I haven’t finished listening to the novel on my new Audible subscription, but I see no reason not to review it.

It’s twenty-seven Titanics of insanity steaming with breakneck slowness over an eternity of pages towards a who-knows-what species of icebergian reckoning beyond all feasible capacity of expectation.

It’s the ideal volume to be stranded on a desert island with, expiating one by one, word by word, every sin committed from cradle to grave (yes, in the metaphor you die on the island), keeping count by dropping grains of sand into a teacup salvaged from the shipwreck of life that brought you to this pass.

I don’t entirely dislike “Infinite Jest.” Read that as a positive statement in spite of its syntax. My son is a medical professional involved in mental health. I strive to recommend it to him. It has narratives he could profit from hearing. I can’t bring myself to do it. He has a life to lead, a profession to practice, and his time, unlike mine, is valuable. Saddling him with “Infinite Jest” would be like yoking him to a plough to turn 65 acres of sod for some intriguing weed-life to peek through. 

I try to know as little as possible about writers’ lives. The knowledge distracts from their poems and doesn’t “explain” them any more than an alcoholic’s life “explains” his disease. The poem (or novel), and the disease, have their own voice. I know only that David Foster Wallace liked tennis and killed himself in his forties. 

“Infinite Jest,” of its own accord, seems to me written by a brilliant, disturbed tennis nut possessed of suicidal ideation and an exquisitely attuned eye, ear and tongue for every species of human fallibility, deviancy, eccentricity and putridness under the sun. But and so (as he would write), not without glints of illumination, I affirm cautiously, suspiciously and hesitantly. 

Will I have begrudged the time spent in hearing “Infinite Jest” read when it’s done? Nope. You can’t know the view from a jagged peak until you’ve climbed it. I anticipate the view from “Infinite Jest,” when reached, will be close to indescribable. 

Here’s my anticipatory conclusion which I’ll reach when I get there: What I think of “Infinite Jest,” besides admiring its title, is neither here nor there. This novel will find those it needs to find, if and when they damn well want it and have the time. It found me, and vice versa. No complaints.

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