I am now almost a third of the way through Infinite Jest, so I will be careful about spoilers for anyone who is following the prescribed schedule of Infinite Summer. I may allude to things you have not yet read, or even quote lines, but I won’t give any actual spoilers without warning.

As I expected, this is a funny book.¹ I have been doing lots of my reading on airplanes and have found myself laughing out loud on several occasions, silencing my chuckles as fellow travelers peek out from under their sleep masks to see what kind of lunatic is sitting in 6H. The sheer absurdity of some of the situations is amusing, but it is usually the puns that incite audible cachinnation in this jet-lagged reader.

‘Urine trouble? Urine luck’

Yes, the humor can be scatological, but it is often more cerebral as well.

‘…a truly ghastly Bret Ellis period during Lent.”

Wallace is clever without pause. His narrative doesn’t break to let you laugh. It keeps moving and sometimes the jokes are strung together so you risk missing them as you slowly wrap your mind around the one you are currently chuckling at and your eyes continue moving across the page. I am sure that I am missing a good deal of humor in my first reading, but it will be there next time for that deeper appreciation that you get from subsequent readings of such a book.

1. It is probably better characterized as a profoundly sad book. It helps to remember the full context of Hamlet’s Yorick quote to appreciate the sense of forlorn despair that permeates this text:

‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now?’ (Hamlet, V.i)

Clearly, his jests were finite.

Infinite Jest is populated by characters suffering with drug addiction, mental illness, and wretched existences beyond their control. They are usually sympathetic, despite their absurdities and extremities of behavior, and in many cases, empathetic to readers who share their sense or circumstance. Death, especially suicide, is often their only exit, but there is also a sense of solace in there being any exit at all.

Perhaps I am reading DFW’s own suicide into the text, but death and suicide are treated as welcome alternatives to the meaningless and torturous circumstances of life. I find myself thinking of Sartre’s No Exit in which “hell is other people.” The characters of this novel treat their fellow sufferers poorly, to say the least, and suicide is depicted as “having Too Much Fun.” The only consolation seems to come in the recognition that it is all finite indeed, the power to end it all is within the grasp of the sufferer.

Unlike Sartre’s characters who never take the exit, Wallace’s do, and sometimes they look forward to it, plan for it, and relish in the prospects of escape. Given the more literal translation of Sartre’s title as In Camera, there might be more to this connection than my simple associative reading. Camera and “cartridge” play important roles in the work as well, but I will save that for another time.

tags: david foster wallace | infinite jest | Infinite Summer | reading