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Infinite Jest [Paperback]

David Foster Wallace (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 5 Jun 1997

Somewhere in the not-so-distant future the residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of INFINITE JEST, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss . . .

'Wallace's exuberance and intellectual impishness are a delight, and he has deep things to say about the hollowness of contemporary American pleasure . . . sentences and whole pages are marvels of cosmic concentration . . . Wallace is a superb comedian of culture'

James Wood, GUARDIAN

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Product details

  • Paperback: 1104 pages
  • Publisher: Abacus (5 Jun 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0349121087
  • ISBN-13: 978-0349121086
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 5.5 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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› Visit Amazon's David Foster Wallace Page
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Review

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)

Book Description

* 'Ambitious, accomplished, deeply humorous, brilliant and witty and moving. A literary sensation' INDEPENDENT

* With a new foreword by Dave Eggers

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
92 of 96 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars fabulous 26 May 1999
By A Customer
Format: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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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars surprising how good it was when I thought I'd hate it 11 July 1999
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
I came in expecting to hate it. Comparisons to Pynchon; "genius" shown on the cover to be what seemed a twerp in a baseball cap; footnotes... but this turned out to be a darned good book. Why? Everything seemed to be against it. The Science Fictional element was very weak; the story had no beginning or end; there were endless digressions... but the author really IS brilliant; the characters are terrific; there is wit, (human)realism, pithy commentary on today, and humour --and unlike Pynchon, it's honest humour. (Pynchon rips you off consciously. Wallace on the other hand is genuine. He really has things to say and he honestly says them.) I put down the book (after days of not being able to put it down much) and said, "well that was really worth reading."
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Like wading through champagne jelly 12 Sep 2006
By GRBD
Format: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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5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book I Have Read, Ever.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Infinite Jest
After finishing Infinite Jest, I read a number of reviews about the book. Most reviewers find it obligatory to comment on its length, wordiness and the footnotes. Read more
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1.0 out of 5 stars A rare book indeed
I read a lot and there are very few books I've started and not finished. Infinite Jest joins Midnight's Children and a handful of others on the shelf of shame. Read more
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So here I am at last, ready to comment on my experience of Infinite Jest. I feel I must be humble, as one should be when facing something that defies comments and descriptions. Read more
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