Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Every now and again I set myself a bit of a literary challenge, and force myself to read a long, difficult bit of literary fiction. This is one of them. I've never read David Foster Wallace before or, indeed, anything that might be considered eidetic literature, which Infinite Jest may or may not be.

It is, indeed, a challenging novel: the first couple of hundred pages are difficult as one wends one's thinbking round the many characters and their foibles; the occasiionally non-linear narratives and the many absurdities- the Wheelchair Assassins and everything about them; the cross-dressing CIA agent; tennis; Alcoholics Anonymous; the PGOAT (prettiest girl of all time) who is improbably disfigured; suicide by microwave. Ostensibly, this novel is about a short film so perfect it kills you through pleasure, and this idea certainly features, but it's less central to the novel than one might imagine from plot summaries.

No: the novel is a meditation on addiction. Addiction to what it would call Substances, for which the film is an obvious metaphor. Addiction to absurd political causes. Addiction to competitive sport. Addiction to all that wtwelve step nonsense of the Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous cult, itself no less damaging than chemical addiction and responsible for spreading so many dangerous myths on the subject.

As for the novel's structure... yeah. Plot threads develop. Characters enter and leave. Literary style changes like a chameleon. One cannot glibly and neatly summarise the plot or shape of this novel. I won't claim to have understood it: does anyone? But perhaps that's not the point. This novel is, shall we say, an extremely rewarding ideal.

Expect my next novel to be rather more in my comfort zone- I've earned it- and not to take so damned long.