Infinite Jest

ByDavid Foster Wallace

Release Date: 2009-04-13
Genre: Literary Fiction

Score: 4.5

4.5

From 571 Ratings

Description

The 30th anniversary edition of the virtuosic, wickedly comic modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America, with a new foreword by Michelle Zauner, author of the New York Times bestselling sensation Crying in H Mart.

“To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renews the idea of what a novel can do.

“Uproarious ... Infinite Jest shows off Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer … who can seemingly do anything.” ―Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“The next step in fiction ... Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty ... Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think.” —Sven Birkerts, The Atlantic

One of Time magazine’s “100 Best Novels” (1923—2005)

Reviews

Infinite Jest
3
By Noah Mussay
Where are the endnotes?!
Stunning
5
By MikeyTheVee
An absolutely magnificent novel of epic proportions.
Great read- perfect format
5
By oldfezziwig
For years I put off reading this book, daunted by its size and everything said about how hard it was. Then I bought the print version and since it was just too massive to take on the subway or on plane trips, it took weeks to get to page 100.

Enter the ibook. At last, the perfect format to enjoy Infinite Jest. so nice to click right to the endnote and right back again. So portable on the ipad mini that I can take it everywhere and sneak in a page or two at a time.

And yes, I said enjoy. Sure, you have to engage your brain, it's not mindless reading. And yes, it's very long and occasionally dull in its detail about things not of interest to the reader. But you are more than rewarded for the effort. It's funny, troubling, provocative as hell and spot-on about a whole lot of things.
Not an easy read but worth it
5
By Yamajamawee
Ok I have the hard copy, and if there are problems with the footnotes in iBook, it's even more cumbersome. That being said, this is one of the best books that I've ever read. Amazingly insightful about our modern society.
Formulaic?!?
4
By strubiedo
LOL. That's even funnier than some of the hilarious parts of this book.

A ponderous read to be sure. But, certainly interesting.
Boring Sidney
1
By Barren Spinster
Indulgent and insane. Don't waste your time.
Not good
1
By Epignosis567
And formulaic at that
Probably the best format for this
3
By fivebats
It is great to be able to read this novel with a reader that has a dictionary and links to and from the (copious) end notes.

The only negative aspect is that the links back to the main text in the end notes do not always get you back to the page you were on in the main text. Probably a limitation of the epub format or the publishing system.