Infinite Jest

a novel

Paperback, 1104 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2006 by Back Bay Books (Little Brown and Company).

ISBN:
978-0-316-06652-5
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4 stars (24 reviews)

Set in an addicts' hallway house and a tennis academy, and featuring one of the moste endearing screwed-up families in contemporary fiction. Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to dominate our livs, about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people, and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philisophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do. (back cover)

14 editions

Brilliant and Rich

5 stars

There is so much in this book that it's very difficult to verbalise much about it. Brilliant, detailed, inventive, very human studies of addiction, depression, recovery, obsession, and the difficulties of interaction and communication. All within an absurd but carefully presented (though nowadays looking less and less unrealistic) alternative 90's, a world that turns out to be quite natural to inhabit during the (long, but pleasurable) process of reading the book, along with the minds of the main protagonists and even of many of the secondary characters. The language is varied, deliciously creative, and fit to the different characters. Several scenes in the book will stay with me for a long time.

Not what I expected

5 stars

This books is amazing in many ways but is hard to compare to other more conventional stories and novels. It has a unique narrative structure and a radically chaotic use of language. I have to say I was skeptical at first and nearly gave up on this at several points, but it drew me in and by the end I was in love with its weird, quirky natures. The story itself is disjointed and a bit uninteresting when distilled from the way it is told and language used to tell it. That said it draws you in and is strong enough to hold up the novel through what is a marathon length telling. A lot of what happens in the book seems to be in service of some other purpose than serving to move the story along. It seems to be making points about society, human nature, morality and humanity …

Review of 'Infinite Jest' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Here is a novel that can have many different meanings, depending on who the reader is. There are several plots and theaters being acted out and they do converge in intriguing ways.

I am re-reading this with a small book discussion group, which is making it a different experience. One of the members stated that she was tackling this as a series of short stories, and I will be interested to hear how this came together for her when we reconvene in January.

To me, this tome is mostly about addiction and the various ways D.F. Wallace's characters came by their addictions. Whatever their drug of choice, it was always about passive escape--shoot up and trip, get drunk and forget, or--turn on the television for hours of passive entertainment. All of these things can be done by a loner, in a crowd or alone in a room. It becomes the …

Review of 'Infinite Jest' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

In the not so distant future, the residents of a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts and the students of the Enfield Tennis Academy both search for the master copy of a bizarre movie that is so entertaining the viewers die in a state of catatonic bliss. That movie is called Infinite Jest and it is said that anyone who watches it will lose all desire to do anything but watch it. This semi-parodic novel questions what entertainment is and why it dominates our lives.

I’m not going to lie, this book is both lengthy and difficult to read but in the end it is worth the effort. You will need three bookmarks for this book, one for where you are up to, another for the endnotes and the third for the timeline that sits around page 80. You do need to read the endnotes, this book relies heavily on …

Review of 'Infinite Jest' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Well.

Dave Eggers once wrote that he spent an entire month reading this when it was released. And added that it's impossible to mutter an "eh" when finished with it, saying the book will change your life for the better.

I think he's right about it changing things.

The first 15 pages stormed me. Then, I felt David Foster Wallace was merely trying to impress and masturbate onto pages in some self-loving way that Jonathan Franzen can be prone to coming close to; after appx. 150-200 pages, however, that went away.

This book is filled with subjects and words and places but it's coherent, funny, inspiring and disgusting, bewildering, simple and complex. At times it felt like a drag, but mostly it's really, really good.

Every sentence feels thoughtful and sincere, and at the same time, I got the feeling (which is still in-place) that's simple; all you need is …

Review of 'Infinite Jest' on 'LibraryThing'

4 stars

Well.

Dave Eggers once wrote that he spent an entire month reading this when it was released. And added that it's impossible to mutter an "eh" when finished with it, saying the book will change your life for the better.

I think he's right about it changing things.

The first 15 pages stormed me. Then, I felt David Foster Wallace was merely trying to impress and masturbate onto pages in some self-loving way that Jonathan Franzen can be prone to coming close to; after appx. 150-200 pages, however, that went away.

This book is filled with subjects and words and places but it's coherent, funny, inspiring and disgusting, bewildering, simple and complex. At times it felt like a drag, but mostly it's really, really good.

Every sentence feels thoughtful and sincere, and at the same time, I got the feeling (which is still in-place) that's simple; all you need is …

Subjects

  • Popular American Fiction
  • Fiction
  • Fiction - General
  • General
  • Fiction / General
  • Addicts
  • Compulsive behavior

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