Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
... not only does [Wallace] share with both a mordantly black view of modern and late-modern experience, but he also has a penchant for weaving long braids from enticingly antiphonal plots, each of which is differently absorbing, if not for its characterizations or imaginative brio then for the sharp snap of its thought, the obsessiveness of its informational reference (hence the notes), or—and—the incandescence of the writing.
David Foster Wallace's marathon send-up of humanism at the end of its tether is worth the effort. There is generous intelligence and authentic passion on every page, even the overwritten ones in which the author seems to have had a fit of graphomania. Wallace is definitely out to show his stuff, a virtuoso display of styles and themes reminiscent of William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis. Like those writers, Wallace can play it high or low, a sort of Beavis-and-Egghead approach that should spell cult following at the nation's brainier colleges.
... shows off the 33-year-old Mr. Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything, someone who can write funny, write sad, write serious, write satiric, a writer who's equally adept at the Pynchonesque epic and the Nicolson Bakeresque minute, a pushing-the-envelope postmodernist who's also able to create flesh-and-blood characters and genuinely moving scenes.
... one of the best (and, God knows, longest) American novels of the decade. Many readers will blanche at the length (and more than 100 pages of end notes), but the engrossing, subplot-heavy narrative is absolutely engrossing.
If Mr. Wallace were less talented, you would be inclined to shoot him -- or possibly yourself -- somewhere right around page 480 of Infinite Jest. In fact, you might anyway.
... truly remarkable.
... has a cult following that is as loyal as they get, and for good reason.
... ultimately a book I can’t quit, though I should probably mention up front that it’s not like I’ve tried or have ever had any real ambition to change this. Every reader has a book like this; a book that, for some inexplicable and intangible reasons, sinks its hooks into you in a way that few others can. It resonates with the fibrous strings of your core being.
... a book that derives its power from a thousand incidental victories.
... ambitious and frequently brilliant fictional exploration of the pursuit of pleasure and its ramifying consequences.
With its baroque subplots, zany political satire, morbid, cerebral humor and astonishing range of cultural references, Wallace's brilliant but somewhat bloated dirigible of a second novel will appeal to steadfast readers of Pynchon and Gaddis. But few others will have the stamina for it.