Infinite Jest for the Wrong Reasons

Today I began my new year’s reading resolution and cracked open Infinite Jest on my kindle. The edition I’m reading, rather hilariously, begins with a foreword which attempts to allay any fears the reader might have about the levels of complexity and subsequent inpenetrability of the novel - which ironically only served to heighten my own. Nonetheless, it added to the sense that I am setting off on a spiritual and emotionally journey, one from which I will return a changed man, hopefully for the better.

With that being said, I suspect I am not reading the book for the right reasons. I am one of those problematic people who cannot help but romanticise the tortured artist cliché, perhaps narcissistically feeling some kind of kinship with those sorts, and in my naive attempts to be self aware about this, posed the question to myself whether or not I would be reading the book had its author, David Foster Wallace, not taken his own life in 2008? The answer, unfortunately, is that I probably would not be. Similarly, I worry I am not reading Infinite Jest in order to read Infinite Jest, and that I am in fact reading Infinite Jest to have read Infinite, a goal that while on the face of may seem noble, I expect has a very high chance to bring disappointment.

Despite this, perhaps it is irrelevant whether or not intentions are noble, if the outcome of the actions they inspire is positive. Even if I am not choosing to begin reading the book for the right reasons, I suspect that they will be the only things that keep me reading it, as I navigate its 1079 pages of footnotes, satire and post-post-modernism. Perhaps, as they say, the end will justify the means.