The novel Infinite Jest was one of the most frustrating and captivating things I have ever read. It didn't really have a narrative arc. Its character cast was ridiculously unwieldy. But the ideas it contained were so audacious, so blind to taboo, so fucking beautiful, that you kept reading the book just to happen on another one. Here are three of the ideas I found most memorable:
3. The Disfiguring Beauty — The main female character wore a veil to cover up her face. This was natural; her disfigurement traumatized her through her adolescence so that eventually she decided to just cover herself, to attempt to live a normal life. Eventually, the reader learns her disfigurement is an unconventional one: Her beauty crippled her ability to exist. Men became transfixed, women grew enraged, her stalkers were legion. So she covered herself up.
2. The Last Movie You'll Ever Watch -- Floating through the novel "Infinite Jest" is a videotape of the same name that is so captivating it causes people to become vegetables; they literally can't stop watching it. The joke of the book of the same name is that the book was similar to the movie; I knew that the book wasn't going anywhere, I knew such a riot of notions and characters would never be able to come together in the end, and yet, I ignored my misgivings because it was so captivating. And I suspect that was the punchline.
1. Suicide By Microwave Oven -- This still goes down as the most horrible way to commit suicide I have ever come across. A character cuts a hole in the oven door, inserts his head through it, and microwaves his head at high power until he dies.
This morning, I heard the sad news that Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace died over the weekend. He hung himself. He was 46 years old.
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