Addicts and perverts and purse snatchers, oh my!
Written: Mar 01 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: mostly funny and poignant and well-written
Cons: Often super violent; long; sometimes confusing and pretentious
The Bottom Line: Not for the faint of heart, the easily distracted, or the busy.
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| kilinahe's Full Review: David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest: A Novel |
It would figure that the first book I actually have some time to sit down and read in a great while would be the longest, most convoluted, most confusing thing ever written in the English language.
I knew it was long when I took it off the library shelf, but nothing prepared me for the 1100 pages of non-linear narrative, phantom characters, and brain-numbing tedium that is Infinite Jest. This thing has a cast of thousands. The one thing that Wallace does well is create characters who are all distinct and defined. Sometimes, a book has lots of characters who are similar and it becomes a bit of a task to sort them all out, but in this case, they all have unique characteristics and it's almost kind of fun to meet them.
When you do meet them, you realize, though, that it's hard to give a damn about any of them. Every last person introduced in this book is at best unlikeable; at worst psychotic. We have every flavor of addict present here: drug addicts, sex addicts, control freaks. This book is about addiction and hedonism and the addictions are all spelled out for you, in gory detail. Parts of it read like the Physician's Desk Reference. Pills, marijuana, cocaine, you name it, it's in here. Wallace must be a recovering addict, because he nails the loneliness and emptiness of addiction quite well. The passages that discuss the isolation and horror of addiction are the most compelling passages I've read in a long time.
Wallace's current hangup is fifty-cent words. If and when you buy Infinite Jest, buy a dictionary, too. I think he gets off on showing the world how smart he is. His way with words doesn't add anything or create a mood; it just looks often pretentious and annoying.
The most unique aspect of this novel is the nearly 100 page section of footnotes in the back. Yes, footnotes in a novel, mostly a lot of superfluous details about the characters that really isn't necessary but is there, just in case you need to know. On one hand, it's a marvel to see such complete development and detail, but on the other hand, it's a bit much. One footnote is ten pages long and consists of a meandering telephone conversation between two brothers that has nothing to do with drugs or AA; (lots of the story takes place at a drug treatment halfway house and at AA meetings) but instead outlines the basics of another entirely different plotline involving Quebecois separatists. You will have absolutely no clue what the Quebecois separatists have to do with the drug-addicted teenage tennis prodigy, Hal, until somewhere in the middle of the book. That is the main weakness of the book. Nothing looks even remotely related or relevant until you've almost given up on the whole thing.
Since Infinite Jest is so long, it can't be a cover-to-cover laugh riot like the jacket suggests. It is laugh-out-loud funny in parts and unimaginably dry in other parts. Most of the good stuff happens in the scenes with Hal and his family. They are the most screwed-up family ever portrayed in a novel and are the embodiment of the whole point of the book, in my opinion. Who needs the bunch in the halfway house when you have the four (five, counting one character who is deceased for most of the action) of them.
Infinite Jest has been over-hyped. It's not genius, but it's a good way to kill a few weeks.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kilinahe
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Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Reviews written: 74
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About Me:
"In your face, Space Coyote!"
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