Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by American writer David Foster Wallace. Categorized as an encyclopedic novel, Infinite Jest is featured in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.
The novel has an unconventional narrative structure and includes hundreds of extensive endnotes, some with footnotes of their own.
A literary fiction bestseller after having sold 44,000 hardcover copies in its first year of publication, the novel has since sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Development

Wallace began Infinite Jest, "or something like it", several times between 1986 and 1989. His efforts in 1991–92 were more productive; by the end of 1993, he had a working draft of the novel.
From early 1992 until the novel's publication, excerpts from various drafts appeared sporadically in magazines and literary journals including Harvard Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Harper's Magazine, The Iowa Review, The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.
The book was edited by Michael Pietsch of Little, Brown and Company. Pietsch made suggestions and recommendations to Wallace, but every editing decision was Wallace's. He accepted cuts amounting to around 250 manuscript pages from his original submission. He resisted many changes for reasons that he usually explained.
The novel gets its name from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1, in which Hamlet holds the skull of the court jester, Yorick, and says, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!"
Wallace's working title for Infinite Jest was A Failed Entertainment.

Setting

In the novel's future world, the United States, Canada, and Mexico together compose a unified North American superstate known as the Organization of North American Nations, or O.N.A.N.. Corporations are allowed the opportunity to bid for and purchase naming rights for each calendar year, replacing traditional numerical designations with ostensibly honorary monikers bearing corporate names. Although the narrative is fragmented and spans several "named" years, most of the story takes place during "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment".
On the orders of U.S. President Johnny Gentle, much of what used to be the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada has become a giant hazardous waste dump, an area "given" to Canada and known as the "Great Concavity" by Americans due to the resulting displacement of the border.

Plot

There are several major interwoven narratives, including:

A fringe group of Québécois radicals, Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, plan a violent coup to free Quebec from O.N.A.N.
Addicts living in Boston reach "rock bottom" with substance abuse before entering a residential drug and alcohol recovery program, Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, where they progress in recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.
Students train and study at the Enfield Tennis Academy, founded by James Incandenza and now run by Avril Incandenza and Avril's adopted brother Charles Tavis.
The personal drama of the Incandenza family centers around Hal's struggles to live up to high expectations of academic and athletic success amid wider dysfunction.

These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest, also called "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so compelling that its viewers lose all interest in anything other than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die. It was James Incandenza's final work. He completed it during a period of sobriety that was insisted upon by its lead actress, Joelle van Dyne. The Québécois separatists seek a replicable master copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States. The United States Office of Unspecified Services aims to intercept the master copy to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations, or else to find or produce an anti-entertainment that can counter the film's effects. Joelle seeks treatment for substance abuse problems at Ennet House. A.F.R. member Rémy Marathe visits Ennet House, aiming to find Joelle and a lead to the master copy of "the Entertainment".
Wallace compared the novel's structure to a Sierpiński gasket, a type of fractal. He said the book's "chaos is more on the surface" and that it had a coherent structure despite its seemingly disjointed plot.

