Rating: 
Summary: The joke's on us, folks
Review:
Sigh. And I was so looking forward to a good read...
I forced myself to read the first 255 pages (and every blessed footnote along the way) of this Generation-X encyclopedia of drugs, alcohol, and adolescent tennis before I decided to stop torturing myself and throw the book away. Oh, the guilt! Since books are my passion, throwing one in the trash was, well, difficult.
So what's wrong with it? Have you ever seen one of those pictures that at first glance looks like nothing more than millions of colored dots? If you relax your eyes and look "through" the dots, a 3-D picture begins to take shape, and pretty soon you don't see the dots at all because you're inside the picture. That's as close as I can get to the magic of reading a good book. Sadly, with Infinite Jest, I couldn't find the story inside the words. I was always uncomfortably aware of the "dots" - of Wallace's sentence structure, his choice of words, his background research, and, most of all, the prodigious amount of EFFORT that went into this book.
Infinite Jest contains a thousand pages of disjointed character sketches with nothing but the book binding to hold them together. Too bad the sum of the parts doesn't add up to anything more than a technical (w)hole.
Rating: 
Summary: Generation X meets Naked Lunch meets Ulysses???
Review: Well, just I suspected, the worst part of Wallace's novel for me was the end. I found it a little unsatisfying, mainly because I wasn't ready for the novel to end. It's odd to speak of a 1000-page novel being too short, but I guess it was. It reminded me of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" by the Beatles, from 'Abbey Road.' That song (nearly eight minutes of it) ends so abruptly that I STILL, after having heard it hundreds of times over the past twenty-plus years, am stunned by it every time. The reason it ends that way is because, if it didn't, it would go on forever, and I, for one, would listen to it as long as it lasted, rather like those poor sods who chanced upon the Mad Stork's smiley-face cartridge. The novel is rife with self-referential meta-fiction and meta-film elements, as stylistic device and also a thematic motif, so it's no surprise that the title itself is another example of this. Surely the author knew that critics would call it "Infinite Length" and such, and the "jest" is of course on them AND us....the story (not the novel, the story) is infinite (real life doesn't have chapters) and the novel (not the story) had to stop (not end) somewhere. If it didn't, we would go on reading it forever
Rating: 
Summary: It's a trip but not that fun.
Review: I felt like I was an unfortunate victim of a lukewarm stand-up comic. Prepare to be insulted (and I mean DIRECTLY) by this book if you are a woman, a black, or a poor person, and not by one of the character's voices but by the most chirpily constant of all, David Himself. (Wallace makes a point of playing with who's talking when and emphasizes that it's usually but not always all him.)
Formally, the writing is fun and postmodern and all. But it's worth thinking seriously about whether you really want to hang out for 6 weeks on a road trip with the brain of a 16-year-old tennis academician who can have intense fun with words and novel structure but will seriously and simply insult you every 5 pages or so without any good interesting reason. I took more sociocultural punches to the groin reading the 1000+ then I received TOTAL before in my entire life. If people are going to say that this is part of simulating the drug thing, then I say Whatever. I can get the cravable burnable bits of it better elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: This book on addiction is an addiction unto itself!
Review: It is awfully ironic that a book about addiction in its many forms is one of the few books in recent years that I have been unable to put down. Likewise, it becomes ironic that we actually take the time to carefully read footnotes and look up the words we don't know (and trust me, this book is full of them) while reading a book in which obsessive-compulsiveness plays such a hefty part. I am an English student that have had the pleasures of taking classes taught by both this book's author and his mother (he teaches at ISU in Bloomington, Illinois; she teaches at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois)and I promise you, young writers can learn alot simply by reading this 1,079 page opus. Single-handedly, one of the best books I have ever read, writers might be advised to read it twice. There's no way to catch it all the first time
Rating:
Summary: The Joke's On You
Review: The funniest thing about this book, in a world filled with 30-minute TV shows and 100-page 16-point vacuous feelgoodism masquerading as books, is the thought that anyone would actually bother to read it.
But the joke's on you, because, as it turns out, you can't *help* but read it. It's just way too addictively funny to be able to resist. Think nothing about discipline or endurance. Just start reading it. Don't worry about the length. You won't be able to put it down, and you'll be come away genuinely sad that it's not longer.
