{"id":101,"date":"2014-10-04T18:31:51","date_gmt":"2014-10-04T17:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2015-01-13T10:01:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T10:01:38","slug":"infinite-jest-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/infinite-jest-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best book I’ve read this year. And maybe ever.<\/p>\n

The first thing to say about Infinite Jest is that it’s long. Like really long. It took me months to finish. Not only is it lengthy in the technical word count sense, but also time-consuming in the very way it’s written. Qua Proust, sentences go on and on and on, to absolute technical perfection (Wallace is the master of sub-clause), meandering and wandering off course and really requiring you to pay close attention until the very end.<\/p>\n

It’s also written with a style I can best describe as deliberately hostile to the reader. Wallace uses the most esoteric words he can, or just plain makes them up. He doesn’t just use a good word to describe something, he’ll use the exactly right technical term for it. An example used throughout is that of the drugs the characters take throughout the book. Each time, a footnote directs you a full pharmaceutical description of the drug and it’s chemical composition. It’s utterly superfluous, but totally unique at the same time and I was pretty much blown away with this level of detail.<\/p>\n

Oh, and those footnotes. There’s just under 400 in total. That’s a lot of flicking back and forth between the text (thankfully, my Kindle edition made that pretty simple), but again it really breaks up the reading experience and leaves you exhausted as you’re performing mental gymnastics trying to suspend your position in the prose to read a footnote, which may or may not have sub-footnotes of their own and could go on for as long as the chapter you were originally reading. But I’m stressing that this is all a good thing.<\/p>\n

An example I loved was that of James O. Incandenza’s filmography. James O. Incandenza is the father of the Incandenza family, around whom 50% of the plot of the book revolves. He’s a film-maker (amongst other things) and Wallace at one point lists his entire filmography. Read it online here<\/a>. Each film is listed with a synopsis of the plot, but also with details of how it was filmed, what kind of film was used, etc. Barely any of these tie back into the story ever again (though some do) and many are just jokes, but it really fleshes out the backstory (literally) and the book’s world more generally. It might be unnecessary, but then again so is the whole book in the first place.<\/p>\n

So, what’s it actually about? The answer is complicated… It essentially all boils down to a deadly film (yeah..) created by the aforementioned James O Incandenza, and the struggle between the US government and Quebecois separatist militants (wheelchair-bound assassins, by the way) to gain control over it. But this is all going on in the background to other things. Along the way there’s drug overdoses, tennis tournaments, long philosophical exchanges on a rocky outcrop, and a weight-room guru who licks the sweat off people’s foreheads. It’s dealt with all in the most serious tones, with a blunt matter of factness that only exaggerates the comedy. Basically, it’s really really funny. (I was tempted to call it the ultimate farce, before realising those are basically literal synonyms for Infinite Jest).<\/p>\n

I read one review on Goodreads that complained that Wallace’s prose comes across as though it was written by a depressed robot. And that’s not a bad comparison. But that’s also sort of the point. Central character Hal is a young man totally dead on the inside, devoid of feelings, and able to recall on demand the full dictionary definition of any word. He has a great relationship with his father, JOI, where the father believes Hal to be mute – leading to a great scene where JOI dresses up a psychologist to try and trick Hal into speaking, as Hal explains that JOI has clearly gone insane. It’s just really stupid, but kind of sad too.<\/p>\n

Wallace was clearly a really smart guy. The detail and complexity of the book are amazing. He writes about themes such as addiction and depression with complete conviction (much from his own experience, as I understand it). The great irony of the book is that the Entertainment (the deadly film everyone is after) is really a metaphor for Infinite Jest itself, the suicide of its creator even mirrored in reality.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t recommend the book for everyone, though. It takes real commitment to make it past the couple of hundred pages before the parallel threads start to merge, and the tone of voice takes real getting used to. But once you’re in, you’re hooked. I’d love to read it again at some point, but not for a long time.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, if you talk to me about it I’ll definitely have that conversation with you for at least an hour. It’s just really really good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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