Reading “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace.

Smiley.svg.png

In this file I want to write down my impression of “Infinite Jest”. I am mostly reading non-fiction, but this book is an exception, however, I am not going to break with my tradition of some of the book’s content for the sake of learning, so be wary, as review has a lot of spoilers.

Spoilers are, on the other hand, intentional, as I mostly believe that good books are not spoilt by spoilers, and bad books should not even be read. Moreover, it is hard to spoil “Infinite Jest”, because it is a terrible book.

Yes, I read it in full, and I did not like it at all. I think that, maybe, 5% of the book are worth the fame, and 95% are just incredibly boring and dull.

Why did I decide to read “Infinite Jest”?

  1. Mark Andreessen from A16z read it and recommends it: https://www.a16z.news/p/infinite-jest-belongs-in-the-techno
  2. The book generally is famous for being a “Silicon Valley” book
  3. It also is know for being those who read it fail entirely at the dating market for being incapable to communicate with normal people “lit-bros”
  4. It is also known as one of the most representative pieces of “post-modern” literature, and post-modernism deserves learning

1. Body

1.1. Executive summary

1.1.1. Infinite Jest is not a masterpiece

I firmly believe that a all masterful pieces of art, like children, eventually detach from their creators and start living their own life. There are numerous examples to this, but I mostly like the example of Edward Limonov, whose works are very talented and impressive, but whose everyday interviews exposed his “limited mind”.

This phenomenon is completely missing from “Infinite Jest”. If anything, “Infinite Jest” looks like the trope frequently appearing in the Cyberpunk genre, a digitised version of a human being, remaining in the noo-sphere after the original human being is already dead. “Infinite Jest” is inseparable from David Foster Wallace.

1.1.2. Order does not beat rank

There is a famous Russian phrase “порядок бьёт класс”, which I am loosely translating as “order beats rank”. In English “order” and “rank” are the same thing, but I am trying my hopeless attempt at wordplay here, because I am using “order” in a different meaning “orderliness” and “structure”. This phrase means that in long-term, people of average talent who work hard, diligently, thoroughly, and carefully, beat people of high talent who neglect self-discipline and are disorganised, as talented people often are, because everything comes easy to them.

I am afraid to say that this novel, unfortunately, seems to prove exactly the opposite. It is incredibly well thought-through, written with a colossal amount of effort, cared of for 9 long years of hard labour. People who visited Wallace seem to report that all of his working study was full of notes, drafts, sketches and schemes. And all of that is in vain. Despite all of the titanic effort invested in it, the books is dull, implausible, boring, trying to impress the reader by it intellectualism, and miserably failing at it. It has several themes covered extremely well, such as addiction recovery, but that is basically it, it is a book for a very narrow and specific audience niche, and will not age well outside of this niche.

I suspect that such a review would have been the worst of all possible for Wallace.

here the spoiler-less Executive Summary ends

1.2. Wallace himself

As mentioned earlier, the book is a mirror of Wallace. How exactly is this manifested?

Well, Wallace was an academic, an alcoholic, and a tennis player. And what is the book about? About an academy, an alcohol-recovery institution, and about tennis. Oh, well, there is also a plot about Quebecois insurgent separatists on the territory of the newly-formed confederation of USA, Canada, and Mexico, but it would rather make me feel that Wallace was himself involved in a conspiracy, rather than that it was his actual creative invention.

The main characters are a recently deceased genius film director Jim, his youngest son Hal, his brother’s former girlfriend Joelle, and her next boyfriend, a well-recovering drug and alcohol addict Don Gately. All of them meet only at a single line of the novel, when the three alive heroes are digging out the skull of the fourth one out of his grave, because a copy of a lethally addictive piece of film is expected to be buried together with him, inside his skull.

Why skull? Because Hamlet, of course.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

That’s where the name of the novel comes from.

But how is a piece of old English literature related to a post-modern novel? Well, the author was a professor of literature in a university, of course.

Are you seeing what I mean when I say that the book is Wallace and nothing but Wallace?

1.3. The Plot

So, the plot revolves around the search for a master-copy of a film called “Infinite Jest (V?)”, which is so attractive and entertaining that anyone who sees it even for a few seconds is permanently addicted to it, and wants to watch it all the time, foregoes any desires to eat, drink, and use a toilet, so eventually dies of starvation.

This film is searched for by at least two parties, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Quebecois separatist terrorist group.

What exactly is the Quebecois separatist group doing in the USA? Are not they expected to fight Canada instead? Well, yes, but, you see, Canada and the USA are united in this new world, as a new political entity called Organization of North-American Nations, and are Inter-dependent. Just look at the acronym formed by the first four letters of the official name, and image its official ideology: O.N.A.N. O.N.A.N.ism. Isn’t this genuinely funny? An official word which looks like a medical term for self-pleasuring? And instead of the Independence day, the new confederation now celebrates Inter-Dependence Day. Isn’t this a sign of literary brilliance?

