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Guests | October 15, 2009

A Few Initial and Not-Comprehensive Meditations on Group Novels

1 comment By Michelle Wildgen

I am a sucker for a book about a group. What reminded me of this was Joanna Smith Rakoff's A Fortunate Age, her homage to Mary McCarthy's endlessly re-readable... Continue »

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MitchW, September 15, 2009 (view all comments by MitchW)
Losing David Foster Wallace to suicide was an enormous blow to anyone who views literature as an essential element of the human experience.

Reading 'Infinite Jest', while a time-consuming and often dizzying emotional and intellectual experience, will solidify that feeling forever.

This huge novel of ideas and footnotes that run for pages alongside the main action (and are just as enthralling) will envelope you if you stick with it, and you will never forget it.

The skeleton of the plot revolves around a mysterious and sought-after videotape that the viewer cannot stop watching once he or she starts.

This is the jumping-off point for an exploration on the nature and allure of entertainment as addiction, with off-shoots into the reasons for and difficulties overcoming drug addiction, mental illness (which Wallace struggled with all his life and is described in such stark detail that you will feel real chills running through your body as you read), and a spate of wildly drawn characters that include wheelchair-bound assassins from Quebec, budding tennis prodigies, and a spellboundingly beautiful woman who stars in the video you can't stop watching.

I spent 3 months reading this book, and became so absorbed in its fascinating, twisting fun-house narrative that it seemed at times as if the rest of the world was blocked out of my consciousness.

It's a masterpiece all at once funny, sad, baffling, infuriating, mesmerizing and unlike anything you will ever read. it is without a doubt a book I would recommend as a Top 10 all-time read. Don't be put off by its more than 1,000-page length. Each one contains wonders.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9781135966133