Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

• Born: February 21, 1962
• Birthplace: Ithaca, New York
• Died: September 12, 2008
• Place of death: Claremont, California

First published: 1996

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Absurdist

Time of plot: First decade of the twenty-first century

Locale: Phoenix, Arizona; Tucson, Arizona; Boston, Massachusetts; Enfield, Massachusetts

Principal Characters

Harold "Hal" Incandenza, the protagonist, a young tennis player

Michael Pemulis, his best friend

Orin Incandenza, his oldest brother, a football player

Mario Incandenza, his older brother, a physically disabled filmmaker

James Orin Incandenza, his father, the maker of a lethal movie

Avril Incandenza,his domineering mother

Joelle Van Dyne, "Madame Psychosis," the lead actress in the lethal film, a cocaine addict

Don Gately, a recovering drug addict and a burglar

Rémy Marathe, a Canadian quadruple agent working for the ONAN government

Hugh/Helen Steeply, an ONAN agent and cross-dresser

The Story

The postmodern Infinite Jest is set in the first decade of the twenty-first century, which was the near future when the novel was published in 1996. The story weaves through time and introduces many intricate vignettes full of minor characters with ironic names and features absurd situations rendered with much wordplay. It is augmented by nearly four hundred farcical endnotes. The story takes place in the Organization of North American Nations (ONAN), comprising present-day Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and years are referred to by their annual corporate sponsor.

At eighteen, student-athlete Harold "Hal" Incandenza faces an admissions interview at the University of Arizona because of the discrepancy between his low standardized test scores and his high-quality writing samples and stellar tennis record. Asked to explain himself, Hal seems to give an erudite response that the plot reveals sounds like guttural gibberish to his audience. He is rushed to an emergency room.

Introducing the first of a vast number of minor characters through a brief sketch, the plot describes how elaborately addict Ken Erdedy prepares for a marijuana binge. At twelve, Hal is sent for therapy with a conversationalist who turns out to be his father.

At seventeen, when most of the events of the novel take place, Hal (judged fourth-best tennis player under eighteen in the United States) shares a dormitory room at the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA), in Massachusetts, with his older brother Mario. Mario was born prematurely after a seven-month pregnancy and therefore has a severely deformed body but a bright mind; he makes documentary films about events at ETA. In their room, Hal gets a call from his oldest brother, Orin. Meanwhile, a lethal entertainment film, which compels people to watch its pleasurable content repeatedly while forgoing sustenance (and therefore starving to death), is picked up and watched by a medical attaché to a Saudi prince in Boston.

At night in their dorm room, Hal and Mario discuss how their mother, the Moms, appears happier since the death of their father, called Himself. In Phoenix, the professional football player Orin Incandenza wakes up. He is disgusted by the big cockroaches in his apartment. He kills them by asphyxiating them under upturned glasses. At ETA, Hal secretly gets high on marijuana. He thinks about his mother, Avril Incandenza; her adoptive brother, Charles Tavis, runs ETA after the death of Dr. James Orin Incandenza.

The drug addict and burglar Don Gately is introduced. At twenty-seven (at the time when Hal is sixteen), Gately accidentally kills a Canadian dignitary and is arrested. The story of James Incandenza and his beautiful young wife, Avril Mondragon, is told. A tennis player at college, James studies optical physics, founds ETA, and turns to filmmaking. At fifty-four years old, he commits suicide.

The story introduces Michael Pemulis, Hal’s friend at ETA, who talks about marijuana use among the athletes. The patient Kate Gompert describes her marijuana use to a physician. Mario talks about game theory with the head coach at ETA

In Tucson, Québec separatist–turned–ONAN agent Rémy Marathe meets his government contact, Unspecified Services agent Hugh Steeply. Marathe, who has lost his legs and is confined to a wheelchair, is supposedly an agent of the Québec terrorist organization Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (AFR), or wheelchair assassins. Steeply is a cross-dresser who attends the meeting in drag. Marathe and Steeply discuss the lethal film, known as the Entertainment. The film was made by James Incandenza. Steeply wonders if Québec separatists are using it. Their discussion is intercut with scenes of Hal and his friends at ETA and minor character vignettes. Steeply asks Marathe to go to Boston to find the rumored anti-Entertainment antidote film to the lethal movie.

Next, the plot introduces Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, then retells some urban legends. Pemulis buys a potent, fictional hallucinogenic in Boston and sells some of it to Hal. The substance is nicknamed DMZ or Madame Psychosis, after a student radio personality. Hal describes a tennis documentary shot by his brother Mario.

The fate of some characters at Ennet House is told, interwoven with Hal and Pemulis listening to the radio show of Madame Psychosis, pseudonym of Joelle Van Dyne, who starred in many of James’s films. Wearing a veil over her face as usual, Joelle attends a party of her friend Molly Notkin and gets depressed. She attempts to overdose in Molly’s bathroom on drugs she bought in Boston before Molly’s party.

On the phone, Hal and Orin discuss their father’s suicide: James put his head in a microwave he rigged for this purpose after making his last film with Joelle. Hal and ETA win a big tennis tournament. When Hal was nine, Orin had switched from tennis to football upon entering college. At the time, he was in love with Joelle, then known as Prettiest Girl of All Time (Prettiest GOAT).

In Boston, Marathe tells Steeply that the lethal film is made in the United States and that Canada has nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, on November 8, in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (YDAU), to celebrate Interdependence Day, residents of ETA play a game of Eschaton, a mix of a computer nuclear-war game and tennis. Ennet House residents are required to attend a meeting of a Boston chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. As part of his probation, Gately is one of Ennet’s staffers. He becomes curious about the new resident, Joelle, who was admitted after her failed suicide.

Next, the plot describes Mario’s film about the founding of ONAN, which is tied to the rise of former lounge singer Johnny Gentle of the Clean USA Party (CUSP). After his election as US president, Gentle founded the ONAN superstate. Within ONAN, the United States tries to cede to Canada the toxic waste dump that is part of New England.

Marathe and Steeply continue to discuss the effects of the lethal film. Marathe and Steeply discuss human psychological experiments in Canada in the 1970s. In Boston, the film-cartridge store of brothers Lucien and Bertraund Antitoi is raided by AFR terrorists, who kill the brothers in their search for the master cartridge of the lethal film. Marathe and Steeply continue to discuss the film’s effects and their own hunt for the master cartridge, which may have been stolen during Gately’s last burglary. Marathe and Steeply reveal that both AFR and the government have lost careless people watching a read-only copy of the lethal film.

In response to their performance at the Eschaton game, Hal and his friends are summoned to the headmaster, Hal’s uncle Tavis. They overhear Hal’s mother, Avril, give a speech to preteen female tennis players.

Marathe and Steeply liken the effect of the film to that of the mythic Greek figure Medusa, who turned to stone those who watched her. The government is increasingly worried about the film.

Stories of Hal and Pemulis’s adventures are interlaced with those of Gately and the Ennet House residents. At this point, an interwoven subplot concerns Orin and a Swiss hand model at an Arizona motel. After they have sex, a man in a wheelchair knocks on their door. He asks Orin questions for a bizarre survey, which Orin answers.

Protecting some Ennet House residents from three angry Canadians, Gately is shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the leg. Joelle and others save him and bring him to Ennet House, choosing not to involve the police.

The plot covers adventures of Hal and Pemulis, such as one of Hal’s key tennis matches, events at Ennet House, Steeply’s pursuit of the film cartridge, and Orin’s past. Three of James Incandenza’s films are described in detail.

Next, the AFR contemplates two ways to get the master cartridge of the film. Instead of pursuing actors such as Joelle, it starts looking at film stores; however, it finds just a read-only copy. It refocuses its energies on finding the actors.

As planned by AFR, Marathe tries to get admitted to Ennet House, faking an addiction. As Joelle cleans her room, she remembers her love for Orin and how she was introduced through him to work as an actress. She remembers some of her films. This section is interlaced with the entry interview of Marathe, who is admitted to Ennet House. Meanwhile, Mario ponders the issue of sadness in one of his documentaries. He discusses the topic with Hal.

The government interrogates Molly Notkin about Joelle’s role in the lethal film. For the first time, the film’s title is given: Infinite Jest (V or VI). Joelle told Molly she starred in the film as a figure of Death, sitting in the nude, looking highly pregnant through a cinematic effect, her face hidden behind a veil, perhaps holding a knife while giving a monologue on death. Joelle never saw the film. Joelle’s alleged real name is revealed to be Lucille Duquette, and some of her backstory is told. At a previous Thanksgiving, Joelle’s mother disfigured Joelle’s face with her chemist father’s acid, jealous of their father-daughter relationship. This contradicts Joelle’s earlier explanation for wearing a veil, in which she tells Gately that she hides her face because she is so beautiful that she feels deformed. After attacking Joelle, her mother killed herself by putting her arms into a kitchen garbage disposal.

Hal is at Ennet House but unclear about its true nature. Gately is in the hospital recovering from his gunshot and stab wounds. He has visions of James Incandenza as a wraith and of Joelle as Death. Joelle visits him.

The government decides on the sponsor, Glad, for the following year’s name. In return, the sponsor develops a film cartridge warning children about watching underground entertainment like Infinite Jest.

Interlaced with Hal’s memories, Gately relives his past while in the hospital, including Gately’s drug use. Gately remembers working with the drug addict Gene "Fax" Fackelmann, who cheated the bookie for whom he worked and for which he was killed.

Agent Steeply apprehends Joelle and interrogates her about Infinite Jest. Joelle says James Incandenza made it as a joke. There is no antidote film. Joelle tells Steeply the master cartridge was buried with James in what is now a toxic-waste dump.

Hal watches another of his late father’s films. Joelle returns to Ennet House after her interrogation. Preparations are made for an ETA fundraiser.

The AFR kidnaps Orin and interrogates him about the location of his father’s grave. He is trapped inside a huge glass, and the AFR releases cockroaches into his glass to terrorize him. At the hospital, Gately remembers the events leading up to Fackelmann’s death.

Bibliography

Burn, Stephen. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: A Reader’s Guide. 2nd ed. London: Continuum, 2012. Print.

Carlisle, Greg. Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Los Angeles: Sideshow, 2007. Print.

Dulk, Allard Den. "Beyond Endless ‘Aesthetic’ Irony." Studies in the Novel 44.3 (2012): 325–46. Literary Reference Center. Web. 25 July 2014. <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=82328828&site=lrc-live>.

Jacobs, Timothy. "The Brothers Incandenza." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49.3 (2007): 265–93. Literary Reference Center. Web. 25 July 2014. <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=26378620&site=lrc-live>.