Endless fun

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Infinite Jest (English title: Infinite Jest ) is a 1996 published novel of the American writer David Foster Wallace .

The author David Foster Wallace at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in January 2006. The portrait comes from a group photo with fans of the author.
David Foster Wallace (2006)

The German translation by Ulrich Blumenbach was published in 2009.

The novel interweaves storylines at a tennis academy, in a drug rehab center and from the secret service milieu into a complex narrative structure with numerous main and secondary characters and their dealings with addiction and addictions. The plot is linked and driven by the search for the film Infinite Fun , which captivates its viewers in such a way that - with life-threatening consequences - they are no longer capable of any other thoughts or actions. The title refers to Shakespeare's Hamlet .

Infinite fun is considered a central work of US American literature of the 1990s and was named one of Time's 100 best English-language novels.

content

Plot overview

The novel is set in the near future - at the time it was first published in 1996 - mainly in Boston, USA . The United States , Canada and Mexico have come together to form ONAN, the "Organization of North American Nations". The United States dominates politically, but French-Canadian separatists from Québec want to enforce their independence. Due to the "Territorial Reconfiguration", the USA has changed geographically slightly, a large area in the northeast they have forced upon Canada ("Experialism"). Because this is where the USA dispose of their toxic waste , it is the target area for the "garbage disposal projectiles" fired by large catapults . The US is also blowing its polluted air into this now uninhabitable zone with huge fans. Energy problems, on the other hand, have been resolved by the invention of "annular fusion", whose side effect, however, includes hypertrophic growth of plants and animals. In order to increase state income, wealthy companies are being sold the right to name a whole year after their products, which results in a separate calendar: the "sponsorship time". The main part of the action takes place in the "year of incontinence underwear".

The main location of the action is the elite "Enfield Tennis Academy" (ETA), a boarding school on a hill near Boston, consisting of several buildings and tennis facilities, connected underground by a system of corridors and rooms. Here young people are trained to become future tennis professionals. Due to the constantly recalculated ranking lists, they are under constant pressure to succeed; many of the students consume prohibited substances. Among them was 17-year-old Hal Incandenza, one of the two main characters in the novel, who is sporty and linguistically gifted. He is the youngest son of the inventor and film director James O. Incandenza, who founded ETA. After his suicide, his widow Avril runs the Academy with Hals' uncle Charles. Her second son Mario, severely physically impaired, also lives in the ETA, while Orin, the oldest of the three Incandenza brothers, lives as a football professional in Arizona and has broken off contact with his mother.

The alternative world of the Academy lies at the foot of the hill: the drug therapy center "Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House", the second essential location of the novel. One of the residents of the home is Joelle van Dyne, a former friend of Orin. Here the supervisor Don Gately looks after addicts . An essential task is to accompany his protégés to daily meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and to observe strict rules of conduct in Ennet House. Gately was a drug addict from childhood and turned a criminal to finance his addiction. He went through withdrawal with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. He does everything to protect the home residents entrusted to him from the outside world and ultimately gives his life for them.

The storyline that connects ETA, the Incandenza family and Ennet House follows the activities of a terrorist group from Quebéc: the AFR, the "Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents". These “wheelchair bombers”, capable of excessive violence, are looking for the ultimate weapon in the fight against the USA: “the entertainment”, the deadly, because irresistible, film Infinite Fun , the last work of director James O. Incandenza. Viewers of this film become instantly addicted to it, want nothing more than to watch it again and again, forget food, drink and sleep and - if they are still found alive - are irrevocably transported into the state of mind of a toddler. Individual copies of the film appear several times, with fatal consequences for viewers. It remains unclear who put these copies into circulation - apparently anonymously by post. The AFR are looking for the master tape of the film, want to feed it into the television network and thus defeat the USA. The US secret service wants to prevent the spread of the film, uses agents and double agents - how that ends remains open in the novel. The actual content of the film also remains unknown.

characters

At the beginning of the novel, Hal Incandenza takes center stage. He's second best tennis player at ETA, writes excellent essays, knows the Oxford English Dictionary by heart and secretly smokes marijuana in the hallways below the boarding school. In the course of the plot, Hal withdraws more and more into himself, suffers from listlessness and incipient depression and increasingly loses his ability to communicate. At the end of this development - described in the first chapter - there is the physical and psychological collapse of the neck and his admission to a hospital.

The book also ends in a hospital: Here lies Don Gately, seriously injured in a shootout. When he was shot deadly, he was in great pain, but refused medication to prevent a relapse into his previous drug addiction . Gately's character has evolved from what appears to be a subplot at the beginning of the novel - the break-in at one of the separatist leaders - into a main character.

In the course of the described storyline, Hal and Gately have no contact. But there are indications from Hal in the first and Gately in the last chapter that the two of them are trying together, outside of the plot described, to find a remedy for the effects of the film.

Around these two protagonists there is a dense network of numerous secondary characters, some of which are depicted in great detail and which are also related to one another:

All about the ETA and the Incandenza family:

  • James O. Incandenza. Alcoholic founder of ETA, film director and inventor in the field of optics . As a child, he suffered from a tyrannical father and a passive mother. He publishes his experimental films in his production company "Poor Yorick Entertainment". While completing what is believed to be his fifth version of Neverending Fun, he sticks his head in a converted microwave and commits suicide. As a ghost, he later makes contact with some of the characters.
  • Avril Incandenza. The dean of ETA, described as very attractive, comes from Quebéc and has apparently repeatedly been unfaithful to the late James O. Incandenza. Her relationship with her half-brother Charles Tavis is unclear. Of the three Incandenza brothers, their dominant mother is only called "the Moms". She cannot endure closed doors, uncleanliness and incorrect grammar.
  • Mario Incandenza. The middle one of the Incandenza brothers has an oversized head and too small limbs, he can only stand upright with the help of a supporting metal bar. Mario was an assistant on his father's film projects and now makes films himself, using a helmet camera specially made for him. He always tells the truth and has great empathy.
  • Orin Incandenza. The eldest of the brothers was moderately successful as a tennis player, but mastering a perfect long-range shot opened him up to a career in football . Orin is obsessed with finding new women. He only had a longer relationship with Joelle van Dyne. He may be the anonymous sender of the film.
  • Charles Tavis. After the death of her husband, Avril brings him to the top of ETA as the new head. He is Hal and Orin's uncle, possibly Mario's father.
  • Michael Pemulis. Hal's best friend at the academy, a math genius and drug dealer . He is a master of eschaton, a computer-aided strategy game in which students simulate a nuclear war .
  • John Wayne. He's the best player in the tennis academy. He is also from Québec and has a relationship with Avril. He does not speak directly throughout the novel.
  • Ortho Stice. Also a very good tennis student and a friend Hals. The spirit of the ETA founder appears to him.
  • Lyle. He's something of a guru and life coach who lives in the academy's fitness room and literally feeds on student sweat.

