|
I’m not going to say the book couldn’t have been trimmed at times, but it has so so so many memorable moments that I think the length is mostly justified. If this was your first DFW, I highly recommend his short story collection Oblivion. It eliminates the exhausting length issue some might have, and delivers totally distilled DFW brilliance. It’s by far my favorite work of his.
|
#
¿
May 15, 2021 02:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
I'm about 200 pages into Gravity's Rainbow, which also happens to be my first Pynchon. I was startled to realize just how nakedly Infinite Jest borrows from Gravity's Rainbow in style, form, aesthetics, scope, ambition. I thought Infinite Jest was a little more... sui generis I guess. But it's much clearer to me now that it had at least one major antecedent.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2023 03:47
|
|
|
I got a few sections into Section 2 (The Herman Goering Casino) and then gave up. I haven't stopped thinking about it though, I think I just needed a few weeks off and will dive back in. It definitely feels a bit like homework.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2023 23:42
|
|
|
I would start with his essays first to get a sense of his style. His short story collection Oblivion is also fantastic and a good entry point.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2023 19:31
|
|
|
lifg posted:If I were describe it honesty I’d say it’s about a young tennis prodigy who is slowly falling into addiction, and an older man who is slowly recovering. There’s a lot of other plots and characters, and a lot more to those two, but following the journey of those two is really what make the book great to me. I mean yeah that's sort of the "synopsis" but that gives readers the impression that this is a straightforward narrative with a clear throughline and ending, which itvery much does not have. It's the opposite of the OP's true crime stuff- there's nothing linear or conclusory about it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2023 20:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
Stinky_Pete posted:btw, it's probably important to put the author in context. I was not yet school-aged when Infinite Jest (1996) was published, but my understanding of the 90s is an era where technology, by way of mass media production and new materials for packaging and signage, allowed large brands to become otherwordly and omnipresent, as more recently explored in the vaporwave milieu. Sure we had The Society of the Spectacle in 1967, but print and television were still "grounded" in many ways back then. Computer graphics introduced an unprecedented level of sterile perfection, accessible only to highly scaled capital, acting as distant gods dropping visions of a utopia that human beings cannot truly exist in. Snow Crash was published a few years prior the Seattle WTO protests would come a few years later, and I think people like DFW had anxieties about the prospect of a completely manufactured reality and/or digital mind control of one form or another, and Brave New World was a great fiction novel to read but it seemed like it was becoming the reality we are currently living under more and more each day. This was peak "Kill your television," parodied on Mr. Show (1995-98) and referenced in songs like Flagpole Sitta (1997). In that vein, Infinite Jest has a lot in common with Black Mirror. In other words, IJ came out at about the same time as Ok Computer.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2023 11:48
|
|