Infinite Jest

As a book, this is an interesting read. Its a long story, with over 1000 pages, but if you are hungry for literature, this one is for you.Physically, however, the book I got was a paperback, and like i said it is a BIG book, so the front and back paperback pages tore a bit after only a few uses. I don’t really mind that much, but if you can find a hard cover of this and are thinking of displaying this book at some point, maybe think of going that route instead.

Hard but great book. This is my second or third copy.

Reminds me of goosebumps, but like maybe a little harder to comprehend. Overall pretty good book, but I think R.L Stein probably would have done a better job. I give it 4 out of 5, would be better if it incorporates more thematic elements of monsters and other spooky stuff.

Don’t waste your time

Having read IJ, I immediately thought to myself, “I’m glad that I’m a jam-band fan.” For that same reason, I can understand why a lot of people do not like this book. If you don’t have the patience to listen to Trey Anastasio noodle through a 15 minute improv to get to “the moment”, the big transcendent payoff, then you will be in the same company as Tom Bissell, who, in the forward to the 20th Anniversary Edition wrote, “For the first few hundred pages of my initial reading, I will confess that I greatly disliked Infinite Jest.” That description was my experience as well. If I were to call it fragmented, frustrating and fantastic, it would be, admittedly, pithy, but true to my experience.Sections seem to interrupt one another the same the way the short film, “Crimson Permanent Assurance” interrupts the rest of Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life”-by design. Except, there is no context for the interruption, at least at the beginning of the book. A lot of the humor feels in the Python vein: The Feral Hamsters of the Great Concavity and instructions for avoiding them. The US Department of Unspecified Services. Ecological Gerrymandering. An academic course entitled, “The History of Canadian Unpleasantness.” All of those things might tickle my funny bone, but might not possess the trade-off that gets other readers past the digressions that sometimes feel pointless-until they become not so pointless. There are plenty of times that a new chapter begins in a completely different voice, runs multiple pages long, doesn’t relate to the story in any way, and one won’t have any idea who even narrated the chapter. Plenty of times the reader will say, “What on earth did I just read? And why?”The absurd is relied upon consistently in this novel; Absurdity for the sake of being absurd, or absurdity that is the essential sugar that makes the more serious stuff go down. Those absurdities could be as innocuous as run on sentences that are pregnant with their own children, endnotes that you’d better damn well read lest you miss critical points in the story, or the fact that every single character from one of the four major narratives is precocious. But then there is the absurd that is a trifle more heavy. The stinging critique of the way US History is taught using a puppet show feels like Vonnegut, as does much of IJ at times. We learn that a minor character has depression so profound that he desires to undergo surgery just to ‘level up’ and reach Anhedonia-a state where he merely has the inability to experience pleasure from, well, anything. The number of suicides and outrageously violent deaths become almost predictable and over the top to the point that, if a new character is introduced, especially someone’s parent, you know their backstory is going to be a short one. In those instances, absurdism seems to be Wallace’s way of saying, “and so it goes”.In the film, “End of the Tour”, writer David Lipsky enters Wallace’s home and notices he doesn’t have a TV. Wallace shrugs it off and says, “If I owned one I’d just have it on all of the time.” When the two writers are later in a hotel room with two girls, Wallace starts, and then never stops watching TV and, as the girls fall asleep from boredom, it dawns on Lipsky that maybe Wallace likes watching TV a little more than the average bear. One does’t know how acquainted Wallace was with the term, Behavioral Addiction, and the necessity to reprogram one’s dopamine to live life with more intentional purpose, but he most certainly felt its effects and translated those feelings with the same mastery with which he wrote in conscious, excruciating detail. All of that is to say that IJ is fraught with the profound. Mental Illness, addiction, the nature of love and freedom (and some great discussion between two government agents on the latter), and the nature of freewill itself are all covered. All of that will be enjoyed if one has the patience to stick with it. Yet, it may be the only 4 or 5 star book that I am not sure I would recommend-its not for those who are easily, or even moderately prone to frustration.

"Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace takes place in the near future - mostly in and around Boston, MA.Things are a bit different in the future.Calendar years are no longer referred to by ordinal numbers; instead, the naming rights to each year is auctioned off to commercial products. Years now go by names such as "Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken", "The Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar", and "Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad". Most of the story takes place during the "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment".After contaminating the entire northeastern part of the United States, the US has coerced Canada into annexing the polluted region and using it as an international toxic waste dump. This region is known as "The Great Concavity", probably because of its shape, but possibly because of the frequency of babies born missing a skull.Canada, Mexico, and the US are now part of a larger nation, known as the Organization of North American Nations, aka "ONAN", which may or may not be a reference to the Bible's most famous masturbator.The novel follows dozens of characters and multiple story lines. Some are in a private Massachusetts high school that focuses on educating elite tennis players; others are in a nearby drug and alcohol rehabilitation center; still others are involved in international intrigue, espionage, and terrorism.There is no shortage of quirky characters in Wallace's novel. Most are neurotic and some border on psychotic. Characters are damaged in a variety of ways, from being abused as children to the suicide of loved ones to drug addiction. One beautiful girl had acid thrown in her face by her mother, who was aiming for her philandering father.They all search for happiness, but not seem to find it.It's a difficult book to follow for the following reasons-It is extremely long, has many characters, and many subplots-It contains hundreds of footnotes and some of the footnotes have footnotes-It sometimes switches backward and forward in time and even to long descriptions of characters' dreamsSome of the storylines came together; but many did not (or, if they did, I didn't see it). And that frustrated me.Having said that, I did enjoy Wallace's writing and the characters he created and the imagination he put into individual scenes. But I failed to see the overall arc of the novel.I'm tempted to read this book again to catch what I missed, but the 1000+ pages makes that a daunting task.

Reading this book is like exploring, with Wallace, each and every cranny in his mind and memory, cleaning as we go.In order complete this enormous book, I continued on by letting the images, details and digressions wash over me. I had to stop trying to keep track of all the characters and the bizarre situations they had to endure. I must have absorbed SOMEthing or other. As a writer myself, he's giving me all kinds of permissions. Details, details, details.It took months to reach the far shore of this crazy, detailed ocean.