Infinite Jest Paperback - 2006

About this book

First line

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From the rear cover

Infinite Jest is the name of a movie said to be so entertaining that anyone who watches it loses all desire to do anything but watch it. People die happily, viewing it in endless repetition. The novel Infinite Jest is the story of this addictive entertainment, and in particular how it affects a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts and a nearby tennis academy, whose students have many budding addictions of their own. As the novel unfolds, various individuals, organizations, and governments vie to obtain the master copy of Infinite Jest for their own ends, and the denizens of the tennis school and the halfway house are caught up in increasingly desperate efforts to control the movie - as is a cast including burglars, transvestite muggers, scam artists, medical professionals, pro football stars, bookies, drug addicts both active and recovering, film students, political assassins, and one of the most endearingly messed-up families ever captured in a novel. On this outrageous frame hangs an exploration of essential questions about what entertainment is, and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment interacts with our need to connect with other humans; 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. The huge cast and multilevel narrative serve a story that accelerates to a breathtaking, heartbreaking, unforgettable conclusion. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the very idea of what a novelcan do.

First Edition Identification

The first edition of Infinite Jest was published by Little, Brown in 1996. The original price was $29.95 and it was 1079 pages long. The blue paper boards were stamped in silver on the spine, and the original dust jacket had eight reviews with William Vollmann's name misspelled as Vollman rather than Vollmann. First Edition is stated on the copyright page along with the full number line 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Signed copies of Infinite Jest's first edition can be sold for up to several thousand USD.

Media reviews

Citations

• Entertainment Weekly, 03/04/2016, Page 66
• New York Review of Books, 05/12/2011, Page 8
• New York Times Book Review, 02/07/2016, Page 16
• Newsweek, 11/29/2010, Page 50
• Time, 06/22/2009, Page 107