All about Ennet House and the drug scene:

  • Joelle van Dyne. After an overdose, she moves into the home and feels connected to Don Gately. As “Madame Psychosis” she was a radio presenter and as a member of the LARVE, the “League of the Absolutely Malefaced and Disfigured”, she always wears a face veil. It remains unclear whether it is actually marred by acid or so beautiful that it hides its face so as not to be reduced to its appearance. Joelle is the alleged leading actress in Infinite Fun , but she does not know the content of the film.
  • Kate Gompert. The inmate is under constant surveillance because of the risk of suicide . She suffers from clinical depression and her pain is impressively described in the novel.
  • Randy Lenz. The resident has obsessive-compulsive disorder , for example cannot see a clock and always tries to go “north”. In order to overcome a feeling of powerlessness, he tortures and kills rats, cats and dogs on nightly forays. When he kills the dog of a French-Canadian group, it triggers an outbreak of violence, in which Gately is shot.

All about the separatists and the US secret service:

  • Hugh Steeply. The US secret agent, disguised as a woman, poses as a reporter for a magazine to find out from Orin and Hal where the master tape of the film is.
  • Rodney Tine, head of the USBUD, the "US Bureau for Unspecified Services," a kind of super intelligence agency. He is an influential advisor to the presidents.
  • Johnny Gentle, President of the USA and ONAN The former pop singer , a cleanliness fanatic with compulsory washing . Election promises of his SUSAP ("Clean USA Party") were the elimination of pollution from the USA (hence the assignment of territory to Canada) and no tax increases (hence the "sponsorship time").
  • Remy Marathe, a member of the AFR who sits in a wheelchair who is also looking for the film and does not shrink from torture and murder. Marathe also works as a double agent for the US secret service - actually as a "quadruple agent " because the AFR knows about his betrayal, but at the same time the USBUD knows that the AFR knows this.

Time calculation

The plot is not told chronologically, almost all chapters are titled with dates from an alternative calendar. During this “sponsorship time”, corporations pay for the naming of a year for advertising purposes - these become, for example, the “Year of the Whopper ” or the “Year of the Glad Garbage Bag”. Associated with this is equipping the Statue of Liberty with oversized versions of the advertised products. Most of the action takes place in the "year of incontinence underwear". This would have to correspond to the year 2009, derived from the endnotes and from the series of year names - there is no clear indication of this in the text. Years before the introduction of the "sponsor time" are given the addition "v.SZ".

Themes and motifs

Against the background of the plot, Wallace unfolds a wealth of recurring motifs in different contexts. It is about physical and psychological addictions like that of drugs among the inmates of Ennet House, the students of ETA and Alcoholics Anonymous , but also about the addiction to constant entertainment and distraction as in the description of a society that has fallen into hedonism . Consequences such as violence in the drug environment and in the search for the film are shown drastically. The description of depression as Kate Gompert and Hal runs through the novel, as well as perpetrated (as with James O. Incandenza, Eric Clipperton or Joelle van Dynes mother) or attempted (as with Joelle van Dyne) suicide . All of the families described (Incandenza, Gately, Pemulis, van Dyne) are dysfunctional and show characteristics such as dominance behavior (Avril, Hals grandfather, Gately's stepfather), neglect (Gately) or rape (Pemulis). Detailed descriptions are devoted to training and tennis at the ETA and in competitions, the further development of television and the Internet, as well as a power of advertising that pervades all areas of life (not only time has sponsors, but also clothing, cars or the American Statue of Liberty).

shape

construction

The structure of the novel shows jumps in storylines, locations, in the chronological sequence and in the narrative perspectives . In addition, several hundred endnotes, some of which are pages long, lead again and again outside the main text. The 28 chapters are each marked with a shaded circle symbol and a date, sometimes also a location. Within some chapters, individual sections are also marked with dates.

According to Stephen J. Burn, behind confusing narrative strands and scattered chronology is a methodically elaborated structure of the text. Accordingly, the protagonists systematically reflect each other in the periods of time that are not chronologically ordered but can be assigned by dates: For example, those days in Hals' biography that indicate increasing drug addiction and an increasingly worsening psychological state are also the days on which Gately relieved of his addiction gets loose and becomes a strong character. Subplots, put together, would explain the winding paths of the film piece by piece.

Marshall Boswell describes the structure of the novel as "circular": the temporal levels go forward chronologically, then backward again. The last chapter, which precedes the first and takes place entirely in Gately's mind, without resolving the conflicts and open questions about the plot, is an anti-climax . The hundreds of footnotes, which require constant jumping back and forth in the book, are a metafictional tool with which Wallace makes it clear that the world in the text is only a mediated world. The novel is - Boswell quotes Wallace - deliberately difficult in order to have to work for the pleasure of it.

According to Greg Carlisle, the novel is built like a Sierpinski triangle , with main strands that can be continually divided into smaller units / subsidiary strands. Carlisle distinguishes six sections in the novel, with chapters getting longer and longer. He relies on a statement made by the author in a radio interview.

  1. Chapters 1–15, 179 pages (English edition). New storylines, people, locations and motifs are introduced in quick passages. Whether and how they are related remains unclear.
  2. Chapters 16–21, 141 pages. The people are characterized in more detail. Possible connections between the storylines are emerging.
  3. Chapters 22–24, 169 pages. The connections between people and storylines become clear.
  4. Chapters 25–26, 131 pages. The dramaturgical tension rises and runs towards possible climaxes.
  5. Chapter 27, 189 pages. Individual events are described, but there is no further development of the plot.
  6. Chapter 28, 173 pages. Possible explanations for the previous action are offered. Essential questions (what happens to Hal? Does Gately survive? What about the film?) Remain open or can be answered ambiguously. The tension is not released.

David Hering writes of a “broken form” and a “fragmented principle of order” in the narrative structure, in which the readers' expectations of recognizing contexts are systematically disappointed. The time frame extends from the 1960s to the early 21st century, but is not told in a linear fashion. Hering also emphasizes that at the beginning of the novel there are short, fragmentary and seemingly incoherent scenes that are used in the further course of the plot and that are "enriched" with more and more information about main and secondary characters. Sometimes it only becomes clear after a few hundred pages how individual storylines can be classified and what effects subplots have on the whole. In addition, the endnotes interrupt the flow of reading again and again, but they sometimes contain essential information about the action.

