Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This book was loaned to me by my brother a year ago,with fair warning and I finally got the nerve to open it up.  It took 5 months of my life to get through it, but oh, at what an appropriate time in this the year of an illiterate,  self-aggrandizing reality tv president contradicting scientific facts during a global pandemic.

This was a rollercoaster read for certain.  I had many moments of wanting to throw the book in the trash and one paragraph later would be completely absorbed in every word.  My advice is to pace yourself, read those dang footnotes, and don’t toss it out the window (it’s too darn heavy anyway).

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow/ of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”

References to Hamlet abound throughout Infinite Jest and some have compared Hal to Hamlet himself.  I believe, however, that Wallace had the last laugh and believed the reader, especially those obsessives, were the true jesters.

We meet Harold Incandenza at the book’s opening as he is being “interviewed” at the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA).  We witness his mental deterioration without surprise.  Love that he was an encyclopedia fan, as was I (although I never got out of the letter “A”).

Known to Orin Incandenza as the Moms, Avril Incandenza is a controlling obsessive compulsive who dominates her younger sons, Hal and Mario.  Not a very likable woman.

Eldest Incandenza son, Orin is wise in keeping his distance from his mother.  His ways with women leave little to like about him, yet there is something about him that is sympathetic, perhaps his devotion to Hal while essentially ignoring the rest of the family.

Don Gately was another very sympathetic character.  A recovering addict who ends up as an unconventional counselor at Ennet House.  He is seriously injured and we get his perspective as he recuperates in the hospital unable to speak.  Hal + Don = David Foster Wallace, IMHO…

Marathe, a Canadian separatist is a member of the Wheelchair Assassins.  His true motivation is getting medical support for his wife from the Office of Unspecified Services.

Quotes:

My silent response to the expectant silence begins to affect the air of the room, the bits of dust and sportcoat-lint stirred around by the AC’s vents dancing jaggedly in the slanted plane of windowlight, the air over the table like the sparkling space just above a fresh-poured seltzer.

It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it.  

One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party.  

He made whoever he got high with feel lonely.

Was Mr. Wallace merely toying with his readers?  I believe I’d feel very uncomfortable in his presence but would feign an air of tranquility.  It’s evident he wrote what he lived, so I’d try to get his take on natural writing ability versus MFA trained writers.

My rating for Infinite Jest is an 8 out of 10.

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Next up, Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier…