I mean I know nothing about this book besides what I’ve read about it in these two comments, but it is called infinite jest, why is it so hard to believe that it’s a joke?
Maybe go to a bookstore, pick up a copy, and leaf through it. I think you’ll understand exactly what I mean pretty quickly. The book is pretentious drivel.
It’s a reference to Shakespeare, when Hamlet finds the skull of the old court jester who looked after him as a child. “Alas! poor Yorrick! I knew him, Horatio. A man of infinite jest and most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times…”
In the book, it’s the name of a film made by the protagonist’s late Dad, one which combines a myriad of new and experimental film techniques and technical application of lenses with some incredibly beautiful people - and is so compelling that if you watch it you can’t stop watching it until you starve to death.
The book juxtaposes the obviously bad addiction of drugs and shows us the journey of an addict trying to gain a control of their life, with a bunch of “good” addictions amongst a group of adolescent boys trying to become tennis pros at an ivy-league-type college.
With a bunch of criticism of American life: Years no longer have numbers like 1997 or 2008, they are sponsored by brands so there’s Year of the Whopper, Year of Glad Flaccid Plastic Receptical Products, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment… Canada, Mexico and the USA have formed into one giant country after the mid-west became uninhabitable due to pollution…
honestly I love the book but you have to be a certain type of person to love it.
Hmm that does sound like an interesting book, not gonna lie. But I see how the name of the book doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an elaborate meta-joke
Yeah, sure. The inane pretentiousness was just a “joke”!
Fuck that book.
I mean I know nothing about this book besides what I’ve read about it in these two comments, but it is called infinite jest, why is it so hard to believe that it’s a joke?
Maybe go to a bookstore, pick up a copy, and leaf through it. I think you’ll understand exactly what I mean pretty quickly. The book is pretentious drivel.
Which apparently is the whole joke about this book. Maybe I should pick it up and see what this whole discussion is about lol
It’s a reference to Shakespeare, when Hamlet finds the skull of the old court jester who looked after him as a child. “Alas! poor Yorrick! I knew him, Horatio. A man of infinite jest and most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times…”
In the book, it’s the name of a film made by the protagonist’s late Dad, one which combines a myriad of new and experimental film techniques and technical application of lenses with some incredibly beautiful people - and is so compelling that if you watch it you can’t stop watching it until you starve to death.
The book juxtaposes the obviously bad addiction of drugs and shows us the journey of an addict trying to gain a control of their life, with a bunch of “good” addictions amongst a group of adolescent boys trying to become tennis pros at an ivy-league-type college.
With a bunch of criticism of American life: Years no longer have numbers like 1997 or 2008, they are sponsored by brands so there’s Year of the Whopper, Year of Glad Flaccid Plastic Receptical Products, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment… Canada, Mexico and the USA have formed into one giant country after the mid-west became uninhabitable due to pollution…
honestly I love the book but you have to be a certain type of person to love it.
Hmm that does sound like an interesting book, not gonna lie. But I see how the name of the book doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an elaborate meta-joke