The book's length isn't the least of your worries as a reader. Wallace demands a lot more of his readers than just time. First of all, you have to keep track of a flood of characters, some which appear minor at first but become major, putting together lots of out-of -sequence plot action. The best I can describe the narrative unfolding is like dropping a paper towel on a floor that has been splattered with multi-colored paint. At first, you just see some distinct spots of different color and shape. But as the narrative progresses, they all start spreading together (though in the book's case, it's more like they're racing towards a head-on collision) until you finally end up with a coherent mosaic. And keep a dictionary nearby, because Wallace's lexical tours de force are very humbling for people who have previously supposed themselves pretty educated. And it demonstrates that it's not only Hal -- the book's hero -- who's been spending way too much time rooting around in the OED. Where else to you get words like acrostic, ephebic, and saprogenic? (You'll note I've helpfully arranged these terms in alphabetical order for easier lookup, something Wallace won't be kind enough to do). It isn't helped by a fairly daunting smattering of Latin, German, and French, only some of which is translated. (N.B. I'm a fluent French speaker, and a lot of the French didn't sound genuine, and some of it was even incorrect, but on the other hand, I'm not familiar at all with the Quebecois, since I'm speak the continental version, so it might just be me). And I was sure at least some of the odd words were neologisms of Wallace's own coin, like the term "howling fantods," which sounds like some post-millenial argot. So I didn't bother looking that one up at first. But believe it or not, that one's a real word too. And then there is the "Notes and Errata" section at the end of the book, which is the thing that most amused me about the book and probably what impelled me to read it. Notes and Errata in a 1st edition work of fiction? The only other times I've seen such a thing is in deceased writers works where pretentious editors helpfully or unhelpfully try to explain to you what the author meant to say. Don't make the fatal error of skipping any of those endnote notations in the text; this small-print section not only comprises some of the funniest stuff in the book (such as the filmography), but also contains some vital plot aspects. I suggest you keep two bookmarks in the book, one for the main section, and the other to help you find the endnotes.
If Wallace's wit were a weapon, it would definitely require a waiting period. He rat-a-tats us with a dizzying fusillade of rapid-fire wit, whose comic timing is so bulls-eye accurate, so fast and clever that it's automatic weapons grade. You can't take it all in at once. Yet he keeps going and going, so dense and copious, going and going, like some polymath Energizer Bunny with an Uzi. In the end, you can't laugh anymore, you just have to stand back and shake your head at such a flabbergasting, torrential, even indecent display of tragicomic, patho-bathetic but ultimately human and affirming genius. So it's yet another layer of irony that you feel like you've ODed on Wallace.
It's odd to say, but there's not any filler. This book is chock-to-the-brim full in a way that books 1/5 the size aren't. (Or like this review isn't) Its size makes Moby Dick look like a guppy. It isn't just funny, it's also sad and even appaling at times. But it is ultimately a very important and relevant commentary on the nature of our culture, and how we value and choose our entertainments. Even if some of the stuff seems absurd (The Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad? A Union-activist, compulsively clean Las Vegas lounge crooner cum President?) It may strain credulity, but somehow it all seems plausible. After all, the universe, particularly the 1990s in the USA, is pretty absurd sometimes.
But I'd better stop here, because my effusivenes is lapsing into prolixity. Just read the book. You'll come away bewildered, delighted, and offended. Bewildered that someone could be so smart, funny, and meaninful. Delighted because you can inject, smoke, and sniff the stuff till you're dazed. Offended because you'll never, ever, be able to write something so good.
P.S. I'd love to get email from other readers' who have ideas about how the plot is supposed to be resolved. I have some ideas and would like to discuss them with others
Rating:
Summary: Stop the Madness
Review: An early review of this book refered to Gaddis and Pynchon. Now every thing written about this book includes them. Does anyone out there have an original thought??
Wallace has more in common with Jerzy Kosinski and Martin Amis at the peak of their powers. He is the first great writer of our generation. I have never read anyone so young who had so much (almost too much) to say.
Man oh man does Wallace have a lot to say. If you don't understand this book, thank whatever God you pray to, because life has been easy on you.
If the coming dawn shocks you every morning, amazed to wake to another day, and 'nausea' seems like a banal rip off of 'either-or' Buy the book and live with it for a while. You won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: A book! A novel! Of such quality that it has been published!
Review: This book is almost as amusing as the people who try to
tell you how to read it. As an aid to the layman, I shall
summarize their position: "Infinite Jest" is a masterpiece of prose, an aria of imagination. It stands on its own, defying criticism...unless, that is, you have read
the novel and intend to criticize it, in which case you should be referred to the works of Gaddis and Pynchon,
who are even more famous than David Foster Wallace and often just as unfunny. Foster Wallace's writing evokes an infectious love of language. However, if you don't like his diction, keep in mind that he was initially writing for a very small audience (his aunt and the ghost of Nabokov).
