“Infinite Jest” Has Turned Thirty. Have We Forgotten How to Read It? | The New Yorker

David Foster Wallace’s novel, in all its immensity, became the subject of sanctification and then scorn. But the work rewards the attention it demands.

David Foster Wallace’s novel, in all its immensity, became the subject of sanctification and then scorn. But the work rewards the attention it demands. January 26, 2026 Wallace’s great novel proposed that the compulsive, addictive character of America, not least its addiction to entertainment, could best be resisted through the engaged reading of fiction. It was a book about addiction that offered itself as a kind of counter-addiction.Photograph by Richard Burbridge A few stanzas from the end of Chaucer’s long poem “Troilus and Criseyde,” the author interrupts his story to indulge in a…

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