Infinite Jest

Author	David Foster Wallace
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	None
Subject(s)	None
Genre(s)	Hysterical realism, Satire, Tragicomedy
Publisher	Little, Brown
Released	February 1, 1996
Media Type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	1079
Size and Weight	9.5 x 6.6 x 2.4 in., 3.4 lb.
ISBN	ISBN 0-316-92004-5

Infinite Jest (1996) is a critically acclaimed novel written by David Foster Wallace. This lengthy and complex work takes place in a hypothetical Boston, Massachusetts of the near future. The novel touches on topics as diverse as tennis; substance addiction and recovery programs; child abuse; advertising and popular entertainment; film theory; and Quebecois separatism. Image File history File links Infinite_jest_cover. ... David Foster Wallace is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Hysterical Realism, also called recherché postmodernism or maximalism, is a literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization and careful detailed investigations of real specific social phenomena. ... 1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire. ... Tragicomedy (or dark comedy or black comedy) refers to fictional works that blend aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. ... Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. ... February 1 is the 32nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ... David Foster Wallace is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. ... Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe) (The State House, according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, is the hub of the Solar System), Athens of America, The Cradle of Revolution, Puritan City, Americas Walking City Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County Mayor Thomas M. Menino... A tennis net Tennis is a game played between either two players (singles) or two teams of two players (doubles). Players use a stringed racquet to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponents court. ... Drug addiction, or dependency is the compulsive use of drugs, to the point where the user has no effective choice but to continue use. ... Substance-abuse rehabilitation is a process of medical and/or psychotherapeutic treatment, for dependency on psychoactive substances. ... Child abuse is the physical or psychological maltreatment of a child by an adult, often synonymous with the term child maltreatment or the term child abuse and neglect. ... Billboards and street advertising in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, (2005) Advertising is drawing public attention to goods and services by promois performed through a variety of media. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Recreation. ... Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for analyzing, among other things, the film image, narrative structure, the function of film artists, the relationship of film to reality, and the film spectators position in the cinematic experience. ... Quebec The Quebec sovereignty movement is a movement calling for the attainment of sovereignty for Quebec, a province of the country of Canada. ...

The book's plot centers around a lost film cartridge, referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment", but titled Infinite Jest by its creator James Incandenza. The film is so "entertaining" to its unwitting viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than endless viewings of the film. In the novel's future world, North America is one unified state composed of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N), a wry allusion to Onan, the Old Testament figure killed for wasting his seed. Corporations purchase the naming rights to the calendar year, eliminating traditional numerical designations, so advanced is the corporate grasp on daily life; for example: "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment," or "The Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland." Furthermore, much of what used to be the Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada has become a massive hazardous waste dumping site known as "The Great Concavity". Onan (אוֹנָן Strong, Standard Hebrew Onan, Tiberian Hebrew ʾÔnān) is a person described in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. ... A corporation (usually known in the United Kingdom and Ireland as a company) is a legal entity (distinct from a natural person) that often has similar rights in law to those of a Civil law systems may refer to corporations as moral persons; they may also go by the name... Depend is a brand name for a sort of adult diaper marketed to those afflicted with urinary or fecal incontinence. ... Hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment and generally exhibits one or more of these characteristics: ignitability corrosivity reactivity toxicity Generally, toxicity is quantified through the use of the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure or TCLP test, as required by EPA. Hazardous...

The novel derives its name, at least in part, from a line in Hamlet, in which Hamlet refers to Yorick, the court jester: " Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy". The third quarto of Hamlet (1605); a straight reprint of the 2nd quarto (1604) The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and is one of his best-known and most-quoted plays. ... Yorick can refer to: Yorick, the deceased court jester whose skull is exhumed by the gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of Shakespeares Hamlet. ...

