Infinite Jests And Finite Truths

“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”

David Foster Wallce

About a month ago, I wrote this piece defending a few books and authors that were on the receiving end of some of our cancel culture’s characteristic parochialisms. Number one in this reductionist’s tweet of the “Top 7 warning signs in a man’s bookshelf,” was the post-postmodern classic, Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace (DFW).

I had read most of the other books she mentioned, so I was aware of their “problematic” reputations, but I had no idea why she felt Infinite Jest belonged on the list. So I did some digging online. I was immediately sucked into this hypnotizing literary debate that’s been going on since the books publication in 1996.

I learned that the massive novel usually falls into one of two categories: it’s either absolutely and unabashedly adored, or it’s the worst thing that anyone has ever read. There is no middle ground. One critic even suggested that it’s “not worth the paper it’s written on.” But what’s even more interesting is that some of these well respected literary critics have gone and totally reversed their hyperbolic chiding and switched sides. These were written by the same person eight years apart.

“(some elements in the novel) feel rather willed and secondhand. They are impressive in the manner of a precocious child’s performance at a dinner party, and, in the same way, ultimately irritating: they seem motivated, mostly, by a desire to show off.”

“(infinite Jest is an) enormous, zeitgeist-gobbling novel that set his generation’s benchmark for literary ambition” (Wallace is the) “the best mind of his generation.”

So I decided to read the novel for myself. I’m only about half way through it so far, but I figured I would write a few consecutive posts about it as I go along. In this one, I want to peel back the layers of all this social commentary and see if I can’t get to the bottom of why the book is so polarizing. I’m not going to get into the literary merits of the book–perhaps only briefly to emphasize some key points– but rather, I want to focus primarily on the notorious reputation that the book’s readers get.

But before I get into it, there’s one thing that I want to point out that’s particularly noteworthy. Most of the articles that I’ve read so far, and everywhere I go collecting bits of this meta-narrative, I see that DFW is consistently regarded as a genius. No matter what side of the debate someone belongs to, it’s usually one thing they can all agree on.

And as you read Infinite Jest, you can’t help but see some truth behind those words. I wouldn’t say that the entire book is well written, because some of his prose is painfully dull and difficult to read, but it’s filled with these occasional flashes of an intoxicating brilliance that’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before. He makes you feel like he has lived your life, only to have its most rudimentary moments read back to you in a way that you’ve never thought of before, but easily could have if you tried. The type of descriptions that make you think way longer than it probably took him to write them. All the while making it seem effortless, and remaining humble and shyly self-conscious throughout, by using terms like, “like”, and “and but so,” so frequently, that it makes you conscious of the idea that he was just a regular dude, no more intelligent than his reader.

Here are a few of my favourites, although I’m aware that they might fall flat being pulled out of context like this. It’s like trying to show someone your favourite song with the volume turned too low, it just doesn’t have the same kick to it.

“Time began to take on new aspects for him, now, as Withdrawal progressed. Time began to pass with sharp edges. Its passage in the dark or dim lit stall was like time was being carried by a procession of ants, a gleaming red martial column of those militaristic red southern-U.S. ants that build hideous tall boiling hills; and each vile gleaming ant wanted a minuscule little portion of Poor Tony’s flesh in compensation as it helped bear time slowly forward down the corridor of true Withdrawal.

David Foster Wallace

“…almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of ‘psst’ that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.”

David Foster Wallace

Anyway, this is the typical narrative as far as I understand it. On one side of the stereotypical aisle, you find (mostly) men who treat this encyclopedic tome as a sort of boast-worthy accomplishment. One reviewer on Goodreads even said that finishing the book was one of the greatest achievements of his entire life; the other two being raising his children, and getting his MBA. All over the internet you’ll find numerous blogs and articles written by obsessed fans who tirelessly deconstruct the novel page by page. DFW himself had said that he modelled the book after a pyramidical fractal called the Sierpinski Gasket; saying that, “Its chaos is more on the surface; its bones are its beauty.”

It reminds me of a comment James Joyce made about his book, Ulysses:

“I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.”

I think that’s exactly what DFW tried to do.

And on the other side of the debate, you find (mostly) women who are fed up with dealing with the (mostly) 20 something year old college males who won’t shut up about the book. They have learned to associate it with arrogance and condescension. They condemn the book for it’s racism, misogyny, and questionable subject matter. The feminists in this group even argue that books like Infinite Jest are the unconscious extension of the male author’s phallus. They claim that writers like DFW are your typical male egoists, flexing their intellectual muscles to show off, saying: “look at me, look how good I am at writing.”

It’s sentiments like this that have inspired some of these women to make a certain variety of joke about Infinite Jest and its predominantly male audience.

Like this comedian, who was so tired of having the book recommended to her, she literally decided to eat it. Like as in sandwiches. And as far as I can tell, she is doing it out of spite, and this is her idea of refusing to read it…maybe?

