Infinitely Sad, Infinitely Compassionate, Infinitely Fucking Beautiful 

A feeling based, non technical review of "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace

         I have owned "Infinite Jest" for four years now.  It has been in California, Hawaii, and now back in California again.  It was one of those books I had a feeling I would fall in love with, but I wasn't sure when or why.  In late January, i told myself that I was just gonna sit down and read the whole fucking book, and I did.  Once I was twenty pages in I realized I was never going to stop, I already felt like I was reading somebody who understood parts of me I have trouble explaining to others.  There is a long chapter, which acts like a short story,17 pages in, about a college professor who is preparing for a long and final (always is the final) binge on marijuana (which as we all know can be quite addictive).  The whole scene plays out in stream of consciousness and it is absolutely infinitely sad.  There are parts of the book that reach such a level of infinite sadness, they are hard to get through, but you do, because that is life.  Things happen that are infinitely sad, and in our capitalist so called pursuit of happiness nation, things happen that are infinitely sadder than they have to be.  "That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and , like, hurt."  Yes, like everyone says its a challenge.  Yes, its big, Yes,  it will change your life.  Read this book, do not be intimidated by any of the bullshit you hear about narcissistic self aggrandizing writing.  Each page in this book is stained with the blood of its creator.  The 1,079 pages, including end notes and errata, are marked with the love, pain, and compassion of the author.  To express himself in such a way must have required soul searching so deep that it would be nearly impossible to dig your way back to the surface, and maybe he never truly did come all the way back. 
      Even just the idea of writing a review of this book is daunting.  I want to do it justice, I want to explain my thoughts and feelings as well as Wallace was able to.  The beginning of the book is strangely different from what it to come.  At first it feels off.  The reader is bounced around from a pseudo interview with a father pretending to play therapist to a son (that isn't explained for another 900 pages), to tennis courts, to halfway houses, to a man stuck in a room fucking strangers and putting glass tumblers on top of insects and waiting for them to die.  Wallace's world seems distant at first until I realized it was my world.  Yes, it is a dystopian world set a decade in the future, but we are living in a dystopia.  With slavery, rape, mass murder, oppression, and one third of the world starving, how can anyone lay claim that our world now is anything but a dystopia.  Wallace shows the depth of the depravity, but he also shows that sometimes out of something infinitely sad can be born something infinitely beautiful.  Yes sometimes "these worst mornings...the soul's certainty that the day have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and steep."  But, he counters these feelings of doom and dread by telling us that despite the dystopianly infinite madness and sadness "there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness."  Yes, he makes up words and phrases and mixes truths with half truths and blatant lies and pieces of his life and pieces of other fiction and movies.  But it is all him, it is all us.  At no point in this book did I become lost in the story for the sake of catharsis.  Like Vonnegut, or Brecht(who he mentions in a similar spiel later in the novel) "Infinite Jest" is meta fiction in many ways.  He uses language, end notes, stories, and references, to alert the reader to the fact this this shit is really fucking going on.  Nothing in the book for him is a stretch of the imagination, its all fucking real.  Maybe a wraith here or a herd of feral hamsters there, but they are part of it.  If you are looking for escapism or a break from your mind, your thoughts and feelings, your issues with the way you live and the world you live in, then do not read this book.  This book is a journey deep within what it is to be a human being.  Because as Wallace said "fiction's about what it is to be a fucking human being."  And some human beings get addicted to smack and walk around with a dead baby in their arms for weeks until it becomes stuck to them.  Other humans fuck their sisters, brothers, cousins, and kill them too.  Others do so many drugs that they lay in an apartment full of their own urine until said urine burns through the floor.  This shit happens, its real.  Wallace embraces it, he accepts the world how it is instead of writing some fucking feel good hopeful fairytale.  Yes, the book is sad, but there is hope.  By the end of the book, you will realize Wallace believed in people.  He found the good in the sickest and unluckiest of people.  When Mario comes to the T at the near end of the novel and hugs the so called dregs of society, Wallace is showing what is possible, what is within all of us. Some lucky ones are born with an ability to easily access their compassion and goodness, for others it takes work and years of trying.
      So the book is real, but what really makes it special is the depth of soul searching and compassion that are found within each page.  Kate Gompert is one of the infinitely sad characters who only finds joy at the end of the novel in a bar(regressing or falling off the wagon) with a paraplegic quadruple (or quintuple) agent from Quebec.  She is introduced in one of the most self aware pieces of writing I have ever seen, a doctor patient interview at a mental hospital that is vivisected by Wallace, no thought or feeling left a mystery.  Gompert tells the doctor of a pain a feeling that "when you're in the feeling you forget.  The feeling feels like it's always been there and always will be there."  The feeling of emptiness and pain and all encompassing nausea of a panic attack where the body cave in on itself and needs some kind of escape because as Gompert tells us "I can't stand feeling like this another second, and the seconds keep coming on and on."  For those of us who have felt this pain, this feeling that in the moment seems like it was always there and is never leaving, we understand.  We know the loneliness that comes with it, the dread and terror it brings.  Wallace believes that this feeling is like a fire burning and when people do things like kill themselves, it is not because they want to die.  Instead (to paraphrase the author) it is because the flames are going to burn them and they have no choice, but to jump out of the building (being alive) and towards death, because the feeling inside them at that moment seems unendurable and never ending.  One of the most important points Wallace makes is that "no single moment is unendurable" but that a compilation of many of these moments can be.  Gately can endure the pain in the hospital because it is better than going back to a life of drug use by taking the painkillers.  Throughout the novel, characters endure.  One of the biggest themes of the book is enduring.  Characters endure through rape, incest, abuse, unspeakable physical and mental trauma, and find courage within themselves to seek help.  Yes they are fucked up, but they don't revel in it, and they want to function.  They want the same things we all want and they endure through the shit to get there.
     The other important piece I took from the novel was that cliches are not always trite and to be thrown away.  That as Wallace says the more simple a cliche the more true it is likely to be.  Even if the cliche is take things one day at a time.  That cliche is so goddamned important.  If an addict looks at the next month of their life it seems unendurable to stay clean.  However, each moment is endurable, they just need to be strung together moment by moment.  Because, we humans tend to forget these cliches and forget that we do in fact live moment to moment.  If we can take hold of each second, each minute, each hour, and endure, we can live beautiful lives.  If we get stuck thinking about the next year or how to get through the night, or the week , or whatever, things are impossible.  We will regress, we will fall off the wagon of whatever it is we are trying to stay away from.  There are many cliches out there that are totally worthless, but it is not a good idea to throw them all out.  It is also not a good idea just to forget them, but instead it is important to remember the important ones for yourself and keep living them in each moment.
      Here is a list of things I wrote in the margins of the book to give you an idea of my various immediate reactions to some of his writing
"People are so fucking beautiful, it takes so much to truly break someone, we have no concept of how strong we really are"
"We create whole worlds only we understand"
"Felt exacty like this"
"ENDURE"
"We don't realize the depth of our own innate goodness"
"So infinitely sad"
"This whole section is fucking beautifully perfect"
"love vs fucking"
And this is just a small part of it, I could go on forever with quotes and whole chapters and I could write 1079 pages about this book here, but you need to read it for yourself.  In the foreword, Dave Eggers ponders if it is our duty to read this book.  My answer is that yes, it's your duty to yourself to read this book because it is about you. 
    Lastly, you are going to have to read the book aware that the author killed himself.  That is infinitely sad, but at the same time makes the power behind the words so incredibly forceful.  He dug deep in himself.  There is a part of the book where I wrote "Wallace knows death is neither calm nor peaceful yet he still killed himself.  It must have been that hard for him to stay alive, to keep the flames at bay."  I am not one to separate the art from the artist.  Art is made by humans and for humans and Wallace was a human and the work is indelibly connected to him.  He lives on through his words.  He is now part of me.  And I sincerely hope that you will choose to make his art and his life and what he left for us part of you too. 

