A Most Excellent Fancy: Infinite Jest and America's Addictions
David Foster Wallace's Gen X magnum opus was an inflection point for my own writing and a lesson in why you never skip the footnotes
And so but then I was coming out of my neighborhood 7-Eleven a while back, carrying a six-pack of Bud Light bottles, when the guy sitting in the beat up Honda Civic next to my car called out, “Hey man!” I gave him a mild “What’s up?” and he held up his own six-pack of Bud Lights, in the cans that each hold about four ounces more than a bottle.
“You should get these, get more for your money,” he told me.
“Nah, I’m good with these,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” he laughed. Then he blew into the breathalyzer ignition lock to start his Civic and drove off.
It’s the type of story about addiction and how it permeates our country and culture that’s so on the damn nose that I need to stress: I am not making it up.1
Addictions of all kinds are everywhere you turn. The opioid epidemic. The fentanyl crisis. The rapidly expanding universe of gambling that’s been unleashed by legalized online sports betting. Political junkies. Conspiracy theorists, because what is more addict-coded than obsessing over a theory so completely that any evidence to the contrary is immediately warped into support of the conspiracy theory.
Which brings me to one of the main books that changed my life, both as a person and a writer: David Foster Wallace’s weirdly prophetic Infinite Jest2, a mammoth novel about tennis, addiction, recovery, and a movie so entertaining that when a person begins watching it they cease doing anything else.
Nearly thirty years after its debut, it’s probably more known for its door-stopper length (if you think Stephen King’s epic page counts with larger print are long, then I have 1,079 pages of ten-point type here that’ll make you think again), its supposed difficulty (not really, once you adjust to its jumbled and circular chronology3), and its hundred pages of even-smaller-print footnotes where a surprising amount of the “plot” actually happens.4 It’s a big-ass, postmodern American novel by a writer who was hailed as the next big thing in literature, a status he openly and eagerly sought.
I stumbled across Wallace in 1997 on a flight to Seattle while reading the Newsweek I’d picked up as part of my reading stack I always required for any flight. There was an article on this new Gen X writer who was taking the literary world by storm. In his photo, Wallace was sporting a bandana on his head of the same type I often wore in college, which made me feel a little simpatico. Also, Infinite Jest sounded like a high-literature science-fiction romp with a lot of my favorite sport, tennis. Once off the plane and ensconced in my downtown convention hotel, I scouted the nearest bookstore (alas, it wasn’t Powell’s) and snagged my first edition hardcover.
It wasn’t at all what I thought it was. It was much, much more. Over the next six weeks (I’d decided it would be fun to string together a whole bunch of work trips plus a couple weeks of vacation for an extended period away from home, which turned out to be one of those supposedly fun things I’ll never do again5) I lugged it around the country, struggling at first then settling into its rhythms, and discovering that it was quite a conversation starter when reading it in hotel bars.
Some people are fascinated by the idea of reading gigantic books and assume intelligence on the part of the reader. Which is flattering, if perhaps a stretch.
Before jumping into what Infinite Jest did to me, I should probably at least attempt to summarize the basic plot of a novel that aggressively resists summarization.
Hal Incandenza, a linguistic savant and tennis prodigy, is in his senior year at the prestigious Enfield Tennis Academy in Boston, where his burgeoning secret addiction to marijuana is threatening to impinge on his academic and athletic success. His father, James O. Incandenza, is the founder of the tennis academy, as well as an “aprés garde” filmmaker6, former tennis prodigy, inventor of annular fusion (an energy source that has transformed America), a prodigious alcoholic, and during the timeline of the novel dead from a particularly gruesome (though weirdly humorous) suicide by microwave.
Down the hill from the academy is the Ennet House recovery home, where Don Gately, a physical behemoth, addict, and former small-time crook who accidentally committed manslaughter is doing the work to maintain his sobriety and come to terms with his violent history and tragic upbringing. Also at the home is popular late-night radio host and muse to James Incandenza, Madame Psychosis, who as a member of U.H.I.D. (the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed7) keeps her scarred face always covered by a veil, and is in recovery for her addiction to freebasing cocaine.
Then there’s the Entertainment, the titular Infinite Jest, a film created by the senior Incandenza that reduces viewers to mindless automatons whose only purpose is to continue watching the film, which is recorded onto video cartridges that have begun leaking to the populace and the master copy of which is being pursued by wheelchair-bound Quebecois assassins, government agents, and a seeming bevy of spies and bad actors. Oh, and the United States has turned the northeast into a massive waste disposal area and “gifted” it to Canada and forced both that nation and Mexico into the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.), where the common era calendar year has been replaced by “subsidized time,” e.g. The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.
Infinite Jest is a lot. And those three paragraphs barely make a dent, when the cast of characters is almost as dense as the special effects credits in a Marvel movie.
While the genre aspect drew me to the book, that’s not really at all what it’s about. It’s actually about the gaping, endless maw of need and consumption at the heart of America. Well, it’s partly about that. Infinite Jest is the rare novel where if you say it’s “about everything” it actually kind of is.
