Infinite Jest

Ich gebe zu, ich hab's (noch) nicht durch. Seit mehreren Monaten kämpfe ich mich nun durch dieses Buch, und wenn das so weitergeht, werde ich wohl auch noch mehrere Monate benötigen, um mit diesem Buch abzuschließen. Das mag sich negativ anhören, ist aber nicht so gemeint. Zugegebenermaßen ist es recht mühsam, dieses Buch zu lesen. Die über 1000 Seiten (einschließlich der Anmerkungen) sind ehr noch eine Spar-Version - insbesondere die Anmerkungen sind extrem klein gedruckt. Zudem hat der Autor einen Wortschatz, der eigentlich nur einer Frau zuzutrauen wäre... :-) So oft wie bei diesem Buch habe ich glaube ich noch nicht mal in der Schule das Wörterbuch benutzen müssen. Einen Harry-Potter-5 mit 750 Seiten kann man auch in Englisch in weniger als einer Woche lesen - und das ohne Urlaub. Mit diesem Buch geht das eindeutig nicht.

Aaaber: das Lesen bereitet mir trotz dieser Mühen Freude. Das Buch sprüht nur so vor Einfallsreichtum und subtilem Witz. Auch stilistisch ist es sehr abwechslungsreich (wenn auch teilweise sehr anstrengend zu lesen, z.B. über mehrere Seiten ohne Absatz oder Satzzeichen...). Die Anmerkungen sind, obwohl sie den Lesefluss doch ein wenig behindern, ebenso einfallsreich, abwechslungsreich und witzig, daher dafür auch kein Punktabzug in der B-Note. Really something completely different.
Aufgefallen - sozusagen als sprachlich Aussenstehender - ist mir die Vorliebe des Autors für deutsche Umlaute. Ich kenne zwar das Brockengespenst oder auch Toblerone, aber nicht das Bröckengespenst bzw. Töbleröne. Aber diese Marotte sei dem Autor verziehen...
Alles in allem ein Buch für den langen Urlaub (und die Zeit danach). Ehr weniger mal eben für ein Wochenende.
Mein Fazit: Ich find's gut.


HELP ME.   Juli 16, 2000
Brian Gates
0 aus 2 fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

So what exactly does happen to Hal in the interrum between the YDAU and the Year of Glad? He didnt see his fathers murderous entertainment else he would not be able to even articulate his thoughts. Could it just be a symptom of his Withdrawal from weed? Is it because of the barely hinted at digging up of the grave of his father? and what exactly do they extract from that grave that is held by hair? How come near the end of the novel Hal's personal map suddenly seems mirthful for no reason and beyond his control, and his peers keep noticing the bizarre grimaces of his face? if anyone can help me answer these question Email me! Oh yeah, this is the best book i have ever read etc.


Not with a bang, but a whimper...   Juni 23, 2000
KrabbyKrush
5 aus 5 fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

What a disappointing book! It took me 4 years of picking it up, putting it down for extended periods, and then picking it up again to finally finish. The first 300 pages were slow, but I found myself getting increasingly hooked as I went along. By about the 600th page, I could barely put it down. The many plotlines were coming together slowly but surely, and it looked like it would reach a convoluted but amazing conclusion. So what went wrong? I dunno what was in Wallace's head, but he seems to have decided to cast aside this book's potential for greatness and just end it on a soft note. What a shame. Some elements of the book were great... the wry humor, the many exquisitely crafted plotlines, the zany future that Wallace's imagination cooked up (monstrous feral hamsters, lounge singer presidents, etc), and so on. But other parts were something of a turn off. The tennis academy narrative did not match the quality of the other plotlines, and Wallace's egomania concerning his own writing ability was a bit much. If an author is a genius, it will show subtly in his work (Mikhail Lermontov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, etc)... Wallace's brute force approach of beating the reader over the head with complex words and sentence structures is NOT the mark of genius. See especially the 200 pages of footnotes... the idea was cute, but when some of the individual footnotes are 10 to 20 pages each, you know he's gone too far. Anyway, I'm digressing from my main point, which is: this is a well written and entertaining book, but prepare to be let down considerably by the lack of a satisfactory conclusion... I must say that the "look, I didn't put an ending in!" trick is SOOOO cliche in post-modern literature, and the fact that Wallace thought the reader would see the lack of ending as somehow clever or original does not speak well for him. 1100 pages is too much to have to sit through for this kind of disappointment.


