I really hate to say things like; “This is my favorite book,” but in this case it’s fairly close to true. Anybody who has read this thing should understand at least of few of the references and puns that go into my name.
David Foster Wallace is part of a new breed of writer, doing things with language that make you drool. Every page of this book brings you into a fuller and fuller realization of the kind of brilliant mind that you are dealing with, and that, for me at least is the kind of experience always to be sought.
Title: Infinite Jest: A Novel
Author: David Foster Wallace
LC Rating:
Infinite Jest is an amazing novel. This book right here, when I was getting towards the end of it for the first time, I was forcing myself to put it down after tasting only a couple of pages a night, simply because I didn’t want to see it end.
This is a lyrical exploration of addictions and the pursuit of happiness in America. By way of fair warning I do have to state that it’s the size of a phone-book, and it’s fiction with end-notes, a few hundred pages of them. But inside this incredible stack of pages David Foster Wallace has created some of the finest characters you are likely to ever encounter.
On the back of my copy Wallace is compared to Thomas Pynchon, and there are certainly parallels in their respective styles, namely the habit of veering almost without warning from one tangent to another, leaving the poor reader scrambling around, searching for the rational behind this sudden dislocating shift.
This is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one. I could sit here and ramble for days about this thing, the way he plays around with your sense of chronology by doing away with numeric references for years. The beauty inherent in his ongoing satire of politics that never quite makes it to the fore-front of the plot, but instead bubbles away in the background to keep his characters’ various trials and tribulations presented in just the right scenery.
If I had to provide a quick synopsis, I’d refuse, simply because it really can’t be done. You’ll just have to take it from me.
finite jester