pages is a lot to invest in characters without getting some idea of where they're going. Don Gately will now forever be in the hospital refusing narcotics as far as I'm concerned. I would hope for an Infinite Jest II to follow these folks if I wasn't sure that it must be a disppointment after the brilliance of the original.
Rating:
Summary: "infinite jest" is challenging but rewarding
Review: The title says it all! It sometimes seems as though the joke is on the reader. This meandering story takes forever to read and, yes, study, but is well worth the effort. It's the type of book that I plan to read again, someday, like when I'm retired and have great vistas of time to fill.
Rating:
Summary: Infinite Jest: or The Book that Nobody Ever Read
Review: OK, so I'm the last in a long chain of book lovers who have passed on this same dog-eared copy of Infinite Jest, largely unread, with hope that the next reader could better explain why this book is so well received. I was the first in this parade of lost souls to finish, so I get to write the review. Let's see if I can summarize the complaints we've had ...
-- The narrative is always inconsistent (sic), peppered with unappetizing colloquialisms and grammatical "corrections" for its own flaws that draw attention away from the story. It makes the reading experience like driving through fog with Vaseline-covered sunglasses.
-- The text is chronically marred with endnotes that force you to thumb 800 pages to find an insipid observation that had nothing to do with the noted object.*
*The endnotes can be 5 pages long and
footnoted themselves, which still manage
to avoid enlightening the footnoted text
-- The alleged novel is really 17 short stories until around page 250, when it begins to congeal into a textual pudding with clumps of esoterica and pools of brilliant anecdote. And it tastes sooo pretentious!
I'm sure DFW had a great time writing this book, but when does the _reader_ get to have fun? For the first 300 pages I really wanted to put the book down, run out in the rain and catch pneumonia. But, like all the characters in the book, I became hooked. And therein lies the Jest Infinite (oops, let the cat out of the bag) - we're all a bunch of addicts to reading, and someone needs to come along and create a BA (books anonymous) to help us gain Control over our dependencies. What a powerful force moves us to finish and even believe we liked a book that definitely doesn't like us! The only reason I rate it as high as I do is the payoff you get when you actually finish: the high of reading 2300 grams of pure fluff.
Rating: 
Summary: The fine line between genius and inanity (sic.).
Review: Mixed emotions about a mixed metaphor, or the worst (but funniest) pun of all time, or the angst of seeing all the rules broken with a broken ruler; I really am at a loss concerning this book. It's not that I dislike long or annotated books (I'd just finished the Northwestern University's heavily annotated "Moby Dick" and loved it!), but this almost pointless tome pained me to read in a way not felt since being assigned "The Yearling" in school. I dreaded picking it up, but felt I had to finish it no matter what. I read a dozen other books while wading through this quagmire of pretentiousness. Given, Wallace can turn a phrase with the best I've seen; but wading through this virtual pharmacopia of silliness to get to a moment of brilliance isn't my idea of a good time. The fancy philologisms were done better by Burgess, the pharmacopian fantasies better by Burroughs, and the tone and tenor of the book is mirrored (only in a more concise and readable piece) by "The Tetherballs of Bougainville". One Amazon.com reviewer mentioned breaking Wallace's legs. That seems an extreem and somewhat excessive exercise. I would limit my ministrations to his writing hand.
Rating:
Summary: A State of Halcyon
Review: Alot of people seemed to take themselves and their description of this book very seriously, accrediting more to the reader than to the writer, Wallace. Of course it is silly to say that it doesn't take "something" to read it, but imagine what it took to write it. All I can say is, it was the best book I have ever read. It is more realistic than reality, and a work of art, which I think should replace the constitution, as far as worth. I think it would do alot of good for some people to read this book. But then again, you get whatever you want out of anything. And this book is infintely full, so dive in!
Rating:
Summary: Calculus to our counting
Review: David Foster Wallace is a writer who leaves me ruptured in mind (his genius) and body (his humor). The human universe we see with the naked eye, Wallace views thru his own personal Hubble Telescope, and describes with a language that is calculus compared to our own simple counting. Reading Wallace was like looking, for the first time, at the drop of plain, ordinary water we call life; under his intense magnification, an astounding other/same world suddenly appears, leaving one in complete and utter awe. Wallace does owe me for a new dictionary though as he set my poor Websters paperback on fire and burned it to a dull gray ash.
Rating:
Summary: Just whetting your appetite
Review: I loved the book, but I won't join the fray. Instead, I'm putting up one of my favorite one-liners of all time, which appears in this novel. "The truth will set you free, but not until it is done with you." If you like this kind of wisdom, there's more where it came from.
Rating:
Summary: When are they airing the TV miniseries???
Review: Entertainment as warfare--yes! what a great idea!
What's all this about Wallace's "poor characterization?" If you're going to criticize, why don't you offer an example of the kind of characterization you expect from a novel so that the rest of us will know where you're coming from, and can therefore either accept or (more likely) reject your criticism? I hate to sound like some kind of cult member defending its leader or something, but it's almost like if you haven't given this book an honest attempt, you haven't given yourself one, either. Sure, there are flaws in Infinite Jest but as far as intelligent, challenging fiction goes, there's not a lot else out there, know what I mean? All respect to Pynchon, but "Pynchonesque"--what a dumb word. You should know, there ARE original writers down here in the oubliette of "generation x": not all of them can be so easily indexed or glommed onto some older writer's reputation or style. Anyway, if you take the dust jacket off the hardcover copy and leave it laying in a carefully inconspicuous spot in your apartment, without ever reading it, Infinite Jest makes kind of a neat prop (like most books in this day and age). Maybe someone will stumble across it, think "Hey, he/she sure does have some interesting taste in literature," and they'll pick it up, and become hooked, and you'll arrive home several weeks later to find them dead a few hundred pages from the end... Jesse Hilson
Rating:
Summary: a new breed of writing/reading which is truly refreshing
Review: i must say, i have never enjoyed reading a book so much. to enjoy the act of reading - to enjoy the becoming wrapped up in characters who are wholly wrapped up in themselves - to enjoy the style of a writer who surprises, gladdens, and so tantalizingly annoys with his quirks that you are compelled to go on - that is the mission of a writer. david foster wallace: mission accomplished. abraham lincoln said that "writing...is the great invention of the world," david foster wallace should stand in line at the patent office.
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