Infinite Jest

There is no real question that Infinite Jest is one of the very, very few novels written in the 20th century that changed the course of American literature forever. But many are still daunted by this postmodern epic's length (upwards of 1,000-pages), by its famously maximalist, nonlinear plot structure, or by its seemingly insane number of footnotes. They shouldn't be. This book is worth it in so many ways-fantastical, ecstatic, brooding, hilarious, visceral, violent, and just ridiculously smart. No writer in the last 100 years understood human beings in quite the same way David Foster Wallace did, and Infinite Jest is one of the most dazzlingly rewarding (and terrifying) tomes you could possibly read. Set in an alternate early 21st century where America, Canada, and Mexico have merged into a single revenue-driven corporate nightmare, each year is subsidized by whichever corporation is willing to pay for the rights to it, resulting in The Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken and The Year of Glad. Narratively, Infinite Jest centers on an eponymous conceptual film so ridiculously and lethally entertaining that it turns anyone who watches it into a pleasure-drenched, drooling vegetable. Mostly, this book is a genuine and utterly unironic meditation on addiction, depression, and solipsism--the ways we communicate with other human beings, and the ways in which we are alone. In light of Wallace's long-documented struggle with clinical depression and his suicide in 2008, Infinite Jest can occasionally read like a particularly moving--and convincing--suicide note. But it's much more than that--it's the ultimate American novel. It's a masterpiece.