Infinite Jest: A Novel [B2015]

2006 PB reprint of the 1996 original, 1074-pages, clean with minor cover wear. The virtuosic, wickedly comic modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America. Infinite Jest is the name of a movie said to be so entertaining that anyone who watches it loses all desire to do anything but watch. People die happily, viewing it in endless repetition. The novel Infinite Jest is the story of this addictive entertainment, and in particular how it affects a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts and a nearby tennis academy, whose students have many budding addictions of their own. As the novel unfolds, various individuals, organizations, and governments vie to obtain the master copy of Infinite Jest for their own ends, and the denizens of the tennis school and halfway house are caught up in increasingly desperate efforts to control the movie-as is a cast including burglars, transvestite muggers, scam artists, medical professionals, pro football stars, bookies, drug addicts both active and recovering, film students, political assassins, and one of the most endearingly messed-up families ever captured in a novel.

Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human-and one of those rare books that renews the idea of what a novel can do.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "This is the craziest book I've ever read and I don't even know what to say about it. 5*s"; "An incredible accomplishment to say the least, "Infinite Jest" is not for the weak hearted or stomached. Containing some of the most vividly gruesome, humorous, sad, realistic, dark language and imagery I've encountered, it accompanies a wildly vast entourage of characters, scenery, chronology and times. The ending itself isn't even in chronological time, and we are left with no answers to some of the novels biggest questions and conflicts. Everyone should read this - substance issue history or not."; "500,000 words weighing well over 3lbs. This thing is a monster in narrative scope and vocabulary. Brilliant and sad. Hard to read and darkly funny. Compelling story but without any real plot. It's a far reach from my usual bookshelf. Sometimes reading a thing isn't so much for personal love or enjoyment as much as it is for personal growth and perspective.

I can see why people like this and I'm glad to have read it. If given infinite time I would spend more of it with Infinite Jest."