I'm only sixty-three pages into David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest--which keeps me right on schedule--and I keep wondering what drugs Wallace was ingesting while writing this mammoth book.

There's a lot going on here: Wallace is stringing out multiple plotlines and introducing numerous characters--none of whom seem to have any relation to the others--and it's easy to see how Infinite Jest can be immediately off-putting. Let's face it: I have no fucking clue what's going on.

But that's okay: being a little lost isn't necessarily a bad thing. Infinite Jest is certainly one of the weirdest books I've ever read, but Wallace writes with confidence, and I get the sense that, for all his juvenile vernacular (which veers dangerously close to the teen-speak in the film Clueless), he knows what he's doing. He has a great eye for detail (which is exhausting at times), especially when it comes to nineties culture, and Infinite Jest reads like a book caught in a time warp. Wallace, partying like it's 1996, has a sardonic, postmodern sneer, the kind of sensibility that's both critical and darkly humorous. Imagine James Joyce's Ulysses transplanted into the mid-nineties, and you'll have a very good idea of what it's like to read Infinite Jest.

Clearly, this isn't a quaint book. It's a mess. It's repetitive. Wallace is throwing everything he has at me, but I can sense a twinkle in his eye. He'll help me pick up and arrange all the pieces, I'm sure.

Comments

[Pete]

I hope he picks up the pieces for you by the time his thousand-plus pages are up. If not, he's failed as an author.

[Citizen Reader]

I am dying to get this book. I'm waiting for it at the library (it's got a perpetual waiting list). I might have to break down and buy it.

[Lindsey]

That is exactly what I said to my husband when I put the book down tonight: I have no fucking clue what is going on. I'm running on pure faith that it's all going to come together.

[Dorothy W.]

This book is definitely demanding. I can figure out what is happening in most of the sections, but how the sections relate is another matter. I can see connections all over the place, but adding them all up is way beyond what I can do right now.