The Unbearable Surreality of Being (or, Irony, Tragicomedy, and Wheelchair Assassins)

Overall, it seems to me that Infinite Jest is a comedy in form, but a tragedy in plot, in as much as it has one. Really, David Foster Wallace seems to write more by creating this world as a setting than through using a traditional plot. The book certainly is ironic- the Wheelchair Assassins particularly hilariously so. I was already familiar with how the FLQ caused the October Crisis in Canada in the 1970s, kidnapping several high profile figures and resulting in the government even suspending habeas corpus, invoking a War Measures Act only used then and in WWI & WWII, and positioning tanks on the lawns of the national parliament, so the idea of the Wheelchair Assassins assassinating one of them for being too moderate was hilarious. I think that it really epitomizes the book and what makes it so ironically tragicomic. Though I still don't know quite what to think on the matter of plot with reference to Infinite Jest, I think that it does create a sort of "worldview plot" through the depiction of, effectively, a society that has lost its rationality (or, perhaps, all perspective), extrapolated from ours. It certainly is interesting, though even as someone who appreciates irony, I found the quantity of it rather overwhelming.