this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
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Is David Foster Wallace a word-smith? Maybe. Critics and reviewers certainly seem to think so.
Personally, he writes far too densely for my tastes. His points get lost in an avalanche of flowery, intellectual language that, even with context clues, I'm never quite sure I'm interpreting right. In the above quote, for example, just what the hell does "endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles" actually mean?
The man also seems to detest paragraphs. That, or he loves them far too much; and ensures they are as long and intimidating as possible. Reading Infinite Jest, you'll often come across blocks of text that are multiple pages long with no breaks.
It's not like he isn't insightful though, it's just that uncovering what he's trying to say is a chore.
If I remember correctly, and I don't have the quote for this, but I think he once said that he was aware that Infinite Jest takes effort to read. It wasn't a deliberate choice to make it difficult for the sake of being difficult, but that it was difficult because we're no longer used to putting in the effort into reading. The deal must be that if you do the work, the story will reward you for it. Any book can be made difficult to read, but if they do it for the sake of being difficult, you will not want to read more from that author I guess.