Infinite Jest
Author: David Foster Wallace
Rating: â 4/5
Date Read: 2013/08/29
Pages: 1079
Um yeah so hmm.
Alright, so every. single. person. that Iâm friends with on Goodreads who has read Infinite Jest has reviewed this book with some substance in hand, and now that Iâve finished it literally less than a minute ago I can kind of see why, so excuse me while I take a few sips of my hard apple cider.
Okay.
Infinite Jest is the name of a film that is so entertaining that it causes viewers to go into a stupor that leads to their eventual death. If you think that sounds interesting and you want to read the book to find out more about the film, well, donât bother. Infinite Jest, the film, is a MacGuffin, so you wonât really get any explanation. Extrapolate that, and you can get a clearer image of what constitutes Infinite Jest, the book.
True story: I am as into film as I am into books. I hope this doesnât freak the literati out, because Iâm not interested in getting my intelligentsia card revoked. I said film, not movies, so itâs not like Iâm saying that the latest version of some cut-heavy superhero piece of bullshit is on par with War & Peace, or whatever. What Iâm saying is that Rashomon, the film, is at least as culturally important as Rashomon, the short story. If you feel like debating that fact, I urge you to get off the internet and watch the film. Itâs less than two hours long. This review can wait.
Anyway, this is the first of just many digressions in this substance-mediated non-linear review, so donât expect me to link Kurosawa with Infinite Jest, per se. The important thing here is that I feel incapable of reviewing Infinite Jest without comparing it to a few films (hopefully ones that youâve heard of, and if you havenât, you should seriously considering adding them to your Netflix queue or whatever).
Mostly, Infinite Jest reminded me of a Buñuel film. Not just any Buñuel film, I mean itâs not like itâs some strange, 1000 page long version of Un Chien Andalou. Iâm specifically talking about any of the films from his second French period, but maybe weâll just make it easier by using Belle de Jour as an example. This easily applies to Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, if youâre more into that.
I say Infinite Jest is like a Buñuel film because itâs a picture of society that might make members of said society uncomfortable. But there are also strange, dreamlike sequences that donât really make sense, except that they kind of do. Also, terrorists. But really awkward terrorists that donât seem to connect with the rest of the story.
Seriously, I wish I was even half as stylish as Catherine Deneuve.
But actually, the more affecting parts of Infinite Jest revolve around mental illness (mostly, addiction, but I was more impressed by the sections that were about depression). And those sections reminded me of a much more recent film, Melancholia by Lars von Trier:
Which is about the end of the world, but is mostly about depression, which is paradoxically useful when there really isnât any hope anymore. And yeah, the Hamlet link between Melancholia and Infinite Jest is something I actively wanted to reference, if you were wondering.
Okay, so those are the good things about Infinite Jest. But, actually, Iâm not that smitten with Infinite Jest, in the way that other people seem to be. Mostly, because there are some things that are super freaking annoying about Infinite Jest. First and foremost, David Foster Wallace sets Infinite Jest in a future world that I think is supposed to be zany and amusing and comedically realistic, somewhat like the future of Sleeper:
But, to this reader, whoâs reading this 17 years after it was written, the IJ future doesnât seem topical or universal or even remotely realistic. Actually, itâs comedic in a campy and ridiculous way. Kind of like the 1993 Stallone vehicle, Demotion Man:
Which is to say that my major issue with Infinite Jest is that itâs a book that didnât know what it wanted to be when it grew up. Is it an honest, realistic look at addiction and depression? Is it a zany story about kids in a tennis academy in the future (also, seriously, I canât think of anything that is less interesting or less-take-seriouslyable than a tennis academy). Is it a surrealistic political thriller involving wheelchair assassins from Quebec? Obviously, DFW couldnât decide, so he just did all of those things. The result isnât as âawfulâ as Harold Bloom claims, but it is incredibly uneven and, frankly, self-indulgent.
(Is it fair for me to call something self-indulgent when Iâm writing a rambling review on the internet in which hard apple cider is as important as the work itself? I donât know, but I do think that next time Iâm going to go back to my beloved Ace Joker Cider instead of this Stella Artois stuff. Itâs just way too sweet.).
Anyway, the irony of the book is that many of things that DFW tried to do have been done before in the visual medium, but better. I donât know what director to compare David Foster Wallace to. I think that if Dan Brown:Michael Bay::David Foster Wallace:Federico Fellini. Fellini has gotten a lot of awards and critical acclaim, and itâs not undeserved. But his films donât resonate with me in the way that, say, the films of Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen or even Wes Anderson do. Fellini always seemed too stylized, too cool, and that took away from the honesty of his films, even though parts of, say, 8 1/2 are certainly emotionally resonant. So itâs not really my thing, but itâs also pretty good, and Iâm glad that I gave it a shot.