If somebody tells you they have read Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s enormous 1996 novel about addiction, entertainment, family, and tennis, among the many other things contained in its roughly 9 million pages, they are probably lying. Maybe they made it past the long segment, early in the novel, in which an anxious young man endlessly wrings his hands over the not-so-imminent arrival of his pot dealer, and then wrings his hands over his hand-wringing, until 20 pages later his hands and your brain have been wrung into mush. Or they got lost in a later digression about a game of tennis as a stand-in for geopolitical warfare, or in the Quebec separatist schemes, or threw the book out the window after having to flip back from endnote No. 63. Or they read Wallace’s short stories, his essays, and his recurrently viral Kenyon commencement address, and called it a day.
Infinite Jest is the kind of book that requires a support group and a long stretch of lazy summer days to conquer. Fortunately, you have just that in “Infinite Summer,” the book club convening Wednesday at the Wild Detectives that will, by Sept. 22, have gone cover to cover with this landmark work of fiction. The club will meet every three weeks or so. As the Wild Detectives notes, 10 pages a day will take about four months. It can be done.
Having finished Infinite Jest has become something of an obnoxious status symbol for a certain species of dweeb, but don’t look at it that way. You’re not in this for bragging rights, or the challenge. This is a treat, and a treasure, an opportunity to reckon with an important—but also very funny and moving!—book. Reading Infinite Jest (or, full disclosure, at least the 650 pages we made it through in college) is an absolute blast.
You could also just say to hell with these nerds and their convoluted, postmodern texts, and eat the book. That’s fine, too.
