The Crabshack Gallery

Recent Reads: Infinite Jest

7th February, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments

I gave fair warning a few weeks ago that I will write my oft-rambling and seldom-insightful thoughts on books I’ve just read, and the first one’s a doozy: Infinite Jest ;).  A monster of a book at 1079 pages, it is at times daunting to read, and even difficult to describe.  Sure, I could tell you that it’s about a young tennis star-in-the-making at a prestigious tennis academy beginning to mentally unravel; that it’s about a counselor at halfway house for recovering drug addicts wanting more than anything to stay clean; that it’s about a film so entertaining that anyone who sees it becomes fatally addicted to it; that it’s about the groups who want that film for their own purposes, including a militant Quebec separatist group of wheelchair-bound assassins.  I could say that the book’s about all that,  and, somehow, how they all connect, but Infinite Jest is not so much about the story as it is the telling of the story.

Infinite Jest has been described as extremely innovative, and while I’m hardly a judge of that, I know I’ve personally never read another book like it.  The story is told through different characters’ eyes, jumping through space and time, in little anecdotal vignettes, straight narratives, or essays.  The tone of these scenes vary greatly, spanning from comedy to pathos, from scene to scene, and sometimes even within the same one.  However, this is not a criticism, as Foster Wallace does both well.  The book is often very funny in a absurdist way, but what could, if alone, be taken as snideness is balanced by heart and (I felt) real compassion.  It’s similar to a body made up a different cells: each kind is unique and different from the others such that you’d hardly think they belong together, yet together they create a functional whole.

It’s this same connections slowly being revealed a bit here and a bit there that make this book a difficult read.  You have to pay attention, and be prepared to flip back and forth at times (and yes, the 100+ pages of footnotes at the back certainly doesn’t help readability, but they are necessary).  Things are often left ambiguous and open-ended (in some instances very), and there are dozens of characters to keep track of.  As can perhaps be expected in a book of this length, there are some times when I found it a bit dragging, but these were few, and even when the story wasn’t moving the writing was still enjoyable.  It is hard, even though any one paragraph would not seem overly so (the writing itself is generally easy-to-read and conversational). It took me a month’s worth of long commutes to finish.

Despite my enjoyment of this book, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.  I freely admit I didn’t get everything, and that when I finished the book one of the first things I did was search for more information about it.  But what higher endorsement can I give than saying that instead of simply satisfying my curiosity, reading about connections I had missed made me want to see them for myself?  One day I’ll tackle the 1079 page monster again, and next time I’ll be more prepared :D