On Infinite Jest
…This is Water
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” — DFW
David Foster Wallace is a genius. It’s evident in his writing. It’s clear when he’s being interviewed (see his appearances on Charlie Rose). And it’s most lucid once you’ve completed his magnum opus, Infinite Jest, and had some time to digest the 1,079-page tour de force.
Written in 1996, DFW had an uncanny sense for how entertainment was impacting our collective consciousness; how media can brainwash masses into a mindless, blissful state of un-thinking. He captures this degradation with wit and humor, alongside an ever-permeating tinge of sadness. Still yet, Wallace spells out the beauty in life with unprecedented observational skills, both of the extraordinary in the ordinary, and his discernment of the human condition.
The sad ending to his life may well be, in part, the result of the intensity of his connection to it all. In reading DFW, you feel him channeling some ineffable poignancy in the crux of being; you feel him channeling life itself, in all its flavors. His writing is commonly described as “that voice inside your head” — just with greater vocabulary and wit then practically anyone, ever.
Infinite Jest is set up as Sierpinski Gasket, something Wallace described as “a pyramid on acid”. Essentially it reads as a non-linear, fractal-like prose; and it requires the reader to be on his/her game for the whole ride. Insanely detailed and tangential at times, Wallace said in an interview “whatever is hard in the book is in service of something.” And only until you’ve finished the beast of a story does it all start to come together. IJ is about nothing less than the experience of life: most directly how we spend our time and what we devote ourselves to. It’s about addiction, in the broadest sense; how the vices we choose (or passions, depending how you look at it) permeate our personhood and lived reality.
It most ingeniously acts as a meta experience, as well. The film within the story, also called Infinite Jest, is a movie so captivating viewers become catatonic in their ignoring all facets of life to endlessly sit in front of a screen and watch it. This echoes the type of compulsive commitment Wallace asks of his readers — working through the dense tomb of prose, filled with endless footnotes and observations that require the reader to flip through the book, get out the dictionary, and keep multiple narratives in mind throughout.
The best way to describe what Wallace did with IJ is to go back to a short little joke mentioned early on in the novel (and also reiterated in his 2005 commencement address, wonderfully animated here):
“This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, ‘What the fuck is water?’ and swim away.”
It’s a seemingly trivial quip at the surface. But we humans are also surrounded by a fluidity many fail to recognize, and Wallace — in his own way — is that wise old fish, attempting to show us what we’re missing.