Midrash on the Reviews   Juni 2, 2000
Arik Berglund
2 aus 3 fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

There are over 300 people who have written reviews of Infinite Jest on Amazon.com, and not only have I read DFW's postpostmodern tome, but I have also read all the reviews on this Web site; after which, it is fairly clear, to me, anyway, that a review written on March 23, 1999, entitled "you guys should have zero stars," was, in fact, written by DFW himself. Go check it out; tell me DFW wasn't getting a kick out of reading the volleying back and forth (pardon the pun) between Rave Review/Horrible Review, and decided to lob one more joke upon the English-reading public.

Like "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" (and anything Pynchon ever wrote), "Infinite Jest" is a (sophisticated) joke--only DFW went so far as to tell us (IN THE TITLE!). Of course, there's nothing wrong with a joke--even a long one--as long as it's told well. (I do not, however, intend to tell you which I think it is--and please don't take my silence as a stance of disfavor.)

I have nothing to add, good or bad, that other readers haven't already posited about IJ. But I do have something to suggest concerning the phenomenon of IJ: The 20th century began with Joyce and ended with DFW. Did we (Literature) ever get anywhere? This is to say, is it now (and perhaps forvever) the mark of a great writer to thrust at least one book upon the reading public that not only calls for the death of way too many trees, but which can only be appreciated by a very select-few readers in any given literate society? Was that the great leap in literature undertaken during arguably the most eventful century in human history?

The 'point' of "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" was that no one ever needed to write something like that again; just as Samuel Beckett should be the only playwright to ever write a play that has no words! Once something like this has "been done," what's the point of repeating it?

Look at Borges. Easily Joyce's equal, Borges only "invented" Ulysses-like epics in his short stories. To actually write such a book, after Joyce, was a waste of a decade of life. Novelists like Pynchon and DFW are drawing a picture of a person staring into a mirror who sees a person staring into a mirror who sees a person staring into a mirror who sees a person staring into a mirror of...Infinite Regress (Jest).

Anyway, something to think about. Was/Is IJ really necessary? Ulysses, I believe, was.

I would judge IJ, in part, based on DFW's other works. (Why? It seems only fitting, since anything he ever writes in the future will only be measured by IJ.) He's a lousy non-fiction writer, that's for sure, and, like Annie Dillard has promised to never write another novel, I hope DFW vows to never write another essay. As for DFW's fiction, he's somewhere in the middle of the road, definitely below Don DeLillo, and definitely above Douglas Coupland. That's why I gave this book 3 stars.

P.S. If you're going to read a 1,000-page book, I would suggest Canopus in Argos or The Holy Bible.

P.P.S. Of course, since the dawn of Catch-22, no one ever needed to write another word of fiction--ever; including me.


Addicting   Juni 1, 2000
Jefferson Turner
5 aus 5 fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

When I picked up this book, I intended to read just the first few pages to see what it was about, and maybe finish some other time. 1100 pages later, I finally put it down. OK, I didn't read it all in one sitting, but the single mindedness you could call an addiction. Which is appropriate, because this book is about addiction in all sorts of forms: drugs, alcohol, athletics, entertainment, and so forth. The scope DFW attempts (and succeeds) is amazing: every page, every chapter is a constant surpise. DFW sets up his own kind of reality, and then stretches that reality to the breaking point. To try to summarize or encapsulate in a 1000 words is impossible. INFINITE JEST is comic and tragic, science fiction and mystery, socio-political commentary and literary fiction. Now for the bad news. Sometimes, the writing is....pretentious. The footnotes get to be a little much. It is as if DFW is showing off his virtuosity at wordplay for the sake of showing off. He actually addresses this criticism in a very good interview ................. INFINITE JEST is not an "easy read," but it is well worth the effort.