Infinite Jest

By: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers - introduction

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

The "grandly ambitious, wickedly comic" modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America, now in a new 30th anniversary edition (Seattle Times).

Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human — and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

"The next step in fiction...Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty...Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think." —Sven Birkerts, The Atlantic

It seems impossible that this classic work could be improved, but Sean Pratt's reading is that brilliant.

I love this book and have read it twice, but we all agree, that's an undertaking. So dense, it has eluded many. Now that this audio version is available, many more people will experience this stunning work. The book interweaves several plot lines, each in the voice of an artfully drawn, idiosyncratic character, and Sean Pratt brings them all to life. Wallace would have been more than pleased by this performance of his opus.

Infinitely jesting but thankfully not interminably so

Review First Half to footnote 202:

Seduction strategies #12 and #16 being applied… but in the end it’s just Christ on a jetski! Complaint, but seriously: I had to look up “soccum” - hundreds of footnotes, but none explaining that? C’mon! …

Presenting: speedy seduction strategy #7! It never fails! We like chortles - chortles are good! Let the EEC pay for their own defense! Motions are gone through … then I took a breather - after 32h, I think I deserved it! …

Also, just coming to my mind: I really, at this point, could not imagine anything I’m less interested in than prep school or college tennis. Needed to say that. Québec is okay, though, somehow.

Review Second Half on from footnote 203:

“The unfortunate me” - unfinished, unreleased … The Year of the “let’s vote for the guy who we can be sure screws all of us over intentionally rather than for the lady who just pretends to care about us” Election … They took away my belt and my shoe strings - but I noticed they didn’t take away my feelings! …

“Now, you’re going to risk vulnerability and discomfort and hug my ass or do I goin’ to rip off your head and shit in your neck!” … It’s the chill of inspiration and all the girls in grass skirts. The daily bullshit here is hip-deep. The terror over the fall is overcome by the terror of the flames.

“No towardness. No narrative movement toward a real story.” Exactly. “This is no “saliva sticking to frozen metal”-type of situation.” No, it isn’t, or what sayest thou, Madame Psychosis, or Phully (sic!) Phunctioning (siccer!) Fill (siccest!), no DDD?

Although … … … Up to about 50h in, I thought about this book as sidetracks of sidetracks to sidetracks, with yet more sidetracks sidetracking these sidetracks… and when the author couldn’t narratively handle the third or fourth sidetrack level (it’s his book, after all, fair enough) he just put it into a sidtrack, uh, sorry: footnote.

Now, towards the end, it starts to feel like there is a book or story here. Unfortunately, it is a semi-bleak, semi-neutral, semi-detached - but beautifully worded - illicit drug addiction story in funny and/or graphic detail. And yeah, those poor drug users. Good thing we don’t have to worry about the other ppl who get robbed, fleeced, injured, killed, damaged by these drug users. At least not in this book. They’re not even in the footnotes here. Because that might just have made it less easy to read and too senselessly bleak? I understand noone is a winner here, baby, that’s the truth, and all are victims, but aren’t there some perpetrators, anywhere at all???

I read about David Foster Wallace only in the last hour of listening to this… and: what a surprise! He was a tennis-playing drug addict abuser. I am shocked - shocked, I tell ya!

What do I hear? I should be nice to him, post mortem? I think we should be as nice to him as he was to Linda McCartney, okay?

Oh, well. On to shorter oeuvres.

An Impressive Recording, All Things Considering — The Narrator Is Brilliant, Does Not Give One ‘The Fantods’

For first time readers/listeners, as well as those that are unfamiliar with D.F.W, do yourself a favour and read the book while you’re listening. Read a few hundred pages then listen to ten hours or so, and just keep on until you’re done with both. There is a common misconception that D.F.W is dense. He is not dense at all. He is wonderfully easy to read and understand. The predicament with Infinite Jest is its length, and for first time readers/listeners a lot will simply get missed because it’s such a significant amount of literature to digest. So read while you’re listening.

The voices Sean Pratt hear employees are well deployed and useful. There are so many characters,and each are lengthily-developed and more complex than the last. Listening to this work be performed so to speak allows one to paint stronger mental images about what is occurring, why it is occurring, and how each segment is connected to the next/last.

I am of the impression that there are two types of D.F.W. readers; those who are interested in being entertained and potentially generating some input on entertainment as well as addiction, and those who are attempting to decipher what Infinite Jest is “really all about.” I think moreover that both types are of course linked at least to a degree… This recording with Sean Pratt will help you determine just which type they are.

Moreover; being that this is as long of a work as it is, a few pointers: A) Look up words you don’t know… B) Don’t pause the recording in the middle of a footnote as you’ll get confused/lost when you un-pause… C) Abstain from reading/watching any critical analysis of this work before or while you’re reading; this will impede your ability to paint your own imagery and/or draw your own responses.

-Noah Balfour
Listened from the 1st of May, finished on June 19th — 2024; re-read the work throughout the month of May 2024

Achievement unloockef!

This work is as long as the Old Testament, and has about as much mystery surrounding it. Loosely based on "Hamlet," it's a story about a short piece of media (called a "cartridge") that is so entertaining that viewers cannot do anything else once exposed to it, causing death. This work had a long, rambling narrative that is almost impossible to decipher due to the many digressions, exhaustingly long cast of characters, and a plot that is extremely non-linear. Did I forget to mention the footnotes? This audiobook is a fantastic way to experience the work, as its narrator nails a dizzying array of accents, affects, and attitudes and the footnotes are conveniently delivered with a brief into and bell sound when concluded. The only criticism I have of this work is that it is so dense that it *will* escape your comprehension. Since it's author knows how to write in a more common, accessible style, as witnessed by his nonfiction work, one can only assume the inaccessibility is a feature, not a bug.

I misjudged this book back in the day

I remember everyone who thought themselves cool had this book on their shelves in the late 90s. They would condescendingly tell teenage me I “probably wouldn’t get it”.
Then as the years went by and it attained “lit bro” status I avoided it even more.
I finally decided to give it a shot as part of a book club I’m in. I’m so very glad I did. I had no idea how funny, deep, poignant, and relevant it would be. Maybe I would not have “got it “ back when I hadn’t lived through some of the harder parts of life. For whatever reason this spoke to me on a profound level.

Once again the books that make me feel this way are usually written by people who de-map themselves.

Read it. If it isn’t right for you then try again in a few years.

Also, the narration was some of the best I’ve ever heard. So good that I emailed the narrator, Sean Pratt, to tell him so. I have never done this before. It’s that good.