Major characters

The Incandenza family

Hal Incandenza is the youngest of the Incandenza children and arguably the novel's protagonist, as its events revolve around his time at E.T.A. Hal is prodigiously intelligent and talented, but insecure about his abilities. His friend Michael Pemulis calls him Inc, and his favorite thing to do is secretly smoke marijuana in the seclusion of the E.T.A. tunnels. He has difficult relationships with both his parents. He has an eidetic memory and has memorized the Oxford English Dictionary, and like his mother often corrects his friends' and family's grammar. Hal's mental degradation and alienation from those around him culminate in his chronologically last appearance in the novel, in which his attempts at speech and facial expressions are incomprehensible to others. The origin of Hal's final condition is unclear; possible causes include marijuana withdrawal, a drug obtained by Michael Pemulis, a patch of mold Hal ate as a child, and a mental breakdown from years of training to be a top junior tennis player.
Avril Incandenza, née Mondragon, is the domineering mother of the Incandenza children and wife of James. A tall, beautiful francophone Québécois, she becomes a major figure at Enfield Tennis Academy after her husband's suicide and begins, or perhaps continues, a relationship with Charles Tavis, the school's new head, also a Canadian and Avril's either adoptive or half-brother. Her sexual relationships with men are a matter of some speculation/discussion; one with John "No Relation" Wayne is depicted. Avril has phobias about uncleanliness and disease, closed doors, and overhead lighting, and is also described as agoraphobic. She has an obsessive-compulsive need to watch over E.T.A. and her two younger sons, Hal and Mario, who live at the school; Avril and Orin are no longer in contact. James Incandenza believes that he can connect with his children only through her. Orin believes she runs the family with ingrained manipulation and the illusion of choice. Her family nickname is "the Moms".
James Orin Incandenza Jr., Avril's husband and Orin's, Mario's and Hal's father, is an optics expert and filmmaker as well as the founder of Enfield Tennis Academy. The son of small-time actor James O. Incandenza Sr., James Jr. created Infinite Jest, an enigmatic and fatally seductive film that was his last work. He used Joelle van Dyne, his son Orin's strikingly beautiful girlfriend, in many of his films, including the fatal "Entertainment". He appears in the book mainly either in flashbacks or as a "wraith", having killed himself at the age of 54 by placing his head in a microwave oven. He is an alcoholic who drinks Wild Turkey whiskey. His family nickname is "Himself". Orin also calls him "the Mad Stork" or "the Sad Stork".
Mario Incandenza is the Incandenzas' second son, although his biological father may be Charles Tavis. Severely deformed since birth—he is macrocephalic, homodontic, bradykinetic, and stands or walks at a 45-degree angle—as well as mentally "slow", he is nonetheless perennially cheerful and kind. He is also a budding auteur, having served as James's camera and directorial assistant and later inheriting the prodigious studio equipment and film lab his father built on the academy grounds. Somewhat surprisingly, he is an avid fan of Madame Psychosis's dark radio show, partly because he finds her voice familiar. Hal, though younger, acts like a supportive older brother to Mario, whom Hal calls "Booboo".
Orin Incandenza is the Incandenzas' eldest son. He is a punter for the Phoenix Cardinals and a serial womanizer, and is estranged from everyone in his family except Hal. It is suggested that Orin lost his attraction to Joelle after she became disfigured when her mother unintentionally threw acid in her face during a Thanksgiving dinner, but Orin cites Joelle's questionable relationship with his father as the reason for the breakup even though he later admits he knows there was no romance. Orin focuses his subsequent womanizing on young mothers; Hal suggests that this is because he blames his father's death on his mother. Molly Notkin, a friend of Joelle's, says that Orin has numerous "malcathected issues with his mother". Orin's relationship with his father was tense. His father tells Joelle "he simply didn't know how to speak with either of his undamaged sons without their mother's presence and mediation. Orin could not be made to shut up."
The Enfield Tennis Academy
Michael Pemulis, a working-class teenager from an Allston, Massachusetts family, and Hal's best friend. A prankster and the school's resident drug dealer, Pemulis is also very proficient in mathematics. This, combined with his limited but ultraprecise lobbing, made him the school's first master of Eschaton, a computer-aided turn-based nuclear wargame that requires players to be adept at both game theory and lobbing tennis balls at targets. Although the novel takes place long after Pemulis's Eschaton days, Pemulis is still regarded as the game's all-time greatest player, and he remains the final court of appeal for the game. His brother, Matty, is a gay hustler who as a child was sexually abused by their father.
John "No Relation" Wayne, the top-ranked player at E.T.A. He is frighteningly efficient, controlled, and machine-like on the court. Wayne is almost never directly quoted in the narrative; his statements are either summarized by the narrator or repeated by other characters. His Canadian citizenship has been revoked since he came to E.T.A. His father is a sick asbestos miner in Quebec who hopes John will soon start earning "serious $" in "the Show" to "take him away from all this". Pemulis discovers Wayne is having a sexual relationship with Avril Incandenza, and it is later revealed that Hal is also aware of the relationship. Wayne may be sympathetic to, or actively supporting, the radical Quebec separatists.
Ortho "The Darkness" Stice, another of Hal's close friends. His name consists of the Greek root ortho and the anglicized suffix -stice from the noun interstice, which originally derived from the Latin verb sistere. He endorses only brands that have black-colored products, and is at all times clothed entirely in black, hence his nickname. Late in the book Stice nearly defeats Hal in a three-set tennis match, shortly after which his forehead is frozen to a window and his bed appears either bolted or mysteriously levitated to the ceiling. There are indications that Stice is being visited by the ghost of James Incandenza.
Lyle, E.T.A. weight room guru. He spends most of his time perched atop the towel dispenser in the lotus position. Lyle licks the sweat off the boys' bodies after they work out and in turn gives them life advice. His behavior is described by the narrator as unusual but "nothing faggy". Lyle is close to Mario, whom he sometimes employs to speak to players who struggle with self-esteem.