It’s as if committing to his own story would have been too obvious, and maybe too honest, for Wallace — he wants to make sure we know that on some level, he doesn’t really mean it. But Wallace didn’t have the grand Pynchonian playfulness he would have needed to pull off this kind of bet-hedging performance, and the narrative of Infinite Jest can’t support the riches Wallace lavishes on it. It lies hopelessly pinned to the ground beneath them, twitching limply, like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree crushed beneath its own ornaments. The result is a book that’s brilliant, funny, heart- and brain-rending and borderline unreadable. It’s great, but its greatness runs but north by northwest.
