So far Infinite Jest is a comedy in style but not in actual happenings; it’s like David Foster Wallace is observing all these miserable people and casually dissecting their lives kind of flippantly, without any compassion or empathy. I thought the most arresting sections were the ones about Erdedy’s and Kate’s drug habits, and then the one about the poor old man suffocating due to all the mucus in his nose; they’re “funny” only in the most depressing and ironic sense. I like that David Foster Wallace’s writing style changes so dramatically between stories: sometimes it’s perfectly coherent standard English, then it’s statistics and shorthand, then there’s no punctuation whatsoever.

In the Erdedy drug section, specifically, it’s jagged, rambling thought starting with “Where was the woman who said she’d come.” No question mark, because Erdedy isn’t really wondering, he’s just expressing anxiety. At the end of that section (p 27), the description of Erdedy’s awaiting his drug supplier (“he moved first toward the telephone console, then over towards his intercom module, then convulsively back toward the sounding phone, and then tried somehow to move toward both at once, finally, so he stood splay-legged, arms wildly out as if something’s been flung, splayed, entombed between the two sounds, without a thought in his head.”) reminded me of the Buridan’s ass paradox: that if an entirely rational donkey, whatever, is staying equidistant from two equal stacks of hay, will starve to death rather than choose one since there’s no rational reason to pick one over the other.

I’m about ready for the story to come together, but even as separate anecdotes I’m enjoying Infinite Jest because I love the way David Foster Wallace writes, and the bizarre little details he adds (the image of a maze of glass tumblers on the floor, each in the process of asphyxiating a cockroach, for example).