Recent Reads: Infinite Jest

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. (more…)

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