2020: tl;dr Don't do drugs, kid.
The top two takeaways from this book are 1) don't do drugs and 2) don't do drugs.

I'm not sure why I immediately clicked the 5 star rating on this book. It doesn't meet most of my 5 star criteria: it barely passes the Bechdel test, it required me to use a dictionary and three bookmarks to get through it, and the ending is left SO WIDE OPEN, a sure sign of negative stars for me. I practically had to keep a running list of all of the names / nicknames that referred to each of the characters (how very Tolstoyesque of Wallace).

But the experience of reading Infinite Jest was unparalleled to any other book I've ever attempted. This was my third time trying to read the book, and the seven weeks I spent inside the world of Enfield, MA, ONAN were unique and unforgettable. I will be in an IJ book hangover for probably months. Maybe it's because I finally had some time in the middle of quarantine to persevere, or maybe because I was reading about the disillusionment of video conferencing (predicted by Wallace! written in 1996!) in the middle of a time in which so many of us are suffering from Zoom fatigue. But it WORKED and I am officially a fan.

There's not so much that I can say that won't simply mimic what many other reviews before me have mentioned. The endnotes of lore are insane, and multitudinous, with their own footnotes on top of them. Wallace enjoyed making up his own words (the man uses the word "tallly" in the book, as in tall but adverbially, this is a word with one letter THREE TIMES IN A ROW ARE YOU KIDDING ME), and I so appreciate everyone who ever contributed to or edited the Wallace Wiki (seriously, USE IT, it's so much better to be able to understand the book you're reading!) I give thanks that I have a dictionary app on my phone and that I did not need to lug around a dictionary with me. The best part of this is that Wallace does employ a number of the new words multiple times throughout the book, so I think I actually learned them (such as "prolix", meaning tediously lengthy, aka INFINITE JEST).

The ability to keep track of all of the different tangents and stories and endnotes together at the same time is truly an accomplishment. One of the reasons why I read multiple books at once is to keep my mind engaged, but that was not necessary with this book. (Did I do it anyway? Yes, because I am an addict). It takes until page 500 for you to begin to see maybe how all these stories might be connected in the end, and until page 800 for the connection to actually happen. Page 851 is a continuation of the narration that begins the book on page 3.

There are so many moments that would defeat the casual reader (and defeated me the two previous times I attempted to read this beast). There are paragraphless pages. The Hemingway App HATES this book. The only way I made it through the drug-fueled, six-page sentence was by checking that the T route outlined was accurately portrayed. Particular joy for me came from the many tiny references to Boston College, and the fact that Enfield is located pretty much right where I used to live. I read the line "Enfield is due east of the Marathon's Hills of Heartbreak" on Patriot's Day 2020, swoon!

I found the inclusion of many racial slurs and derogatory slang needlessly distracting and super unnecessary to the plot (if you can call it a plot). What's frustrating is that even though Wallace spells out and uses the n-word multiple times throughout the book, a couple of his endnotes refer to both "the n-word" and "the f-word", so it's not like he was unaware or opposed to using a reference to the word, instead of the word itself.

That being said, Wallace is incredibly well read and the depth AND breadth of knowledge required to create a world like this, AND be able to comment on it so thoroughly. I feel like I learned so much being in this world. I'm happy to be a part of it, and I cannot wait to experience the many, many pieces of fan fiction and pop culture that this novel has inspired.