Infinite Jest

I just finished Infinite Jest last night, which I’d decided to read upon hearing about DFW’s suicide last fall. All the obits were calling it his most significant work and I’d already loved his two essay collections and got IJ for Christmas.

This book is one that surely gives book reviewers (which I’m not), as DFW says, “the howling fantods,” because 1). it’s impossible to do justice to in a review and 2). there’s so many different brilliant facets in the book it’s hard to know where to start in response.

So I decided to go with bullet points.  These are intended to summarize some of my reactions, but more to convince anyone on the fence about taking the IJ plunge, that it’s worth it.  (There are no true spoilers below):

• this book is very long, as in over 1000 pages and took me 2 ½ months to read. But, unlike every other real long novel I’ve ever read, I didn’t have trouble staying engaged.  To be honest this was partly because a lot of the time I was having to work to keep track of what was going on (especially in the beginning). But just as I began to wonder if a master plot would emerge from the tangle of different characters and vignettes, the big picture did start to come together for me around the 200 page mark.

• to my surprise, I found this overall plot compelling and kept wondering where he’d go with it.

• IJ has the best narrative descriptions I’ve ever read about a host of subjects:
• alcohol and drug-abuse (especially pot and prescription drugs)
• the recovery culture (AA, NA, etc)
• youth competitive tennis
• clinical depression
• a certain kind of dysfunctional family – withdrawn alcoholic father, overcompensating impossibly-perfect mother.

• the book is set in the near future and, considering it was written in the early 90s, is down-right prophetic about the technology-driven entertainment/information revolution we’ve lived through in the past decade.

• the book is comedic satire of the highest order, especially of the following subjects:
• America
• our addiction to entertainment
• terrorists
• college radio
• avant-garde film

• fair warning: I was disappointed in the ending and feel (as of now…this could change) that it’s the weakest part of the book. DFW intentionally decided not to tie up the plot’s loose ends and I wish he had. But I could be missing something about his intentions here, and the disappointment doesn’t come close to outweighing the joy I got from reading this thing.