How to Read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (Introductory Lecture) (Patreon)

It’s time to begin our journey through David Foster Wallace's complex postmodern novel: Infinite Jest.

Our reading will prompt us to think about the nature of addiction, mental illness, our relationship with entertainment, meaning, identity, will, communication, and the human condition. We will meet some incredible characters and, in doing so, ultimately meet ourselves.

Today we’re discussing how best to break into this challenging but immensely rewarding work and bring ourselves fully Infinite Jest.

This is a long video (for a long work), so please feel free to use the timestamps below if you would like to split your viewing up or jump to anything that interests you.

Video Timestamps:

0:00 reading one of the most difficult novels

2:00 reading as exchange between consciousnesses

3:45 what is the story of Infinite Jest about?

5:30 the dystopian future of Infinite Jest

6:00 Organization of North American Nations/O.N.A.N.

6:30 President Johnny Gentle and the Great Concavity

7:00 when did David Foster Wallace write Infinite Jest?

7:30 what is subsidised time in Infinite Jest?

9:30 nightmare dystopia or contemporary comment?

10:20 why is the beginning so confusing?

11:20 who are the characters of Infinite Jest?

11:50 Hal Incandenza and Enfield Tennis Academy

12:40 David Foster Wallace on tennis

13:20 the filmography of James Incandenza

15:00 what is the entertainment in Infinite Jest?

16:45 is Infinite Jest a prophetic novel?

20:10 Québécois seperatists/The Wheelchair Assassins

22:00 Don Gately/Ennet Recovery House

23:40 Joelle van Dyne/Madame Psychosis

25:25 worshipping our corporate masters

26:40 we already live in a corporate dystopia

28:30 DFW on addiction as religious devotion

29:50 do we have the freedom to choose?

31:20 loneliness in comfort and easy pleasure

32:40 religious impulse and the death of God

33:40 the existential crisis of drug addiction

35:15 higher power in the twelve-step program

37:00 how do you know you’re addicted?

37:50 the essays of David Foster Wallace

38:30 David Foster Wallace teaching syllabus

39:10 David Foster Wallace and Stephen King

40:00 television, pop culture, postmodernism

41:10 irony and metafiction vs realism

42:00 being addicted to television/social media

45:30 rise of the postmodern hero of non-action

47:00 how we have lost the desire to think deeply

48:00 the battle of short vs long form content

49:00 great literature is frequently boring in places

50:00 Infinite Jest as antidote to instant gratification

50:40 do you have to read the endnotes?

51:45 jokes, parody and secrets in the endnotes

53:00 why you need two bookmarks for Infinite Jest

54:00 reading experience is like a tennis match

55:30 Infinite Jest as encyclopaedic novel

56:00 self-awareness and active reading

57:00 being addicted to obsessive thinking

58:00 is Infinite Jest difficult for the sake of it?

59:00 David Foster Wallace’s narrative style

1:00:00 how difficult is Infinite Jest?

1:01:00 modernism vs postmodernism

1:02:30 relationship between comedy and tragedy

1:04:00 sadness and humour of David Foster Wallace

1:05:30 Sierpiński triangle structure in Infinite Jest

1:07:00 iceberg theory and deformation in literature

1:09:00 DFW’s rationale for structure of Infinite Jest

1:10:30 the author-reader relationship in Infinite Jest

1:12:00 where does the title Infinite Jest come from?

1:14:00 Shakespeare’s Hamlet parallels in Infinite Jest

1:15:30 what is the meaning/point of life?

1:17:30 infinite play within parameters

1:20:00 choosing our freedom and meaning

1:21:20 David Foster Wallace’s tragic end

1:22:30 why should you read Infinite Jest?

1:23:30 recommended pacing for Infinite Jest

1:25:00 the joy of engaging with the book club

1:27:00 what is your experience with Infinite Jest?

Resources:

• Film Appreciation: You may wish to start your journey into Infinite Jest by watching an excellent film called The End of the Tour (2015), which stars Jason Segel as David Foster Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as the Rolling Stone journalist who interviews him. This film really captures the writer's thoughts and personality in a way that will make a reading of his work more accessible.

• Shakespeare: One of the best preparations for appreciating Infinite Jest would be to refresh your memory of Shakespeare's Tragedy of Hamlet. You might like to do that with our recent lecture on this masterpiece. You might also like this reaction video to different performances of Hamlet. If you haven't seen Hamlet yet, then treat yourself to Franco Zeffirelli's film version or check out Kenneth Branagh in the iconic graveyard scene.

• Essays: It would be a great idea to have some of David Foster Wallace's essays on hand as we work our way through this novel. Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again will give you a great sense of the man. I also highly recommend listening to This Is Water, the commencement speech Wallace gave at Kenyon College a few years before his tragic death.

• Interviews: We are lucky to have many interviews with David Foster Wallace in which he talks about his books in depth. My favourite interviews are this one from 2003, these one from the radio show Bookworm, and his interviews with Charlie Rose here and here. You may also find it interesting to take a look at the writer's syllabus from when he was teaching English.

• Edition: I will be referring to page numbers throughout as presented in the paperback edition published by Abacus in the UK. I believe that page numbers are the same across available editions, including the US paperback published by Back Bay Books, and the original hardback first edition, published by Little, Brown, so feel free to use whichever edition you can get your hands on. As detailed at the end of the video, discussions are on alternating weekends, so ~15 pages/day will keep you in line with when they come out. But, like with Genji, I encourage you to take this one at the pace that works best for you and listen to the lectures regardless of how much you have read.

• Journalling: In addition to making sure you have two bookmarks (one for the main body of the work, another for the extensive endnotes), you may want to have a journal on hand to make notes as you go. I continue to recommend the Leuchturrm1917 bullet journals.

• Thoughts: Have you or someone you know struggled with addiction or issues of mental health? Are there any malignant addictions in your life that you know you need to remove? And what meaning can you choose for your life?

Reading Assignment:

Our next discussion will take us through the first 219 pages of the novel. So start making your way into the work, meeting the characters, and noting down any themes, ideas, or passages that personally resonate with you.

You can identify this page by the paragraph break and the chapter subheading '❍ 7 November: Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.'

Questions for You:

1) What is your current relationship with David Foster Wallace? Is this your first reading or a rereading of this novel?

2) What themes from your wider reading, and your life, would you like to pull into this work? And what are you hoping to get out of your deep reading of Infinite Jest?

3) What lessons from other difficult books can help us through this one?

4) David Foster Wallace saw reading as an 'exchange of consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can’t normally talk about.' Do you agree?

Happy reading, everybody!