In fact, the book, perhaps, 90% consists of similarly ridiculous cringe-worthy idiotic jokes. All its philosophy, genuine literary talent, intriguing plot, and certain (very few) novel ideas are completely buried under the pile of junk, which so extremely laborious to waddle through.

The plot is very convoluted, the first chapter is also the last chapter, because, of course, how can an intellectual novel NOT f*ck up its time line, it would be too trivial for the sophisticated audience. Of course, the time line is not just a loop, it is made intentionally entangled and made mind-boggling, because you know, the piece of art shaped in a Möbius strip is already in production. Oh, by the way, Wallace actually visited the stage of the Lynch’s work: https://web.archive.org/web/20021205121918/https://lynchnet.com/lh/lhpremiere.html .

The problem is - it does not serve any purpose. The whole convoluted plot line does not help him express any complex idea, it is just making reading harder.

But all of it does not really matter, because, after all, the plot is playing not even a secondary role in the novel, more closer to a tertiary or a quaternary one.

1.4. What is Important

If the plot plays no role in the book, what does?

Well, the plot drags the reader through a lot of scenes related to drugs, alcohol, other addictions and obsessions, and the grave consequences which all the aforementioned cause.

The plot is basically the 10% of the book which are, a lure, a bait, which is trying to hook you and drag you through the book, making you investigate the rest of the 90%, describing addiction, suffering, more addiction, and more suffering, probably hoping that it is going to have some therapeutic effect on your addicted soul.

I already mentioned “Lost Highway”, but even “Lost Highway” is too high-brow for me, whereas the film I kept thinking of while reading is “Requiem for a Dream”, except “Requiem for a Dream” has much more talent invested in it.

But does it actually work – using a ridiculous conspiratorial detective-story to drag you through 900 pages describing the suffering of alcoholics? Of course not. And hence Wallace has to use another, even more powerful lure: the scenes of people suffering.

Oh, yeah, the secondary characters in his book suffer a lot and profusely. (I am disregarding the sufferings of the main characters, because those actually can be made into the plot itself, so I am not daring to criticise them.)

The book mentions almost every problem of the modern world, which people care about even a little bit:

  1. Alcoholism
  2. Drug addiction
  3. Child molestation
  4. Incest
  5. Rape
  6. Homelessness
  7. Obsessions
  8. Unhappy marriages
  9. Tyrannical bosses
  10. Government provocations
  11. Insurgent provocations
  12. Children playing dangerous games
  13. Food excesses
  14. Sport obsession
  15. Serial seductions
  16. Romantic obsessions
  17. Bullying
  18. Loans
  19. Dentists
  20. Other medical circumstance (e.g. amputations)
  21. Beggary
  22. Excessively loving parents
  23. Estranged parents
  24. Disabilities
  25. Torturing pets

I might have forgotten something, but if you are thinking that this is looking as a checklist, every item of which an aspiring modern stunning and brave controversial writer needs to touch in order to be considered “on the forefront of modern literature”, then, in my opinion, you are not too far from truth.

Is there anything which destroys literature than KPI, which must be mentioned in order to be considered “discussing critical modern issues”?

So, if you like watching people suffer, especially suffer from issues you can yourself reflect upon, this is the book for you.

After all, there are people who enjoy SNUFF content, horror films, angst, as well as genuine masochists. This is the book for you.

I tried to empathise with the characters for about the first 100 pages, and then I just had to tell myself “come on”, and start reading the book mechanistically, page after page, counting the pages until this torment ends, and encouraging myself by sometimes appearing new words, so that I would have a legitimate excuse to get distracted with asking Wiktionary what they meant.

1.5. Is there anything which justifies the novel’s existence?

No piece of literature can be infinitely bad, so, of course, the novel has traits which make it useful.

Firstly, I suspect that the novel is of real help to actual suffering addicts and alcoholics. Wallace know what he was writing about, and the suffering is written carefully, thoroughly, and, I suspect, relatable to the people who suffer from it themselves.

Secondly, I did have to learn quite a bit of insofar unknown to me English words.

Thirdly, there are some genuinely good scenes in there, for example the description of the blizzard in one of the last chapters is just marvellously written, one of the best descriptions of a snowfall in the English literature I have seen.

Lastly, of course, this book is the symbol of an epoch, and in this sense deserves being read as an evidence of what the word looked like in 1996.

Do these four pros redeem the books existence? I would say a firm “no”.

Despite Wallace being a qualified writer, word-weaver, he chose to apply his skill to a moot project. And no, he is not a genius, sorry, no matter how much his entourage and the media tried to convince everyone, including, most importantly, Wallace Himself, and no matter how hard he worked to (seemingly to me), justify this title.