Characters

The Incandenza family

• Avril Incandenza, née Mondragon, is the (covertly) domineering mother of the Incandenza children and wife to James. A beautiful Québécoise, she becomes a major figure at the Enfield Tennis Academy after the death of her husband. After which, she begins, or perhaps continues, a relationship with Charles Tavis, the new head of the academy and her either half or adoptive brother. Her sexual relations are a matter of some speculation/discussion, yet a certain sexual relation with John "No Relation" Wayne is confirmed and one with Orin Incandenza, her own son, is perhaps implied. (Issues of incest permeate the book's text in other segments as well.) Her nickname among the family is The Moms. The Moms' behavior is also characterized, among other traits, with a fear of doors and overhead lighting and an obsessive-compulsive need to watch over ETA and her two children living at ETA (Hal and Mario). It is also noteworthy that Avril and Orin are no longer in contact with each other.

• Hal Incandenza is the youngest of the Incandenza children and arguably the protagonist of the story, with events mainly centered around his time at the Enfield Tennis Academy. As prodigiously intelligent and talented as the other members of his family, Hal is nonetheless insecure about his own abilities (and eventually his own mental state) and has a difficult relationship with both his parents. He reads the Oxford English Dictionary and often corrects the grammar of his friends and family (much like his mother). As the chronological end of the novel nears, Hal's mental state progresses into an almost complete alienation from the people and things around him, culminating in his complete mental breakdown and inability to communicate without screaming by the Year of Glad. In this regard, strong parallels can be drawn between him and the title character of Hamlet. The origin of Hal's condition is unclear, and the cause of his breakdown is fiercely debated amongst fans of the novel. One possible cause is the slow development of a certain fungi that Hal ate as a child into a drug known as DMZ, while an alternate possibility is that Pemulis (or another Academy resident) doped his toothbrush with the same hallucinogen.

• Dr. James O. Incandenza is the founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy and a filmmaker. He is the creator of the Entertainment (aka Infinite Jest or "the samizdat"). He had a strong degree of attachment to Joelle Van Dyne, his son Orin's strikingly beautiful girlfriend, using her in many of his films; the precise nature of this relationship (particularly whether or not it is platonic) remains uncertain. It is proposed that he can create and view the Entertainment without becoming entranced because at the time of its creation he is already insane. He appears in the book mainly either in flashbacks or as a ghost, having committed suicide by placing his head in a microwave oven. His nickname among the family is Himself.

• Mario Incandenza is the intermediate child of the Incandenzas, although there is some insinuation in the novel that in fact his father may be Charles Tavis rather than James. Severely deformed since birth, he is nonetheless perennially cheerful. He is also a budding auteur, having served as Himself's camera and directorial assistant, and later inheriting the prodigious studio equipment and film lab built by Dr. Incandenza within the grounds of the Enfield Tennis Academy. The prototypical relationship between Hal and him has been reversed, in that Hal (the younger of the two) plays the role of a supportive elder brother. Hal's nickname for Mario is Booboo.

• Orin Incandenza is the eldest son of the Incandenzas. He is a serial womanizer who plays professional football as a punter for the Arizona Cardinals and is estranged from all members of the family except Hal. He met and fell in love with Joelle Van Dyne (introducing her to his father), but later lost his attraction to her. After Joelle his conquests have all been mothers and this may be related to his intense hatred/lust for his own mother.

In Canadian English, a Québécois (IPA: ) is a native or resident of the province of Quebec, Canada, although the term is used most usually to indicate those from the francophone population. ... The protagonist or main character is the central figure of a story. ... The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is generally regarded as the most comprehensive and scholarly dictionary of the English language. ... Samizdat, book published by Pathfinder Press containing a collection of forbidden Trotskyist Samizdat texts. ... Platonic idealism is the theory that the substantive reality around us is only a reflection of a higher truth. ... Inmates at Bedlam Asylum, as portrayed by William Hogarth Insanity, or madness, is a semi-permanent, severe mental disorder typically stemming from a form of mental illness. ... In literature and film, a flashback (also called analepsis) takes the narrative back in time from the point the story has reached, to recount events that happened before and give the back-story. ... A manufactured image of a ghostly woman ascending a staircase. ... Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending ones own life. ... Microwave oven A microwave oven, or microwave, is a kitchen appliance employing microwave radiation primarily to cook or heat food. ... The term auteur (French for author) is used to describe film directors (or, more rarely, producers or writers) who are considered to have a distinctive, recognizable vision, because they (a) repeatedly return to the same subject matter, (b) habitually address a particular psychological or moral theme, (c) employ a recurring...

