[lucyrulesok]

So I finally finished reading Infinite Jest last night.

Thought I would post back my thoughts here since it sparked such a ruckus last time.

Basically...... I don't think the book is a big 'joke's on you' emperor's new clothes affair. BUT I think it is a bit smarmy as it invites you to think that the whole way through. The 'deeper' pomo aspects of the book I think were partly lost on me since I don't tend to read in that way and also I don't really care about those kind of things haha.

I did really enjoy it. I see a lot of people complaining about the characters being 2d but I really liked the POV type stuff and the kinda oddball characterisation. I mean, you couldn't really imagine these people in real life but I don't think it's meant to be that kind of book.

I think as some kind of scholarly exercise the book is really good, it's very technical and almost like a study of something. The story isn't amazing but I did really enjoy reading it. This sounds contradictory but I feel like the book is greater than the sum of its parts. Like individually the story, characters, plot, language etc are not special but it works together and is really truly like nothing else I have read (although I will be the first to admit I am not very well read at all).

It kinda reminded me in that way of Siddartha. Like I read this book at the end of a really intense period of reading loads of Hesse books, and to me it distills perfectly all these grandiose themes of Hesse into a really condensed, efficient story. But the story itself is not what makes it good to me, it's the execution of something so precise. Obviously Infinite Jest is like the opposite of that haha! But it's trying to do something very different.

I don't know, I can't articulate my thoughts very well but I did really really enjoy the book and part of me wants to read it again right away since it was so long ago that I read the beginning. But I'm not that much of a maschist haha (no, I'm only reading Gravity's Rainbow next.....)

Now I'm going to read a bunch of people's reactions and theories online to see if they match up with mine. I have been desperate to read about the book all along but I didn't want to spoil it.