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billiamdyemyhair's review against another edition
challenging
funny
sad
slow-paced
5.0
It’s good, a little long.
couuboy's review against another edition
5.0
Take a quick look at this Joseph Turner painting, titled "Sun Setting over a Lake"
It’s quite impressive, right? You might think about it in terms of the colours and style, how what it represents and how it is represented are conjoined, you might bring in teleology and link it to Rothko or Monet, you might even eschew historical context and just focus on the objet d’art and how it’s certainly alive on one hand but that there’s still a sense of it being “incomplete” on the other, less charitable, hand.
What makes art complete and what makes it incomplete? In literature, film, music etc., a sense of completeness might have something to do with resolution, whether the wave crashes upon the sand. You could use a pretty reductive formula – whether at some point in the art object you can comprehend and then link point A to point B. That some sense of a self-contained life exists within.
Where is point B in DFW’s Infinite Jest? It’s most definitely there; just beyond the horizon you’re currently at: here just before the mountain’s peak. Just before the zenith with its grand view. But wait – a sign: There’s no going forward – please return the way you came – come back another time. You reluctantly acquiesce, content that you’d come even this far, that the view from this side was impressive in itself, willing to come back tomorrow.
And so you do come back, rejuvenated and motivated. But wait, that can’t be right? there’s something different about today’s hike, something you hadn’t realised yesterday; that there was a slight layer of fog which has now passed – you can see so much further today, it’s even more magnificent that you’d previously thought. Oh yes, this certainly only spurs you on further to make it to the very top and witness the sublimity you know you will behold. Until, wait – a sign.
And yet, even more of the fog has dissipated, you had made it this far before except now the view is even more incredible, even more awe-inspiring at this point, just shy of the peak. You think you’re beginning to understand.
Anti-confluential is a term used in this book to describe some of Jim Incandenza’s films, films that resist the impulse to tie a narrative together, to reject interdependency in composition. You want to think that this term describes this book well, that DFW was inserting his own self-referential literary theory, that maybe it’s intentional that narrative strains aren’t packaged or explicitly linked. Except they are, because this is not an anti-confluential book. The book only seems like it’s anti-confluential because it doesn’t link threads in the way we’re accustomed to see them linked, you will not be nudged in the shoulder to pay attention to an important and specific part because everything is an important and specific part. Hold a sentence in your mind and you may unearth its pairing couplet 600 pages later. To understand this book, not only do you need to enlarge you mind, you need to subtilize it.
It’s quite impressive, right? You might think about it in terms of the colours and style, how what it represents and how it is represented are conjoined, you might bring in teleology and link it to Rothko or Monet, you might even eschew historical context and just focus on the objet d’art and how it’s certainly alive on one hand but that there’s still a sense of it being “incomplete” on the other, less charitable, hand.
What makes art complete and what makes it incomplete? In literature, film, music etc., a sense of completeness might have something to do with resolution, whether the wave crashes upon the sand. You could use a pretty reductive formula – whether at some point in the art object you can comprehend and then link point A to point B. That some sense of a self-contained life exists within.
Where is point B in DFW’s Infinite Jest? It’s most definitely there; just beyond the horizon you’re currently at: here just before the mountain’s peak. Just before the zenith with its grand view. But wait – a sign: There’s no going forward – please return the way you came – come back another time. You reluctantly acquiesce, content that you’d come even this far, that the view from this side was impressive in itself, willing to come back tomorrow.
And so you do come back, rejuvenated and motivated. But wait, that can’t be right? there’s something different about today’s hike, something you hadn’t realised yesterday; that there was a slight layer of fog which has now passed – you can see so much further today, it’s even more magnificent that you’d previously thought. Oh yes, this certainly only spurs you on further to make it to the very top and witness the sublimity you know you will behold. Until, wait – a sign.
And yet, even more of the fog has dissipated, you had made it this far before except now the view is even more incredible, even more awe-inspiring at this point, just shy of the peak. You think you’re beginning to understand.
Anti-confluential is a term used in this book to describe some of Jim Incandenza’s films, films that resist the impulse to tie a narrative together, to reject interdependency in composition. You want to think that this term describes this book well, that DFW was inserting his own self-referential literary theory, that maybe it’s intentional that narrative strains aren’t packaged or explicitly linked. Except they are, because this is not an anti-confluential book. The book only seems like it’s anti-confluential because it doesn’t link threads in the way we’re accustomed to see them linked, you will not be nudged in the shoulder to pay attention to an important and specific part because everything is an important and specific part. Hold a sentence in your mind and you may unearth its pairing couplet 600 pages later. To understand this book, not only do you need to enlarge you mind, you need to subtilize it.
