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trainisloud's review against another edition
5.0
Insanely entertaining, challenging, and engaging. This isn't a book to take on lightly, it isn't a book easily read over a weekend. It is packed with some many characters, words I have never heard descriptions of tennis, drug addiction, language and the meaning of living. Wallace gives us a super complex and long conversation about so many things; do we live for pleasure, achievement, distraction, protection of trauma, virtue, meaning, God, power. It is multi-thematic, what is entertainment? What is addiction? What is purpose? Now a couple of things here; don't read this journey thinking it is straightforward narrative we clearly follow a main character who we champion to a personal growth that coincides with saving the day. While there are character arcs (one of which is absolutely heart crushing in hindsight), I don't think it is really about that. It is about our engagement in entertainment, what virtuous and meaningful life is, a critique of commercialism, a spiritual, physical, and emotional study in addiction and recovery. I think this book is important.
briangodsey's review against another edition
4.0
Great book; so many great ideas in there, but unfortunately I didn't catch much of a resolution. Not that a good book needs a tie-up-loose-ends final chapter, but I still have a lot of questions I'd like to ask, many of them more philosophical than practical. Maybe that's the intention, just like some of the films described in the book. Highly recommended, though, if you have enough time to double or triple your longest book ever (note: mine was Anna Karenina).
alicandlin's review against another edition
5.0
Life changingly good, in the way where you see everything around you differently because the sheer breadth and depth of the writing has skewed your perspective.
Finishing this book doesn't answer any questions, but instead leaves you with so much to think about, to discuss and wonder. It made me want to talk and talk and talk and understand and explain. So much in it is new and fresh to me and so indescribable that I can't help but try and describe it to anyone who stands still enough to listen.
Thinking about Infinite Jest makes me question myself and my responses and my world. What more of a wonderful thing could you ask from a book?
If I wasn't so utterly exhausted by the reading of it, I'd start again at the beginning immediately in order to soak up every moment again (and refresh myself on what even happened in the first half of the book, my god is it long).
Finishing this book doesn't answer any questions, but instead leaves you with so much to think about, to discuss and wonder. It made me want to talk and talk and talk and understand and explain. So much in it is new and fresh to me and so indescribable that I can't help but try and describe it to anyone who stands still enough to listen.
Thinking about Infinite Jest makes me question myself and my responses and my world. What more of a wonderful thing could you ask from a book?
If I wasn't so utterly exhausted by the reading of it, I'd start again at the beginning immediately in order to soak up every moment again (and refresh myself on what even happened in the first half of the book, my god is it long).
premat's review against another edition
5.0
when i first tried to read this book i was 17 & i didn't get it. i thought the infinite jest was that i'd tried to finish it. then...i found it again. & realized that it was, quite possibly, one of the best things i'd ever read. because it was smart, & funny, & massive, & rambling, & brilliant. absolutely brilliant. sometimes i re-read it when i run out of other things to read, just for fun. which is saying something, since i never re-read anything. so hah.
themtj's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. It goes without saying that this is a monstrous achievement in literature, or I suppose I should say it almost goes without saying since I bothered to say it. It is a scathing, witty, and warranted critique of entertainment culture not just in the content of the book, but also the form. The book is difficult to read at least for the first few hundred pages and not because of the relentless use of endnotes and the requisite page flipping, but because it is non-linear and has built a future alternate reality which is never clearly laid out. The reader must work for the plot and the world it is set in and this I take not just as DFW's style, but direct opposition to the easy consumption of media and even popular reading.
The book was clearly a cathartic work and I find it mind-boggling that this is the heavily attenuated version of his original 1,600-page proposal. Some of the writing can drift into seemingly endless rambling about apparently nothing and at times I wondered if large portions of the book were nothing more than autotelic.
With all that said, there are probably 30 pages that are heavily annotated and underlined which is a relatively small percentage. However, I was consistently enjoying the book throughout and enjoyed the struggle. Hal has a few enlightening discussions, but I found the sections with Marathe to be the most enjoyable.
The book was clearly a cathartic work and I find it mind-boggling that this is the heavily attenuated version of his original 1,600-page proposal. Some of the writing can drift into seemingly endless rambling about apparently nothing and at times I wondered if large portions of the book were nothing more than autotelic.
With all that said, there are probably 30 pages that are heavily annotated and underlined which is a relatively small percentage. However, I was consistently enjoying the book throughout and enjoyed the struggle. Hal has a few enlightening discussions, but I found the sections with Marathe to be the most enjoyable.
musyas's review against another edition
5.0
If DFW published a thousand pages of his experience watching grass grow, I would read it. This guy has a storytelling voice that is unparalleled in any of the books I've ever read. He could make anything interesting, and he really takes advantage of this throughout the book.
Also, I have never laughed out loud so often when reading a book. I had a great time.
Also, I have never laughed out loud so often when reading a book. I had a great time.
wordcommando's review against another edition
4.0
Overwritten, overpopulated, over-thought and... overrated? Like Finnegan's Wake, I guess it's just an achievement that it exists? That said, I love DFW. His short stories and essays are magnificent. That would be enough. The Pale King is his best novel, I think. Broom of the System is best forgotten. It's hard to criticize Infinite Jest without sounding like an unappreciative cretin lowbrow--and I think that's the point. One of many points. DFW holds nothing of his intellect back. He is bright, he'd have been the first to admit. He SHONE bright. Burned out far too early.
The prose here, at times, soars. But, contrary to some reviews, this is not Beckett. It's better than Pynchon but it's... tedious. There--I said it. So much is inconsequential. Here's a writer who makes the reader work far too hard. This takes transgression to another level. I did not believe nor buy the tennis academy characters for a second. They all were drawn as hyper-intellectual graduate school versions of DFW. The footnotes? FUCK YOU, DAVE. I can see why he swore them off in later books.
There's very little here to make a reader want to read the book again. I'm sure there's profundity--but it's buried so deep in this verbal cocaine-fueled sprawling behemoth... what's the point? The point is in the title: Infinite (endless) Jest (joke). I'll bet DFW had fun writing this. No doubt this book haunted him. There are seven books contained therein, at least. If you like scuba diving in the Mariana Trench, this is the novel for you.
I'm damn glad I got through it. Thank you, DFW for everything.
The prose here, at times, soars. But, contrary to some reviews, this is not Beckett. It's better than Pynchon but it's... tedious. There--I said it. So much is inconsequential. Here's a writer who makes the reader work far too hard. This takes transgression to another level. I did not believe nor buy the tennis academy characters for a second. They all were drawn as hyper-intellectual graduate school versions of DFW. The footnotes? FUCK YOU, DAVE. I can see why he swore them off in later books.
There's very little here to make a reader want to read the book again. I'm sure there's profundity--but it's buried so deep in this verbal cocaine-fueled sprawling behemoth... what's the point? The point is in the title: Infinite (endless) Jest (joke). I'll bet DFW had fun writing this. No doubt this book haunted him. There are seven books contained therein, at least. If you like scuba diving in the Mariana Trench, this is the novel for you.
I'm damn glad I got through it. Thank you, DFW for everything.
chrissych's review against another edition
5.0
A PERFECT novel, though not for readers faint of heart. This book was an immense challenge, in every sense of the word, but its pay-off is spectacular, life-changing, almost impossibly satisfying, and absolutely indescribable.