Sometimes Very Frustrating

Philip Silberman

The very first thing I thought about when I read Infinite Jest was “what kind of a book is this?” After the first little chapter I expected an almost narrative like situation in the same style he started using. When Erdedy’s section came, I modified my theory and figured it’d probably be impossible to have an 1000 page narrative anyways. Still, trying to follow the plot of Infinite Jest feels very similar to following To the Lighthouse.

While Virginia Woolf uses stream-of-consciousness literary technique, Wallace seemed to take that style, and change it so that he liked it. Each of the little story bits that we go through do have a narrator and I think it’s because it’s someone’s thoughts. Even the sections that seem totally unrelated (at least to me), such as the “Prince Q-------” story (vignette? puzzle piece?) must have some sort of narrator in that they stem from one of the main character’s thoughts. I actually thought his writing style was very interesting, even if at times I became very frustrated.

For each different story, Wallace will modify his prose so that it sounds like the thoughts of the narrator. For instance, in Erdedy’s section, Erdedy is (at least in my first observations) ridiculously obsessive compulsive, so Wallace basically writes how an obsessive compulsive would think. Every detail that crosses Erdedy’s mind is expressed by Wallace in some manner. Since Erdedy’s character is more or less mechanical in his efficiency, Wallace’s syntax and diction are very mechanical. The same goes for every character that narrates a particular story bit. Though it seems like there are multiple narrators, somewhere around five, I believe that number will decrease as the book goes on, as in we will see that the extra character we thought that narrated that section is actually Hal or Erdedy or whatever. I feel like there are many main characters but only Hal and Erdedy (and maybe someone else) would narrate.

In the vein of comedy, I do feel there are very comedic moments. When Hal is pinned down in the beginning by the Deans and his uncles are trying to get him away from them while they attempt to “heal” him in the boys bathroom, Hal wonders who doesn’t like the “leonine roar” of the men’s toilet. I see the book as being incredibly ironic at times, in that it can swing back and forth from dead serious to comedy very easily since Wallace is portraying the thoughts of the characters. Wallace is being ironic, I feel, in his portrayal of the humanity of these characters. I feel that as a reader, I forget sometimes that these are relatively young people and they have their own funny situations.

Of the themes I’ve come across, substance abuse is seemingly one of the most important. Nearly every character in the book abuses drugs, and it’s almost always marijuana. I think it’s very interesting though, the way that each character basically smokes. It’s a real indication of their character, like how Hal can only take one inhalation as opposed to Erdedy who smokes non-stop for days at a time. I think Erdedy’s drug use is actually very sad, because he’s so enveloped in his own obsessive compulsiveness, that he can’t get out of this self-destructive pattern he’s set forth. It’s also very interesting to compare the reasons why each of them are really smoking. All in all, I think this will be a recurring them, and I believe the book will only get more interesting from here.