kokenyreka's review against another edition
3.0
I suffered through this long-ass book and sure, I see the themes and messages and I think it has value, some parts I even enjoyed, but babe, no need to make it so long and repetitive. absolutely no need. learn to edit yourself, please. (needless to say, if it weren't for a reading seminar, I never would have picked this up to begin with.)
gilmargirl's review against another edition
Will come back to this at some point at a time when I can put more focus on it
zerofactorial's review against another edition
5.0
This has been a very life-changing book. I can't even write a review and have been avoiding it for months because this experience was larger than words. It wouldn't be an understatement to say it has changed my theme of thought.
zdelon's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
savaging's review against another edition
3.0
Two months and ten days trapped in the brain of David Foster Wallace. I'm still reeling. My roommate says: "I thought you didn't believe in obscenity." I answer: "Well but -- this book!"
Ten conclusions:
1. At least Mario Incandenza exists.
2. Ha ha -- three stars - what does that even mean?! You think you can just average out all the loving and the hating into a 'meh'?
3. Here's a line: "Nothing in even Poor Tony’s grim life-experience prepared him for the experience of time with a shape and an odor, squatting."
4. It's like that 'Powers of Ten' film that yanks you between orders of magnitude, the subatomic to the galactic. So it's a big book, but big in both directions: it moves as microscopically as it does expansively.
5. Nobody can write like this.
6. I mean I'm the first to say fuck plot, but I'm not sure you can just fuck plot like that, DFW. And no, I'm not just going to take all the clues and sew them together into my own speculative ending because the world is more surprising than that. No, get out of my brain, there aren't any inevitable patterns here. Shut up, DFW, I finished the book, ok? I gave you two months and ten days, you don't get anymore.
7. Why would I be surprised that someone writing about incomprehensible violence would be more than a little mean to his readers?
8. No, there's something I have words about, sharp words formed into sentences: Racism is here, not just within the characters, but knitted deep into the book itself. Every character who's a person of color is violent and unknowable -- mysterious, but in a flatly stereotypical way.
9. And misogyny: every female character is either hubba-hubba or ew gross. Over 1,000 pages and dozens of characters and the book only passes the Bechdel test (two female characters, with names, talk to each other about something other than a man) around page 300 when Molly Notkin and Joelle Van Dyne share three lines about apple juice.
So we can only concluded women are present and making noises by the fact that so many of the male characters are annoyed by them. I thought the book might pass the Bechdel test again around page 700, because two named female characters are walking together and one, we are told, won't shut up. But the description of the scene remains abstract, protecting us from the direct lady-words of this "hideous, despair-producing, slutty and yammering newcomer." Whew, if you're a woman in a DFW novel, best to keep your mouth shut.
10. But at least Mario Incandenza exists.
Ten conclusions:
1. At least Mario Incandenza exists.
2. Ha ha -- three stars - what does that even mean?! You think you can just average out all the loving and the hating into a 'meh'?
3. Here's a line: "Nothing in even Poor Tony’s grim life-experience prepared him for the experience of time with a shape and an odor, squatting."
4. It's like that 'Powers of Ten' film that yanks you between orders of magnitude, the subatomic to the galactic. So it's a big book, but big in both directions: it moves as microscopically as it does expansively.
5. Nobody can write like this.
6. I mean I'm the first to say fuck plot, but I'm not sure you can just fuck plot like that, DFW. And no, I'm not just going to take all the clues and sew them together into my own speculative ending because the world is more surprising than that. No, get out of my brain, there aren't any inevitable patterns here. Shut up, DFW, I finished the book, ok? I gave you two months and ten days, you don't get anymore.
7. Why would I be surprised that someone writing about incomprehensible violence would be more than a little mean to his readers?
8. No, there's something I have words about, sharp words formed into sentences: Racism is here, not just within the characters, but knitted deep into the book itself. Every character who's a person of color is violent and unknowable -- mysterious, but in a flatly stereotypical way.
9. And misogyny: every female character is either hubba-hubba or ew gross. Over 1,000 pages and dozens of characters and the book only passes the Bechdel test (two female characters, with names, talk to each other about something other than a man) around page 300 when Molly Notkin and Joelle Van Dyne share three lines about apple juice.
So we can only concluded women are present and making noises by the fact that so many of the male characters are annoyed by them. I thought the book might pass the Bechdel test again around page 700, because two named female characters are walking together and one, we are told, won't shut up. But the description of the scene remains abstract, protecting us from the direct lady-words of this "hideous, despair-producing, slutty and yammering newcomer." Whew, if you're a woman in a DFW novel, best to keep your mouth shut.
10. But at least Mario Incandenza exists.
inkblot_cdc's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
sealfeathers's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75