Will Sargent reviewed Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Review of 'Infinite Jest' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
In some ways, the investment of time and energy it takes to read Infinite Jest results in the people who've read it wanting to make a value statement about how great it is. Look at the vocabulary! And the footnotes! Look at the sprawling interconnections! Look at how BIG it is!
And yes, it is big, and erudite, and DFW was very smart and had a big vocabulary and clearly read lots. But here's the thing.
It's cribbed. You can feel when he's writing on his own, and when he's writing based off a movie he saw, a jokes he retold, the books he's copying, even the Monty Python skits. This stands out even more once the stuff that ISN'T cribbed comes out -- when he writes about depression, you can feel the walls melt as he stands there, trying to make you see something unseeable -- and then he's …
In some ways, the investment of time and energy it takes to read Infinite Jest results in the people who've read it wanting to make a value statement about how great it is. Look at the vocabulary! And the footnotes! Look at the sprawling interconnections! Look at how BIG it is!
And yes, it is big, and erudite, and DFW was very smart and had a big vocabulary and clearly read lots. But here's the thing.
It's cribbed. You can feel when he's writing on his own, and when he's writing based off a movie he saw, a jokes he retold, the books he's copying, even the Monty Python skits. This stands out even more once the stuff that ISN'T cribbed comes out -- when he writes about depression, you can feel the walls melt as he stands there, trying to make you see something unseeable -- and then he's back up and running again, and all the vocabulary, qualifications and cleverness in the world won't stop you from seeing that in the end, it doesn't mean shit. It's the words of a man who knows he's not saying anything, and is hoping that maybe -- if he keeps talking long enough -- something will matter.
Of course the book chronologically ends with Hal unable to speak, crippled and inarticulate. Of course the actual end of the book signifies nothing. Of course there are hundreds and hundreds of footnotes with their own footnotes attached, each of them drawing smaller and smaller circles. It's all the same. It's all lost. It's an infinite jest in the purest sense of the word; a book that is itself a joke.