What's So Funny? Reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest *In-Person* *NEW*

What is Infinite Jest? The title of a famous, even infamous, book? The title of an infamous film described in said book? An allusion to Shakespeare's Hamlet? Wordplay on the length of the book and its notorious endnotes? Yes to all. David Foster Wallace was a complicated man who wrote complicated, yet eminently readable, books. Building upon the giants of postmodernist literature, Wallace was a hero to other writers, as well as to legions of readers. By turns prodigy and dropout, novelist and reporter, sensation and introvert, addict and recovered addict, Wallace put not only himself into his writing, but his reflections on the direction of culture that would have made Nostradamus squint. Set in his near future, largely within a walk or MBTA bus ride from Brattle Square, Infinite Jest feels imminent, immediate, and, for better or worse, eternal. Perhaps two terms' worth. (No jest.) Please read to p. 37 in the paperback edition for the first class. 

Required book: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Back Bay Books ISBN: 978-0316066525

Instructor: Joshua Passell