Dear Alexis,

You are my older sister. You have always been there...but not as you imagined. You were only physically with my mother for nine months. You were still born. You are part of me. You are as much a part of my family as anyone. I wish I could tell you I always love you, but that isn't the case. There are days I am so resentful of you, and so angry I can barely take it. You gave my mother hope, after 12 years of trying to have a baby, you were her hope. You brought my father and mother close together, then when you were born, you drove them running in opposite directions, never to be that close again. One a stoic, the other a basketcase. My mother tries to control her loss of you with anorexia, controlling her food. My father comforts himself and all subsequent feelings with cookies, ice cream, and mike and ikes. Filling the emotional void you left with sugar. I was born on the same day as you Alexis, one year later, on april fucking 7th. I wasn't ready to handle this. I need you now, and I needed you then. I dream of you often. You are so fucking beautiful. Your compassion, your unconditional love and understanding of me. You always included me. I was always part of you. You will always be part of me.

Love ,

Your little brother James

My maternal grandfather had surgery 2 days ago, he is 90. He wrote this letter after you were born Alexis. When you think of us, remember, we did the best we could, we are just trying to get by in the world without you...

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO YOUR DAUGHTER

(1983)

What do you say to your daughter as she sits on the crib in the nursery, staring at the newly decorated walls, the baby toys, the happy balloons , but no child to hold close to your heart, no sound only silence.

Here I am your father, I should be able to shake the earth, build mountains, shield you against all harm and wave the magic wand to make your wildest dreams come true. I search for the wand but it is not there, I muster all of my strength but cannot move.

So I question where is the magic wand and strength that I have used all of your life to keep the sun shining on you, to answer every tear you have shed to hold you in my arms to shut out the world.

Who took it away from me and why. We are good people we deserve goodness .If there is a God, then where is he? Is He too busy to help my daughter? He deprived me of my first grandchild.

I stand there helpless in my inability to shield my daughter at a crucial time of her life. Where is her little girl that I can hold and protect?

How dare you take her away from us?

I never met you Alexis, I never held you close to my heart, but you will be with me forever, you will never fade from my mind and thoughts and I am your papa-Jim forever.