The Enfield Tennis Academy

• Michael Pemulis (aka The Peemster, Penis-less) - Pemulis, a working class kid from a Southie family, is Hal's best friend. Pemulis is a prankster and the school's resident drug procurer. He is also a mathematical genius. This, combined with his limited but ultraprecise lobbing, made him the school's first Eschaton master. (Eschaton, a computer-aided turn-based nuclear wargame, requires that players be adept both at matters of game theory and at pegging targets with tennis balls.) Pemulis is thus the archetypal Eschaton player. Although the novel takes place long after Pemulis' Eschaton days (the game is played by twelve- to fourteen-year-olds), Pemulis is still regarded as the game's all-time great, and a final court of appeal in game matters. It's worth noting that he's very adept at the art of revenge–no one ever calls him Penis-less anymore. Also has a brother among the Boston Drag Queens who was repeatedly anally raped by their father in Allston.
• Ortho "The Darkness" Stice - Another of Hal's close friends. He only endorses brands that have black-colored products, and is thus clad at all times entirely in black. He manages a narrow loss to Hal Incandenza 2/3 through the book, and becomes a more significant character as his ability to deny selfhood is realized.
• John "No Relation" Wayne - Wayne is the top ranked player at the school, and was discovered by James Incandenza during the filming of one of his arguably pretentious art films (some might just find the films uniquely, funnily eccentric) which revolved around interviewing different men named John Wayne from around the US. Frighteningly efficient, controlled, and almost machine-like on the court, Wayne plays a major role in the novel.

Eschaton can refer to: The end of everything, as studied in the subject of eschatology. ... The Battle for Wesnoth turn-based strategy, released under the GPL. A turn-based game, also known as turn-based strategy, is a game where the game flow is partitioned in well-defined and visible parts, called turns or rounds. ... Wargaming is the hobby dedicated to the play of simulated military operations in the form of games known as wargames (sometimes also called conflict simulations). ... John Wayne (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), popularly known as The Duke, [1] was an Academy Award winning, American film actor whose career began in silent movies in the 1920s. ...

The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (Sic)

• Don Gately - a former thief and Demerol addict and current counselor in residence at the Ennet House. He is physically enormous, an avid Alcoholics Anonymous member, and intricately (though not obviously) connected to both the Enfield Tennis Academy and the international struggle to seize the Master Copy of Infinite Jest. He is one of the central characters in the book, second only to Hal. Gately is also the burglar who so offends the ADA with his toothbrush-in-ass antics (an outrageous scene that is a favorite at public Wallace readings), and furthermore is the accidental murderer of M. DuPlessis, one of the masterminds behind the Quebecois A.F.R and samizdat conspirators.
• Joelle Van Dyne - aka Madame Psychosis on the radio (her on-air name, a play on metempsychosis) ; aka the Prettiest Girl of All Time (or PGOAT), as called by Orin; aka Lucille Duquette according to Molly Notkin's deposition to the U.S.O.U.S. (United States Office of Unspecified Services, a CIA stand-in), which may be either knowingly fabricated to get them off Joelle's trail, actually her (Joelle's) real name, or a lie Joelle/Lucille told Notkin who then passes it on as what she thinks is truth to the U.S.O.U.S.. She wears a veil, a la the Elephant Man, to hide her face. Whether she does this because she is Hideously and Improbably Deformed, or paralyzingly beautiful, or previously offputtingly beautiful but now H.I.D., is open to the reader's interpretation. At any rate, her hiddenness is one of the many examples of masking throughout the text, a symbol of, among other things, either not knowing oneself or willful secrecy. The PGOAT is the primary figure in the filmic Infinite Jest, filmed through a wobbly neo-natal lens, which reaches down to the camera as if a bassinet and apologizes profusely, sans veil - which supposedly triggers some sort of addictive pleasure complex in the viewer that makes even partial viewing of the samizdat suicidal. She tries to 'eliminate her own map' in Molly Notkin's bathroom via massive ingestion of freebase cocaine, unsuccessfully, which lands her in the Ennet House as a resident. As a resident she develops a strong connection to D. Gately and considers showing him whatever lies under the veil after his heroic actions in the middle of the text.
• Kate Gompert is a cannabinoid addict who suffers from extreme unipolar depression. She was named after someone Wallace knew; the eponym sued the author and his publisher.
• Pat Montesian - Ennet House manager. She is a recovered addict, stroke victim, and wife of Mars Montesian, a Boston billionaire. There is some suspicion that Mars owns the only non-lethal form of the Entertainment, and that their daughter is hopelessly addicted to it. Pat has a special fondness for Don Gately, possibly due to the fact that he has recovered from his addiction and has also survived being "Entertained". (This information [including the tenuous proposal about Mars and Pat's daughter, who collectively get a total of about 5 lines in the actual novel] would require deep reading into the text).
• Ken Erdedy - Cannabinoid addict from first few chapters of the book.
• Bruce Green - husband of Mildred Bonk Green, once lived with Tommy Doocey, hare-lipped pot dealer for Erdedy, et. al.; reticent and fondly thought of as stoic by Gately; accompanies Lenz on post-AA meeting walks back to Ennet House and thus unknowingly prevents Lenz from murdering neighborhood pets, which culminates in the climactic fight scene.
• Randy Lenz - resident cokehead scumbag not in the House to recover, but to hide from both the police and a group of drug dealers he managed to get one over on in a tremendous simultaneous con. The compounded stress of this hiding and a wicked case of withdrawal lead him to begin torturing animals, leading to the brutal fight mentioned above. Also relapses (general narcotics) prior to this event.
• Tiny Ewell - a Lawyer with dwarfism; has obsession with others' tattoos (complete with classification system) as well as the corners of made hospital beds
• Doony Glynn - a Boston roofer with extremely bad luck
• Wade McDade
• Geoffrey Day - pompously verbose E.H. resident in for crashing his Saab into a department store who, pre-rehab, authors the article on the Wheelchair Assassins and their pre-adolescent train jumping which Struck disastrously plagiarizes for Poutrincourt's "Quebecois" class
• Calvin Thrust - Former porn star, star of several of Himself's films
• Emil Minty - Perhaps named for the actor who portrayed the 'feral child' in the Road Warrior.

