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4.2 AVERAGE
4.2 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Olipahan ristiriitainen reissu. Kokemus vaihteli aivosähkökäyrän seisauttavan pitkäveteisestä intensiiviseen mukaan tempautumiseen. Parasta olivat nerokkaat kielikuvat ja moniulotteiset hahmot sekä näiden ajatuksissa ikäänkuin ohimennen mainitut erittäin tarkkanäköiset ja syvällisen ymmärryksen huomiot ihmiselämästä. Pahinta kirjassa oli ammattitason tenniksen yksityiskohtiin pureutuminen sekä sadat uuvuttavan tekniset alaviitteet.
Päättymätöntä riemua en oikein osaa verrata mihinkään aiempaan taidekokemukseeni. Sen verran ainutlaatuinen teos. Suosittelen kärsivällisille lukijoille. Teos on kyllä vaivan arvoinen.
Päättymätöntä riemua en oikein osaa verrata mihinkään aiempaan taidekokemukseeni. Sen verran ainutlaatuinen teos. Suosittelen kärsivällisille lukijoille. Teos on kyllä vaivan arvoinen.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Tennis, addiction & dysfunctional characters.
It's a very challenging book in my opinion, especially the first 20-30% where DFW uses so many niche words. So much time is spent looking up words in a dictionary or flipping through the endnotes, which can be very jarring.
I don't think it's much fun for people who tend to zone out while reading, but it's a one of a kind book for sure. It's a very unique novel, which I always appreciate, so I don't regret reading it. Like a Shakespearean comedy, readers will likely begin the novel with a lot of confusion that is later, somewhat, resolved. I say somewhat because there is no conclusion...which is kind of annoying but I wasn't that kncested in the bokm anyways. I give it a 4/5 for that reason...it wasn't that entertaining (which is an ironic sentence considering the premise of the book - finding The Entertainment).
It's a very challenging book in my opinion, especially the first 20-30% where DFW uses so many niche words. So much time is spent looking up words in a dictionary or flipping through the endnotes, which can be very jarring.
I don't think it's much fun for people who tend to zone out while reading, but it's a one of a kind book for sure. It's a very unique novel, which I always appreciate, so I don't regret reading it. Like a Shakespearean comedy, readers will likely begin the novel with a lot of confusion that is later, somewhat, resolved. I say somewhat because there is no conclusion...which is kind of annoying but I wasn't that kncested in the bokm anyways. I give it a 4/5 for that reason...it wasn't that entertaining (which is an ironic sentence considering the premise of the book - finding The Entertainment).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction
This book became a temporary lifestyle for me during the last month and a half. I wholly resided in the world of Infinite Jest regardless of whether I was actively reading or not. It's difficult to briefly or even objectively review a book that overtook my whole way of thinking for a tenth of a year, but I'll attempt to mosaically convey my thoughts in a close-to coherent manner.
The true joy of reading this book lies not in the minutiae of the individual pages, which can range from breathtakingly thrilling to unbelievably boring. Rather, it's found in the intricate, enigmatic way in which the various threads of theme and plot become more and more intertwined. They're tantalizingly - some might say agonizingly - restrained from ever clicking together in a totally satisfying way, but rather than frustrating, this has the effect of making the book's world seem even wider upon completion. The world(s) of the Enfield Tennis Academy and the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House is so deeply-realized that it becomes more difficult after a while to believe that it's all fiction than to justify the detail away by believing it's all real. The infinitely faux-researched backstories and histories of every major character and event feel more authentic than many historical events I know for a fact to be true. It's such an odd way to write a book, relegating large swathes of expository information to 100-odd pages of footnotes, but it somehow works in a way that makes traditional storytelling techniques seem comparatively sparse and undercooked.
Every time someone has seen me reading this book and asked me what it's about, I've struggled to offer any kind of convincing response. The simple answer is that it's about entertainment consumption or production or modulation, or else it's about tennis, or addiction, or family, or politics. The really cheaply broad answer is that it's about life. The real answer, I think, is just about impossible to articulate. It's about everything and it's about nothing and it's about giving the reader an experience that seems personally crafted to entertain and thrill and challenge.
Before reading Infinite Jest, every conversation I'd ever overheard or read regarding the book seemed almost impossibly pretentious. After reading the book, I think I can empathize with the participants of those conversations. In my unqualified opinion, DFW accomplished something unique in creating a book that feels anti-pretentious in a way that defies anyone to discuss the book with anything less than a pretentious-sounding tone. It's a self-aware type of pretension, though, where the person discussing the book knows he sounds pretentious and in many cases is actually actively working to minimize the pretension. Maybe the very identification of this proposed phenomenon is pretentious. The fact is, it doesn't really matter. I would caution anyone to speak about this book in a way that somehow belittles people who haven't read it, but I would heartily encourage any other kind of discussion of the book, mostly because finishing it has left me with an insatiable desire to discuss it myself.
In re-reading it, this has been less of a review than a stream-of-consciousness rant about the various (personally perceived) merits of this weird, weird book. Really, writing anything about it seems almost hilariously mundane, like making a finger-painted homage to the Sistine Chapel. It doesn't matter, though; I needed to write about it in the same way that I need to comment on just exactly how good my meal is when eating with friends. It doesn't really matter to my meal-mates and this doesn't really matter to anyone, and yet I feel overwhelmingly compelled to write it. It's the natural digestive process of what felt like an incredibly personal journey. I've heard it said that David Foster Wallace's greatest strength was that he made the readers of his books feel personally loved. Over the past month and a half, I did feel loved, and cared for, and understood. What a book this is, and what a life it captures.
