A meditation upon ‘Infinite Jest’
This is a guest post by my son, Tom Gilbert, a college sophomore majoring in philosophy. David Foster Wallace expressed dissatisfaction with the reviews for his ambitious Infinite Jest. The 1,104-page book is so expansive that any attempt at a plot synopsis is useless; any sweeping thematic summation seems to feel reductive. However, the novel’s polyphonic structure and character voices are illuminating in its discussion. The novel bears numerous similarities to Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in its character relationships. Instead …