Books

Infinite Jest

A gargantuan flamboyant novel about addiction, high level junior tennis, and an imaginary strain of radical Quebecois separatism.

And a lot of other stuff, too. You can fit a lot in 1k pages of dense, small text. It’s way too long.

It’s also juvenile. He renames TV to TP (for teleputer) for example.

And the “experimental” structure is really just an expression of disdain for the reader’s expectations in many cases. The first 150 pages seem designed to shake out readers without a stratospheric tolerance for the book’s breed of shenanigans.

I very nearly stopped reading it (for the second time) on this pass. But I stuck it out and ended up loving it.

Past the 150 page mark, it settles in and becomes a lot more human. It has flashes of brilliance when telling stories of abuse. It made me laugh out loud a few times as well.

I found it helped to think of it as a work of a gifted, self aware child.

Worth reading. High intensity low urgency recommendation. Good for audiobook format.

S tier book review

Interesting and actionable

playing /bracket, assisting /bracky, talking /greatbooks

Thank you for the kind words, means a lot, especially from you