Infinite Jest

I have 95 pages left in this book (and 3 pages of footnotes) and I want to see what /book/ thinks of it.   By the time I check this thread again I'll have probably finished it.

As of right now I'd say it's one of my favorites.

I would have to agree that it's one of the best of the last 50 years.

Maybe the saddest/most hilarious book I've ever read.

a phenomenal waste of time right up there with 4chan and youtube

>>4
Cept more edumactional

Infinite Jest? Interminable Jest, more like. This annoying novel is grossly overwritten, 1079 pages of 8-point type, including 98 pages of footnotes in 6-point type. Large sections of it are superfluous logorrhea and should have been cut; the thing reads like the world's most awesome speed rant, though this may be deliberate. The plot is rudimentary, all telegraphed in advance, and moves at a glacial pace. When I finally finished the thing, I wanted my time back.

Hated one of the protagonists, Don Gately, for reasons requiring some self-examination to discover. (1) He's the sort of large ugly ignorant self-satisfied anti-intellectual homophobic cretin I've always disliked in real life. (2) His presentation is hypocritical, one of the most intellectual anti-intellectual statements I've ever read. The more apparent it became Wallace intended to reward him, the more I hated him.

Other unlikable things: (3) The polemical treatment of marijuana as virulently addictive, which most experienced people know to be nonsense; sure, some vanishingly microscopic percentage of users get into trouble with it, particularly since the introduction of the high-resin kind in response to pot's illegality (it being easier to transport and store in smaller quantities), but still a far smaller number than with booze, let alone cocaine, speed or narcotics. (4) The smug closet god stuff. (Sample paraphrase: "...the religion only morons believe in, but that works anyway.") At least this cannot be said to pander to Jesus freaks. No moron possibly could get through this book.

Probably the most annoying thing of all is that, after 1079 pages, it doesn't end! The story is left hanging up in the air, as if there were another 50 or 60 pages yet to come (or, considering Wallace's prolixity, 200-300). Evidently, Wallace simply got bored of writing it and decided we could make up the rest for ourselves, or maybe his editor finally put his/er foot down and said, "Enough."

True, the very first chapter gives us a skeletal outline of the principal events to come. This section reads as if it were written last, after the work had been abandoned, to prevent it from being a total cheat. But far more is left unresolved. Characters are abandoned in mid sub-plot. Painstakingly built-up mysteries are shrugged off

In short, virtually the entire denouement is missing. After 1079 pages, just as the excitement is finally building toward the events we've been promised, the thing ends. It's the book's final jest, and it's on us.

At least the language is inventive and original, and a bit harder to pastiche than one might think, considering that its principal device is merely to string clauses together without limit or punctuation. There are some truly comic bits too-conceptual comedy mostly, the kind you chuckle over only when you think back on them. Only wish there'd been more of them.

Altogether, I believe I have now had a lifetime dose of David Foster Wallace.

Infinite Jest? Interminable Jest, more like. This annoying novel is grossly overwritten, 1079 pages of 8-point type, including 98 pages of footnotes in 6-point type. Large sections of it are superfluous logorrhea and should have been cut; the thing reads like the world's most awesome speed rant, though this may be deliberate. The plot is rudimentary, all telegraphed in advance, and moves at a glacial pace. When I finally finished the thing, I wanted my time back.

Hated one of the protagonists, Don Gately, for reasons requiring some self-examination to discover. (1) He's the sort of large ugly ignorant self-satisfied anti-intellectual homophobic cretin I've always disliked in real life. (2) His presentation is hypocritical, one of the most intellectual anti-intellectual statements I've ever read. The more apparent it became Wallace intended to reward him, the more I hated him.

Other unlikable things: (3) The polemical treatment of marijuana as virulently addictive, which most experienced people know to be nonsense; sure, some vanishingly microscopic percentage of users get into trouble with it, particularly since the introduction of the high-resin kind in response to pot's illegality (it being easier to transport and store in smaller quantities), but still a far smaller number than with booze, let alone cocaine, speed or narcotics. (4) The smug closet god stuff. (Sample paraphrase: "...the religion only morons believe in, but that works anyway.") At least this cannot be said to pander to Jesus freaks. No moron possibly could get through this book.

Probably the most annoying thing of all is that, after 1079 pages, it doesn't end! The story is left hanging up in the air, as if there were another 50 or 60 pages yet to come (or, considering Wallace's prolixity, 200-300). Evidently, Wallace simply got bored of writing it and decided we could make up the rest for ourselves, or maybe his editor finally put his/er foot down and said, "Enough."

True, the very first chapter gives us a skeletal outline of the principal events to come. This section reads as if it were written last, after the work had been abandoned, to prevent it from being a total cheat. But far more is left unresolved. Characters are abandoned in mid sub-plot. Painstakingly built-up mysteries are shrugged off

In short, virtually the entire denouement is missing. After 1079 pages, just as the excitement is finally building toward the events we've been promised, the thing ends. It's the book's final jest, and it's on us.

At least the language is inventive and original, and a bit harder to pastiche than one might think, considering that its principal device is merely to string clauses together without limit or punctuation. There are some truly comic bits too-conceptual comedy mostly, the kind you chuckle over only when you think back on them. Only wish there'd been more of them.

Altogether, I believe I have now had a lifetime dose of David Foster Wallace.

gfmgfm

>>6
There were originally 500 more pages.  Those are the ones that got cut. DFW has stated that everything he left in is important, which could be bullshit, but think about those 500 extra pages.

Added "w/r/t" to my vocabulary.