Before starting this novel, I knew very little about it. I have seen it called plotless, or about tennis, but not really about tennis. A campus novel. After reading Roadside Picnic, I saw it referred to as a book with dystopian scifi area. There are as many people say they cannot get past page 100, as say it is the best thing they've ever read.
My take? This is a book about obsession, compulsion, addiction, discipline, loneliness, and intelligence all in one, and their unifying interrelatedness. It is about how drug addiction, sports ambition, and patriotism are children of the same impulse. How entertainment and elitism are born from the same wellspring. That Ambition = Obsession = Addiction = Entertainment, and they all exist just to distract us from existential Boredom.
I strongly disliked reading Gravity's Rainbow, but even in that distaste, I recognised the work of a hyper detail-oriented polymath, and the novel at least culminates the very literal arc of the story.
I did not dislike reading most of Infinite Jest. The writing was easier, the insights into human nature more compelling, the thematic parallels between the various vignettes more apparent as the novel progressed.
(Mild spoilers for the structure of the ending:)
The only way I can make sense of this novel's abrupt and unfulfilling ending is in a meta way, where James Incandenza's filmography is representative of Wallace and this novel. JOI started in obsession with a technical aspect of filmmaking (lenses) similarly to how DFW seems obsessively preoccupied with grammar. JOI's early work involved a lot of technical and documentarian work, as DFW was also an essay writer and literature teacher.
As JOI developed his own artistic work, it was speculated whether it was artistically transgressive (anti-confluential?) or just poor editing, as can be said for DFW. Ultimately, his final work was a desperate drive to connect with and communicate with people, and entertain, as it widely seems DFW was trying to. In the end, Infinite Jest V was offically never seen, never finished, never released, just as the "end" of Infinite Jest is not present in these pages, at the risk that it would he "so entertaining" that one would never leave it; a tongue in cheek promise (An unfinished masterpiece can also be extrapolated to The Pale King).
It is also, as is, the Ultimate Anti-Entertainment; the ultimate demand of your active attention, the ultimate repudiation of the passive TV consumption which DFW fears so much.
by Gay_For_Gary_Oldman
2 Comments
Only love for IF and DFW.
Great summary. I tried to read it twice, finally finished the audio book and then actually _read_ it. It became my favorite book after that.