By Julie Sara Porter, Bookworm Reviews
And I thought Ulysses was a difficult read. Infinite Jest makes the James Joyce novel look like Green Eggs and Ham.
Infinite Jest is one of those books that is made to be reread so the Reader can catch all of the nuances, plot angles, and literary devices that they missed the first time around. But if you are reading and reviewing it for the first time, it's the literary equivalent to climbing Mt. Everest a difficult climb but you have to read it because it's there.
Infinite Jest is an unwieldy book with several characters and plot angles that it's hard to summarize. Characters get a several page introduction and you think they will be important later, only to take a minor role in later pages. Certain conversations get repeated to the point where the Reader is filled with deja vu thinking "Didn't I read this already?" The narration goes from third person to first to script format without a care. Not to mention, there are over 100 pages of footnotes to the almost 1,000 pages of the main text that recounts important conversations and plot points that the Reader might miss if they don't read the footnotes. Clearly, Wallace did not want to make his book an easy read.
However when Infinite Jest isn't lost in its unwieldiness, it is a thought-provoking and intriguing look at the near future which looks ever so much like today. It is fascinating to read a book set in the future like Infinite Jest and recount how many topics that the writer got right.
Okay, the yearly calendar has yet to be arranged to fit Subsidized Time from advertisers who buy the rights to name the years after their products such as the Year of the Whopper, the Year of the Dove Trial-Size Bar, and the Year of the Depend Adult-Size Undergarment. (How do you determine Astrological signs and personality traits with years like that? Is a baby born in the Year of the Whopper full of themselves? One born in the Year of the Dove Trial-Size Bar obsessed with cleanliness? I'd hate to think what the personality of a Depend Adult-Size Undergarment baby would be.)
However with pop up ads and product placement, advertising surrounds us more than ever that we might as well have years named for them.
People watch entertainment on teleputers and through a site called the Interlace. We know them as Netflix, Hulu, and others.(However Wallace still had a toe in 1996 by saying that the characters watched the works on cartridges and home computers. Wallace did not envision hand-held devices or that the Entertainments could be downloaded on to them.) The majority of the Entertainments are plotless mindless action movies to keep the audience watching and enthralled with the occasional experimentation, not to far off from what is seen in modern-day movie theaters. Pop culture invades every mode of society, even academia, shown when a character gets accepted to a prestigious academy by writing a thesis comparing the lead characters in Hawaii Five-0 and Hill Street Blues. Many real-life college campuses and high schools contain courses on Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and other pop culture touchstone items.
The political social environment also is similar to life in the late-2010's. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have formed a super country but many Quebecois want to break from this union similar to the divisions between the United States and many of its former allies as well as the Brexit when Britain left the European Union. The President, Johnny Gentle, a crooner with little political experience wins the election based on backing from various fringe groups like oh say a certain real estate mogul/reality show star becoming President based on backing from various fringe groups. (Though Gentle's demeanor is more based on Ronald Reagan rather than the bombastic Trump.) Many characters are addicted to various drugs, many of them are a composite of marijuana and various painkillers and prescription drugs similar to the modern day Opioid Crisis. There are areas between the former United States and Canada that are environmentally uninhabitable. While that has yet to happen, the relaxing of many EPA regulations suggest that one day this may be a possibility.
The world of Infinite Jest seems like a composite of Brave New World and Idiocracy, where there is no depth, where shallowness is the order of the day, and most characters behave like thoughtless children living for their personal pleasures and nothing else. The most disturbing thing about this futuristic society is that except for a few fringe groups here and there, there is hardly any Resistance to fight against this society. Where is Guy Montag to remind them of the importance of reading? Why doesn't a John the Savage claim the right to be unhappy? Why aren't there even people who rebel in little ways like a journaling Winston Smith or an Offred vowing not to let the bastards grind her down?
The answer is nowhere. There is no Resistance. The people have become desensitized to their society that they are numb to it. No one shows much outrage unless it concerns them personally. So they withdraw into themselves and their addictions.
Addiction is an ongoing theme in this book particularly in its main two settings, the Enfield Tennis Academy and the Ennet House Alcohol and Drug Recovery House. The Tennis Academy is filled with students who are pushed to succeed, particularly Hal Incandenza, son of the Tennis Academy's late founder, James O. Incandenza and it's current co-President, Avril Mondragon Tavis Incandenza. While being pushed in his courses and to succeed on the court against students who are sometimes better and younger than his 13 years, Hal also has to deal with his eccentric family. His family includes his obssessive-compulsive mother, Avril, his womanizing brother, Orin, his deformed brother, Mario, his uncle, Charles Tavis who may have had an affair with the nymphomaniacal, Avril, and his father, James who besides creating the Academy made Experimental films before he committed suicide. With a family like that, it's no wonder Hal and his friends retreat into drugs to numb themselves from the stress of a world that no longer listens.
The Ennet House is also filled with lost characters starting with Don Gately, a former addict turned counselor. He has been through the steps so often, that he knows the cliches by heart. He also is not as far from his addictive past as he thinks he is. Another resident at the Ennet House is Joelle Van Dyne, AKA Madame Psychosis, a disfigured former actress who was Orin's former girlfriend and James's frequent co-star in his films. Like her nickname suggests, she has a dark personality that rejects the beauty that she once was. Her addictions are her only means of existence.
The ultimate addiction in this book is not a drug, it's a film. The Entertainment also called the samizdat or Infinite Jest, directed by James Incandenza and.starrimg Joelle Van Dyne is a movie that puts new meaning to the term binge watching. The Entertainment is so addictive that people can't stop watching it, forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep. They just watch it until they die. Many want this film, including the government to use it as a weapon or an antidote and many others want to use it as another drug, something that helps them forget their worries.
Infinite Jest is a book that is tough going and could be several hundred pages shorter, but when the Reader is able to find the story underneath the length, they find a book that makes them think.
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