Infinite Jest (30th Anniversary Edition) Audiobook By David Foster Wallace, Michelle Zauner - introduction cover art

Infinite Jest (30th Anniversary Edition)

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Infinite Jest (30th Anniversary Edition)

By: David Foster Wallace, Michelle Zauner - introduction
Narrated by: Sean Pratt, Michelle Zauner
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The 30th anniversary edition of the virtuosic, wickedly comic modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America, with a new foreword written and read by Michelle Zauner, author of the New York Times bestselling sensation Crying in H Mart.

“To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renews the idea of what a novel can do.

“Uproarious ... Infinite Jest shows off Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer … who can seemingly do anything.” ―Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“The next step in fiction ... Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty ... Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think.” —Sven Birkerts, The Atlantic

One of Time magazine’s “100 Best Novels” (1923—2005)

Publishers note: This unabridged audiobook edition includes all footnotes, signaled by a brief chime, and read in sequence throughout the main text as part of the full immersive listening experience. Classics Dark Humor Family Life Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Funny Witty Tearjerking Genre Fiction Sports Heartfelt
Thought-provoking Masterpiece • Memorable Characters • Humorous Elements • Interconnected Storylines • Diverse Accent Range

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I love this book and have read it twice, but we all agree, that's an undertaking. So dense, it has eluded many. Now that this audio version is available, many more people will experience this stunning work. The book interweaves several plot lines, each in the voice of an artfully drawn, idiosyncratic character, and Sean Pratt brings them all to life. Wallace would have been more than pleased by this performance of his opus.

It seems impossible that this classic work could be improved, but Sean Pratt's reading is that brilliant.

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Review First Half to footnote 202:

Seduction strategies #12 and #16 being applied… but in the end it’s just Christ on a jetski! Complaint, but seriously: I had to look up “soccum” - hundreds of footnotes, but none explaining that? C’mon! …

Presenting: speedy seduction strategy #7! It never fails! We like chortles - chortles are good! Let the EEC pay for their own defense! Motions are gone through … then I took a breather - after 32h, I think I deserved it! …

Also, just coming to my mind: I really, at this point, could not imagine anything I’m less interested in than prep school or college tennis. Needed to say that. Québec is okay, though, somehow.

Review Second Half on from footnote 203:

“The unfortunate me” - unfinished, unreleased … The Year of the “let’s vote for the guy who we can be sure screws all of us over intentionally rather than for the lady who just pretends to care about us” Election … They took away my belt and my shoe strings - but I noticed they didn’t take away my feelings! …

“Now, you’re going to risk vulnerability and discomfort and hug my ass or do I goin’ to rip off your head and shit in your neck!” … It’s the chill of inspiration and all the girls in grass skirts. The daily bullshit here is hip-deep. The terror over the fall is overcome by the terror of the flames.

“No towardness. No narrative movement toward a real story.” Exactly. “This is no “saliva sticking to frozen metal”-type of situation.” No, it isn’t, or what sayest thou, Madame Psychosis, or Phully (sic!) Phunctioning (siccer!) Fill (siccest!), no DDD?

Although … … … Up to about 50h in, I thought about this book as sidetracks of sidetracks to sidetracks, with yet more sidetracks sidetracking these sidetracks… and when the author couldn’t narratively handle the third or fourth sidetrack level (it’s his book, after all, fair enough) he just put it into a sidtrack, uh, sorry: footnote.

Now, towards the end, it starts to feel like there is a book or story here. Unfortunately, it is a semi-bleak, semi-neutral, semi-detached - but beautifully worded - illicit drug addiction story in funny and/or graphic detail. And yeah, those poor drug users. Good thing we don’t have to worry about the other ppl who get robbed, fleeced, injured, killed, damaged by these drug users. At least not in this book. They’re not even in the footnotes here. Because that might just have made it less easy to read and too senselessly bleak? I understand noone is a winner here, baby, that’s the truth, and all are victims, but aren’t there some perpetrators, anywhere at all???

I read about David Foster Wallace only in the last hour of listening to this… and: what a surprise! He was a tennis-playing drug addict abuser. I am shocked - shocked, I tell ya!

What do I hear? I should be nice to him, post mortem? I think we should be as nice to him as he was to Linda McCartney, okay?

Oh, well. On to shorter oeuvres.

Infinitely jesting but thankfully not interminably so

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This version of the audiobooks includes the (excellent) footnotes in line with the rest of the text. In my opinion, this is the only way to listen to this book. Extraordinary book, superlative narrator.

With footnotes!

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A slight overexaggeration aside, this book is perhaps the most interesting and thought provoking piece of media I've ever been lucky enough to learn of. Movies and shows and games and other books just can't stack up anymore after finishing it. The lasting impression this has left on me is one that is deep and complex and incomprehensible at times and yet, I feel like I grasp every sentence with the ease I wish I could grasp life itself. I still don't...get it, not all the way. It's begging to be reread and retread, studied and learned and decoded, to be spoken of in ways that can only betray the story itself's grandiosity. I feel like an idiot beyond the definition of the word but I also feel like I've learned something about myself that I wouldn't have otherwise understood if I hadn't listened to this. The narration only carries it further - an absolute masterclass in tone, delivery, and gravitas. I'm not ashamed to admit I don't know if I'll ever understand what David Foster Wallace could have possibly been conveying, not to the fullest extent the author himself would. Gone too soon, yet left the world with a tome so beautiful and horrific and chaotic and orderly that opposing terms as such can be the only way to truly describe it. This should be required reading to do just about anything. Please, an urge from one lost heart to billions of others, do yourself a favor and spend the time necessary to explore this mighty work. If you give yourself over to it, you will not regret it.

An outstanding exploration of, well, everything

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The story was too disjointed to be an audible book, but the beauty of the language and the depth of the knowledge came through.

The narrator, an incredible voice and an incredible array of different voices

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