《Infinite Jest》简介：

Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace. The lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-parodic future version of North America, and touches on substance addiction recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising, popular entertainment, film theory, Quebec separatism, and tennis, among other topics.

The novel includes 388 numbered endnotes (some of which have footnotes of their own) that explain or expand on points in the story. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace characterized them as a method of disrupting the linearity of the text while maintaining some sense of narrative cohesion.[1]

The novel was included by Time magazine in its list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.[2]

As of 2006 (ten years after its publication), 150,000 copies of Infinite Jest had been sold and the book has continued to sell steadily.[3]

Wallace was 33 when the novel was published.

《Infinite Jest》摘录：

Urban jogging in a sweaty pack is tedious. Have Himself hunch down to put a long pale arm around your shoulders and tell you that his own father had told him that talent is sort of a dark gift, that talent is its own expectation: it is there from the start and either lived up to or lost. Here's how to avoid thinking about any of this by practicing and playing until everything runs on autopilot and talent's unconscious exercise becomes a way to escape yourself, a long waking dream of pure play. The irony is that this makes you very good, and you start to become regarded as having a prodigious talent to live up to.