What is the message of Infinite Jest?
In Infinite Jest, addiction, mental illness, and suicide are not unusual or abnormal pathologies that affect only a select number of people. Instead, they are ubiquitous: every significant character in the novel seems to suffer from addiction or mental illness of some kind.
What mental illness did David Foster Wallace have?
Death. Wallace’s father said that David had suffered from major depressive disorder for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive.
What is the plot of Infinite Jest?
Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertai.
Is David Foster Wallace still alive?
September 12, 2008David Foster Wallace / Date of death
Why do people not like Infinite Jest?
It’s typically regarded as difficult reading, due partly to its narrative structure, but mostly because of its length. Infinite Jest is 1,079 pages long, making it not ideal for subway reading but extremely effective as an emergency doorstop.
What makes Infinite Jest so good?
You need sentences to display-case the words, and here, too, Infinite Jest surpasses almost every novel written in the last century, displaying a consistent and mind-boggling descriptive mastery, as when he describes a sunset as “swollen and perfectly round, and large, radiating knives of light. . . .
How difficult is Infinite Jest?
At more than 1,000 pages – with copious footnotes – Infinite Jest is a famously difficult read. It is the Gen-X Ulysses that even those like me, who consider themselves DFW superfans, are nervous to attempt, many preferring to feed their devotion with his essays and short stories.
Is Infinite Jest the longest book?
Originally published (1649–1654) in ten parts, each part in three volumes, Artamène is generally attributed to Madeleine de Scudéry….List.
| Book title | Infinite Jest |
|---|---|
| Volumes | 1 |
| Page size | 9.2 inches (23.4 cm) x 6 inches (15.2 cm) |
| Word count | 543,709 |
| Language | English |
What famous author killed himself?
Some of the greatest writers in the history of the art-Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Jerzy Kosinski, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf-all chose to silence themselves by suicide, leaving their families and friends with heartbreak and the world of literature with gaping holes.
Was David Foster Wallace overrated?
David Foster Wallace, the critically acclaimed American writer who took his own life in 2008, has been described as “the most tedious, overrated, tortured, pretentious writer of my generation” by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis.