Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

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Infinite Jest

February 1, 1995 / 1092 pages / Fiction

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A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; 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 philosophical 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.

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Addiction

American Culture

Tennis

Mental illness

Entertainment

Drugs

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Absolutely stunning. Parts are tough to get through, but it's worth it. The breadth of themes and emotion contained in this epic is staggering. Wallace is often rather neurotic (he includes ~400 endnotes, some of which go on for pages and have endnotes of their own), but it really just reflects the tone of his protagonist. Never thought reading about competitive high school tennis could be so engaging.

Grade: A+ / soccereagle542 / Sep 3, 2013

I was quite daunted in starting this beast of a book, but armed with my e-reader (made flicking back and forth between the book and the 400 (ish) footnotes MUCH more pleasurable) I bravely set forth. After the first few pages, I knew that this was not going to be a chore in the slightest. I loved the humour, the growing sense of how all these different characters interconnected with each other; I was truly immersed.

Grade: A / SniffaCat

/ Sep 26, 2014

It took four tries, spread over a number of years, for me to get past the first 50 pages. Dave Eggers speaks the truth in his foreword: you need to be ready to devote a month's worth of your attention to "Infinite Jest" in order to survive it and appreciate it. Simply put, the book an astounding literary achievement. Its fractured plot and endless footnotes can be maddening, but that frustration is outweighed by the honesty and linguistic brilliance that Wallace pours into every sentence.

Grade: A+ / bennett_the_ceo

/ Feb 24, 2015

Betterbooktitles.com offered as an alternate title "Too Long," but honestly, after I made it to page 223 I was so engrossed I didn't want it to end. The book is a task, for sure; much of it is a deliberate puzzle (yes, page 223 yields some helpful info), and really it's the kind of book that offers rewards proportional to investment. It changed my brain. Completely amazing. Read it with a dictionary nearby.

Grade: A / zimbobalo / Feb 14, 2014

2 Stars because this mammoth book is only OK and can't be recommended. I'm sure there are many other writers whose classic tales or trilogies would have surpassed 1,000+ pages like this one but for a good editor and a resistance to diarrhea of the pen. This book is basically 3 stories: 1) a brilliant insight into addiction, recovery, and human existence; 2) discussions between teens at a super-elite tennis academy; 3) an overview of the ridiculous (SciFi-ish) setting in which the book take

Grade: D / Z-man / Jun 11, 2016

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