The title of the book is also the title of a fictive film within the text. The daunting materiality of the text reflects the content of the novel perfectly. It requires three bookmarks in order to keep up with the plot and the timeline, but for the reader willing to engage it in this way, it is quite rewarding. Clocking in at 1079 pages with 388 endnotes, some of which contained irrelevant or even fake information and others of which contained crucial plot exposition, the novel was intimidating to the average reader. He wanted his readers to engage with the text on an emotional level-to, in his words, “feel less alone.” That goal was a tall order considering the nature of the text itself. Whereas classic postmodernism emphasized ironic distance and playful language in order to undercut unified meanings, Wallace employed those same techniques toward a more seemingly genuine end. However, Wallace did not necessarily think of himself as a postmodern author, but rather as an author using the tools of postmodernism to undermine this intellectual trend's usual message. Upon publication, the sprawling novel was almost immediately hailed as a postmodern masterpiece. David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest, published in 1996, was written over a period of several years beginning in the late 1980s.
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