Pethidine (INN) or meperidine (USAN) (also referred to as: isonipecaine; lidol; operidine; pethanol; piridosal; Algil®; Alodan®; Centralgin®; Demerol®; Dispadol®; Dolantin®; Dolestine®; Dolosal®; Dolsin®; Mefedina®) is a fast-acting opioid analgesic drug. ... Logo for A.A. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an informal society of more than 2,000,000 recovered alcoholics in the United States, Canada, and other countries [1] These men and women meet in local groups, which range in size from a handful in some localities to many hundreds in... Metempsychosis is a doctrine among some followers of Eastern teachings which expresses the theory of transmigration, that the human spirit may incarnate from one body to another, either human, animal, or inanimate, which is very different from the doctrine of reincarnation, which holds that man is an evolving being progressing... The CIA Seal The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an American intelligence agency, responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. Government. ... Samizdat, book published by Pathfinder Press containing a collection of forbidden Trotskyist Samizdat texts. ... Cannabinoids are a group of chemicals which activate the bodys cannabinoid receptors. ... A feral child (feral, ie. ... Road warrior may refer to: Road Warriors Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Road warrior: a person who travels significantly for his/her work, especially in North American and Western societies. ...

Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents

Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (AFR) or, in English, the Wheelchair Assassins, are a Quebecois separatist group. Many such groups exist at the time of the book, when America has coerced Canada and Mexico into joining the Organization of North American Nations (ONAN), but AFR is the most deadly and extremist. While other separatist groups will settle for mere nationhood, AFR wants Canada to pull out of ONAN and to refuse America's forced annexation of its polluted northernmost strip. This is why the Antitoi brothers, despite also being separatists, suffer such gruesome fates at the hands of AFR: they are members of the FLQ whose goals AFR finds unacceptably moderate. The AFR seeks the master copy of IJ as a terrorist weapon to achieve its anti-experialist goals. AFR grew from a childhood game in which miners' sons lined up on a train track and tried to be the last one to jump in front of an oncoming train, a game in which many were killed and maimed. But despite being legless, the AFR is brutal and merciless. See n. 304, p. 1057, for the book's most thorough description of AFR motives, goals, and methods.