What struck me about Wallace’s writing and began creeping into my own8 was the sense of earnestness lurking behind the postmodernist structures, comedic set pieces, and gut wrenching depictions of addicts hitting rock bottom. We Gen Xers got dinged constantly as an all-too-cynical generation, unable to deal with the world without our ironic armor. There’s some truth to that. Too often we brought irony to art that wasn’t actually ironic. The best example from my own experience would be David Lynch and the double-shot of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks — it wasn’t until later I realized how vital sincerity is to Lynch’s work.9
Wallace was pushing back on that in 1997 and I definitely picked up on it. When I go back and re-read my work from the ‘90s, I can see the change that starts happening, my change of focus, my willingness to give a little bit more grace to others.
Let’s be clear, I was still often a little bitch because being a little bitch can be funny and that’s mostly what I was being paid to do at the time.10 I didn’t change my entire persona and style purely because of him — I expanded and grew my style because of him. I wrote a short story, Revelation, that was a very conscious attempt to take those elements of Wallace (and mash them up with Flannery O’Connor, a writer we’ll be getting to very soon here), complete with footnotes and set in a gay strip club.11 (That story will be available soon, for free to Back Half paid subscribers, available on Kindle otherwise. Gotta get that plug in!)
And that’s the other thing I picked up quickly, I’d say too quickly: the Wallace quirks of style that for a few years dotted so much of what I wrote. You saw one of them at the start of what you’re reading now: “And so but then,” the type of phrase that mimics human speech, with our verbal placeholders and circularity and imprecision. Those, along with long, multi-clause sentences that meander about and use 25-cent words where Strunk & White would demand a nickel.
But that’s what writers do, particularly young ones. We read voraciously (one would hope), finding new ways to express ourselves, adapting those to our own experience and talents, and creating something new (again, one would hope). I in no way believe that I am anywhere near the high level at which Wallace operated, even at my absolute best.12 But he’s one of the main writers who made me want to be better, to try new things, and to lower my barriers to experiencing the world with real feeling.
And what the hell, a few footnotes never hurt anyone, right?13
Coming Up on the Podcast
I’ve written before about my lurking inferiority complex when it comes to capital-L literature, so I won’t dive into that self-deprecation pool again. Still, Infinite Jest was a daunting book for me although, as I said, it’s not actually as difficult as its reputation suggests.
It’s a huge novel by a writer drawing on the works of postmodern masters such as Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, and William Gaddis. There are layers and allusions and meanings that only reveal themselves through close reading, study, and previous knowledge. I don’t have training in postmodern literature — I haven’t read Lacan and Derrida and all the other prerequisites of a degree in literature.
What I do have is a friend from college, Marshall Boswell, who literally wrote the book on it: Understanding David Foster Wallace. Discovering his book back in the aughts set me on my third re-read of Infinite Jest, which was an even deeper experience for me as a result. In it, he covers all of Wallace’s fiction, from his debut novel Broom of the System (which really is a calling card for Infinite Jest), through his short stories, and up to his posthumously published novel, The Pale King.
Marshall is a professor of American Literature and Fiction Writing at Rhodes College in Memphis. He’s also the author of the short story collection Trouble with Girls and the novel Alternative Atlanta. He was kind enough to join me for the Back Half podcast to talk about Infinite Jest, its ongoing place in American culture, its status as a Gen X work of art, and how students are reacting to the novel in the present day. We also get into how prescient Wallace was in writing a novel where Canada has become a frenemy, the occupant of the White House is a mentally unstable entertainer, and the instant availability of entertainment has changed the cultural landscape. He got a lot right! He also got some stuff wrong and we get into that, too.
However, memory being imperfect and all, he may have actually been driving a Toyota. But Bud Lights were for sure present.
Shakespeare, Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?”
Quite literally, as the first pages of the book are actually the end of the story and the last page is in many ways the beginning. Trust me, it makes sense.
I can’t stress this enough: Do not skip the footnotes. Footnotes are where the fun happens, like Sergio Aragonés doodles in the margins of Mad Magazine.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again being Wallace’s first non-fiction essay collection, the title essay being an account of his time on a luxury vacation cruise, which in his entertaining telling is one of the few things actually worse than spending six straight weeks on the road sleeping in beds that aren’t yours.
After a long filmography of such films as The American Century as Seen Through a Brick and Blood Sister: One Tough Nun, he launched a critic-trolling movement of films that weren’t actually made, an elaborate joke that’s funnier in the book than I can explain here. Which, obviously, means you should go read the book already.
If you haven’t actually read it you may be picking up about now that Infinite Jest, while being a serious novel about America, addiction, and everything, is also about many deeply silly jokes. Wallace makes multiple references to a Japanese tech company, “Yushityu,” which tells you a lot about the ‘'90s-era Cornholio humor you’re getting into here.
Like using footnotes to make jokes, undercut myself with self-deprecation, and generally goof around.
At this point, with Lynch having passed and his last major work, Twin Peaks: The Return proving this point about sincerity, I think everyone’s on board with this approach. But if you haven’t gone back to rewatch his earlier breakthroughs knowing that he earnestly meant all those things we took as mawkish irony, you should. It makes a big difference, especially to something like Fire Walk with Me.
Hell, these days I’m often a little bitch totally for free.
Write what you know, as they say.
Not self-deprecation, just stone cold fact. And that’s okay. One thing that has come with age is a certain level of comfort about what I’m good at and what I’m not. Still, even now, my goal is to get better. That’s why I read and re-read. And write and re-write. Only way to do it.
Footnotes only hurt you if you don’t bother to read them and, since you’re here, you’re not the type who skips them, so you’re golden.