PANK’s Books We Can’t Quit series reviews books that are at least ten years old and have shadowed and shaded, infected and influenced, struck and stuck with us ever since we first read them.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, 1996

Little, Brown

1079 pages, $18

Review by Joseph Michael Owens

I submit that Infinite Jest fans have gotten a kind of rap. Whether good or bad, deserved or undeserved, the rap’s derivation remains up for debate. What’s clear though is that I.J.  is most certainly not for everyone: hating the book does not make you an inferior reader, incapable of understanding its brilliance, a douche, a simpleton, a minimalist fanboy/girl, etc. Likewise, at least in my humble opinion, loving the book does not make you a hipster, pretentious, a “snoot,” a lit snob, a douche, and/or a postmodern meta maximalist fanboy/girl etc. et al. &c. […]

Infinite Jest is ultimately a book I can’t quit, though I should probably mention up front that it’s not like I’ve tried or have ever had any real ambition to change this. Every reader has a book like this; a book that, for some inexplicable and intangible reasons, sinks its hooks into you in a way that few others can. It resonates with the fibrous strings of your core being. When you read your unquittable book, harmonies synchronize; connections are orchestrated between the page’s ink, the room’s light travelling at 299,792,458 m/s, and the relationship between your retina and the dilation of your pupils; neurons fire across pathways in your brain and . . . something happens.

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