James Jason Walsh refers to a three-part structure, which is characterized by clearly different language and writing styles in the storylines. The parts around the tennis academy ETA are “post-modern, ironic or avant-garde” in style, the parts around the drug rehabilitation home Ennet House are characterized as “linear, realistic and honest” and the sections in the intelligence / terrorist milieu are between realistic and switch ironically and thus combine the other two parts into a common novel structure.

Stefano Budicin sees the concept of so-called stasis , a kind of standstill or blockade of action, which is thematized several times in the plot, fully realized in the structure of the novel . Due to the lack of resolution of essential questions at the end of the very long text, the reader experiences feelings of frustration and powerlessness similar to those experienced by the main characters in the novel. The search for answers almost forces you to start reading all over again: with the first chapter, which chronologically describes the last event of the novel.

Language and stylistic devices

One of the most striking peculiarities of the text is the use of a total of 388 endnotes , which in the German edition extend over 134 pages, in the English original over 98 pages. Some of them are of considerable length, such as a 12-page filmography of the works of James O. Incandenza, or have endnotes themselves. In some cases they only contain additional information such as manufacturer information on drugs mentioned in the text, but in some cases essential elements of the narrative, such as information about the Canadian separatists or about Orin, the oldest of the Incandenza brothers, with references to elements of the main plot that do not exist Information remains incomprehensible. According to Marshall Boswell, the endnotes serve as a metafictional tool for the author with the purpose of breaking the narrative and making it clear that the book is a construct , a mediated world. Wallace also uses footnotes and endnotes in other of his texts, which is "almost like having a second voice in your head", Wallace is quoted by DTMax.

Other anomalies include the fact that the sentence structure in individual sections of the text is unusually complex, with long, nested sentences or incorrect word order in passages in which Franco-Canadians use English or in the translation German. The syntax of the novel goes to the limits of readability, writes Simon de Bourcier, especially when describing psychological and emotional states. The sentence structure correlates with the content: long, complex sentences are used in connection with the motive dependence / addiction, while simple sentence structure indicates authentic feelings, for example in connection with recovery from dependencies, sobriety, seriousness and empathy .

Wallace uses numerous medical and pharmacological terms and foreign words, some of which are deliberately misused. Guido Graf writes that the novel is populated by people who cannot pronounce specialist vocabulary correctly or use it incorrectly, in the sense of malapropisms . According to translator Ulrich Blumenbach , word twists or mix-ups such as “establish an example” were used by Wallace “because his losers had to speak exactly like that.” In addition, there is the use of various dialects and idiolects : for Alex Rühle, each character has “its own tone, you own vocabulary: Afro-American cascades of abuse, stump-Irish, sharp-mouthed Harvard Uppest-Class dialogues, broad West Coast length ... "

Wallace uses numerous abbreviations and acronyms (ONAN, LARVE, SCH.MAZ etc.) and creates new words in the novel that were previously not used in the English language. In the German edition, these are also translated into new creations ("Lokomotivischer Lärm") by the translator Ulrich Blumenbach. Even onomatopoeia uses Wallace as when opening a soda can ( "SPFFT") or drinking ( "GLUCKGLUCKGAAAH").

intertextuality

Infinite Fun has numerous intertextual references to other literary works. According to James Jason Walsh, William Shakespeare's Hamlet plays a central role . The title of the novel already provides the reference, a modified quote from the grave scene in Hamlet Act V, Scene 1: The late court jester Yorick is referred to here as a "fellow of infinite jest". Guido Graf calls Infinite Fun a "Hamlet machine". The figure constellation of the Incandenza family has parallels to the Hamlets family: a deceased father (James / König) who returns as a ghost , a mother (Avril / Gertrude) who has replaced the father with the uncle (CT / Claudius), and an internally suffering, externally incapacitated son (Hal / Hamlet) who is considered crazy by others.

A grave scene reminiscent of Hamlet plays a central role in the novel, but outside of the plot described. Both Hal - in the first chapter - and Gately - in the last chapter - refer to it. The two dig up a skull that may contain the master tape of the deadly film, possibly an antidote to it. Hal reads towards the end of the plot described in Hamlet and ponders about it, for example about the reality of the mind or the subject of hypocrisy. A film production company owned by James O. Incandenza is called "Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited".

Walsh also sees the structure of the novel with its non-chronologically ordered plot as “ time out of joint” (according to the Schlegel translation; in the English-language original: “The time is out of joint”, Hamlet Act I, Scene 5). In addition, he points out that in the play Hamlet (act II, scene 1) (composed around 1600 ) Polonius mentions a tennis game.

In connection with the central role of David Foster Wallace in the literary movement of the New Sincerity with its striving for the representation of authentic feelings, Adam Kelly also refers to Hamlet as a key text and to a quote from Polonius, who gives Laertes advice on how to live: “This above all - to thine own self be true ".

The nuclear war game "Eschaton" described in the novel refers to another text, End Zone by Don DeLillo from 1972. As Graham Foster explains, the focus is on college football instead of tennis , but here too, individual players would find themselves in an existential crisis, and supporting characters in both novels would be described with similar characteristics. And there is a nuclear war simulation in both End Zone and Infinite Fun . The choice of words when describing the starting point of the game and the acronyms used for the opposing power blocks are similar. Another reference to a text by DeLillo, according to Stephen J. Burn, is the mention of the " MIT language riots", which also appear in DeLillos Ratner's Star from 1976.

Burn sees parallels in construction with James Joyce's Ulysses . The relationship between the two main characters Hal and Gately corresponds to that of Stephen Dedalus, who like Hal has a problematic relationship with his father, and Leopold Bloom, who, like Gately, is formally less educated, but more empathetic, more human. In both books, the emphasis is first on the younger Hal / Stephen and then shifting to the older Gately / Bloom. Wallace - himself a creator of new words - uses a known word created from the Ulysses : "scrotumtightening / skrotumzusammenziehend" and he is playing with a malapropism used term "telemachry / Telemachrie" in the first chapter of Ulysses on, after Gilbert scheme the so-called Telemachos chapter.

Timothy Jacobs sees the figure constellation of the Incandenza brothers as an equivalent to the Karamazov brothers of Fyodor Dostoyevsky . Both novels are about a father and three sons: The eldest of the Incandenza brothers, Orin, shows parallels to the oldest of the Karamosov brothers, Dmitri, also described as unruly. Hal corresponds to the intellectual Iwan and Mario the simple, friendly and sensitive Aljoscha.

