Infinite Jest, the novel - discussion (spoilers)

[tuq]

This summer is the 10th anniversary of me first reading Infinite Jest, a sprawling, epic novel that took me around four months to get through. It is my favorite book ever, but mileage definitely varies - many complained about the hundreds of pages of endnotes, others about the overuse of the english language (the book requires two bookmarks and a dictionary or thesaurus to get through).

I did a search in this forum for discussion on this, and indeed it was "favorited" by others in random book threads. Its core subject - addiction - is one I'm deeply fascinated in, which probably contributes to my love of this work. The part very early in the book about the guy from Tucson who is waiting on a marijuana delivery and who concocts elaborate schemes in which to purchase the product without making it seem like it's for him and then go on weeks-long pot benders is a huge LOL.

Also, the character development is off the charts - from the awesome Don Gately to Hal and his entire dysfunctional family.

Anyway, it's said that the true "end" to the book is actually at the beginning, but I've still never figured it out. Can someone elaborate just what the hell really happened, and what they thought of it?

I am very hit-and-miss on David Foster Wallace as an author. Some of his stuff just doesn't interest me at all, but the hook that got me to read IJ was his short story A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which I thought was absolute genius and describes perfectly why I'd probably hate going on a cruise.

Thoughts? Not sure if this is worthy of its own thread but wanted to see if there were some fans out there.

[kerowo]

I used to read DFW quite a bit and my friends would always know because my sentences would get a little over elaborate wrt DFWisms. The last copy of IJ I had has disappeared so I haven't tried to get through it again. It takes dedication and big chunks of time, it isn't a 20 minutes here 10 minutes there kind of book. Maybe next year I'll pick it up again in the year of the Tucks Medicated Pad.

[tuq]

kerowo,

I even tried to google about the ending to this book, to no avail. People just seem to bitch about it.

Yeah, I read this book a lot during the course of the day, but I'm notoriously ADD so it took me almost 2X longer than a friend of mine who was reading it concurrently. This was just before I left the grocery business and I remember taking it to work and reading it on lunch, etc. That was one dog eared-ass book by the time I got through it all, heh.

[gumpzilla]

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Anyway, it's said that the true "end" to the book is actually at the beginning, but I've still never figured it out. Can someone elaborate just what the hell really happened, and what they thought of it?

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It's been a while, so I went and dug up the book. There's one bit in there that I vaguely remembered from the last time I had this discussion, and now I found it:

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I think of John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year's WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head.

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So Wayne was a spy for whoever was trying to get their hands on the Entertainment, I guess; damned if I can remember how Gately was involved. Hal's incoherent rambling at the admissions interview seemed to be one of a couple of pieces of evidence that he himself had maybe seen the tape. (EDIT: Oh yeah, and presumably what they are attempting to dig up is the tape itself. I forget, but wasn't there some reason mentioned elsewhere in the book to suggest that this was where it ended up?)

I had pretty mixed feelings about this book. Don Gately was an excellent character, and I thought the halfway house scenes were very gripping. By the end, I'd lost a lot of interest in Hal and the tennis academy, though, as it just didn't have anything resembling the same emotional investment. And as is pretty obvious I've completely lost the thread of what the hell the plot was about.

[tuq]

I think what happened is when I got to the non-ending and after some research was told that the ending WAS AT THE BEGINNING, I just didn't bother to follow-up. Yeah, it's clear that the whole UofA interview at the front of the book happens after everything else but I couldn't piece it all together.

I remember John Wayne being sketchy and there's no way that Gately was in on the conspiracy, and also I need to crack the book and figure out when the Quebecois seperatist and the American informant's conversation happened overlooking Tucson at dawn. That could be key as long as it was in the Year of the Tuck's Medicated Pad or whenever Hal was interviewing at UofA.

[Chump Change]

There was a thread here in the lounge for suggesting reading material and I suggested Infinite Jest. In fact, anytime the subject comes up, online or off, I suggest this novel. Easily one of the most brilliant novels ever.

That's all I can add right now as it is bed time, but I look forward to the thread.

[Chump Change]

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And as is pretty obvious I've completely lost the thread of what the hell the plot was about.

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It's post-modern, there is no traditional plot. Holy buzzword batman. More apt would be there is no rising action, climax, et cetera. It starts in the future and ends in the past, though there is still a defined emotional apex. The only time a character dies is in the direct middle of the novel, I believe to the exact middle page if I remember correctly. You could say there is an emotional anti-climax at the beginning and the end with the apex in the middle.

This sounds kinda garbled, i'll go into more detail later. I must add these are not all my original ideas, there is an incredible amount of writing devoted to this novel.

[WhoIam]

IJ is probably my favorite book ever. I haven't read it in years and obviously don't have it here in Laos, but if I remember correctly, the "end at the beginning" shows the tennis kid (name escapes me) at a college interview. The inference is that he's taken the crazy drug that was talked about in the novel and has now gone mental as a result.

The ending fits the book's theme of addiction very well--you're left wanting more and you're tortured that you can never have more Infinite Jest again. Get it?

I really liked the character (again forget the name) who was the genius slacker kid at the tennis academy. There's a very similar character in his first novel, The Broom of the System. It isn't nearly as good as IJ but it's worth reading if only for the reason there's a character named Judith Prietht.

[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]DFW but thought Oblivion wasn't nearly as good as his previous short story collections, although every review I read of it was glowing.

[gumpzilla]

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And as is pretty obvious I've completely lost the thread of what the hell the plot was about.

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It's post-modern, there is no traditional plot. Holy buzzword batman. More apt would be there is no rising action, climax, et cetera.

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Well yes, that I remember. But there were still a lot of things happening in the background and I've forgotten most of them; I guess it's kinda like Gravity's Rainbow that way.

I picked this book up again last night after seeing this thread and read the first 20 pages or so and then started flipping through it. Now I think I can expand on my previous comment. The Gately/addiction stuff felt like there was a real story there about people; a lot of the tennis academy stuff sorta seems like it's there to allow Wallace to write "E Unibus Pluram" style essays about literary theorists and entertainment and all of that stuff. That could maybe be done well, but I remember feeling that in his zeal to demonstrate his erudition he disjointed the story something fierce.

[nick604]

Posting without reading the thread because I don't want to be hit by spoilers.

Finally got round to buying this a couple of weeks back after recommendations from a bunch of people, including tuq. Haven't actually started it yet, but I plan to soon and will be back to read all this properly/post views sometime in the near future...