All in all, the book is great, but not for everybody; if it is not for you, it is above you. But buy it, anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes a finger is just a finger.
Review: I don't remember what I had for dinner last Friday. I don't remember what I wore to work three days ago. I don't remember the scent of my ex-girlfriend's shampoo. But it's been about nine months since I finished Infinite Jest, and I find it's still resonating in my head like the memories of a good vacation.
We English-major types love to sound off about art (I've spent the last nine months scouring the 'net for a forum in which to discuss IJ), but never mind memes and tropes and pop-culture metaphors for right now. Let me put your mind at ease: IJ isn't just for Pynchon-heads, lit-crits and hip pre-millennial academics. IJ is, among other things, fun. It's a mystery in a joke wrapped in "Peyton Place," rolled in a giant paper and trailing fragrant smoke. It's a great party with your weird neighbors. It's a late-night dorm-room rap about everything that's profound and banal in the life of a late-Twentieth-Century American. It is, in short, a trip.
I find it curious that the most common criticisms of Wallace's book refer to its length, its endnotes, or its allegedly unsatisfying conclusion. The only even marginally defensible position from the critical viewpoint is that Wallace cheated his readers out of their comfortable feeling of closure by not wrapping up his plot lines in Christmas paper and handing them over, and even that argument ultimately belies a merely cursory reading of the novel. The other two criticisms are at once irrelevant and slightly whiny.
Remember when you heft the book (a much less daunting task in paperback, no doubt) that brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is not necessarily the soul of fiction. The discussion of how many words should have been pruned or how many should have been added is moot: IJ is what it is. Although structure and form are valid critical criteria, one should not wag a finger and tell Tolstoy to slim down because of the trim physique of "The Old Man and the Sea." The minuet does not invalidate the symphony. If you feel that the material does not warrant a lengthy treatment then criticize the author's instincts, but in the case of IJ that approach again belies a too-literal interpretation. Either read it or don't, but "too long" is a criticism that should be reserved for cafeteria lines and dental procedures.
The endnotes are a literary device, nothing more. Perhaps they're a satirical comment on academia, maybe they're a metafiction tool to bring a measure of physicality to the reading process, maybe Wallace just digs the way they look, but don't get annoyed because they make it inconvenient to read the book with a drink in hand. Wallace uses endnotes in his prose (nonfiction as well) for asides, omniscient-author commentary, and lengthy exposition that he has for some reason determined inappropriate in the context of the novel's body, and in IJ they conform to Wallace's structural scheme. In fact, late in IJ the endnote device itself becomes significant in demonstrating characters' psychological conditions. If your inerpretation of the novel leads you to conclude that Wallace made an unwise choice in the endnote device, like a poorly chosen adjective or clunky sentence, then criticize the device and its subtext; it's laziness and poor analysis to just gripe about the page-turning.
An examination of IJ's narrative form is probably somewhat illuminated by an essay Wallace wrote on David Lynch (it appears in his recent collection, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"). In the essay, Wallace cites an axiom about conclusions and meaning in fiction (and art in general, I suppose): if you point something out to a dog, the dog will stare at your pointing finger (it's actually more elegant than that in the essay, but I'm paraphrasing). The implication is that in Lynch's work and, by extrapolation, in his own, a created item is not necessarily intended to be analyzed in terms of pure form (that is, form isolated from meaning). In short, IJ means more than the sum total of its characters' experiences.
This would be a perfect place to launch into an attack on the insidiousness and occasional dishonesty of the neat conclusion, especially as exemplified by the 23-minute sitcom minidrama, but that kind of argument is really disingenuous and kind of snobby. Of course there's a place in fiction for the neatly wrapped plot line and the satisfying denouement. But the fact that an author has chosen to write an elliptical novel (which, incidentally, IJ inarguably is) doesn't imply that the author was lazy, or inept, or hurried, or incapable of wrapping up his own story. Accept ambiguity as a legitimate and, in many cases, desirable quality of art. The fact of the seemingly inconclusive ending should be taken into account in assessing the work as a whole and, ultimately, looking farther than the finger. And besides, the book isn't inconclusive or really all that ambiguous: if you didn't get it at the end of the last page, think about it a little bit and try harder.
