I enjoyed this book and as long as it was I did not want it to end. I knew all the characters and wanted to know more about them. It did get slow at times and took a while to read but just an outstanding book. ( )

To be honest, I only read about 500 pages and the equivalent pages of footnotes. And then someone told me that nothing happens at the end and ALSO the boy I was dating who I was reading it so we'd have something to talk about dumped me. But now I kind of regret not finishing it...maybe one day. ( )

A National Bestseller. Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture

With its baroque subplots, zany political satire, morbid, cerebral humor and astonishing range of cultural references, Wallace's brilliant but somewhat bloated dirigible of a second novel (after The Broom in the System) will appeal to steadfast readers of Pynchon and Gaddis. But few others will have the stamina for it. Set in an absurd yet uncanny near-future, with a cast of hundreds and close to 400 footnotes, Wallace's story weaves between two surprisingly similar locales: Ennet House, a halfway-house in the Boston Suburbs, and the adjacent Enfield Tennis Academy. It is the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" (each calendar year is now subsidized by retail advertising); the U.S. and Canada have been subsumed by the Organization of North American Nations, unleashing a torrent of anti-O.N.A.N.ist terrorism by Quebecois separatists; drug problems are widespread; the Northeastern continent is a giant toxic waste dump; and CD-like "entertainment cartridges" are the prevalent leisure activity. The novel hinges on the dysfunctional family of E.T.A.'s founder, optical-scientist-turned-cult-filmmaker Dr. James Incandenza (aka Himself), who took his life shortly after producing a mysterious film called Infinite Jest, which is supposedly so addictively entertaining as to bring about a total neural meltdown in its viewer. As Himself's estranged sons?professional football punter Orin, introverted tennis star Hal and deformed naif Mario?come to terms with his suicide and legacy, they and the residents of Ennet House become enmeshed in the machinations of the wheelchair-bound leader of a Quebecois separatist faction, who hopes to disseminate cartridges of Infinite Jest and thus shred the social fabric of O.N.A.N. With its hilarious riffs on themes like addiction, 12-step programs, technology and waste management (in all its scatological implications), this tome is highly engrossing?in small doses. Yet the nebulous, resolutionless ending serves to underscore Wallace's underlying failure to find a suitable novelistic shape for his ingenious and often outrageously funny material.

It sat on my shelf for a year or so gathering dust except when I picked it up now and again, glancing at the first page, flipping through the endnotes, shaking my head in dismay. It's a daunting book, almost as daunting as trying to sum my thoughts about it now. When I finally grew a pair and cracked it I was pleasantly surprised by how easily the first "chapter" seemed to flow. Pshaw, this isn't so hard! But wait, who's this Airdaddy guy? Ten pages of waiting for someone, what a weird scene. OK. Then here's Wardine. That's the worst dialect I've ever read! Phew, it's only like a page and a half long. And then Mildred Bonk for another page. What were those about? To discourage weak-willed readers before they waste any more of their precious time? That's awfully considerate.

And but so I keep reading it and like wow, it's actually really stunningly good. Not once do I feel like stopping but alas I must eat and sleep once in a while. The story is very tragic and bleak and I can't help feeling for the characters. But it's also funny: the game of Eschaton, the weird political puppet show (not figurative) and maybe my favorite and a total non sequitur: the insurance claim by the bricklayer who had an accident with his barrel. They tried it on Mythbusters once; I don't remember if it worked.

Anyway, most of the story happens in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, which is supposed to be 2009. Is the prediction accurate? Not completely, certainly not w/r/t the quaint cartridges. But the teleputers aren't really that far off (I for one don't even own a TV anymore) and overall the future isn't too exaggerated, which is good. After all, the book is only in its early teens.
Well, I have only a hundred pages left and the myriad loose threads aren't even close to being tied together. Here's the last page then*, still waiting for a huge bang that brings it all together. Ahh...yeah, that's what I though. Motherfucker! What a miserable ending. It's like he painted himself to a corner and just went "Ah, fuck it". So this is how it feels being the butt of the jest. I'd never been so wretchedly disappointed. I could hardly sleep that night. Ditto the following night, until...the penny dropped, the wheels were set in motion, the ball kept rolling, the bulb over my head flashed and crackled—it was a regular Rube Goldberg Machine—and I GOT IT!

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*All in all, it took me exactly a fortnight to read the book. Pretty good compared to others, I guess. But you see, I have this system. I call it My System. What it entails is that I must read 100 pages every weekday, 150 on weekends and holidays. I'm fairly strict about this since I'm naturally lazy and would otherwise just sit on my computer all day doing nothing. (Even small tasks can be tough for us porch monkeys is what you industrious people don't understand. Show some compassion.) But 1079 divided by 14 equals only 77 pages per diem. However, this is easily explained by the sheer density of the text, so that while it normally takes me two, sometimes three minutes to read a page, with Infinite Jest I was averaging over four minutes per pagina.
P.S. Allston Rules. ( )

As of February 10, 2009, I have to give this book only 1 star. This is to conform with LibraryThing's guide on rating, which says that 1 star means I couldn't get through the book.

I took the book for only one day from the library, knowing that I only had three weeks to complete reading if I wanted to also return on time. I read the first chapter and thought it very very smart and funny. Loved it, in fact, and had no doubt in my mind that David Foster Wallace was amazingly good.

The trouble with the writing is that Wallace repeats and expands single thoughts from one sentence, possibly two required to really describe what it is like to wait for some woman to bring you dope, into massive paragraphs - that's how the book got so big - and I just had to ask myself, do I have time in the next three weeks, with all sorts of other things happening to keep life going, to get through this.

The answer is no, and so before I wade half way into the book and then decide that I've had enough, I think I should just pull out now. This happened with The Satanic Verses for me once, and I am still trying to deal with the aftermath trauma of abandoning a book midway.

I can understand why many people find this book wicked funny. Inside the chaotic head of somebody can feel this way. Reading a sentence like "One two three oh I almost forgot that two goes after one but before four comes I remember that two happens after one and three after two and one is the first and two comes next and then three and then four and then now five but before I forget let's go over this again: one, two, three, four, five and the next one is six..." could be funny too...methinks I can almost write like Wallace.

I picked up the book out of curiosity. It's listed as one of the best books by Time Magazine I think, and then after seeing Wallace's interview with Charlie Rose I thought the author's an all right guy. I still think he's a great writer. I have to choose to stop and this makes me angry and I hate how angry I get when I can't get through a book that I really want to read - I think I just read a sentence that resembles the last one I wrote in Infinite Jest - but before I get myself into three weeks of wading through thick text like I have a substance abuse I promise myself that I'd stop now...

Once I wrote a blog entry like this and a friend commented that the entry was impossible to get through. Ever since I've stopped this writing style because I don't want to drive people crazy.

Who knows? I might in the future pick this up again when there's the leisure. ( )