Burn sees the oversized, several tennis courts-sized map of the Eschaton game and the escalating dispute over the relationship between map and territory (whether external influences such as snowfall on the map or just its visual representation) as a reference to the text Del rigor en la ciencia by Jorge Luis Borges , in which the pursuit of ever more precise, larger maps results in an ultimately unusable 1: 1 scale .

Another text is explicitly mentioned in the novel: a tract of land / Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott , a short story that so playing in a two-dimensional world of lines, triangles, squares. At the tennis academy, it is an "inevitable novel," says Wallace.

Andrew Hoberek mentions another possible literary reference: The Minister's Black Veil (Eng. The Pastor's Black Veil ) by Nathaniel Hawthorne . In this short story, a pastor decides to cover his face with a veil and not take it off again - like Joelle van Dyne in Infinite Fun . Hoberek sees parallels in the structure of Infinite Fun with Moby-Dick by Herman Melville . Similar to the sailors on the whaler Pequod, the tennis students at the ETA and the drug addicts in Ennet House would have volunteered to join an organization that subjects their entire lives to rigid rules . He also sees similarities in the variety of text forms in both novels, such as the excursions into pharmaceutics by Wallace and into cetology by Melville, which are not necessary for the plot .

DT Max points out a scene - inserted late in the creation process - with echoes of George Orwell's 1984 : Orin is held captive and tortured by separatists, with the implementation of his personal nightmare . It is locked under a glass with cockroaches until it is broken and screams: "Do it to her!" - similar to how Winston Smith screamed in 1984 under the torture of rats in room 101: "Do it to Julia!"

There is also a reference to Greek mythology , according to Stephen J. Burn: The twelve labors of Heracles can be found in the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous , which Gately - even of the stature of Heracles - has to fulfill. Like Gately, Herakles is temporarily insane. Both of them accidentally kill a person and then have to pass a series of difficult trials.

background

Emergence

First notes by Wallace, which were processed later in the novel - for example about a fictional Canadian terrorist organization - date, according to DT Max, from 1986. Burn also mentions a two-page draft entitled Las Meninas , which is revised in the "Wardine" - Episode reappears in the novel. In a September 1986 application for the Yaddo artists' colony in Saratoga Springs , Wallace wrote that he was working on a novel called Infinite Jest . In the fall of 1991, he began to work intensively on the project while Wallace lectured at Illinois State University . In April 1992 he sent the first 250 pages to his agent Bonnie Nadell. The publisher Little, Brown and Company bought the rights to the book and paid $ 80,000 advance. His sister, Amy Wallace, was a first-time reader, paid and through her editing office, whose only client was David Foster Wallace. He was in correspondence with Don LeLillo in 1992, including on the subject of Eschaton / End Zone (see section # Intertextuality ), also in order to avoid being accused of plagiarism .

Individual passages appeared in literary magazines. In May 1993 Wallace delivered another 750 pages, in June 1994 he delivered the approximately 750,000-word manuscript.

The publisher demanded cuts, especially in the passages with Marathe / Steeply and in football stories about Orin Incandenza. Editor Michael Pietsch mentions a total of around 250 manuscript pages shortened by Wallace himself. Wallace also used the extensive endnotes in smaller font as an opportunity to keep the main text shorter. The novel was originally titled Infinite Jest - a failed entertainment , but the subtitle was not used after the publisher objected.

Infinite Jest was finally published on February 1, 1996, accompanied by an advertising and media campaign by the publisher, which promised "a masterpiece" and "the greatest literary event of the year" even before publication, and a reading tour by the author. On part of this tour he was accompanied by a Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky for a report that was published as a book in 2010. Even before the end of this reading tour, the publisher had six reprints for a total of 45,000 copies. By 2006, Infinite Jest had sold 150,000 copies . According to Michael Pietsch, over a million copies had been sold worldwide by 2016.

The first translation of Infinite Jest came in 2000, into Italian by Edoardo Nesi with Annalisa Villoresi, under the title Infinite Jest . In 2002, Spanish by Javier Calvo and Marcelo Covián followed under the title La broma infinita . In 2009 the German translation by Ulrich Blumenbach followed, as Infinite Fun . In 2014, the translation into Brazilian Portuguese came from Caetano Galindo under the title Graça infinita . In French, the novel is called L'Infinie comédie and was published in 2015 in a translation by Francis Kerline. A translation into Greek by Kostas Kaltsas followed in 2016. A translation into Russian by Sergey Karpov and Alexey Polyarinov was published in 2018.

Autobiographical references

Wallace's personality is stamped on every page of the book, AO Scott writes, so much that life and work not only appear connected, but merge into one another. In his biography there are numerous elements that are taken up in Infinite Fun , partly as a framework (tennis, drugs, illness), partly to characterize main and secondary characters.

Wallace was a talented tennis player in his youth and was on the competition team at his school, Urbana High School. He was ranked 11th in the Middle Illinois Tennis Association and gave tennis lessons as a teenager. Since his youth he suffered from excessive sweating and sweating, as in the novel the character Marlon Bain.

The power of television was a recurring theme for Wallace: in 1993, during the making of Infinite Fun , he also wrote the essay E Unibus Pluram: Television and Literature in the United States . In it he opposes what he believes is the predominant irony in the media , which makes serious discussions about important issues impossible. The text is one of the foundations for the New Sincerity .

Mathematics , which Hals's friend and dealer Michael Pemulis likes to study, was one of Wallace's subjects at Amherst College . He also enjoyed reading dictionaries , as in the novel Hal, who knows the Oxford English Dictionary by heart.

In his youth, Wallace first came across marijuana , which, according to DT Max, he is said to have consumed similarly to Hal in the novel: alone and blowing out the smoke from the exhaust fan so as not to be detected. In the 1980s, Wallace turned to alcohol more and more , initially as a substitute for marijuana, and became addicted to alcohol . From 1988 he was in contact with Alcoholics Anonymous, whose meetings are described repeatedly and intensely in the novel. Wallace himself did not provide any information about his own dismay in interviews or texts, but claimed that he had his knowledge "from friends who were with Alcoholics Anonymous" and from his own visits to open-air meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous in Boston. He wrote that in a short paragraph inserted in the masthead of the novel.

In November 1989 he made the McLean Hospital in Belmont a withdrawal by and then was sent to a rehabilitation home: Granada House in Brighton Marine Hospital - the model for "Ennet House" in "Enfield Marine Hospital" in the novel. The daily routines, regulations for the inmates and the regular group meetings are described as very similar. Individual people also served as role models: for Don Gately, for example, a supervisor called "Big Craig", also of huge stature and with a previous drug and burglar career.