The true joy of reading this book lies not in the minutiae of the individual pages, which can range from breathtakingly thrilling to unbelievably boring. Rather, it's found in the intricate, enigmatic way in which the various threads of theme and plot become more and more intertwined. They're tantalizingly - some might say agonizingly - restrained from ever clicking together in a totally satisfying way, but rather than frustrating, this has the effect of making the book's world seem even wider upon completion. The world(s) of the Enfield Tennis Academy and the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House is so deeply-realized that it becomes more difficult after a while to believe that it's all fiction than to justify the detail away by believing it's all real. The infinitely faux-researched backstories and histories of every major character and event feel more authentic than many historical events I know for a fact to be true. It's such an odd way to write a book, relegating large swathes of expository information to 100-odd pages of footnotes, but it somehow works in a way that makes traditional storytelling techniques seem comparatively sparse and undercooked.
Every time someone has seen me reading this book and asked me what it's about, I've struggled to offer any kind of convincing response. The simple answer is that it's about entertainment consumption or production or modulation, or else it's about tennis, or addiction, or family, or politics. The really cheaply broad answer is that it's about life. The real answer, I think, is just about impossible to articulate. It's about everything and it's about nothing and it's about giving the reader an experience that seems personally crafted to entertain and thrill and challenge.
Before reading Infinite Jest, every conversation I'd ever overheard or read regarding the book seemed almost impossibly pretentious. After reading the book, I think I can empathize with the participants of those conversations. In my unqualified opinion, DFW accomplished something unique in creating a book that feels anti-pretentious in a way that defies anyone to discuss the book with anything less than a pretentious-sounding tone. It's a self-aware type of pretension, though, where the person discussing the book knows he sounds pretentious and in many cases is actually actively working to minimize the pretension. Maybe the very identification of this proposed phenomenon is pretentious. The fact is, it doesn't really matter. I would caution anyone to speak about this book in a way that somehow belittles people who haven't read it, but I would heartily encourage any other kind of discussion of the book, mostly because finishing it has left me with an insatiable desire to discuss it myself.
In re-reading it, this has been less of a review than a stream-of-consciousness rant about the various (personally perceived) merits of this weird, weird book. Really, writing anything about it seems almost hilariously mundane, like making a finger-painted homage to the Sistine Chapel. It doesn't matter, though; I needed to write about it in the same way that I need to comment on just exactly how good my meal is when eating with friends. It doesn't really matter to my meal-mates and this doesn't really matter to anyone, and yet I feel overwhelmingly compelled to write it. It's the natural digestive process of what felt like an incredibly personal journey. I've heard it said that David Foster Wallace's greatest strength was that he made the readers of his books feel personally loved. Over the past month and a half, I did feel loved, and cared for, and understood. What a book this is, and what a life it captures.
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I am a believer in making life as easy for the reader as possible. Making us look up every 10th word in the dictionary, having 90 pages of footnotes of varying significance, and elongating every sentence and paragraph is the antithesis of that standard.
My favorite item to come out of this Iditarod of literature is the term "howling fantods," which can be found on Urban Dictionary:
"Realizing that, after all this time, as I approach the end of this 981 page novel with 97 pages of footnotes, as much as I have loved every run-on sentence and obscure pharmacological reference I still cannot coherently answer the frequently-asked and painfully-simple airplane-seatmate question 'what's it about?' has giving me a serious case of the howling fantods."
And that sums up Infinite Jest.
In a lot of ways, this reminds me of climbing a 14er. As challenging and audacious as it is, you finish with a sense of accomplishment born out of a disproportionate amount of self-inflicted misery. And in the end you vow, "Never again."
I would never recommend this to anyone, but it's not like nobody should ever read it. It wasn't a bad book, just an unnecessarily hard one.
My favorite item to come out of this Iditarod of literature is the term "howling fantods," which can be found on Urban Dictionary:
"Realizing that, after all this time, as I approach the end of this 981 page novel with 97 pages of footnotes, as much as I have loved every run-on sentence and obscure pharmacological reference I still cannot coherently answer the frequently-asked and painfully-simple airplane-seatmate question 'what's it about?' has giving me a serious case of the howling fantods."
And that sums up Infinite Jest.
In a lot of ways, this reminds me of climbing a 14er. As challenging and audacious as it is, you finish with a sense of accomplishment born out of a disproportionate amount of self-inflicted misery. And in the end you vow, "Never again."
I would never recommend this to anyone, but it's not like nobody should ever read it. It wasn't a bad book, just an unnecessarily hard one.
more like finite jest…
putting away my ironic/pithy quips-as-defense-mechanism-against-being-earnest for a sec to say this book is genuinely brilliant, and there’s probably very little out there that could match the sheer interiority, scope, and heart in here. i will miss reading it
putting away my ironic/pithy quips-as-defense-mechanism-against-being-earnest for a sec to say this book is genuinely brilliant, and there’s probably very little out there that could match the sheer interiority, scope, and heart in here. i will miss reading it
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes