Ok, for those of you who’ve followed along with my can-I-or-can’t-I finish Infinite Jest: I can’t. I tried. I made it to page 500 something. But I have a Kirkus assignment, a tall to-be-read pile, and a book I put in a purchase request for waiting at the library, and also it was slowly dawning on me that even if I persevered to the end, I was not going to “find out what happens.” What seemed interesting and fascinating in the first few hundred pages began to wear me down.
Infinite Jest is still an interesting book. I was amazed at how prescient it seems even though it was published in the early 90’s. Sadly it doesn’t seem all that far fetched that an American administration might consider corporate sponsorship of time. And the drug addiction in the book seems pretty timely. But I was disappointed that the complex plot lines did not become clearer as I read, and I feel a little ripped off that I spent over three weeks trying to get through a novel that was ultimately impenetrable when I have so many other books I want to read.
Would I recommend anyone else try Infinite Jest? I know there are many people who think it’s brilliant. There’s a temptation with a book this out of the ordinary to believe it’s a work of genius that is just beyond the average reader. But I’m afraid I feel like any book that doesn’t reward the reader with some insight after three weeks of hard slogging is probably not a good book. It may be a creative, experimental work, it may be groundbreaking and innovative and unique, and I’m all for complexity, nonlinear narrative, unreliable narrators, etc. But I’d like, in exchange, a good story. This book didn’t give me that. And it’s fairly depressing, to boot. So I’m out.
A side note — I tried Infinite Jest as an ebook at first, and then when it was clear I couldn’t finish it by the time my Overdrive loan would expire, I placed a hold on the hard copy. I’d advise anyone trying to read this book not to bother with the ebook. If you want to try to read the footnotes — something I had limited success doing even in the paper version — it’s just completely inefficient to try to do it in the ebook.
bookconscious 