Wallace had been on treatment for depression since his youth . The disease was first diagnosed while at Amherst College in the early 1980s. He was on constant medication, particularly Nardil , and underwent multiple electroconvulsive therapies . Wallace suffered from the fact that the antidepressants affected his emotions and his writing. In several places in the novel, experiences of depression are impressively described, as are thoughts of suicide . Several characters in the novel commit suicide . Wallace survived a first suicide attempt in October 1988, and is said to have tried at least three times to end his life. On September 12, 2008, Wallace committed suicide at his home in Claremont, California, at the age of 46 .

reception

Initially, the novel was mainly noticed in the United States. The author and literary critic Steven Moore, for example, called Infinite Jest in an early review an " encyclopedic novel" with a wide range of styles and linguistic diversity. It is both a tragicomic epic and an in-depth study of postmodern conditions. The writer Walter Kirn wrote in a 1996 review that the book was brilliant, with its fascinating intertwining and terrifyingly accurate satire of America's future, and that it was itself a kind of endless Möbius loop .

Marshall Boswell places the novel in a row with works by Thomas Pynchon , William Gaddis and John Barth and ascribes lasting importance to it. The book is a challenge, if only by its size. It is not only long and deliberately difficult, it is also enjoyable to read - it is, as it were, "endless fun" itself: "The book itself is an" infinite jest "."

Adam Kelly points out that a deeper examination of the work initially established itself outside of the academic world, in particular through reading and discussion groups on the Internet, who intensively exchanged views on the text. The academic reception took a long time to gain a foothold, one of the first texts on it came from the literary scholar N. Katherine Hayles in 1999. Kelly also emphasizes the novel in connection with Wallace's importance for the New Sincerity in American literature. The demand for emotional authenticity in literature made in Wallace's essay E Unibus Pluram is realized in Infinite Jest and Wallace's later texts. The first monograph on the novel was published in 2003 , written by the literary scholar Stephen J. Burn.

After Wallace's death, his literary estate was made available to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin for scientific research, where manuscripts from Infinite Jest are also stored.

The author and editor Chad Harbach rated Infinite Jest 2004, eight years after its publication, as the central American novel of the last 30 years. Shortly after Wallace's death in 2008, AO Scott writes that Wallace illustrated and expressed the fears and awareness of his generation. Infinite Jest is a masterpiece and at the same time a monster, the scope and complexity of which make it both frightening and “esoteric”: “(Wallace) exemplified and articulated the defining anxieties and attitudes of his generation… “ Infinite Jest ” is a masterpiece that's also a monster . ... Its size and complexity make it forbidding and esoteric "In the Süddeutsche Zeitung Axel Rühe 2010 writes:" Infinite jest was using the tools of postmodern storytelling a general attack on the silly postmodern irony, the high-sheen mirrored nihilism , Wallace went actually killed, genuine Human being '. He wanted the total medialized depict the world, but without dünnsuppige Popaffirmation to serve "The literary critic. Richard Kämmerlings calls the book a" novel of the century ":" Infinite Jest 'is for the beginning of the twenty-first century what Musil , The Man Without Qualities ' for The last century was. "Author Jeffrey Eugenides calls the novel one of the most important American books:" Infinite Jest made so many books look antiquated in one go. It was a way of speaking intelligently and in the voice ... of our generation as it had never existed before ... Wallace's voice is the funniest and saddest you will probably ever hear. "

The literary critic Denis Scheck writes of a "study of the modern Western world," a cross between a family romance and science fiction satire and also draws a connection to the biography of Wallace: "The reading is that it at that Wallace not only a civilization critical diagnostic went , but also the portrayal of his own depression, comes to mind after his suicide in 2008. Since Melville's ' Moby Dick ' every new generation of writers has struggled for the contemporary version of the ' Great American Novel ' ... Wallace wrote this great American novel for his generation. "

The author and critic Tom Bissell ascribes lasting relevance to the novel even 20 years after its publication: it was the first major Internet novel, about the creeping spread of popular entertainment, to the present day sharing of videos and " binge-watching " TV Shows. In addition, the novel is groundbreaking in dealing with language, with its new creations , the most remote technical terms and pictorial descriptions. He also offers an abundance of figures drawn in depth. It is the novel of his generation.

Time ranked Infinite Jest among the top 100 English-language novels since 1923, the magazine's first issue. It is a "damn funny book", the plot of which is secondary compared to his infinitely rich thoughts and reflections on addiction, entertainment, art, life and tennis.

In contrast, there are critical reviews of the novel. These often concern the volume of the book: the author and literary critic Adam Kirsch writes, for example, that a more disciplined, more tactful author would not have published a book of a thousand pages, on the other hand, a slim four-hundred-page version would not have become a cultural sensation and a symbol of a generation .

The literary critic Michiko Kakutani called the novel in 1996 an “ encyclopedic compilation of everything that Wallace had in mind”, and the book was probably written and published on the principle of “the bigger the better”.

In 1996, the author and literary critic Dale Peck criticized the storylines of Infinite Fun as being too simple and called the book unsatisfactory. He regrets the five weeks of his life that he dedicated to this novel, the book is "terrible ... bloated, boring, arbitrary and ... uncontrolled": "... it is, in a word, terrible. Other words I might use include bloated, boring, gratuitous, and - perhaps especially - uncontrolled. I would, in fact, go so far as to say that Infinite Jest is one of the very few novels for which the phrase 'not worth the paper it's written on' has real meaning… ".

The literary scholar and critic Harold Bloom is quoted as saying that Infinite Jest is "just terrible", that the author has no recognizable talent, can neither think nor write. He also resented the fact that the title of the novel was a Shakespeare quote.

Edward Jackson et al. a. criticize that the novel favors the view of white men to the detriment of blacks and women. They see forms of racist and sexist exclusion in it. The literary scholar Clare Hayes-Brady sees in Wallace a general "reluctance or inability to write strong female characters" and accuses the author of misogyny .

