Infinite Jest: Amazon.co.uk: David Foster Wallace: Books

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A writer of virtuostic talents who can seemingly do anything (NEW YORK TIMES )

Wallace is a superb comedian of culture . . . his exuberance and intellectual impishness are a delight (James Woods, GUARDIAN )

He induces the kind of laughter which, when read in bed with a sleeping partner, wakes said sleeping partner up . . . He's damn good (Nicholas Lezard, GUARDIAN )

One of the best books about addiction and recovery to appear in recent memory. (SUNDAY TIMES ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Book Description

* 'Ambitious, accomplished, deeply humorous, brilliant and witty and moving. A literary sensation' INDEPENDENT * With a new foreword by Dave Eggers --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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First Sentence
I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. Read the first page

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Concordance

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

85 Reviews

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (85 customer reviews)

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65 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fabulous, 26 May 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Infinite Jest (Paperback)

The proverbial Book-That-All-The-Fuss-Is-About in America, Infinite Jest hasn't made a big splash in England for some reason. Set in the near-future, the story zips back and forth between a dope-addicted teenage lexical genius in a Tennis academy in the suburbs of Boston, a recovering demerol addict at a half-way house down the road, a gang of murderous Quebec separatist terrorists in wheel chairs, and a film that is so addictively entertaining that once you've been exposed to it you lose all will to do anything else in life except watch it again and again until you die. You also get the experialist evil of ONANism (referring here to the Organization of North American Nations), the death of the TV industry at the hand of tongue-scraper ads, giant feral rats in New England, hyper-obsequious mothers, filmakers killing themselves by putting their heads in a microwave and a girl so devastatingly beautiful she's forced to wear a veil at all times. What's not to like?

But never fear: beneath all the whimsical plot-digressions and flippant deployment of words you don't understand, DFW has a big heart, and IJ never degenerates into the standard I'm-so-postmodern-I-can-just-sneer-and-not-care posture that makes so much contemporary prose detestable.

If the book has a theme, it's addiction...in the broad sense...not just to various drugs but also to entertainment, to sport, to sex, to nationalism. The neat thing is that the book itself is addictive...although it's not a plot-driven page turner in any traditional sense, once you get into it it's hard to put down.

You should know the book is very very long, has 200+ pages worth of bizarre footnotes, 3 dozen subplots, and a whole lot of generally fascinating characters. The pace can be sloooooooow, but you won't mind. Like I said, it became VERY trendy in America a few years back...it's now required reading for the terminally hip 20/30something intelligentsia. For once, the hype was warranted...if you trudge through the (admittedly impenetrable) first 200 pages, you'll be hooked.

Oh and, I don't care how lexically gifted you think you are, you have to read IJ with a dictionary at your side.

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars to be honest i really dont know, 28 Nov 2000

By

M. J. Wakeman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Infinite Jest (Hardcover)

i wont even bother attempting to beat the mulititude of the plot summaries and likes and dislikes on this page except to add my two penneth on the fact that a few people here say that the book just comes to an end without any form of resolution. well, i kind of agree about that unless you all actually get out your copies of the book from where youve left them (and lets be fair if you've read this book all the way through, you want to be sure and leave it somewhere obvious where it can impress others)and re-read the start... i did enjoy this book even though large parts of it dont have a conclusion but i really rather feel that that was one of the points, IJ is not a conventional novel and thankfully some authors are still out there writing stuff that is not easy and digestible but rather makes you THINK!

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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like wading through champagne jelly, 12 Sep 2006

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Madly Bobbington-Blythe "MadBob" (Cardiff) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Infinite Jest (Paperback)

Cor! I would like to tell you that this book is all the things that these other reviewers say it is - amazing, brilliant, flabergasting etc. Well, it is. However, after pushing through David Foster Wallace's interminable digressions and massively complex clauses, sub clauses, sub sub clauses etc, the brilliance could be said to have been dulled somewhat. Nevertheless, It's still a top-notch piece of boundary-pushing fiction, a brain-pulsingly engaging read, and a mad piece of food for thought. It would've got five stars if I could have persuaded any of my friends to read it too. Those slackers!

Read it. It'll do your brain good.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Kindle
You can feel the truth hit you in the face sometimes and I had to reread some passages several times, especially when he talks depression----you can get a feel for his minds... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Michael Smith