How I feel after starting this thread:

9.5/10

Infinite Jest is without question my favorite book of all time (a title previously held by Cloud Atlas).

I'd recommend that after reading the book, you pick up the reader's guide. I really enjoyed the book, and was an astute enough reader to pick up on a few of the themes, but the reader's guide blew my mind. Reading it was like watching the end of the original SAW or Usual Suspects where suddenly you realize that you missed what was right in front of your face the whole time. Perhaps not the greatest analogy, but you get the point.

I think it's especially important for this book due to the size. If you're anything like me, it's gonna take you awhile to plow through this beast, and during that time, it's really easy to forget bits and pieces, or miss some subtle, connected events that are 100 pages apart.

I'm pretty jealous of those of you reading IJ for the first time. It's a wonderful experience.

Grunch.

Picked this up last week after hearing about it now and then over the years and forgetting to buy it. Honestly have no idea what to expect, going to start it up after I finish what i'm reading now.

I have an audible credit i need to use and was considering IJ. What do people think, would that make it impossible to follow or might it make it easier to get through?

I would guess it would make it 110% harder to follow. YMMV.

Thanks, i went the complete opposite direction and got The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo instead for light relief when i'm tired.

Why not go the whole 9 yds and get 50 Shades of Grey?

The possibilities of annulation. What does it mean?

UPDATE:


I'm on page 122.

You can do it. It will pick up. It is totally worth it.

Currently at 570. Just yesterday saw that it's now been 7 months since the purchase of the book. I am a slow reader, sometimes not reading for a month, but I will soldier on.

The book is incredible at times, but also has moments where the pace completely drops, or the constant switching between times and storylines gets so confusing that by now im not really sure what happened before or after the current 'now.'

lmao, how's everyone doing in this thread?

finished it like 2 weeks ago. went online to read more about it and i was blown away how big the scope for this book was. it's like plato's shadow analogy. Infinite Jest is the shadow of something much bigger (which is largely unspoken but heavily implied)

I read it 2 years ago post graduation. My thoughts:

1) It would have been an epic novel if it only included the chapters of Hal at the Tennis academy/his backstory. As a soccer player growing up who lived in those academies during the summer, he ****ing nailed what it was like living in the realm of having your sport be your entire life. The interactions with the other kids forming a brotherhood, the absurd fact you still had to deal with academic classes, the experiments with drugs, how even the top 1% of players still wasn't good enough, ect.

Didn't really care for any of the other side stories, though I liked the girl who hosted the late night talk show.

2) DFW is a brilliant man (or was) but I think his fiction is garbage. WAY TOO PEDANTIC. I prefer Dostoevsky, Camus, Hesse, even Faulkner, because they get to the point a lot quicker and aren't trying to be the objective arbiter of all things grammar and "constructionally" correct about a sentence.

His essays are great, I LOVE his "THIS IS WATER" speech (such a vibrant speaker!), but no one actually enjoys reading his fiction. Even the absurd 20 page sentences in "Absalom, Absalom" hold preference. Faulkner knew how to create a mythos, DFW did not, or at least he was more concerned being the mathematical genius of prose, if that makes any sense.

3) He was so proud the chapters in IJ followed a "Fractal geometric pattern" -- no one gives a ****.

The chapters with those 2 dudes out in the desert, whatever the Hell was going on in Quebec -- all just superfluous mental masturbation.

4) TBH I feel he should have been a scientist instead of a writer. All his fiction you can just tell he doesn't feel or really care about his characters, they are Ivory Tower goal posts championing his intelligence.

Living in this extreme of extremes OCD mind state, one can see how he offed himself. He should have taken his own advice about facing the banality of every day existence: "This is water, this is water".

5) I like the rip off of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" -- anyone else know what I am alluding to? More a hat tip than a rip off, I mean that in a positive connotation -- there is a chapter in IJ that is the exact copy of a section TSATF, and that section of TSATF is one of my favorite passages in literary history.

It's so obvious it's frightening. I admire the hat tip to Faulkner there.


In summary I think the simple worded and imaginary motif of like an Alice in Wonderland says more about philosophy and the existential realities of the self dealing with the world than any of DFWs literature -- I'll take efficiency in literature over mental masturbation -- a soccer analogy would be Ronaldinho vs Messi -- I'll take Messi's transcendent use of angles and speed and efficiency over Ronaldinho's juggling skills.

I tried searching for the passage to which you're referring. Have no idea what it is. Any hints?