Reddit reviews Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest. It changed the way I think in lots of ways.

Infinite Jest is the only book I have read where the footnotes have footnotes.

I know I must be missing some, but these are all that I can think of at the moment.

Fiction:

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

White Noise by Don Delilo

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by DFW

Infinite Jest by DFW

Of these, you can't go wrong with Infinite Jest and the Collected Fictions of Borges. His Dark Materials is an easy and classic read, probably the lightest fare on this list.

Non-Fiction:

The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy

Chaos by James Gleick

How to be Gay by David Halperin

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

Secret Historian by Justin Spring

Of these, Secret Historian was definitely the most interesting, though How to be Gay was a good intro to queer theory.

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Constance Garrett translation)

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Particularly the scenes describing [Spoiler](/s "Gately's and Joelle's recovery during their time in AA and his description of what living in the present is like, the NOW, what addiction do substances/TV/love/etc can be like, hitting rock bottom, just floored me")

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Also Slaughterhouse Five. The description of the reverse war was so beautiful I nearly cried... link. video addendum

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Intelligent and 1104 pages.

It's not a book. This is an excerpt from a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. If you like this, you should definitely check out the full speech or check out one of his three collection of essays. He's also got a number of short story collections, including a particularly famous work Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. He's probably most famous for Infinite Jest, a novel well over a thousand pages in length.

I'll probably have to re-read some of Hero pretty soon and figure out to what extent the stages of the monomyth might be used in the plotline of IJ, but I really like your point about the external/internal. It runs through a lot of Wallace's work and its such an important of IJ because its dealt with across many characters and themes.

I looked at pg. 607, I couldn't see it and I have this edition.

Avril is a total enigma to me. I read up to about 550 last year, and one of the last scenes I read was [spoiler](/s"Pemulis walking in on Avril & Wayne playing football").

Currently reading, and would like to finish:

1. Interaction Ritual Chains by Randal Collins
   
   Started in 2014, put down, would like to finish in 2015:
   
   
2. Aztecs by Inga Clendinnen
   
   
3. The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger
   
   Would like to re-read in 2015:
   
   
4. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
   
   
5. White Noise by Don DeLillo
   
   
6. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
   
   Would like to read in 2015:
   
   
7. The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
   
   
8. A couple of books for /r/SF_Book_Club
   
   
9. Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts, back-to-back
   
   
10. At least one or two books on Buddhist philosophy / practice
    
    
11. At least one or two books on philosophy, either philo of mind or more cultural studies / anthro / sociology type stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316066524

http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X

The words of David Foster Wallace seem strikingly apposite.

>The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. Yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

I had always assumed they were inspired, in part, by the events of 9/11, but a quick Google search reveals the source of quote is his 1996 novel [Infinite Jest] (http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316066524)

Mental illness is one of Infinite Jest's many themes.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Link

It's a sprawling masterwork about how entertainment shapes our lives. Set in a near future America that's been weirdly altered by technological and political upheaval, its sharpest plot line involves a film so captivating that its viewers lose all interest in everything save the film.

Fairly certain this paperback is the 10th ed. http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316066524/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453494152&sr=8-1&keywords=infinite+jest

I've previously read the thing on Kindle, and it had a lot of your standard Kindle-type typos (like constantly confusing "n"s for "r"s and so forth), but none of this stuff. The overlapping isn't possible, and you have to remember that the Kindle affords readers the chance to highlight and report specific typos, so it's possible to continuously see things corrected.

Gravity's Rainbow is Thomas Pynchon's epic, wandering, convoluted WWII novel.

Infinite Jest is either the greatest novel of all time or the most overrated novel of all time, depending on who you ask (I happen to fall into the former category)

Dofleini mentions that "what was on [the] desk at the moment."

Broom is much less demanding time-wise, although I agree with your sentiments... Not only is it much less polished than his later work, I think it's also less rewarding. It almost seems as though he was warming up for Jest... I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I read it after Jest & Interviews. For me, it falls into the same category as the early Dickens novels: entertaining in their own right, but more interesting as a window into the foundation for more developed later work.

I'd recommend Brief Interviews or A Supposedly Fun Thing as entry points for Wallace, followed by Infinite Jest if you like what you've read.

I was reading John Dies at the End last night in bed and had a few moments of... horrorterror

Here are a few books I'm reading right now:

1. John Dies at the End
   
2. Infinite Jest
   
   
3. House of Leaves

This the one you have

This hardcover was released 1 February 2006.

which is the hardcover of this version

This softcover was released 13 November 2006.

I don't know about you, but I love having time to read during the summer!

BINGO! Thanks! :)

I read a lot as a kid, but I think I read more as an adult--typically about two to three hours a day if I'm not working, and a half-hour to an hour on days I'm working. Currently reading Christopher Hitchens' Arguably. My favorite three books for the moment are The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (technically a three-volume set of 8 books, but the serialization was done by the publisher and wasn't the author's intention--without a doubt it is greatest story I've ever encountered), Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.

Seriously this may be a great coming-of-age title for you: Infinite Jest.
Also since you got your first job check out The Wall Street Journal's Guide to Starting Your Financial Life. If you haven't yet appreciated math, I would suggest you do so as you're going to need it for any decent job these days. Detach yourself from Fallacious Thought.

The Somnambulist

Infinite Jest

I've been wanting to read Infinite Jest forever, but hear it's impossible to read in the Kindle, so I've been holding out to buy a real copy.

One of my favorite books is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's my first or second favorite. My other one is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman.

Is there a raffle phrase?

Searching for David's Heart. I read it so long ago I barely remember why.

[Infinite Jest](http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316066524/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8& qid=1334368715&sr=1-1) when the wraith talks to Don Gately about why he made "the entertainment". It was just heartbreaking knowing that everything was so fucked up just because a man wanted to connect to his son.

Gravity's Rainbow

and

Infinite Jest

Well then... I have more to list!

• Infinite Jest by Wallace
  
• Blood Meridian by McCarthy
  
• A Farewell To Arms by Hemingway
  
• Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut
  
• Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon

$10.89 with free 2 day prime delivery -
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316066524/