The Infinite Challenge

Have you ever challenged yourself to read one of those books that everyone says is a ‘must-read’? Maybe you’ve been told that tackling The Brothers Karamazov, or War and Peace, or the Bible from cover to cover, will change your life. I must admit that I’m usually not one to take on such challenges, but after several people told me I should read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, I decided to give it a shot. The decision, in retrospect, was a naïve, costly, but ultimately beneficial one. By all accounts, it is both wildly creative and extraordinarily difficult to wade through. Clearly not everyone ought to read Infinite Jest, but given the steadily rising interest in Wallace (including a recent, very cool viral video about a speech he gave at Kenyon College–see below), whose unfortunate suicide in 2008 marked the end of a short but truly great career, I’m hoping the following considerations can at least introduce you to Wallace’s work and describe what it’s like to journey through the 1100-page Infinite Jest.

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My curiosity about Wallace

was sparked when I first stumbled upon his essay, “Federer as Religious Experience,” prior to the 2006 US Open.[1] At the time, I remember thinking, who writes nine page articles on tennis and includes four extra pages of footnotes? And what sports writer references Greek mythological figures like Apollo and Dionysus in order to contrast Roger Federer with his arch-nemesis, Rafael Nadal? Wallace, an avid junior tennis player himself, writes about the sport in an unparalleled way. One moment he shows superb awareness of the game’s history and evolved racket technology, and then a moment later he’s talking metaphysics and aesthetics. In the aftermath of reading this article, a number of my (at the time) high school students started challenging me to read Infinite Jest. Always keen to know what’s occupying the thought-worlds of my students and wanting to stay literarily current, I finally started looking into Wallace’s wild tale about wheelchair assassins, drug addicts, and child prodigies at a Boston tennis academy.

Sound strange so far? It is. Personally, I was not sold on reading Infinite Jest until last summer when I found out that James K.A. Smith, who is by far one of my favorite living philosophers, was writing about Wallace in his now available book, Imagining the Kingdom. For Smith, Wallace is an extremely important literary voice not only because of his immense skill as a postmodern storyteller, but also because of his recognition that our identity is shaped by what we love and worship more than what we think or believe. For this reason, Smith finds in Wallace a kindred spirit, one who adopts his understanding of liturgical formation as essential to our human makeup.

I soon found myself in a bookstore reading the novel’s back cover. As it promises, Infinite Jest is “A work of genius… grandly ambitious, wickedly comic, a wild, surprisingly readable tour de force.” Another description reads, “Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value.” A “philosophical quest” and a “screwball comedy,” I thought? I’m sold. Where’s the cash register? Apparently, I had naively forgotten the “don’t judge a book by its cover” memo because the next few months had me scratching my head in utter confusion and wading through maybe the most complicated and at times profound novel I’d ever read. I got through it eventually, mind you, but the endeavor was not without its frustrations.

So would I recommend it?

For you brave souls out there, reading Infinite Jest is a costly undertaking. If you’re one to take on such challenges and have the free time to do it, allow me to warn you of a few things. First, make sure consider how much time it will actually take you to read the thing and then add a two or three month cushion on top of that. If one reads 20 pages a day, for example, it is possible to get through it in just under two months. That might sound feasible at first, but 20 pages of Infinite Jest is more like 20 pages of Numbers or Ezekiel than it is Da Vinci Code. There are hundreds of characters in Infinite Jest and multiple interweaving storylines. Then there are Wallace’s footnotes.[2]

Keeping to a fairly regular reading schedule will help, but inevitably life will impede progress, especially if there are a lack of deadlines and GPA consequences. Second, the more costly (and beneficial) reason why reading Infinite Jest is an undertaking experience is because it transforms the way you view addictions and entertainment. More than Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Wallace writes with a prophetic verve that anticipates and warns of America’s cultural decay. As a functional dystopia, Infinite Jest projects a future where everyone is addicted to something, whether it’s drugs, sports, entertainment, or all of the above. So compelling are these addictions, in fact, that many of the characters in Wallace’s novel literally die of starvation and dehydration because of their obsessive addiction to viewing a mysterious film produced by one of the main characters. With these chilling but absurdly humorous passages, Wallace manages to do nothing less than change the way one views the ordinary television screen.

 

So should you read Infinite Jest? My best advice is to try your hand at a few of Wallace’s shorter essays, such as this essay on taking a cruise (which inspired a recent Simpsons episode), before plunging into this gargantuan dark comedy.[3] If you do decide to take the plunge, settle in for a long haul and a wild ride. Wallace will not disappoint. And if you decide to take a rain check, that’s probably a good idea too. There are plenty of good books and better ways to spend one’s summer. Either way, though, being familiar with some of Wallace’s ideas is something that I’d recommend to everyone. Wallace has clearly given his readers much to think about, especially concerning how seriously reflective we should be with regard to our habits, addictions, and sources of entertainment. Whether it’s pills or video entertainment, as Wallace points out, our day-to-day intake and the rituals we enact to process them profoundly shape us emotionally, physically, and spiritually. This is Wallace’s lasting contribution and one that serves his readers well. And if Wallace is right—in other words, if vegging out in front of the TV can spell our death wish—then maybe it’s time to check into the crazy world he creates in Infinite Jest and give it a shot.