Hey Dopers! I just picked up a copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest at a local bookstore solely because I wanted the experience of reading a novel with nearly 100 pages of footnotes. However, before I embark on this literary quest, I was wondering what any of you guys thought of the book, the author, or the author’s other works.
Thanks!
I loved his first book - the Broom of the System - and a number of his short stories and articles. Haven’t tried to tackle Jest.
His footnotes reveal his tendency to uncoil long diversions and riff on topics far away from the main plot, then snap back into the flow of things. As an intellect, he comes across like Neal Stephenson or Nicholson Baker - for all three, the novel seems to be a convenient form to contain ideas more than a form unto itself.
It makes a good doorstop.
I read Infinite Jest a couple of years ago. It’s generally very good, but it’s not an easy read. The footnotes are some of the funniest parts of the book. There are some parts that are extremely difficult to get through, but upon reflection, I thought that was a generally good thing. I’ll elaborate on that last statement if you like, if you don’t mind the spoilers.
Ah, I don’t mind spoilers. The achievement of reading the book is what I’m interested in, not necessarily the surprises involved.
Well, the parts that were, for me, the most difficult to read were the long, detailed accounts of Narcotics Anonymous meetings. The horrors of the NA members stories are related in full, excurciating detail. And it goes on…and on…and on… That was the only place where the book’s length really got to me. But upon reflection, I realized that those passages were like that for a reason. The feeling I got when reading those passages (“This is horrible! I want it to end!”) was pretty close to what the characters were feeling. After all, these were junkies and pill heads in an NA meeting! They wanted to leave just as badly as I wanted to put the book down or skip ahead.
All in all, I recommend the book, but know what you’re getting into. Wallace has 1000 pages to play with, and he takes his damned sweet time doing everything. Any digressions are fully explored 'til his heart’s content and then some. I had my doubts about the quality of the book when I was reading it and when I finished, but passages and scenes keep coming back to me. When I saw The Ring, for example, I said to my SO “Oh! A videotape that kills everybody! Just like in Infinite Jest.”
Since there are several more-or-less intertwined narratives in the novel, you’ll no doubt find ones more appealing than others. While the Narcotics Anonymous stuff is pretty hairy, the Enfield Tennis Academy narrative has the most widespread appeal from people I know who’ve read the book. Hal Incandenza is the closest thing the novel has to a main protagonist, and I think he’s a fascinating character. There’s also a great deal of political material regarding Canada, the United States, and separatism that are still a little thick for me (and I tend to reread IJ once a year). I also think Wallace offers an interesting depiction of a future world in terms of how people view advertising and entertainment. The footnotes (which tend to be an obstacle for some readers) are frequently less of an addendum to the text and more running commentary, like if you were actually in conversation with Wallace and happened to go off on a tangent as one does.
If you’re still interested in Wallace after finishing Infinite Jest, take a look at A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, a collection of essays and articles written for various publications on the topics of professional tennis, cruise ships, David Lynch’s films (Lost Highway in particular), and the cultural phenomenon of the Illinois State Fair, to name a few. The Broom of the System is pretty damn good (and gave me my username), and Girl With Curious Hair has some interesting stories, as does Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. But I think Wallace is at his best with Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing.
Ah, Infinite Jest. I borrowed my first copy from a friend. I didn’t give it back for 6 months and carried it around in the interim hugging and squeezing it and telling it I was going to love it forever. I have my own copy now and I’m a third of the way through my second reading. Being that it’s so dense there is newness, yet remembrance on every page. How I missed Pemulis and Hal and Himself and the Moms and Mario.
I adore DFW to begin with. Sometimes I enjoy his style of writing more than the actual content. With Infinite Jest I get a lovely mélange of both.
The book is an infinite jest. I finished it and immediately wanted to go right back into it. It was a struggle to set it aside and move on to the other poor books collecting dust on my bookshelf while waiting for me to acknowledge them.
My relationship with IJ is intimate and physical. We’ve fought, we’ve laughed and we’ve struggled together. Never before has a book asked so much of me and never before have I been so willing to exude so much effort. Two bookmarks, one for the main story, one for the footnotes, copious amounts of time spent making connections between characters and storylines, struggling through brutally boring passages hoping for another glimpse of Madame Psychosis or more titles and descriptions of Himself’s films.
Yeah, to say you’ve finished it is to step over into the Club. The few (?), the proud, the weary eyed.
And, if you’re ever in need of a blunt trauma inducing weapon the hardcover edition is there for you in a pinch.
I’ve read this book three times now. I also made an attempt to read it aloud to my now-fiancée; she bailed on me around page 200. Having established my credibility as a die-hard fan, I present some advice for climbing this mountain.
Bring a pen and a notebook with you. Underline your copy of the book profusely, and allow each new character five or six lines of blank space in your notebook. Each time they’re mentioned in connection with a past or future event, especially if it seems unrelated, make a note of it. Often you will read a passage later where the same event is referenced, but the character isn’t named. If this happened 390 pages ago, it’s tough to remember exactly who did what; checking your notes allows you to make connections that are pretty well hidden.
Bookmark or print out a copy of page 223, the reference for Subsidized Years. This will help you understand the chronological jumps in time.
Keep a dictionary or Google handy for looking up words you don’t know – often it’s hard to grok them from context, and the meaning is usually precisely the right word.
The first time I read the book, I didn’t really understand that two of the characters are explicitly there for thematic exposition; if you pay attention to them, you will not only understand what’s going on a little better, but you’ll also understand the questions that the author is trying to answer with this magnificent doorstop.
Pay attention to Remy Marathe and Helen Steeply’s long-winded mountain-top conversation; they essentially lay out the allegory of the entire book.
When you finish the book, immediately re-read the first chapter. It makes an amazing introduction, but an even better epilogue.
Always interrupt your reading to go straight to the footnotes as they happen.
One of the few books I’ve started and not finished. Desparately in need of a good editor.
The book is overlong, rambling, essentially pointless, and one can’t help but feel that Wallace has nothing but contempt for his audience and modern fiction. But that’s the whole shtick behind “Infinite Jest” - it’s sort of a piss-take on modernity. That aside, the fact that “Metal Machine Music” was a piss-take doesn’t make it any better to listen to.
Wallace is an amazing writer, though, so don’t let “Infinite Jest” turn you off. “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” is far better - “Adult World I and II” in particular are brilliant - and “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll never do again” is probably my favorite collection of nonfiction writing.