David Foster Wallace

'A writer of virtuostic talents who can seemingly do anything' New York Times 'Wallace is a superb comedian of culture . . . his exuberance and intellectual impishness are a delight' James Wood, Guardian 'He induces the kind of laughter which, when read in bed with a sleeping partner, wakes said sleeping partner up . . . He's damn good' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 'One of the best books about addiction and recovery to appear in recent memory' Sunday Times Somewhere in the not-so-distant future the residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of Infinite Jest, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss . . .

Infinite Jest

Zamu

«No, ma vedi, il fatto è che io non volevo dire che tu sei uno che abbraccia o uno che non abbraccia, perché non ti conosco. Volevo solo dire che non ho niente contro di te come persona, e sarei più che contento di stringerti la mano, anche una di quelle intricate multiple strette di mano etniche, se avrai la pazienza di sopportare la mia inesperienza in quel tipo di stretta di mano, ma non mi sento a mio agio con gli abbracci».

Come la maggior parte degli uomini grossi, si sta adattando in fretta all'idea che il suo posto nel mondo sia molto piccolo e il suo impatto sulle altre persone ancor di più.

Che per qualche perversa ragione, è spesso più divertente desiderare qualcosa che averlo.

«È tutto il giorno che ogni cosa sembra beige e polverosa. I sacchetti della spazzatura continuano a gonfiarsi e a prender fuoco per combustione spontanea dentro i cassonetti. Ci sono piogge improvvise di fondi di caffè e bucce d'arancia. Gli spazzini nei camionchiatta devono mettersi i guanti di amianto. Poi ho incontrato qualcuno, un qualcuno forse molto speciale».

martian1138

I am coming to see that the sensation of the worst nightmares, a sensation that can be felt asleep or awake, is identical to those worst dreams' form itself: the sudden intra-dream realization that the nightmares' very essence and center has been with you all along, even awake: it's just been ... 

; and then that horrific interval between realizing what you've overlooked and turning your head to look back at what's been right there all along, the 

That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.

Lucien finally dies, rather a while after he's quit shuddering like a clubbed muskie and seemed to them to die, as he finally sheds his body's suit, Lucien finds his gut and throat again and newly whole, clean and unimpeded, and is free, catapulted over fans and the Convexity's glass palisades at desperate speeds, soaring north, sounding a bell-clear and nearly maternal alarmed call-to-arms in all the world's well-known tongues.

Conor Murphy

Hal likes to get high in secret, but a bigger secret is that he’s as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high.

This is an upscale district of a vital North American metropolis, Hal.

The figure of Death (Heath) presides over the front entrance of a carnival sideshow whose spectators watch performers undergo unspeakable acts of degradations so grotesquely compelling that the spectators’ eyes become larger and larger until the spectators themselves are transformed into gigantic eyeballs in chairs, while on the other side of the sideshow tent the figure of Life (Heaven) uses a megaphone to invite fairgoers to an exhibition in which, if the fairgoers consent to undergo unspeakable degradations, they can witness ordinary persons gradually turn into gigantic eyeballs.

Infinite Jest quotes

Join the club