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A review by marsius
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
4.0
This, I think, is a review I'll likely revise more than once. Or maybe I'll set out to revise it only to throw my hands in the air. The issue is that, in the end, I'm not really sure what I think of Infinite Jest. To be clear, the writing is wonderful, often virtuosic, and even minor characters are incredibly well fleshed out with lives and personalities all their own. DFW's encyclopedic breadth of world-building was also often astounding. At the same time, so often it felt as if he was showing off, writing additional detail or grabbing at a thesaurus (and then deliberately misspelling the deliberately not-quite-perfect synonym) simply for the sake of proving he could rather than to serve the narrative. Then, of course, there's the ending.
ARGUABLY SPOILERS
The Sopranos-esque ending. There are certainly threads of a post-ending narrative scattered throughout the novel and its endnotes (a cruel twist considering the insane length of the thing), but I don't think there's enough there to really reach many of the conclusions reached by others online. At the same time, I think I agree with Ezra Klein the part of the point is that the unresolved-yet-near-absolute destruction of all these characters (who, again, are insanely well fleshed out) causes people to feel the need to obsessively reread, hoping to pick something up, in the process becoming more attached to the characters while finding little actual resolution in the books pages. In that regard, it's clever, and it's thought provoking (as Infinite Jest the novel becomes its own Infinite Jest the film), but I don't know that it's enough to make it "good."
That's likely a discussion I'll repetitively have with myself in the coming days and weeks. The writing truly is wonderful, the novel is insightful as a meditation on a half dozen or more topics, and DFW's absolute embrace of sincerity is refreshing (and, coming out of the 80s, must have been almost novel itself). At this stage, though, I just don't know that I actually liked it as a whole. I have a feeling it will take me a while to figure that one out.
ARGUABLY SPOILERS
The Sopranos-esque ending. There are certainly threads of a post-ending narrative scattered throughout the novel and its endnotes (a cruel twist considering the insane length of the thing), but I don't think there's enough there to really reach many of the conclusions reached by others online. At the same time, I think I agree with Ezra Klein the part of the point is that the unresolved-yet-near-absolute destruction of all these characters (who, again, are insanely well fleshed out) causes people to feel the need to obsessively reread, hoping to pick something up, in the process becoming more attached to the characters while finding little actual resolution in the books pages. In that regard, it's clever, and it's thought provoking (as Infinite Jest the novel becomes its own Infinite Jest the film), but I don't know that it's enough to make it "good."
That's likely a discussion I'll repetitively have with myself in the coming days and weeks. The writing truly is wonderful, the novel is insightful as a meditation on a half dozen or more topics, and DFW's absolute embrace of sincerity is refreshing (and, coming out of the 80s, must have been almost novel itself). At this stage, though, I just don't know that I actually liked it as a whole. I have a feeling it will take me a while to figure that one out.