There's a lot you can say about Infinite Jest, but usually my first thing to say is a solid disclaimer: this book might well mess you up. This is kind of silly, but its only fair to warn people before hyping them up that this book means business.

Here are my reasons for why Infinite Jest is an infohazard, in short:

• Pedestrian CW: extreme violence towards people and animals (like frfr), weird sexuality, drug use

• Because reading it is a bloody waste of time. It’s written in a delibrately difficult style (which idk I love it, I blasted through this book in 2 weeks) and most of it is wank. A mental sandtrap, if you will.

• Because it describes the Entertainment, which itself is named “Infinite Jest” and is arguably the most immediately dangerous infohazard. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. It works within you to become real.

• Because depression is a Mind-disease and so it is probably communicable through words in some forms (but not all, not all depression is the same). Wallace had like super depression and did eventually do himself in. Infinite Jest is unquestionably mediated in and about depression (and contains really some of the best text-based descriptions of what it feels like imo). We know that Wallace had a diseased brain, so its worth taking caution before importing his thoughts, after all. Otoh if you don’t have it you might not grok it the same way either.

• Because it is absolutely no message of hope. Wallace proffers no answers, maybe only vauge ones. He asks the eternal question: why doesn’t it work?! Nothing is fair in this book's world, if anything it is delibrately unbalanced. He tells the real facts that sometimes you are just hooked and you keep sawing your fingers off, erasing your humanity, to get another fix.

Not going to lie there are still some parts of IJ I don’t quite understand. Like the sections written in stream-of-conscious AAVE are basically impenetrible, and there’s some subplot about a queer/trans-adjacent black person that is pretty intense but doesn’t really come to anything that I could see but I would love to understand how it fits in. Swartz (RIP to a real one, may all information live to be free) doesn’t include it in his really excellent “final chapter” blog post iirc.

I will read it again sometime in the next year or two maybe but I would really like to read The Pale King, and I feel like one Wallace a year is probably enough. It’s intense. I was in a weird mood for weeks afterwards.

This is probably one of my favorite direct quotes:

"I want understanding I have no denial I am drug addict. Me, I know that I am addicted since the period of before Miami. I am no trouble to stand up in the meetings and say I am Alfonso, I am drug addict, powerless. I am knowing powerlessness since the period of Castro. But I cannot stop even since I know. This I have fear. I fear I do not stop when I admit I am Alfonso, powerless. How does to admit I am powerless make me stop what the thing is I am powerless to stop? My head it is crazy from this fearing of no power. I am now hope for power, Mrs. Pat. I want to advice. Is hope of power the bad way for Alfonso as drug addict?"

— SELECTED TRANSCRIPTS OF THE RESIDENT-INTERFACE-DROP-IN-HOURS OF MS. PATRICIA MONTESIAN, M.A., C.S.A.C., 58 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ENNET HOUSE DRUG AND ALCOHOL RECOVERY HOUSE (SIC), ENFIELD MA, 1300–1500H., WEDNESDAY, 4 NOVEMBER—YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT

Is hope of power a bad way for us, as drug addict? May we hope of power so as to do, unrestrained by the distraction of knowledge.