Another funny lady wrote this article called, “5 Footnotes From Infinite Jest That’ll Get Him Rock Hard.” Here’s a little taste:

“So you’re in a rut with your amateur-philosopher slampiece. You’ve tried the lingerie, you’ve tried classic dirty talk…We’ve got the answer: David Foster Wallace’s 1996 magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Nothing gets your guy ready to bone like 1,079 pages of nonlinear metafiction. This enormous novel includes 388 footnotes that are ripe with sexual fodder.”

379 is my favourite. It had me laughing out loud.

“This steamy footnote cannot be used lightly—reserve it for those moments you’re desperate to get him hard. Footnote 379 is a footnote that references another footnote. (Um, what?! Are we even allowed to print something so nasty???)”

There’s no shortage of these jokes all over the internet, and yes, some are good, but most of them are the unfunny derivative of the same tired joke. And the total irony here is that the experiences of these people who complain about the ones who brag about reading the book, appears to me to be just as frequent, if not less so, than the prevalence of the people who never actually read the book, but make these jokes about the ones who do. Personally, I’ve only been on the receiving end of the one, but I imagine if you hear them long enough, they’re probably both equally annoying.

Either way, both sides fail to explain why this book has such an effect on its readers. Is it just because it’s so long and difficult? What about the hordes of people reading the Game Of Thrones series? As far as I know there isn’t a group of people hating on it’s fan base. And as for reading difficult books, I actually finished Ulysses, so if reading hard books is cool, consider me Miles Davis.

This article, titled, “Why Insufferable People Love Infinite Jest,” argues it’s something else. It claims that because of his easy and approachable writing style, DFW created a work of fiction that fools it’s readers into thinking that they’re more intelligent than they really are. The author compares it to confusing the strength one might feel while holding a handgun to actually being physically strong. Consequently, readers who love the novel tend to be arrogant, overbearing, and pretentious, hence the term “insufferable.”

It could be that DFW’s readers think they’re clever because they understand a piece of literature that is so highly regarded as being difficult to read. And yes, Infinite Jest is difficult to read, but not only because it’s long, at around 1100 pages, 98 of which are end notes, (some of which are 10 pages long and contain their own endnotes ;)) but because it’s narrative structure is extremely scattered and convoluted. It takes time, effort, and dedication to finish it; to finish something that comparatively few people will. That’s why it becomes an achievement to some, worn as a badge of honour.

The article continues, “…the best comparison for DFW is Hemingway: a problematic fave whose style deceived loads of men into thinking they could write like him and live his life. Infinite Jest invites in this projection.” He concludes, “We’re left with the remainders of a gigantic talent who got closer to greatness than self-awareness.”

Yes, DFW makes me to want to write like him, but what the author gets wrong is that, like most great artist, athletes, or successful people throughout history, they weren’t “deceived” by their heroes, they were inspired by them. You can’t blame Wayne Gretzky for every hockey player that didn’t make it to the NHL. If this author really thinks that great writers “deceive” people into thinking they could write like them, then his criticism belongs to every single author who boasts the “Classic” tag.

This theory, that Infinite Jest‘s readers feel a false sense of intelligence when they read it, seems pretty unlikely to me given the relative hate that the book and it’s fans receive. There are plenty of smart books out there that don’t have that type of fan base.

Luckily I have a few theories of my own, but it helps to understand a little of what the book is about first.

The novel is split into three interconnected narratives that deal with one of three major themes: achievement, addiction, and entertainment. The first narrative takes place in a junior tennis academy where the students endure rigorous training and discipline in hopes of making it to the pros. The second takes place in a half-way house and follows numerous characters who are in various stages of substance abuse problems. And the third, which is much more broad and complex, centres around a cross dressing C.I.A. agent and a wheelchair-bound French Canadian separatist. The two belong to different political groups that are trying to find a film called “the entertainment” that, when you watch it, you become so entranced by it that you lose the willpower to do anything else and eventually die.

Did I mention that the book is also hilarious at times?

Anyway, each of these themes has a common denominator that brings them all together; they all involve characters who are searching for happiness, meaning, or pleasure in things that end up being empty and hollow. The tennis academy is a microcosm of what the average person thinks success looks like; that even if you achieve all your goals, you’ll always be wanting something more. The addicts all attach a false sense of happiness to whatever substance they’re addicted to, and “the entertainment” (which in the book, is also titled “Infinite Jest”) represents the harmful potential of a cultures obsession with easy and mindless entertainment.

So what were left with is a genius articulating to his readers how misleading and empty our mindless pursuits of happiness are, via television, drugs, and success, on the one hand, and his readers, people who are already willing to forego instant gratification and hunker down and read a 1100 page novel on the other, put those two together, and you likely have someone armed with enough “insufferable” comments to make any casual television watcher weary of their company. Like this one:

“What TV is extremely good at—and realize that this is “all it does”—is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.”

David Foster Wallace

It’s like Infinite Jest is DFW’s diagnosis of everything that he felt was wrong with our culture, while the very act of reading it is the cure.

Can you see how someone would use that to feel superior to others?

I can, and I’m guilty of it myself.