To once again paraphrase and interpret the Lynch essay, IJ, like Lynch, occupies a peculiar space in the pantheon: it's a novel that uses familiar devices of entertainment, accessible language, humor and cultural references both high- and low-brow, and traditionally developed characters to tell a tale that is more complex than its components suggest. Therefore it falls somewhere in the no-man's-land between amusement and challenge, drawing on each tradition and befuddling many.
But having said all that, let me encourage you to just forget it. The book is a good read. Here's what it comes down to: I'm not a patient reader, I'm not exceptionally astute, and I'm really intolerant of hackneyed writing, but I found myself unwilling to put down "Infinite Jest." Even when I was finished, I didn't want to stop reading (yes, a joke on me and ironic in the context of the novel, I know). The lazy-reader part of me wanted someone to take me by the hand and walk me step by step through the novel, answering all my questions, pointing out to me all the sights and following each narrative to its terminus. But the more mature part of me, the part that wants to appreciate art and be expanded by it, realizes that such intellectual indulgence would only spoil my fun and ultimately disappoint (like the first time you get to eat all the ice cream you want). Forget about the finger; enjoy the view.
Rating:
Summary: Reading can be addictive, too.
Review: David Foster Walece's novel Infinite Jest is a story of addiction, but not just drug addiction. Sure, some addicts in this magnificent book are hooked on drugs. One amusing (and disturbing) sequence is a stream of consciousness rambling by someone who is waiting for a kilo of marijuana to be delivered so he can get high for the last time, but his damaged brain and paranoia keep him from making a decision as to whether he should try to get in touch with his contact. But there are others hooked on sex, sports, old movies, M*A*S*H, radio programs, tennis and even an addiction to breaking an addiction. The story takes place at a tennis academy near Boston in the not too distant future. It just so happens that a halfway house for recovering addicts is just down the hill from the school. Hijinks ensue, but not your typical crazy students vs. the rest of the community a la Animal House. The irony of the situation is that what goes on at the school is, in its own way, identical to what goes on at the halfway house, i.e. folks pushing the edge of the envelope just to see what they can get away with. The author shows us that one can become addicted to just about anything to the point of excluding everyone and anything else from their life. He see it every day: the rituals that people follow and their need for acceptance in a world where their quirks, some physical, some psychological, make them just a little bit different.
That's not to say that the book is gloomy and serious. Indeed, it is a satirical look at the future of the country. Years are no longer referred to by a number; they are sold to corporations who subsidize the country in exchange for the free publicity, an idea the former lounge singer President got from attending a New Year's Day Bowl game.
People are comparing David Foster Wallace to Thomas Pynchon. I prefer to just let Wallace be Wallace. Prepare yourself. This is a hefty read. The plot meanders in time and location and some times you wonder " where did that come from?" Fear not, loose ends are tied, often with a surprising knot. Two bookmarkers are necessary: one to mark your place in the text and one to mark your place in the footnotes, a couple of which are chapters unto themselves. Having a PDR and dictionary handy wouldn't hurt, either. And don't stop until you finish it. And when you do, just flip back to page one and start over. After all, if one reading can be this entertaining, just think of the buzz you'll get from two
Rating:
Summary: The best book I've read that was written in this decade
Review: Do you have lots of time to do any reading? If so, I recommend Infinite Jest. Just out in paperback, I'm reading it now, I think you might like it. It has this twisted plot involving, among many other things, Quebec independence from (gasp) America (heehee) and Organized North American Nations subsidised time (ie corporate sponsorship of the years, like Year of the Whopper, Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, instead of 1998, 1999, etc) being fought by Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents. It also involves a tennis acadamy, lots of drugs, interesting endnotes (the author must moonlight at a pharmacutical company), and high definition digital entertainment. I'm interested to see how it all converges, I'm on page 150-something now. It's written by David Foster Wallace who seems to be brilliant. His insight is always so fresh, which isn't easy to do when you have hundreds of years of writing preceding you. But not a obvious metaphor yet, this guy is good. Not a single "The blood making patterns on her dress like the ink blots on a Rorscharch test." (That quote, as much as it sounds fabricated to be an obvious metaphor quote, is real, taken from Eden Robinson's much hyped collection of short stories Traplines. Eden is called a Gen X laureate by some. I ask, with that boring imagery? Please, Eden, we can do better than that, can't we? Check Mr. Wallace for one. But I digress...) Very few people, and writers in particular, know how to describe something in a very new way. David Foster Wallace does. One image I recall is his description of the desert surrounding the city of Tucson as the color of a lion's hide. Now that is original to me. I would not have thought of that. And the book is absolutely chock full of original (and funny!) things to say, even when I'm not..
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