I’m a little late for the Infinite Summer but I finally completed David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest this evening. Going into this project, I was initially skeptical at all of the people hailing Infinite Jest as the greatest book of the last twenty years, but, as I read, I slowly began to realize how this book can profoundly affect people. The story is almost an irrelevant to the actual content of the book. What is important is how Wallace analyzes different relationships: a dysfunctional family, a halfway house, a group of separatists. These main plots rarely (if ever) directly interact, but their stories are intertwined. Wallace’s writing style is also atypical. It’s almost as if he is telling you a story, rather than writing a book. There are long winded sentences that make little sense if read traditionally, but when read aloud, they come to life.
At about page 600 or 700, I realized that I had not fully absorbed how amazing and deep the novel was. I was too caught up with the novelty of Eschaton, or even attempting to figure out exactly what the O.N.A.N. was, to regard the more serious tones of the book. It was at this point that I pledged to myself that I would, one day (hopefully in the next year), read Infinite Jest again. Next time I will buy a companion guide and pick it apart, section-by-section, to see what else I can find.
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