Just the other day I was telling my brothers how I thought Grown-Ups 2 was stupid and it’s cheap humour pandered to a dumb and vague audience. Not only that, I tell my wife on a weekly basis that television will rot her brain. But these opinions aren’t new to me, I didn’t just learn them from reading Infinite Jest, DFW just says it better than I ever could. He validates my preexisting ideas in ways that compels me to have a stronger conviction of them, because I know he’s on my side.

That’s partly where I think this “Insufferable” idea comes from. It could be that certain fans of Infinite Jest are basically beefed up versions of literary snobs who, Instead of bragging about reading difficult classics, brag about reading this one particular difficult classic, whose message could be interpreted as: engage in more meaningful and noble pursuits, like reading difficult classics.

That might account for some of the book’s readers, but it still doesn’t explain why most of them are men.

If I had to guess, besides the obvious reason being that most of the characters are male, I would say it has to do with the book’s subject matter regarding depression, addiction, and suicide. It should be noted that DFW killed himself in 2008. He also suffered from addiction throughout his life. It could be that Infinite Jest talks about these difficult topics in ways that your average male reader, perhaps those that feel a stigma attached to opening up to others, can relate to. It’s like I mentioned earlier, DWF has a way of putting things into words that you might have never been able to articulate yourself. That might explain why these men are so passionate about the book. Maybe they feel like DFW knows them better then they know themselves.

Here is DFW on depression for example:

“It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self’s most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self.”

He has a habit of making you uncomfortably aware of the fact that you’re not as unique as you think you are.

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”

David Foster Wallace

That’s why I initially wrote these last few posts, I wanted to defend myself, and the book’s readers, from being categorized into some banal stereotype. It never feels good when someone paints you with sweeping and broad brush strokes; we all want to be thought of as unique snowflakes.

But I came to realized that there was some truth to their accusations. I’m really not that different from the “insufferable” people who brag about reading Infinite Jest.

I think like them, I just want to feel smart. I want people to think i’m interesting, and I care deeply what they think of me. It’s an incredibly hard thing to admit to myself, let alone put it out for the world to see, but it’s the truth. I attach so much of my identity with being smart that it affects my ability to be authentic.

It took me a while to finish this post because I was stuck, wrestling with that idea. It really made me appreciate these words:

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”

David Foster Wallace

But it got me thinking about this whole idea snobbishness.

Even though I get a sense of superiority or self-congratulations while reading difficult books like Infinite Jest, does that really make me a snob?

It sort of reminds me of the proverbial vegan and the Crossfitter who get a hard time for talking about veganism and Crossfit too much. What if they just really enjoy those things, have benefited greatly from them, and feel like others could benefit from them too? What’s the alternative to them talking about it in a self-cogratulatory way? Telling a fat person to their face that they need to do Crossfit, or eat more veggies? No, because then they’d be assholes. But are you an asshole if you genuinely want to help other people? When does the potential for good, by telling a difficult truth, outweigh the risk of offending someone? Are interventions offensive?

And just like eating healthy and exercising, reading difficult books has shown to have objective benefits as opposed to other forms of mind-numbing entertainment.

So maybe the people who make the jokes about the Crossfitters, vegans, and even the ones hating on Infinite Jest are, like I was, unwilling to face some hard truths about themselves. Maybe the more outspoken ones don’t like to be reminded of their own shortcomings or poor life choices, and so they lash out and call people snobs in retaliation. It’s a lot easier to make the same old joke about a condescending Infinite Jest fan than it is to actually read the book for yourself. They sort of remind me of the “I hate morning people,” who can’t stand the fact that other people can be happy in the mornings because it forces them to acknowledge their own unhappiness.

Are morning people “insufferable”?

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t criticize things. Constructive feedback is a healthy part of any functional discourse. But when people do it at the expense of others, charged with malicious intent, it gets a little more complicated.

How many of these people, the ones making these jokes, the ones attempting to reduce great art to its worst qualities, are lying to themselves in order to adhere to some false idea of how they think they’re supposed to be perceived? How many go to such extreme efforts to try and maintain an absurd consistency to their opinions; too afraid to veer off for fear of an identity crisis.

I only ask because that’s how I felt.

I think so much of our negative assessment of things we don’t like is nothing but the unconscious deflections of our own insecurities.

How many of us close our eyes and cover our ears anytime something violates the threshold of the comfortable lies we tell ourselves? How many of us are willing to look past being offended?

So to conclude, it might be a combination of both DFW’s writing style and content that are contributing to his fans being labeled as “insufferable,” but how much of that term, and this whole conversation in general, has been exaggerated by the accusers themselves?

I think in the end it comes down to the intentions of the fans of Infinite Jest. If they are using a genius’ mind to push their own agendas of appearing intelligent, then maybe they deserve the criticisms their getting. However, if they see truths that they think could enrich the lives of others, of the people they love, then they don’t deserve to get lumped into this broad category of readers; because by doing so we risk throwing out the baby with the bath water. Which is why we don’t need categories like that in the first place.

Or maybe this is all the elaborate scheming of a genius; some Infinite Jest.

Thanks for reading.