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In this
highly organized, relatively spoiler-free guide to the influential
and notoriously difficult-to-read novel Infinite Jest,
Greg Carlisle succeeds at placing a coherent structure onto
a free-wheeling, barely linear book. It takes him 512 pages,
but Elegant Complexity is a helpful escort through
the labyrinthine, populous Infinite Jest world.
Infinite
Jest, David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel about addiction,
entertainment, and dysfunction in a slightly-futuristic North
America, has been one of the most studied and widely discussed
contemporary novels. The narrative jumps between locations,
years, and seemingly unconnected narratives about teenagers
at a tennis academy, the enigmatic Incandenza family, residents
at a rehab clinic, and Quebecois terrorists who are plotting
to distribute secretly a film so addictive that the viewer
cannot stop watching it. The arrangement of IJ is a
bit like a fractal—it's highly structured, but has a
structure that is difficult to see.
Many
readers have employed a variety of techniques for tackling
Infinite Jest, including blogs, diaries, online discussion
forums and spreadsheets. Until now, the only guide available
has been Steven Burns's slim volume, David Foster Wallace's
Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide, which contains some spoilers
and is probably more suitable after reading IJ. Carlisle's
sweeping study takes away the work often involved in studying
Infinite Jest, leaving readers free to concentrate
on IJ's beautiful prose, hilarious and moving narratives,
and complex characters and relationships.
Unlike
The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses and
A Reader's Guide to William Gaddis's The Recognitions,
Elegant Complexity is not a line-by-line commentary,
although Carlisle does illuminate some of the references that
were not footnoted by Wallace. Rather, this is a template
with notes that attempts to linearize the book and connect
the various themes that appear throughout the narrative that
would be all but invisible to many readers. Elegant Complexity
attacks the book in real time, which is what makes the guide
spoiler-free. Carlisle identifies key themes, characters,
and dates at the beginning of his book and then identifies
what chapters relate to what themes. Carlisle's list of themes
is particularly useful. He identifies major thematic similarities
that link the seemingly incongruent characters and locales.Carlisle
also points out how chapters relate to previous disparate
chapters, invaluable to both first time and repeat Infinite
Jest readers.
For readers
interested in the differences among the various editions,
Carlisle addresses those also, such as protagonist Hal's age
change, from 13 years old in the first edition hardcover to
11 years old in the first edition paperback. Carlisle also
discusses Infinite Jest's debt to Hamlet, specifically
with father-son relationships, and how IJ relates to
Wallace's other works.
Carlisle
makes one possibly spurious conclusion—that "we know
from chapter one that the [subsidized time] contract [for
The Year of Glad] will be ratified." In Infinite Jest,
the right to name years is sold to advertisers, called subsidized
time, resulting in years being called things like the Year
of the Whopper rather than 2002. There is some speculation
among IJ fans whether The Year of Glad, the last year
of subsidized time mentioned in the book, is real or metaphorical.
It's mentioned in a footnote that as of November of the Year
of Depends Adult Undergarment (YDAU), The Year of Glad was
yet to be ratified, and the book jumps (in chronological presentation
rather than textual order) from November YDAU to a dateless
entry in YG, identified within the text as November. But this
is the only section in the book that is not identified specifically
with a date.
Also,
Carlisle identifies the Year of the Trial-Sized Dove Bar as
referring to both soap and candy and briefly discusses its
meaning in the grander scheme of the book. However, Wallace
has said it only refers to Dove chocolate candy, not Dove
moisturizing soap. Whether or not the significance of the
year's nomenclature truly changes the meaning of the book
is unknown.
Of course,
in a book of this size that analyzes a book with the size
and scope of Infinite Jest, it would be impossible
to cover everything and take into account all of the various
theories on what things mean. Carlisle has done remarkable
work with Elegant Complexity—he's made sense of
one of the most famously difficult contemporary novels without
detracting from the joy of reading Infinite Jest.
(December,
2007)
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