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A review by sgbrux
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
5.0
I think it's only appropriate to have finished reading this monster of a book on November 20, roughly 3.5 months after starting it.
This is one of those books I find myself thinking about from day to day for its deeply philosophical, and critical, takes on both society and the individual. I had a love-hate relationship with getting through this tome, but I think that's the brilliance of David Foster Wallace. Some characters' scenes I enjoyed reading much more than others—these "others" I had to force myself through to the other side. And so I think friend of Wallace and author of the foreword, Tom Bissell, captured it perfectly when he wrote, "...Wallace may be the closest thing to a method actor in American literature, which I cannot imagine was without its subtle traumas."
The book Itself is monumental proof of Wallace's ability to breathe life into all manner of broken characters, at times making you revile them, yet at others making you feel hopelessly sad for them. Like the symbol used to denote each new chapter (reminiscent of a lens or even a hole), everything about these characters' lives is annular, cyclical, as is the style in which DFW wrote Infinite Jest. There are no happy endings here. In fact, there are no endings at all. No beginnings. There is only the gray and fleeting now.
A beaten and battered five stars.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"'Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic, and a dyslexic.'
'I give.'
'You get somebody who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.'"
"It's the mornings after the spider-and-heights dreams that are the most painful, that it take sometimes three coffees and two showers and sometimes a run to loosen the grip on his soul's throat; and these post-dream mornings are even worse if he wakes unalone..."
"I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral... I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all."
"Mario is basically a born listener. One of the positives to being visibly damaged is that people can sometimes forget you're there, even when they're interfacing with you."
"Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution."
"'Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. only pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.'"
"'...Welcome to the meaning of individual. We're each deeply alone here. It's what we all have in common, this aloneness.'"
"The truth will set you free, but not until it's done with you."
"'I am so beautiful I am deformed.'"
"It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know."
"'I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.'"
"...Death is always female, and that the female is always maternal. I.e. that the woman who kills you is always your next life's mother...this was why mothers were so obsessively, consumingly, drivenly, and yet somehow narcissistically loving of you, their kid: the mothers are trying frantically to make amends for a murder neither of you quite remember."
"It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe."
This is one of those books I find myself thinking about from day to day for its deeply philosophical, and critical, takes on both society and the individual. I had a love-hate relationship with getting through this tome, but I think that's the brilliance of David Foster Wallace. Some characters' scenes I enjoyed reading much more than others—these "others" I had to force myself through to the other side. And so I think friend of Wallace and author of the foreword, Tom Bissell, captured it perfectly when he wrote, "...Wallace may be the closest thing to a method actor in American literature, which I cannot imagine was without its subtle traumas."
The book Itself is monumental proof of Wallace's ability to breathe life into all manner of broken characters, at times making you revile them, yet at others making you feel hopelessly sad for them. Like the symbol used to denote each new chapter (reminiscent of a lens or even a hole), everything about these characters' lives is annular, cyclical, as is the style in which DFW wrote Infinite Jest. There are no happy endings here. In fact, there are no endings at all. No beginnings. There is only the gray and fleeting now.
A beaten and battered five stars.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"'Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic, and a dyslexic.'
'I give.'
'You get somebody who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.'"
"It's the mornings after the spider-and-heights dreams that are the most painful, that it take sometimes three coffees and two showers and sometimes a run to loosen the grip on his soul's throat; and these post-dream mornings are even worse if he wakes unalone..."
"I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral... I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all."
"Mario is basically a born listener. One of the positives to being visibly damaged is that people can sometimes forget you're there, even when they're interfacing with you."
"Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution."
"'Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. only pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.'"
"'...Welcome to the meaning of individual. We're each deeply alone here. It's what we all have in common, this aloneness.'"
"The truth will set you free, but not until it's done with you."
"'I am so beautiful I am deformed.'"
"It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know."
"'I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.'"
"...Death is always female, and that the female is always maternal. I.e. that the woman who kills you is always your next life's mother...this was why mothers were so obsessively, consumingly, drivenly, and yet somehow narcissistically loving of you, their kid: the mothers are trying frantically to make amends for a murder neither of you quite remember."
"It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe."