Tried to power through Infinite Jest for 3 months straight

I kept seeing people rave about how brilliant it is, but by page 400 I had no clue what was actually happening and didn't care enough to find out. The footnotes were supposed to be clever but they just made me flip back and forth like a maniac. Am I the only one who thinks literary fiction doesn't get a free pass on being needlessly confusing?

2 comments

2 Comments

richard_ramirez1d ago

Wait, did you actually sit down and force yourself to read something that wasn't working for 400 pages? Life is too short for that, man. I get that people think it's some kind of literary masterpiece, but honestly, half the time they're just trying to look smart by pretending they got through it (and the footnotes, god, the footnotes). It's like a book that's trying to be hard on purpose, as if confusion equals depth or something. If you have to flip back and forth like a crazy person just to follow a story, that's not clever storytelling, that's bad editing. Literary fiction gets a weird pass for being a chore to read, but at the end of the day, a book should make you want to keep reading, not feel like homework.

rivershah1d ago

Totally agree, @richard_ramirez. Did that with some award winner last year. 300 pages of me just hating it. Felt like I was in a book club I didn't sign up for.