Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
Over one thousand pages of postmodernism and a lengthy list of footnotes.
Laura’s Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Plot: The book focuses on several groups or institutions: Enfield Tennis Academy (and specifically the Incandenza family that runs it), Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House; and AFR, a group of Québécois radicals searching for a mysterious weapon known as The Entertainment.
Analysis: I struggled a bit with how to rate this book. On one hand, Infinite Jest feels tedious and pretentious with its advanced vocabulary and lengthy footnotes. (The footnotes are obnoxious: just put those details in the novel or leave them out). Yet, I found myself getting into the story at some points and really becoming interested in the themes of the novel.
I break the novel into three main storylines: the tennis academy, the halfway house, and the geopolitical conflict. At first I was the most interested in Hal and the tennis academy, but about a third of the way in, I was totally invested in Don Gately and the halfway house. It was annoying to go back and forth between these and the geopolitical conflict. Each story in itself could have been interesting, but it was too much when all told together.
Wallace exposes how absurd the current state of the world is by creating a surreal, fictionalized, but not entirely unbelievable version of the world in the novel. Additionally, some of Wallace’s predictions about things like video calling and self-selected programming (think streaming services) were pretty spot on. Addiction is a major theme, with an examination of addiction through the lenses of entertainment, achievement, and drug use. Society’s dependence on institutions is also highlighted in the book, sparking questions of submission to the group or organization vs. individual agency.
By the end, I was pretty invested in at least some of the characters and I was ready for a climax that didn’t really happen. To read 1,000+ pages and not have all the book’s events come to fruition was frustrating to say the least. While highly regarded among some literary circles, I wouldn’t recommend this book to the casual reader, as it’s more of an academic exercise. If you’re interested in literary analysis, postmodernism, or just a challenging read, then I encourage you to give Infinite Jest a try (and I recommend reading sparknotes or a guide as you go.)
Comments