Editing Infinite Jest (section)

==Critical reception==

''Infinite Jest'' was marketed heavily, and Wallace had to adapt to being a public figure. He was interviewed in national magazines and went on a 10-city book tour. Publisher Little, Brown equated the book's heft with its importance in marketing and sent a series of cryptic teaser postcards to 4,000 people, announcing a novel of "infinite pleasure" and "infinite style".<ref>Aubry, Timothy. ''Reading as Therapy: What Contemporary Fiction Does for Middle-Class Americans''. University of Iowa Press, 2006. 120</ref> ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' sent reporter [[David Lipsky]] to follow Wallace on his "triumphant" book tour—the first time the magazine had sent a reporter to profile a young author in 10 years.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Kalfus |first=Ken |date=28 May 2010 |title=NYTBR |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/books/review/Kalfus-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0}}</ref> The interview was never published in the magazine but became Lipsky's ''New York Times''-bestselling book ''[[Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself]]'' (2010), of which the 2015 movie ''[[The End of the Tour]]'' is an adaptation.

Early reviews contributed to ''Infinite Jest''{{'}}s hype, many of them describing it as a momentous literary event.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Birkerts |first=Sven |date=February 1996 |title=The Alchemist's Retort |work=The Atlantic Monthly |publisher=badgerinternet.com |url=http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/jest1a.html |access-date=20 August 2015 |archive-date=March 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304115233/http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/jest1a.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> According to [[Book Marks]], the book received "rave" reviews based on 11 critic reviews, with eight "raves" and three "positive".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Infinite Jest|url=https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/infinite-jest/|access-date=16 January 2024 |website=Book Marks}}</ref>  

In the ''[[Review of Contemporary Fiction]]'', [[Steven Moore (US author)|Steven Moore]] called the book "a profound study of the postmodern condition".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Infinite+Jest.-a018540930|title=Infinite Jest. - Free Online Library|website=www.thefreelibrary.com}}</ref> In 2004, [[Chad Harbach]] wrote that, in retrospect, ''Infinite Jest'' "now looks like the central American novel of the past thirty years, a dense star for lesser work to orbit".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2004-07-15 |title=N+1 |url=http://nplusonemag.com/david-foster-wallace}}</ref> In a 2008 retrospective, ''[[The New York Times]]'' called the book "a masterpiece that's also a monster—nearly 1,100 pages of mind-blowing inventiveness and disarming sweetness. Its size and complexity make it forbidding and esoteric."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Scott |first=A. O. |date=21 September 2008 |title=NYT-review |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/weekinreview/21scott.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0}}</ref>

''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.<ref name="TIME">{{Cite magazine |last1=Grossman |first1=Lev |last2=Lacayo |first2=Richard |date=16 October 2005 |title=TIME's Critics pick the 100 Best Novels, 1923 to present |magazine=TIME |url=http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051019053903/http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html |archive-date=October 19, 2005}}</ref>

As Wallace's ''magnum opus'', ''Infinite Jest'' is at the center of the new discipline of "Wallace Studies", which, according to ''[[The Chronicle of Higher Education]]'', "... is on its way to becoming a robust scholarly enterprise."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Howard |first=Jennifer |date=2011-01-06 |title=The Afterlife of David Foster Wallace |url=http://chronicle.com/article/The-Afterlife-of-David-Foster/125823/ |journal=The Chronicle of Higher Education}}</ref>

Not all critics were as laudatory. Some early reviews, such as [[Michiko Kakutani]]'s in ''The New York Times'', were mixed, recognizing the inventiveness of the writing but criticizing the length and plot. She called the novel "a vast, encyclopedic compendium of whatever seems to have crossed Wallace's mind."<ref>Kakutani, Michiko (February 13, 1996) [http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/jest2.html “Infinite Jest.”] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130113012112/http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/jest2.html |date=January 13, 2013 }} ''New York Times''.</ref> In the ''[[London Review of Books]]'', [[Dale Peck]] wrote of the novel, "... it is, in a word, terrible. Other words I might use include bloated, boring, gratuitous, and—perhaps especially—uncontrolled."<ref>Peck, Dale (18 July 1996) [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v18/n14/dale-peck/well-duh "Well, duh."] ''London Review of Books'' (retrieved 4-23-2013).</ref> [[Harold Bloom]], [[Sterling Professor]] of [[Humanities]] at [[Yale University]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Faculty – English |url=http://english.yale.edu/faculty-staff/harold-bloom |website=english.yale.edu}}</ref> called it "just awful" and written with "no discernible talent" (in the novel, Bloom's own work is called "turgid").<ref>{{Cite news |last=Koski |first=Lorna |date=2011-04-26 |title=The Full Harold Bloom |work=Women's Wear Daily` |url=http://www.wwd.com/eye/people/the-full-bloom-3592315?full=true |access-date=19 October 2012}}</ref><ref>On page 911 of the novel, Hal Incandenza describes a scene in one of his father's films in which a professor reads "stupefyingly turgid-sounding shit" to his students; endnote 366, to which this passage refers, adds: "Sounding rather suspiciously like Professor H. Bloom's turgid studies of artistic ''influenza''."</ref> In a review of Wallace's work up to the year 2000, [[A. O. Scott]] wrote of ''Infinite Jest'', "[T]he novel's [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchonesque]] elements...feel rather willed and secondhand. They are impressive in the manner of a precocious child's performance at a dinner party, and, in the same way, ultimately irritating: they seem motivated, mostly, by a desire to show off."<ref>Scott, A.O. (February 10, 2000) [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2000/feb/10/the-panic-of-influence/ "The Panic of Influence"]. New York Review of Books (retrieved 7-26-2014).</ref>

Some critics have since qualified their initial stances. In 2008, A. O. Scott called ''Infinite Jest'' an "enormous, zeitgeist-gobbling novel that set his generation's benchmark for literary ambition" and Wallace "the best mind of his generation".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Scott |first=A.O. |date=February 10, 2008 |title=The Best Mind of His Generation |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/weekinreview/21scott.html?pagewanted=all}}</ref> [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]] has said that he regrets his negative review: "I wish I'd slowed down a bit more with David Foster Wallace."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Wood |first=James |date=August 18, 2015 |title=A Conversation with James Wood |work=Slate |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/08/james_wood_interview_the_new_yorker_writer_on_how_technology_is_changing.html}}</ref> ''Infinite Jest'' is one of the recommendations in Kakutani's book ''Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Reread''.<ref>Kelley, George (November 23, 2020) [http://georgekelley.org/ex-libris-100-books-to-read-and-reread-by-michiko-kakutani/ "EX-LIBRIS: 100 BOOKS TO READ AND REREAD By Michiko Kakutani"]. GeorgeKelley.org (retrieved 12-7-2020).</ref>