Adaptations and motivic use

  • In 2011 the American band The Decemberists released a video for their " Calamity Song ". It plays a game of eschaton, the computer-aided nuclear war tennis described in detail in the novel that ends in chaos.
  • In June 2012, the Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin showed a 24-hour tour through the “utopian west of Berlin” and laid the Boston of the future, which was designed in the novel, “like a foil over Berlin”. The translator Ulrich Blumenbach also took part in a tour.
  • In 2013 Malte Kettler, Anna Daßler and Jonas Sander turned the novel into a play for the Stör & Fried Theater. The first performance took place on June 15, 2013 in the House of Science in Braunschweig .
  • In the US television series Parks and Recreation there was an episode ( Partridge , first broadcast April 4, 2013) in which numerous names of characters from Infinite Jest were used, such as a law firm called "Gately, Wayne, Kittenplan and Troeltsch".
  • In 2014, the exhibition Infinite Fun , inspired by the book, took place in the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main . 20 artists, including Maurizio Cattelan and Daniel Richter, showed works inspired by the novel.
  • The 2015 film The End of the Tour by director James Ponsoldt traces the interviews of journalist David Lipsky (played by Jesse Eisenberg ) with David Foster Wallace (played by Jason Segel ) during the promotional tour for Infinite Fun .
  • In 2016, the German web project Unendliches Spiel , produced by WDR , BR , Deutschlandfunk u. a., 1400 volunteers each one page of the complete text of the novel. The voice recordings were combined with specially composed music to create a radio play lasting around 80 hours.

literature

expenditure

  • David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest: a novel . 1st ed. Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1996, ISBN 0-316-92004-5 .
  • David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest . Back Bay Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-316-06652-5 (With a foreword by Tom Bissell).
  • David Foster Wallace: Endless fun . 3. Edition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-462-04112-5 (American English: Infinite Jest . Translated by Ulrich Blumenbach ).
  • David Foster Wallace: Endless fun . 7th edition. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-499-24957-0 (American English: Infinite Jest . Translated by Ulrich Blumenbach).
  • David Foster Wallace: Endless fun . Translated from the English by Ulrich Blumenbach. Kiepenheuer & Witsch eBook, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-462-30537-1 (e-book on Tolino reader).

Audio book

Secondary literature

  • Marshall Boswell: Understanding David Foster Wallace . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia 2009, ISBN 978-1-57003-887-7 .
  • Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide . 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 .
  • Greg Carlisle: Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest . Sideshow Media Group, Los Angeles / Austin 2007, ISBN 978-0-9847790-4-8 (e-book on Kindle reader).
  • Ralph Clare: The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2018, ISBN 978-1-108-45177-2 .
  • Clare Hayes-Brady: The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace : Language, Identity, and Resistance. Bloomsbury Academic, New York / London 2017, ISBN 978-1-5013-3584-6 .
  • David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview and Other Conversations . Melville House Publishing, Brooklyn NY / London 2018, ISBN 978-1-61219-741-8 .
  • DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 .

