Infinite Jest, Wallace

Review, notes, and thoughts on Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Themes and Ideas

• Entertainment as capital. ‘Infinite Jest’ in the very literal interpretation of an ‘entertainment economy’, in which entertainment functions as a form of capital which is invested in a system of production and consumption that produces more of itself. Whether through sensual, athletic, conservative, fiscal, or menial means, everyone is constantly working to maintain the institutions producing entertainment, and left in such a sunken void that one can only fill it by desperately consuming from the very web of entertainment they produce. It is forced consumption of entertainment derived from its production. It is the infinite jest, the infinite cycle of crying laughter, of tortured ease.
• Waste. The pure and the waste is an unstable opposition which deconstructs itself; the waste often manifests as growth. Does the constant consumption and production of entertainment waste our existence? Or is it all that there is to existence? Is waste significant when deterioration is embedded into the fabric of existence?
• Recursivity of shame. When does shame become a shame of shame? How does the recursivity manifest in the nature of nesting and infinitary development? Is infinitary recursivity circular?

Plot

An attempt to construct the plot of Infinite Jest in detailed, chronological form - no easy feat for such a nonlinear narrative.

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