The Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace was a challenging book to read; it was wordy and messy; disturbing at times and nearly non-sensical at its worst. If you accept the challenge reading this book offers it will yield some truly amazing things to you, but you have to work hard. You can't just passively read this book, glazing over sections could make the entire thing not worth it. This might sound kind of snobby, in fact it will, but this is probably for the best; we should not be able to access the kind of truth DFW is offering without having to dig deep in our abilities to read, to suffer through the insufferable parts. This adds a third dimension to merging form and content that only a deeply personal author like Wallace can get away with.
One major challenge is that this book is absolutely packed with content not directly related to the main plot, picture Moby Dick with way more human element and characterization (as opposed to, you know, nautical trivia). The plot itself revolves around a staggering amount of characters. At the nucleus of this ensemble is the Incandenza family, comprised of a mother, a father and 3 sons. In true Shakespearean style, the novel picks up after the father, film maker and tennis academy founder/headmaster James Incandenza, has died after a grotesque suicide. If you are the kind of reader who reads for plot, this book definitely has a good one. James, in a distant future that sees an end to TV and a rise of film cartridges as entertainment as we know it, has created a film cartridge the content of which is irresistible to anyone who watches it. It becomes so addictive that after watching it only once, the viewer desires nothing more out of life than to watch it again and again. This cartridge is sought after by some pretty dubious crowds.
The plot, though very interesting and good, is not exactly the easiest thing to follow. It is also crowded by characters whose lives are magnified so much they become stand-ins for very dense philosophical themes. These themes are what make it all worth it. They are usually classically powerful literary themes like Shakespearean family dynamics or dystopian futures; big questions like whether free will exists or if there is such a phenomenon as too much freedom; it is all there. I mean you can find anything you want. But the themes themselves are explored genuinely and are made to seem almost vulnerable. Everything has this slight tinge of ridiculousness to it, but not ironic ridiculousness. The book, despite having almost every heavy literary theme present, focuses more on humanizing theme itself rather than lampooning it (though, some of that is there too). Wallace's cast of drug addicts, snobby teenagers, cross dressing secret agents, legitimately wheelchair bound assassins, professional athletes, disabled people, freakishly tall people, beyond logic bureaucratic bureaucrats, crazy Canadian anarchic separatists, and many more; are the various vehicles of these themes, each character with a respective back story or important tie in to the plot or setting, or just sometimes a character with seemingly no purpose at all. These are the imperfect faces of embodied literary themes.
Infinite Jest is truly unlike any book I have ever read. David Foster Wallace has such a personal style. He knows the conventions of writing so well that when he breaks them to get closer to you as a reader, maybe throwing "like" into the middle of a sentence, you can't help but be further engaged. This draws you into his acute observations about our everyday world that ring so true it can have you really feeling something, Wallace will riff on your empathy just by bringing to light something you probably have always seen but never noticed. It is these moments that truly pay off. That said, I have never been more challenged as a reader. It is too easy to see some of this riffing as Wallace jerking it to himself; the wordiness can get old; the constant tangents can lose you; there are some parts that are bound to offend you (incest is a motif in this novel). If you can get through this, if you accept the challenge, if the meaning of all of these flaws doesn't lose you; it is certainly possible to find yourself in this book.
