The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

Reader Score

71%

71% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 11 reviews on

BookMarks logo
A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America

Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, 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 renew the idea of what a novel can do.

"The next step in fiction...Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty...Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think." --Sven Birkerts, The Atlantic

Book Details

  • Publisher: Little Brown and Company
  • Publish Date: Feb 1st, 1996
  • Pages: 1088
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.51in - 6.31in - 2.03in - 3.19lb
  • EAN: 9780316920049
  • Categories: LiteraryClassicsSports

More books to explore

Book Cover for: By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolaño
Book Cover for: The Financier, Theodore Dreiser
Book Cover for: The Great American Novel, Philip Roth
Book Cover for: Longshot, Katie Kitamura
Book Cover for: Follow the Wind: Tales from the Caddy Yard, Bo Links
Book Cover for: The Invisible Mile, David Coventry
Book Cover for: The Beckoning World, Douglas Bauer
Book Cover for: Lonesome Traveler, Jack Kerouac
Book Cover for: Mysterium, Susan Froderberg
Book Cover for: The Devil's Stocking, Nelson Algren
Book Cover for: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book Cover for: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Book Cover for: God Knows, Joseph Heller
Book Cover for: Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, Henry Miller
Book Cover for: The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
Book Cover for: By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolaño
Book Cover for: The Financier, Theodore Dreiser
Book Cover for: The Great American Novel, Philip Roth
Book Cover for: Longshot, Katie Kitamura
Book Cover for: Follow the Wind: Tales from the Caddy Yard, Bo Links
Book Cover for: The Invisible Mile, David Coventry
Book Cover for: The Beckoning World, Douglas Bauer
Book Cover for: Lonesome Traveler, Jack Kerouac
Book Cover for: Mysterium, Susan Froderberg
Book Cover for: The Devil's Stocking, Nelson Algren
Book Cover for: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book Cover for: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Book Cover for: God Knows, Joseph Heller
Book Cover for: Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, Henry Miller
Book Cover for: The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles

About the Author

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.

More books by David Foster Wallace

Book Cover for: Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Something to Do with Paying Attention, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace & Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing, Bryan Garner
Book Cover for: String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis: A Library of America Special Publication, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Oblivion: Stories, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Girl with Curious Hair, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Both Flesh and Not: Essays, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: The David Foster Wallace Reader, David Foster Wallace
Book Cover for: Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, David Foster Wallace

What people are saying

Show more

Critics’ reviews