A new edition to celebrate the 30th anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s iconic, bestselling novel Infinite Jest – with an introduction by Michelle Zauner, author of Crying in H Mart
Somewhere in the not-so-distant future the residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of Infinite Jest, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss . . .
‘Extraordinary… an astonishing and vast epic of contemporary American culture’ Guardian
‘A writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything’ New York Times
‘Ambitious, accomplished, deeply humorous, brilliant and witty and moving. A literary sensation’ Independent
‘An exploding star of a novel’ Spectator
‘A remarkable satire on American entertainment and addiction’ Daily Telegraph
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Reviews
A remarkable satire on American entertainment and addiction... the book's mixture of maniacal inventiveness and comic brio gradually becomes an addiction itself... Enormously readable and quite ridiculously entertaining... a book of our times
Funny, smart and perceptively written
Wallace is a superb comedian of culture . . . his exuberance and intellectual impishness are a delight
Scenes of gruesome hilarity and some of genuine tragedy... The most relevant portrayal of American culture to appear in recent years, Infinite Jest is fascinating, ridiculous and excruciating, and a stimulating injection into contemporary American culture
A writer of virtuostic talents who can seemingly do anything
An exploding star of a novel... reading the book is itself a sort of addiction... Wallace writes with authority, deep feeling and caustic wit
Wallace's prose, ebullient and complex, transmits at once the vitality and absurd decadence of his culture... as an assessment of America, the novel is both powerful and troubling
One of the best books about addiction and recovery to appear in recent memory.
One of the best books about addiction and recovery to appear in recent memory... a dystopian fantasy of the near future, a meditation about avant-garde cinema, a burlesque of North American politics and a critique of sports culture... positively sings with lyrical insight and wry humour
Wallace's theme is addiction: to drugs, to death, to entertainment. His compulsive style mixes erudite and slacker jargon, pseudoscience and urban slang (often in the same sentence) and always in precise detail. Rousing prose breathes on to every page
Massive, unflagging, ingenious, an eccentric portrait of America in decline, a study in addiction, a raucous comedy of manners and mania
From the hilarious to the deliberately infuriating, Infinite Jest packs a considerable range of bawdy, satirical excursions... Wallace's central concerns are powerfully and disturbingly given form in the blurry hinterland where recreation meets slavery
Darkly comic
Ambitious, accomplished, deeply humorous, brilliant and witty and moving. A literary sensation
Infinite Jest seems to fulfil every promise that David Foster Wallace displayed in his precocious and stunning The Broom of the System. If you want to know who's upholding the high comic tradition - passed down from Sterne to Swift to Pynchon - it's Wallace
A writer of virtuostic talents who can seemingly do anything
An insight into modern addictions and spiritual frustrations
Wallace's exuberance and intellectual impishness are a delight, and he has deep things to say about the hollowness of contemporary American pleasure... sentences and whole pages are marvels of comic concentration... Wallace is a superb comedian of culture
He induces the kind of laughter which, when read in bed with a sleeping partner, wakes said sleeping partner up . . . He's damn good
Extraordinary... an astonishing and vast epic of contemporary American culture