It’s the Face in the Floor

January 6, 2024 2:39 AM

I started reading and it soon became the case that so long as Infinite Jest was in my hands, it was possible, okay even, for me to stick around. The core themes of the book that would soothe and sustain me over the coming weeks can be conveyed, I think, by its two dominant and contrasting venues – a halfway house for addicts in recovery on the one hand, and an elite and high-pressure tennis academy on the other – in conjunction with an underlying and unifying thesis: all of us, whether we’re chasing substances, achievements or whatever else we hope will satisfy us and make it bearable to exist, are afflicted. We are all, for lack of a better word, fucked in the head in the very same ways. from Saved by Infinite Jest by Mala Chatterjee [CW: depression, suicidal ideation, David Foster Wallace]

Lots of DFW previouslies, but these stand out:
“What are we learning when we discover that someone was not good”
Eat it, David Foster Wallace
Men Recommend David Foster Wallace to me

If you're feeling depressed or suicidal, There is Help

posted by chavenet (15 comments total)

Read it once and then immediately again, shortly after it was published. Thought it was a great depiction of both depression and trauma: the essential unknowability of what happened to Hal when he saw the film, and why it affected him differently than everyone else, was just tip top. Read it again about ten years later and could barely finish. It was not, after all, a highly addictive Entertainment: the endless, pointless scenes between the federal agent in drag and the guy in the wheelchair were just stupid. Much later, learned that Wallace himself was an abusive dick, but I don't really give a shit about authors' personalities or I'd never get to read most books.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:02 AM on January 6 [2 favorites]

I find books in general to be great sources both of life-affirming inspiration and almost sometimes crazy making amounts of energy, for the lack of a better word. Sometimes I just have to do SOMETHING after reading something that resonates with me very clearly. I also feel the same way as the author of the article about Infinite Jest, about the book being a friend.
posted by fridgebuzz at 6:40 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]

I read Infinite Jest a few years ago, and had very mixed feelings about it. There are parts of the book I found offensively racist and/or sexist; parts that felt self-indulgent and self-consciously clever. At the same time, I've always loved David Foster Wallace's footnotes, his willingness to accommodate in his writing the expansive way his creative mind worked. And I thought the descriptions of depression were the best I'd ever read.

I'm glad to see this essay, to hear how the book spoke to and helped the writer. That's really important, and powerful, and it jibes with my own sense of what was best about the book. Despite its flaws, and its author's flaws—and I can be very scathing on the subject of both, at times—it put something valuable into words. I'm glad the writer found her way to it, and that it was there for her to find her way to.
posted by Well I never at 8:16 AM on January 6 [3 favorites]

Coincidentally, I just read my first DFW this morning here: Consider the Lobster. Looks like I'll have to delve deeper.
posted by hypnogogue at 9:02 AM on January 6 [2 favorites]

Har! [CW: David Foster Wallace] Totally. But I admit I did have a blast with that book. I read it during the brief period of my life when it was possible for me to read it: after my MFA-program-produced aversion to fiction wore off and before I Infinite Jested my brain by mainlining youtube and netflix and podcasts.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:22 AM on January 6 [4 favorites]

I found it a memorable but badly flawed book, like a brilliant first draft. I thought it was possibly an example of how too much praise too early can stop a writer developing the required self-criticism. I didn’t love the footnotes, for example. Nabokov’s use of footnotes in Pale Fire is masterly: Susanna Clarke’s in Strange and Norrell is skilful and entertaining; DFW… isn’t he really just pissing about?
posted by Phanx at 10:07 AM on January 6 [6 favorites]

I've met a couple of the people who's stories he lifted from AA meetings and they were still pretty upset.
He could write really well but seems to have been a moral void.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:08 AM on January 6 [5 favorites]

The book witnessed me, affirmed me, and assured me that my experience was familiar to the world. I can’t put it any better than just saying the book was my friend.

That's a kind of ideal reading experience. Good for her.
posted by doctornemo at 11:47 AM on January 6 [2 favorites]

I still haven't read it (and yes, this English PhD has a stack of such books he still needs to get to).
I've never been in the right headspace when I had the time.
I'm also allergic to sports stories.
posted by doctornemo at 11:48 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]

Giving a friend struggling this hard with depression a copy of Infinite Jest seems like a cavalier approach to an intervention; if you proposed it as a treatment methodology, you might not make it through an Institutional Review Board.
posted by BReed at 12:04 PM on January 6 [2 favorites]

Read this in my 20s while deep in depression and it was brilliant and simply got me. I never wanted to revisit it because of what it might stir up. And reading all the critique of it now, it almost reads as a critique of ourselves, and who we were when we read it.
posted by iamck at 3:56 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]

I bought IJ when it first came out and hated it. So much. Anyway, I now have a hardcover first edition that I need to sell. Sadly, I can’t find the dust jacket.
posted by misterpatrick at 4:08 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

Good essay.

I have mixed feelings about DFW. There's some genius insightful parts of Infinite Jest, but the hip post-modern distancing devices are distracting. I think it should have been published as two separate novels. But then it wouldn't be an epic, I guess.
posted by ovvl at 5:33 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

I read it about 20 years ago. Now my brains attention span is such that I can’t imagine reading anything that long again. I listened to the audio book recently and was struck by the section on video phones and how it actually kind of predicted the zoom fatigue and all the makeup and cosmetic features they’ve added, leading up to avatars.
posted by interogative mood at 5:40 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

see also: The Limits of David Foster Wallace
posted by icosahedron at 7:26 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]