Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
In a big way I did not like this book. While I found many parts of this book to be interesting and amusing, I believe that Wallace manages to present the alienation of his characters through the ironic filter of alienating his reader. I wanted to like it. I thought it would be great. But really, what seems to happen is that people behave in ways that promote their own self interest and in the process of doing so only really enact manipulations of processes that exist. Much of the self discovery and the tennis school training, really only set the stage for me as being anticipation of some kind of material process. Such as how to train. The film. The filming. The conversations about family, about other people. All of this seemed to be an endless insurmountable obstacle to a point where one wrecks oneself on too much pleasure. Sex, or drugs. Alcohol. Smoking pot. Trying to justify what one can do based on some kind of special knowledge of what one is supposed to be doing, which includes appearing to know what one is doing. The institutions involved also are guilty of this.
But maybe the cleverness didn’t inspire me. Didn’t amuse me. Whatever people like about it, I don’t get. So I do intend to re-read this book, later on. Just not now.
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