Only one miner's son has (disgracefully) failed to jump, and he may be the prosaic John Wayne's father, as they share the same last name. Quebecois Avril's liasion with Wayne, and with the half-Canadian attache Don Gately accidentally kills, suggest she may have ties to AFR as well, and there is compelling but vague evidence linking the teacher/prorector Poutrincourt to the group as well.

Miscellaneous Characters

• Poor Tony Krause (P.T. Krause) - a Drag Queen formerly associated with Michael Pemulis' older brother, Matty, as well as Randy Lenz. Throughout the novel P.T. is on a harrowing downward spiral of drug use, seizures, who finally meets his end at the hands of Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents^{[citation needed]}. Poor Tony is actually a bridge between many characters who are associated with the Entertainment, including Don Gately, and there is some supposition (though obscure) that he has experienced the Entertainment in a non-lethally addicting form, though addicting nonetheless^{[citation needed]}. If the Ennet House is a literary device used to show the aftershocks and steps of recovery for addicts, P.T. is the novel's depiction of hitting rock bottom.

Setting

While the novel takes place in what is ostensibly modern-day North America, Wallace tweaks certain temporal and spatial elements to create a setting that is entirely particular to this book. The word space has many meanings, including: Physics The definition of space in physics is contentious. ...

Subsidized Time

In the book's future, advertising's relentless search for new markets has created a world where, by ONAN's dictate, years are referred to only by their corporate sponsor.

1. Year of the Whopper
2. Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
3. Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar
4. Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken
5. Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster
6. Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office, Or Mobile (sic)
7. Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland
8. Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
9. Year of Glad

Most of the action in Infinite Jest takes place in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, or Y.D.A.U., which is probably Gregorian 2009, taking the Year of the Yushityu... (the lengthily titled 6th Subsidized Year) as 2007. Critic Stephen Burn, in his book on Infinite Jest, argues convincingly that Y.D.A.U. corresponds to 2009: the MIT Language Riots took place in 1997 (n. 24) and those riots occurred 12 years prior to Y.D.A.U. (n. 60). The Whopper sandwich is the signature product sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King. ... Tucks may be: Tuckerman Ravine Tucks Pads See also Tuck This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... Dove is a brand of chocolate candy produced by Mars, Incorporated. ... Former Headquarters of the Maytag Corporation, Newton, Iowa Maytag Corporation was a $4. ... Depend is a brand name for a sort of adult diaper marketed to those afflicted with urinary or fecal incontinence. ... Founded in 1978, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) is a legal rights organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, HIV status, and gender identity and expression. ... The Gregorian calendar is the calendar that is used nearly everywhere in the world. ... 2009 (MMIX) will be a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

It is also possible that Y.D.A.U. is 2008, as Matty Pemulis turns 23 in Y.D.A.U. (p. 682). Matty's (and Mike's) father came over in 1989 when Matty was "three or four" (p. 683). If Matty had been three and four in 1989, he was born in 1985, which mean he turns 23 in 2008.

It's possible that Wallace deliberately kept the time of IJ somewhat fluid or simply couldn't be completely consistent throughout the book's 1000+ pages.

Geographic Location

The fictional Enfield Tennis Academy is a series of buildings laid out as a cardioid on top of a hill on Commonwealth Avenue. This detail has certain thematic resonances, as the ETA is in many ways the heart of the novel's setting, and a permutation of the American myth of a City Upon a Hill. The Ennet House lies directly below it downhill, facilitating many of the interactions between characters residing in both locations. In geometry, the cardioid is an epicycloid which has one and only one cusp. ... City upon a hill is the phrase often used to refer to John Winthrops famous sermon, A Model of Christian Charity,, of 1630, based on Matthew 5:14 (You are the light of the world. ...

Orin lives in Arizona, a state where much of the dialogue between Helen Steeply and Remy Marathe takes place, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- here a structure built into an image of the human brain -- is both the broadcasting site of Madame Psychosis' radio show and the location of a potentially devastating tennis tournament between the ETA and Canadian youths. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is organized into five schools and one college, containing 32 academic departments and 53 interdisciplinary laboratories, centers and programs. ...

