•
Rating:
INFINITE JEST
David Foster Wallace
I'll be brief!
Premise: months have passed since I read the first page and today I have read the last one, and I realize that the novel begins with something that ends at the beginning and ends with something that had already happened before…
Others have already talked about the title while reviewing it here on DeB some time ago, so I won't add a word… actually, it seems to refer to Yorick the jester who in Hamlet is called Companion of “infinite jest” which is “infinite jest” in the English of the time, a very fitting reference considering the “jokes” or “facts”, sometimes very funny, that succeed without a deliberate space/time continuity throughout the entire narrative, which is never dispersive or verbose as many accuse their author of being, the still alive DFW, when the first American edition came out in 1996. For some reason it only came to Italy in 2000 via Fandango and later in 2006 via Einaudi, oh well… better late than never.
The plot unfolds (roughly) around the Incandenza family and their vicissitudes in sports and film activities, focusing on the negative aspects of different forms of addiction, the last but not least being alcoholism…
The narrative is gripping with inevitable twists that are like punches in the stomach despite the irony that tries to permeate even the most raw or brutal moments.
Ok, I think brevity is going to hell, so I'll close by saying I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth at the word END and I regret that it ended without being able to find a precise answer to some questions I had asked myself from the start, but so be it.
Soon I will get myself more books by good David and I already know I will not get bored immersing myself in his vivid pages.
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By Talkin' Meat
Wallace is one of those minds you'd love to engage with and “I.J.” manages to capture your soul, to make itself loved.
You can’t summarize this book in one word, because it seems that nothing ever takes precedence: Wallace’s metanarrative audacity is directly proportional to the plot (the entertainment) of the book, which is directly proportional to the leitmotif that veins it (depression).
By insolito
"Infinite Jest - film (therefore fiction) that creates addiction, makes you forget everything else - vegetative state, complete break with reality - a trap - beautiful American entertainment."
"With all the cell phones, with all the televisions and the band spinning around us, can we really turn towards infinity and proclaim 'I'm a modern man!' happy, ecstatic, in full technological orgasm."
By frasag75
Infinite Jest is the culmination of everything that was David Foster Wallace: a storyteller, an innovator/restorer, an academic/anti-academic.
The American writer leaves us with a hidden and veiled possibility of salvation, provided that we accept our own, and others', weaknesses and deformities.
