Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace · first published 1996
34% recommend58% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Dense, funny, demanding novel with deep access to characters' inner lives; admired for sustained prose and for building empathy. Suits patient readers willing to push through a disorienting first couple hundred pages.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America 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 entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing fo
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…the Internet are fatefully tangled with the apps that addict us. They put the heroin next to the tap water. For anyone interested in a fictional account of American society as a tapestry of addictions, Infinite Jest will change the way you think. It's all about that buzz.[2] Full disclosure: I prompted Paul Lewis to write this piece. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Attention-Merchants-Scramble-Inside-H... [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html…
on “'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia” ↗…contemporary literature, instead of great classics. And I have no regrets about missing out on math books—most of my friends went to math camp for that kind of knowledge. I'd recommend David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her; The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis; Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I wish when I went into college I understood women…
on “What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?” ↗…"And the videophonic stress was even worse if you were at all vain. I.e. if you worried at all about how you looked. As in to other people. Which all kidding aside who doesn’t." - David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest Read his funny take on the rise and fall of video conferencing, and you'll be cured from the hype :)
on “2021 will demand new kinds of video conferencing” ↗If you like weird tangents and biting satire of American suburban culture, try _Infinite Jest_. Both Stephenson and David Foster Wallace owe a debt to Thomas Pynchon, but Stephenson's relationship to Pynchon is unfortunately a lot like Dan Brown's (_The Da Vinci Code_) relationship to Umberto…
on “Snow Crash movie to be written and directed by Joe Cornish” ↗Highly recommend David Foster Wallace for this. After Infinite Jest I was definitely had much higher general empathy for months.
on “YC's 2015 Reading List” ↗…pathology (or perhaps not even "almost"). Rather Brave New World-ish , actually. I think the relevant parts are toward the beginning. Full thing's worth listening to, several times. Or you could just read Infinite Jest. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxUY0kxH80 Particularly around 18 and 24 minutes, continuing for 6-10 minutes after. Ah yes, particularly at 30m. The theme is interwoven throughought the interview…
on “Loneliness Is a Warning Sign to Be Social” ↗…sea Hunting - Practically all the rest of Hemingway from what I remember although it's been a while Grouse Shooting - Lady Chatterly's Lover Tennis - Lots of David Foster Wallace, but in particular Infinite Jest[1] which is set in large part in an elite tennis academy Basketball - The Crossover American football - End Zone (the author of the OP loved Underworld, but DeLillo didn't only write about baseball)…
on “Why is baseball the most literary of sports?” ↗I just finished Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's a 1000-page kind of experimental fiction about entertainment/addiction. It took me a while to read, but is something I'd recommend, anyway.
on “Ask HN: Summer Reading Recommendations?” ↗Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe Be Here Now - Ram Das Whole Earth Catalog - Stewart Brand Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace Savage Continent - Keith Lowe Forged - Bart D. Ehrman Young Stalin - Simon Sebag Montefiore Court of the Red Czar - Simon Sebag Montefiore
on “Ask HN: Which books changed your life?” ↗The book is Infinite Jest; it's the unrivaled best piece of writing I've ever put my eyes on.
on “Using the wrong dictionary” ↗Superintelligence - Nick Bostrom Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
on “Ask HN: Best books you've read in 2015” ↗I think in Infinite Jest the writing style -- not just sentences like these but jumping between text and endnotes -- gives the reader a deeper experience with his argument about attention, boredom, and the ways modern society…
on ““The Depressed Person” by David Foster Wallace (1998) [pdf]” ↗Don't make the mistake of confusing the text in Infinite Jest with David Foster Wallace's actual understanding of the Mean Value Theorem. (Read Everything and More, his really awesome book on the mathematical history of calculus, if you need a demonstration.)
on ““The Depressed Person” by David Foster Wallace (1998) [pdf]” ↗It was the second year of my "read books like an adult" effort and there were some great ones: Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)* I was blown away by how completely delightful it was to read. I went in to it with a lot of trepidation about its length and esoteric fixation, but found myself completely immersed…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗…the owner employs him as an outsider. The work entails that he sustain multiple bloody injuries, so he gets covered with what he literally is: a scab. I prefer David's Foster Wallace's gymnosophist in Infinite Jest, who literally never moved from the gym.