Reading aid

  • Luke Hilton: Book Analysis: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace . Bright Summaries, o. O. 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest ... “In: William Shakespeare: Hamlet . Act V, scene 1.
  2. ↑ Chad Harbach: David Foster Wallace! In: n + 1 (literary magazine), edition 1, summer 2004. Online edition, accessed on October 25, 2019 ( online ).
  3. ^ Richard Kämmerlings: Medusa in the self-help group . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 22, 2009, accessed on September 8, 2019.
  4. ↑ Denis Scheck: A novel about addiction? In: Die Welt , Schecks Kanon (33), November 10, 2017, accessed on August 26, 2019.
  5. ↑ Tom Bissell: Everything About Everything: David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' at 20 . In: The New York Times, February 1, 2016. Online edition, accessed November 1, 2019. [1] The text is also the foreword in the 2016 “Infinite Jest” edition.
  6. ^ Lev Grossmann: Infinite Jest. In: All-TIME 100 Novels, Time, January 7, 2010. Online edition , accessed October 25, 2019.
  7. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide. 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 35.
  8. ↑ David Foster Wallace: Endless Fun . 7th edition. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-499-24957-0 (American English: Infinite Jest. Translated by Ulrich Blumenbach). See p. 321 and endnotes 24 and 60.
  9. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide. 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , pp. 50ff.
  10. ↑ Ulrich Greiner: The hammer . In: Die Zeit, No. 36 August 27, 2009. Online, accessed December 3, 2019.
  11. ↑ Elizabeth Freudenthal: Anti-Interiority: Compulsiveness, Objectification, and Identity In Infinite Jest. In: New Literary History, Volume 41, No. 1, Winter 2010, pp. 200f. Online, accessed December 5, 2019.
  12. ↑ Guido Graf: Depression and entertainment are one and the same . In: Frankfurter Rundschau, August 21, 2009, without location. Online, accessed August 26, 2019.
  13. ^ Richard Kämmerlings: Medusa in the self-help group . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 22, 2009, accessed on September 8, 2019.
  14. ↑ Axel Rühle: Hydroponic Marijuana. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung online, May 17, 2010, without location. Online, accessed December 3, 2019.
  15. ↑ Jesse Mechanic: A Nausea of ​​the Cells and Soul: How David Foster Wallace Humanized Depression in Infinite Jest . In: The Overgrown. July 26, 2016, no location. Retrieved December 6, 2019.
  16. ↑ Elizabeth Freudenthal: Anti-Interiority: Compulsiveness, Objectification, and Identity In Infinite Jest. In: New Literary History, Volume 41, No. 1, Winter 2010, pp. 199f. Online (pdf), accessed December 6, 2019.
  17. ↑ Mark Tresnowski: Infinite Jest, Infant Adults & the True Self In: University of Chicago, Thesis, October 19, 2015, pp. 41f. Online, accessed December 5, 2019.
  18. ^ Erik Cofer: Pleasure as Pathology: Trauma and Perversion in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace. Thesis, Georgia State University 2014. pp. 7ff. Online, accessed December 3, 2019.
  19. ^ Mark Bresnan: The Work of Play in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. In: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 50: 1 (2008), p. 51ff. Online, accessed December 5, 2019.
  20. ↑ Duncan White: The 5 impressive ways David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest predicted the future In: The Telegraph, February 1, 2016. Online, accessed December 5, 2019.
  21. ^ Gregor Dotzauer: Sledge hammer of US literature In: Deutschlandfunk, Book of the Week, September 6, 2009. Online, accessed on December 6, 2019.
  22. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide. 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 34 ff.
  23. ^ Marshall Boswell: Understanding David Foster Wallace. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia 2009, ISBN 978-1-57003-887-7 , pp. 119 f.
  24. ^ David Foster Wallace: Interview by Michael Silverblatt. "Bookworm" broadcast on KCRW Santa Monica on April 11, 1996. Accessed on September 10, 2019. From minute 2:00.
  25. ^ Greg Carlisle: Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Sideshow Media Group, Los Angeles / Austin 2007, ISBN 978-0-9847790-4-8 (e-book on Kindle reader). P. 100 ff.
  26. ^ David Hering: Form as Strategy in Infinite Jest. In: Philip Coleman (Ed.): Critical Insights: David Foster Wallace. Salem Press, without location, 2015, p. 128 f. ( online at Academia.edu , accessed August 29, 2019).
  27. ↑ James Jason Walsh: American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. In: ETD Archive, Paper 846. Cleveland State University, August 2014, pp. 12 f. ( online , accessed September 1, 2019).
  28. ↑ Stefano Budicin: Identifying Stasis in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Università Ca 'Foscari Venezia, Online Archive, Venice 2018, p. 112. Retrieved September 11, 2019.
  29. ^ Marshall Boswell: Understanding David Foster Wallace . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia 2009, ISBN 978-1-57003-887-7 , p. 120.
  30. ↑ DT Max: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace's struggle to surpass “Infinite Jest” . In: The New Yorker, February 28, 2009. Retrieved September 3, 2019 ( online ).
  31. ↑ Simon de Bourcier: They All Sound Like David Foster Wallace: Syntax and Narrative in Infinite Jest In: Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, 2017 5 (1): 10, pp. 1–30, without location. Retrieved on September 2, 2019, p. 3 f. ( online ).
  32. ↑ Guido Graf: Depression and entertainment are one and the same . In: Frankfurter Rundschau, August 21, 2009, without location. Accessed August 26, 2019 ( online ).
  33. ↑ Klaus Brinkbäumer: Whoever wants to write has to live . In: Der Spiegel 33/10. August 2009, pp. 118–123, here p. 122, accessed on August 27, 2019 ( online ).
  34. ↑ Ulrich Blumenbach: "I had to translate the wrong right wrong" . In: Spiegel Online , September 8, 2009.
  35. ↑ Axel Rühle: Hunter of the lost vocabulary . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung online, May 17, 2010, without location. Accessed September 27, 2019 ( online ).
  36. ↑ Tom Bissel, Foreword. In: David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest . Back Bay Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-316-06652-5 , pp. XII f.
  37. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide . 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 25.
  38. ↑ James Jason Walsh: American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest . In: ETD Archive, Paper 846. Cleveland State University, August 2014. Retrieved September 1, 2019. [2]
  39. ^ William Shakespeare: Hamlet . In: The Oxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works. Oxford University Press, New York 1988, p. 684.
  40. ↑ Guido Graf: Depression and entertainment are one and the same . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , August 21, 2009, accessed on August 26, 2019.
  41. ↑ James Jason Walsh: American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest . In: ETD Archive, Paper 846. Cleveland State University, August 2014. Retrieved September 1, 2019, pp. 31, 40, 43.
  42. ↑ James Jason Walsh: American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. In: ETD Archive, Paper 846. Cleveland State University, August 2014. Retrieved September 1, 2019, p. 14.
  43. ↑ James Jason Walsh: American Hamlet: Shakespearean Epistemology in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest . In: ETD Archive, Paper 846. Cleveland State University, August 2014. Retrieved September 1, 2019, SV
  44. ^ Adam Kelly: David Foster Wallace and the New Sincerity in American Fiction . In: David Hering (ed.): Consider David Foster Wallace. Critical Essays , Sideshow Media Group Press, Los Angeles / Austin 2010, pp. 131 f., Accessed on August 28, 2019.
  45. ^ Graham Foster, A Deep Insider's Elegiac Tribute: The Work of Don DeLillo in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest . In: Orbit. Writing around Pynchon , 4, Heft 2, 2016, pp. 1–20, here pp. 6 ff., Accessed on September 6, 2019.
  46. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide . 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 35.
  47. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide .2. Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 25.
  48. ↑ Timothy Jacobs: The Brothers Incandenza: Translating Ideology in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest . In: Texas Studies in Literature and Language 3 (2007). Quoted in: DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 288.
  49. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide . 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 33.
  50. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide . 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 48
  51. ↑ Andrew Hoberek: Wallace and American Literature . In: Ralph Clare: The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2018, ISBN 978-1-108-45177-2 , p. 37
  52. ↑ Andrew Hoberek: Wallace and American Literature . In: Ralph Clare: The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2018, ISBN 978-1-108-45177-2 , p. 44 ff.
  53. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 206.
  54. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide . 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. 61.
  55. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 159.
