Infinite Jest

For the last 3 months I've been reading David Foster Wallace's mammoth novel, Infinite Jest. I don't remember exactly when I first heard about the book, but I became more aware of it during the latter half of 2013 and viewed it as an interesting curiosity. It sounded like something different and challenging, perhaps along the same lines as a book like House of Leaves. I eventually picked up a copy in November.

Reading Infinite Jest was an extremely rewarding experience thanks to its incredible complexity, brilliant humour and fascinating insights and critiques of American culture and the nature of addiction.

Wallace wrote Infinite Jest in the early nineties. It's set in a near future, with the majority of the plot taking place during the late 2000's or early 2010's. There are a three key things about the future laid out in Infinite Jest that impact the plot.

The first is that the United States, Canada and Mexico have joined together to form one country. It's known as the Organization of North American Nations and is referred to as the O.N.A.N. throughout the book.

Second, in order to increase tax revenues, the O.N.A.N. allows organisations to buy the right to sponsor a calendar year. Years are no longer referred to by a number but can be named by each year's sponsor. As an example, the first of these years is The Year of the Whopper. This is known as Subsidized Time, with the majority of the main plot of the book taking place in October and November of the 8th year of Subsidized Time, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.

Third is the introduction of the Teleputer, referred to as a TP throughout the book. This is a TV and video cartridge viewing device that becomes ubiquitous across the O.N.A.N. as the principal delivery of entertainment and visual media. Its introduction signals the end of broadcast television, with the public instead preferring to order programming via cartridge, allowing them to create the programming schedules of their choice.

Infinite Jest's plot sprawls. It's intricately woven together across many, many strands and lots of characters. Boiling it down in to a sound bite doesn't really do it justice. It's about lots of things. The hook is that an entertainment cartridge has been discovered that is so compelling that viewers will sacrifice eating and all other bodily functions to watch it, even if it results in their death. The danger posed by this cartridge is so significant that two investigators have been tasked to find out what the video content contains. The film was directed by the recently deceased James Orin Incandenza, an auteur and founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA). The academy is the setting for much of the book and continues to be run by his wife and attended in varying capacities by his three sons; Hal, Orin and Mario. Next door to the tennis academy is a half way house for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts called Ennet House. The story follows the investigation in to the history of the cartridge and the way that the lives of the students at the ETA and Ennet House intertwine.

What I loved about Infinite Jest is that alongside pure plot driven narrative, it features detailed and fascinating critiques ranging from addiction, academy sports, filmed entertainment and consumer technology. One such critique that stands out for me is a staggering, lengthy examination of Alcoholics Anonymous, including the way it works, the interaction that members have with it and the way their relationship with it develops over the course of their recovery. Similarly, an early section in the book details how in the world of Infinite Jest, video phones took off and became wildly popular, but only for a very short time before people reverted back to regular audio phones. The section discusses in great detail the different psychologies and human nature at work when video calling, rather than audio calling, such as requiring to give full attention on video, rather than just the impression of full attention when making an audio only call.

Infinite Jest is forensically detailed allowing a deep understanding of many of the main characters to develop. Wallace develops a rhythm to each chapter that brings each character's state of mind to life at that particular moment. He returns again and again to the things that gnaw away at the characters as they try to go about their daily tasks. The narrative jumps around paragraph by paragraph, even sentence by sentence as scenes and ideas merge. At it's best, the flow between these different narratives is almost imperceptible, even completely natural, such is the quality of the prose that Wallace produced.

It's not an easy book to get started on. For a long time it reads like a collection of short stories set in a shared universe. Disparate scenes play out. They're interesting, but it's very difficult to piece them together in order to understand how they contribute to the wider plot. Slowly, eventually, things start to fall in place, I discovered I'd gained an understanding of the world of Infinite Jest and characters became fully formed and understood. By the end, it's a juggernaut as Wallace lets all the pieces fall in to place and I couldn't help but be moved by the experiences of the characters.

Reading Infinite Jest was a challenge, but thinking about how it must have been written is almost beyond comprehension. Wallace has remarkable ideas and intelligence that are shared in wonderful, varied and exciting prose. Of all this though, it's his wit that really kept me coming back for more. The world of Infinite Jest is one of absurdity and Wallace knows just when to broil his characters up in to everything his world has to offer. Take the O.N.A.N. parking laws, that state that parking is allowed on one side of a street only and that the side of the street changes each day at midnight. This law leads to one particularly frantic nightly ritual in which the resident recovering addicts at Ennet House who own cars must be rounded up by a resident counselor to move their cars to the other side of the street. Given that the residents are in various states of recovery, sleep at random intervals and have the disposition of moody teenagers, it's a recipe for farce.

It's a remarkable book, and I'm so pleased to have been in a position in my life to read it and enjoy it. Infinite Jest was David Foster Wallace's 2nd book. A 3rd was published posthumously following his death in 2008. He also wrote several short story collections and works of non-fiction.