I'll take a stab at this since i won't shut up about liking it.

IJ is a novel in the sense that it is a piece of longform written fiction, but not in the sense that it concerns a particular narrative. there's no hero's journey or anything like that here. what it is ultimately is an experimental foray into being alive in the age of modern entertainments and hedonisms. in terms of form, it's considered a "maximalist" work of fiction, and as such, there are a lot of words put towards the task of throwing information at you, in a world that is ultimately foreign. so you're reading a series of interconnected vignettes, in many different styles, and in which many points of action occur outside the pages of the text.

it doesn't help the reader in that this dystopia has seen the united states quite literally sell off the naming rights of years to corporations, and there's one page in the book that lays out the chronological order of these years that are named as advertisements. the majority of the novel takes place in "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" which is the second to last year of the chronology, but the opening vignette concerning a vocally disabled Hal take place almost a year later in "The Year of Glad." you essentially start the novel after all of the off-text action has concluded, and then get tossed back closer to the start of the main narrative chronology.

Care about Hal and his friends, care about Gately and his friends, care about the wheelchair-bound Quebecois separatist organization hell-bent on punishing all americans with a video that literally melts their brains.

it also helps to be on lookout for imagery related to Hamlet, as there are exceedingly many allusions to the play throughout the story, including the broad narrative arc of the novel and the death of Hal's father, James O. Incandenza.

if you hate the book, just quit reading it though, it's very much so not for everyone. i personally enjoyed it because putting the plot together is a puzzle in and of itself, and the near-future dystopia that foster wallace summoned, in particular their forms of entertainment and the meditations on loneliness, addiction, and depression all resonate presciently today, despite being written before the internet functioned as little more t han text sharing. for example, he essentially predicted streaming services and what streaming content would do to our brains.

i'm also a big nerd, so i very much love a book as pedantically inaccessible as this one.

edit: thanks for reminding me of weed man, i want to go back and read that again now that i smoke. didn't back when i read this.

edit edit: think of it this way, it's a story trying to get you to feel all the myriad ways capitalism will personally drive you insane, and other things also

Imagine reading books without pictures in them.

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It's an acquired taste lol

Sounds fun, I need to find a copy

Eventually the narrative stands start to cohere. A picture forms. But it requires patience, and the willingness to just read the text. Forget the guides. Just read it.

it's funny you mentioned House of Leaves. Because I thoroughly enjoyed IJ and did not enjoy HoL. I appreciated what HoL did well in terms of presentation but I don't think the writing itself was strong to keep me hooked. IJ had the benefit of DFW being an extremely meticulous and hilarious author. Imo he has a way of writing intelligently that doesn't come off as smarmy or pretentious or whatever, (he's the opposite of what you might find in your average NYT article). He also claimed to have physically attended AA meetings and the like before trying to put certain scenes in the book which, at the time, was felt by me (it's been years since I've read the book).

If u don't want to power all the way through IJ I recommend reading DFW's short stories or the various articles/essays that he had published.

oh and I should also add that I read the book over the course of at least 3-4 months.

You’re doing it right. Keep going.

What am I supposed to see in this book?

Whatever makes you feel good about it. It's like those magic eye puzzles in book form, but not really. Wallace was going for some recursiveness where the book you're reading is symbolic of the macguffin whatever in order to induce ego death or something but I didn't really find it to be very well done and then they didn't bother editing it "because he's a genius." It's just a mess. You'd be better off listening his "this is water" speech. That's about the only salvageable bit really. I didn't find that any of the characters had like any individual voices to them or anything. It was just a real disappointment and most of the people who voluntarily bring it up in conversation probably haven't read it.

Edit: not kidding about the editing btw

/lit/ tier post

simply read the book and pay attention. information is revealed as you go. make note of words that you don't know. less than 1 tenth of a book is not enough to understand all of it.