  56. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide . 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 , p. XII.
  57. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 159-171.
  58. ↑ Klaus Brinkbäumer: Whoever wants to write has to live . In: Der Spiegel 33/10. August 2009, pp. 118-123. Hamburg 2009. Online edition, accessed on August 27, 2019, p. 121.
  59. ^ Graham Foster, A Deep Insider's Elegiac Tribute: The Work of Don DeLillo in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest . In: Orbit. Writing around Pynchon , 4, Heft 2, 2016, pp. 1–20, here p. 10, accessed on September 6, 2019.
  60. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 159 ff.
  61. ^ Michael Pietsch: Editing Infinite Jest . Adaptation by: Editing Wallace , Q&A with Rick Moody. Sonora Review 55 (2009). Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  62. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 195.
  63. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 200.
  64. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 210 f.
  65. ^ David Lipsky: Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace . Broadway Books / Random House, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-59243-9 .
  66. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 225.
  67. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 288.
  68. ↑ Michael Pietsch: A Brief (Crowd-Sourced) Interview With Michael Pietsch . In: Infinite Winter , April 6, 2016. Online forum, accessed October 17, 2019.
  69. ↑ Simon Brousseau: L'infinie comédie et la tâche ingrate du traducteur . In: Spirale, December 17, 2015. Online edition, accessed November 28, 2019. [3]
  70. ^ Scott Esposito: Infinite Jest Around the World. Translating David Foster Wallace's 1,000 page mega-novel . In: Literary Hub, May 25, 2016. Online edition, accessed October 17, 2019. [4]
  71. ↑ Josh Nadcau: “Infinite Jest comes to Russia. Why translators finally took on the 'untranslatable' novel ” . In: The Calvert Journal, January 30, 2019. Online edition, accessed November 27, 2019. [5]
  72. ^ AO Scott: The Best Mind of His Generation . In: New York Times , September 20, 2008. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
  73. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 9 f.
  74. ↑ DT Max: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace's struggle to surpass “Infinite Jest” . In: The New Yorker , February 28, 2009. Retrieved September 3, 2019.
  75. ^ David Foster Wallace: E Unibus Pluram: Television and Literature in the USA . In: David Foster Wallace: The fun of it. All essays . Edited by Ulrich Blumenbach, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2018, p. 231 ff.
  76. ^ Marshall Boswell: Understanding David Foster Wallace . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia 2009, ISBN 978-1-57003-887-7 , p. 3.
  77. ↑ Klaus Brinkbäumer: Whoever wants to write has to live . In: Der Spiegel 33/10. August 2009, pp. 118–123, here p. 120, accessed on August 27, 2019.
  78. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 9 f.
  79. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 113 f.
  80. ↑ Laura Miller: Something Real American . In: David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview and Other Conversations . Melville House Publishing, Brooklyn NY / London 2018, ISBN 978-1-61219-741-8 , p. 49.
  81. ^ David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest . Back Bay Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-316-06652-5 .
  82. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 138 ff.
  83. ↑ DT Max: The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace's struggle to surpass “Infinite Jest” . In: The New Yorker , February 28, 2009. Retrieved September 3, 2019.
  84. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , pp. 34 f. and p. 115 f.
  85. ↑ Klaus Brinkbäumer: Whoever wants to write has to live . In: Der Spiegel 33/10. August 2009, pp. 118–123, here p. 123, accessed on August 27, 2019.
  86. ↑ DT Max: Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace . Penguin Books, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-14-750972-7 , p. 116.
  87. ↑ Klaus Brinkbäumer: Whoever wants to write has to live . In: Der Spiegel 33/10. August 2009, pp. 118–123, here p. 120, accessed on August 27, 2019.
  88. ↑ Ralph Clare: The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2018, ISBN 978-1-108-45177-2 , p. XVII.
  89. ↑ Steven Moore: Infinite Jest . In: The Review of Contemporary Fiction, March 22, 1996. Online archive, accessed October 25, 2019 ( online ).
  90. ^ Walter Kirn: Long Hot Novel . In: New York Magazine, February 12, 1996. Archived on an online blog. Accessed November 1, 2019 ( online ).
  91. ^ Marshall Boswell: Understanding David Foster Wallace . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia 2009, ISBN 978-1-57003-887-7 , pp. 118 f.
  92. ^ Adam Kelly: David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline . In: Irish Journal of American Studies , No. 2/2010. Retrieved September 16, 2019 ( online ).
  93. ^ Katherine Hayles: The Illusion of Autonomy and the Fact of Recursivity: Virtual Ecologies, Entertainment, and "Infinite Jest" . New Literary History, Volume 30, No. 3, Summer 1999. The Johns Hopkins University Press 1999. Retrieved October 25, 2019. [6]
  94. ^ David Foster Wallace: E Unibus Pluram: Television and Literature in the USA . In: David Foster Wallace: The fun of it. All essays . Edited by Ulrich Blumenbach, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2018, p. 231.
  95. ^ Adam Kelly: David Foster Wallace an the New Sincerity in American Fiction . In: Consider David Foster Wallace. Critical essays . Ed. David Hering. Sideshow Media Group Press, Los Angeles / Austin 2010. Retrieved August 28, 2019. [7]
  96. ↑ Stephen J. Burn: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide, 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-5707-2 .
  97. ^ Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved October 25, 2019. [8]
  98. ↑ Chad Harbach: David Foster Wallace! In: n + 1 (literary magazine), edition 1, summer 2004. Online edition, accessed on October 25, 2019 ( online ).
  99. ^ AO Scott: The Best Mind of His Generation . In: The New York Times, September 20, 2008. Retrieved September 23, 2019. [9]
  100. ↑ Axel Rühe: Hunter of the lost vocabulary . In: Süddeutsche.de , May 17, 2010, accessed on September 27, 2019.
  101. ^ Richard Kämmerlings: Medusa in the self-help group . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 22, 2009, accessed on September 8, 2019.
  102. ↑ Felicitas von Lovenberg: Are you jealous of "Infinite Jest", Mr. Eugenides? Interview in the FAZ, September 15, 2009. Online edition, accessed on October 2, 2019. [10]
  103. ↑ Denis Scheck: A novel about addiction? In: Die Welt , Schecks Kanon (33), November 10, 2017, accessed on August 26, 2019.
  104. ↑ Tom Bissell: Everything About Everything: David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' at 20 . In: The New York Times, February 1, 2016. Online edition, accessed November 1, 2019. [11] The text is also the foreword in the 2016 edition of Infinite Jest.
  105. ^ Lev Grossmann: Infinite Jest. In: All-TIME 100 Novels, Time, January 7, 2010. Online edition , accessed October 25, 2019.
  106. ^ Adam Kirsch: The Importance of Being Earnest . In: The New Republic, July 28, 2011. Online edition. Retrieved October 31, 2019. [12]
  107. ↑ Michiko Kakutani: Infinite Jest . New York Times, February 13, 1996. Online archive, accessed October 25, 2019 ( online ).
  108. ↑ Dale Peck: Well, duh. In: London Review of Books, July 18, 1996. Retrieved August 29, 2019. (Review). [13]
  109. ^ Lorna Koski: The Full Harold Bloom . In: WWD, April 26, 2011. Online edition, accessed October 25, 2019 ( online ).
  110. ↑ Edward Jackson et al. a .: White Guys: Questioning Infinite Jest's New Sincerity . In: Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, 2017 5 (1): 6, pp. 1–28, without location. Accessed September 6, 2019 ( online ).
  111. ^ Clare Hayes-Brady: The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace: Language, Identity, and Resistance . Bloomsbury Academic, New York / London 2017, ISBN 978-1-5013-3584-6 , p. 19.
  112. ↑ Steve Paulson: David Foster Wallace in the #MeToo Era: A Conversation with Clare Hayes-Brady . In: Los Angeles Review of Books, September 10, 2019, online edition. Retrieved October 28, 2019. [14]
  113. ^ Clare Hayes-Brady: Reading Your Problematic Fave: David Foster Wallace, feminism and #metoo . In: The Honest Ulsterman, June 2018. Online edition. Retrieved October 30, 2019. [15]
  114. ↑ Program details of the theater ( online ), accessed on November 5, 2019.
  115. ↑ Susanne Jasper: The fun society chatters itself to death . In: Braunschweiger Zeitung , June 10, 2013, accessed on November 5, 2019.
  116. ↑ Hillary Busis: “Parks and Recreation”: “Infinite Jest” references in “Partridge” . In: Entertainment Weekly, April 5, 2013, online edition. Retrieved October 24, 2019. [16]
  117. ↑ Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt: "Infinite Fun", July 5 - September 7, 2014 .
  118. ↑ Raffael Barth: Longest radio play in the world ready . BR Puls, March 13, 2017. Retrieved September 14, 2019. [17]
  119. ↑ Stefan Fischer: Completed early. In just ten weeks, "Infinite Fun" turned into a radio play. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 23, 2016, p. 23.
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