Readers familiar with Brighton, Massachusetts, will recognize that Enfield is largely a stand-in for Brighton. The pictures of Enfield and neighboring Allston that Wallace paints, however, seem to serve simply as points of contrast for the largely idyllic life of students at ETA. The name possibly references the former real-life Enfield, one of four towns in central Massachusetts now submerged under the Quabbin Reservoir. Brighton is a section of the City of Boston in the US Commonwealth of Massachusetts. ... Enfield was a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, location 42° 19 N, 072° 22 W. The town was incorporated in 1801 from portions of Greenwich and Belchertown. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, the remainder of this article may require cleanup. ... The Quabbin Reservoir is the largest body of water in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. ...

Stylistic Elements

• Endnotes are used prolifically throughout the text, and embody both formal experimentation and consideration for the hypothetical reader's plot sensibilities. Wallace has explained their use in an interview with Charlie Rose as a method of disrupting the linearity of the text while maintaining a portion of the narrative's cohesion, for readability.
• Acronyms are a signature device in Wallace's work, and Infinite Jest is no exception.
• Wallace's writing voice is also what some would call a postmodern mixture of high- and low-brow linguistic traits. He juxtaposes, quite often within a single sentence, colloquialisms and polysyllabic, highly esoteric words.

Charlie Rose Charles Petee Rose Jr. ... Postmodernity (also called post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is a term used by philosophers, social scientists, art critics and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary art, culture, economics and social conditions that are the result of the unique features of late 20th century and early 21st century... A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech or writing. ...

Thematic Elements

• Infinite Jest is concerned with, among other things: addiction, the role of entertainment in modern America, the nature of film and literature, depression, competitive sports, familial relationships, cultural identity, spirituality, secrecy, and paranoia.

Addiction is a chronic disorder proposed to be precipitated by a combination of genetic, biological/pharmacological and social factors. ... Look up depression in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Cultural identity is the (feeling of) identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as she/he is influenced by her/his belonging to a group or culture. ... Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit. ... Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from others. ... For other senses of this word, see paranoia (disambiguation). ...

Critical Literature

Surveys

• Marshall Boswell, Understanding David Foster Wallace. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. ISBN 1-57003-517-2
• Iannis Goerlandt and Luc Herman, "David Foster Wallace." Post-war Literatures in English: A Lexicon of Contemporary Authors 56 (2004), 1-16; A1-2, B1-2.

In-depth studies

• Burn, Stephen. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide. New York, London: Continuum, 2003 (= Continuum Contemporaries) ISBN 0-8264-1477-X
• Cioffi, Frank Louis. "An Anguish Becomes Thing: Narrative as Performance in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Narrative 8.2 (2000), 161-181.
• Goerlandt, Iannis. "'Put the book down and slowly walk away': Irony and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 47.3 (2006), 309-328.
• Holland, Mary K. "'The Art's Heart's Purpose': Braving the Narcissistic Loop of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 47.3 (2006), 218-242.
• Jacobs, Timothy. “The Brothers Incandenza: Translating Ideology in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49.1 (2007). Forthcoming.
• Jacobs, Timothy. “American Touchstone: The Idea of Order in Gerard Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace.” Comparative Literature Studies 38.3 (2001): 215-231.
• Jacobs, Timothy. “David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” The Explicator 58.3 (2000): 172-175.
• Jacobs, Timothy. “David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System.” Ed. Alan Hedblad. Beacham’s Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction. Vol 15. New York: Thomson-Gale, 2001. 41-50.
• LeClair, Tom. "The Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 38.1 (1996), 12-37.
• Nichols, Catherine "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43.1 (2001), 3-16.

Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is a novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. ... William T. Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist. ...

Interviews

• Laura Miller, "The Salon Interview: David Foster Wallace." Salon 9 (1996). [1]
• Michael Goldfarb, "David Foster Wallace." Radio interview for The Connection (25 June 2004). (full audio interview)

June 25 is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 189 days remaining. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Infinite Jest. Reviews, Articles, & Miscellany
• The Howling Fantods! - David Foster Wallace: News, Info, Links
• Infinite Jest Utilities Page
• Foster Wallace talking about his novel

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