Infinite Jest

De: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers

Narrado por: Sean Pratt

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America.

Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

"The next step in fiction...Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty...Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think." —Sven Birkerts, The Atlantic

©2024 David Foster Wallace (P)2024 Little, Brown & Company

Wonderful in audio

I couldn’t imagine this in audio but narrator did an amazing job, with DFW long sentences and great wordplay. Narrator was smooth and really brought IJ to life in unexpected ways.
IJ one of my favorite books. This makes my 5th reading as it’s so dense & not easy to hold & read such a heavy book that you also can’t put down.
I’d put this audio version over reading it first for its clarity and excellence overall. You can follow along with the book to get into the longer footnotes and not get lost.
Amazing job. Kudos to narrator and production team.

Incredible

This version of the audio book is so impressive. Love how they handle the footnotes - it was a touch distracting at first, but you get use to it quickly and I don’t think there is a better way of doing it. The narrator really brought the characters alive. Amazing performance. I was never able to make it through the print version, so happy the audio book was so well done. It’s a life changing novel. It’s worth the effort and time.

Read along with the audiobook

I'm not someone who has a degree in literature or any fine arts. I've never considered myself as someone who devours literature. I'm just your regular casual reader. I purchased a physical copy of Infinite Jest without knowing anything about the book. I was feeling confident that I was enjoying reading so much this winter that I wanted to take on a longer challenge. A friend had sent me a video of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech, "This is Water," I thought this might be a good time to check out his written work.

About 130 pages or so into Infinite Jest, I hated it. I didn't get it. I had trouble parsing through all the details accompanying every scene. I stalled on words I didn't know how to pronounce or what they meant. There were too many abbreviations. I got tired of flipping to footnotes and being marginally more informed about the context. I couldn't do 800 more pages of this. It was a slog. I started looking for another book to get my reading momentum back.

I set the book aside for a day or two and thought, Maybe I should restart and try listening to the audiobook while reading. So I signed up for an Audible account and selected Infinite Jest as my book for the month, and away I went.

I've never gone from hating a book to loving it so much as I did Infinite Jest, and this would've never happened without the beautiful narration by Sean Pratt. His energy, his accents, and his tone are perfect throughout. And get this...he reads the full version of abbreviations when the reader might not have enough context to know what they stand for. The audiobook had me engaged for every single page. Turns out this book really IS funny. And it's devastating. And it's witty. And it's heartbreaking. And all the details that take up several pages in describing a scene ARE necessary. I sort of discovered that I'm not the type of person who can extract these sorts of things in a silent reading of the book. I need to be read to like a child.

Reading along with the audiobook was perfect for me. Aside from bringing color and texture to the story, the audiobook did two things for me. 1) I was able to plan ahead and schedule time for how long I was going to read and come to a reasonable stopping point. This helped slow down my reading, and I wasn't just trying to speed-run Infinite Jest just to get it over with. 2) The audiobook helped me sustain reading momentum when I reached for a glass or checked the clock or felt I needed to rub my eyes. The story kept moving in audio form. Sean Pratt's narration flows very smoothly, and the little micro-distractions that sometimes interrupt my reading were no longer relevant.

So if you're like me and have trouble unraveling the complexities of this novel, try reading along with the audiobook. I have a newfound appreciation for postmodern/metamodern literature.

Genuinely the best literary experience

Great narration, masterpiece book, and they added the footnotes! This version is basically perfect, it makes reading IJ much easier.

Difficult, yet delightful!

A very difficult book to follow everything going on, yet filled with so many compelling story arcs and an abundance of humor, albeit sometimes dark. The narrator was excellent in every way really bringing the characters to life with unique voices for everyone.

The footnotes are added in with the story, and yes there is a dinging sound to let you know it’s the end of the footnote, which is definitely necessary (and not jarring at all if you’re trying to pay attention) for flow.

One of my favorite reads ever and I don’t know why, just the way the world was established and brought about all of these characters who are connected to the main story in ways, some indirectly.

Very well worth the read and wait! I wish there was a sequel, but that will never happen. RIP DFW.

The best way to enjoy this book

With how difficult it can be to go between endnotes and text this version of the audiobook is the best way to enjoy the book in my opinion. The notes are inline with the story and it keeps the pace of things up.

Overall it is still Wallace’s Opus and an incredible and strange story. It’s hard to grasp but it’s amazing and worth the effort to dig into.

Awesome book, but long

A few of the sections seemed like work due to length but this is a very rewarding read/listen.

So good

What an awesome experience. A true masterpiece. The author was a grim comic. Twas a true honor to listen to. Thank you DFW.

Good Luck...

Years ago a good friend of mine was on a beach in Mexico. a local teenage boy, likely know older than 16 or 17, approach the two of them with a basket of oysters and clams on ice and offered, for the price of $0.25 each, shucked fresh oysters. they were hungry, and so between the two of them they ate about 16. Very fresh and very delicious. my friend was there with his buddy, who had a hard copy of infinite Jest on his beach towel. As the oyster vendor picked up his basket, dripping a bit from the melting ice chunks that were keeping the remaining oysters cool and fresh, he starts to walk away from them, stops, turns and says before moving on- "Good luck with David Foster Wallace."

Narration

I thought a halfway decent IJ audiobook would be impossible—that’s not what i got. This exceeds all precedent set by previous recorded novels. A feat. And one the most important novels of the last hundred years, of course.