Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Cleverness for it's own sake. Detail without depth. Literary onanism, as some other reviewers have pointed out. Still, Infinite Jest makes for a very good read, especially after you figure some things out. First, read the footnotes, as they advance and comment on the plot. Use two bookmarks. Second, have a dictionary handy at all times, the bigger the better. The OED would be optimal (Hal: "I'm an OED man, myself"), but a Webster's Unabridged will do in a pinch. This isn't one of those books where you can gloss over the big words or hope to pick them up from context. You need to know, for example, that "dipsomania" is another word for alcoholism. Third, be prepared for the lack of conclusion. Resign yourself to the fact that if you want to know what happens, you're going to have to read the book TWICE (or at least go back and read the first chapter again). If I had known these things when I first read Infinite Jest three years ago, I would have been spared a great deal of anguish. After spending three weeks of my life night and day with this book, I felt personally betrayed that there was no conclusion. I was so angry I wanted to burn the book and send the ashes to the author accompanied by a nasty letter. It was months later when I finally found out that the beginning is the end. Of course, DFW gives the reader ample hints. I just didn't catch on the first time. The footnote detailing JOI's (Hal's father's) filmography is really just a list of plot events in the main story; pretty much every subject that JOI makes a film about is really something that happens in the novel. This is a good place to go if you think that you missed something. Also important is the theoretical commentary on the nature of JOI's work. Don't forget that he pioneered a genre called "anticonfluential narrative" in which the separate strands of his subject's lives never converge into a satisfying conclusion (sound familiar?). Another hint to the book's structure is the prevalent discussion of annular fusion, a circular process that turns garbage into energy. The word annular (ring-shaped) is key. The book gets four stars instead of five because the characters are mostly flat and because even though the book was written only five years ago, parts of it already seem dated (like "teleputers" and "film cartridges" - c'mon, we have the Internet and DVDs). But David Foster Wallace deserves credit for writing a thousand-page book on the themes of entertainment and addiction that itself manages to be very addictive and very entertaining. The hilariousness of the U.S. being at war with Canada is reason enough to read this book.