It might be the delirium talking, but I’ve been home sick for two days, and, having slogged through another hundred pages of Infinite Jest, I’ve come to the sudden, inexplicably delayed realization that this book is really, really boring.
It’s not that I’m not intelligent enough to appreciate its charms, or that I’m not putting in enough effort. It’s just that there is nothing about the book that appeals to me. If there’s one thing I can pinpoint as something I look for in a novel, it’s conciseness and intricacy and above all elegance; while this book is certainly complex, it’s complex not in the way of origami or flowers, but in the way of ancient wiring- the kind that makes a master electrician throw up his hands in despair and reach for the wire cutters. It’s just a mess. A intellectual mess, sure- but a mess nonetheless, and there’s nothing I can do about that.
Of course, I can’t very well stop reading now… I’m on page 452.