Will’s Reviews > Infinite Jest > Status Update
Will
is on page 209 of 1079
The book makes you laugh, and then makes you feel bad for laughing. This interrogation of one’s own laughter is one of the ways, I think, that a joke can be a serious argument.
Makes me think of Nabokov’s ideas about cruel laughter in Kafka and Cervantes, although the connection is still nascent.
Reminds me also of Joyce’s rhetorical use of jokes in Ulysses?
— Apr 16, 2026 08:10AM
Makes me think of Nabokov’s ideas about cruel laughter in Kafka and Cervantes, although the connection is still nascent.
Reminds me also of Joyce’s rhetorical use of jokes in Ulysses?
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Will’s Previous Updates
Will
is on page 228 of 1079
It occurs to me that ‘Madam Psychosis’ is probably a pun off ‘metempsychosis’ and a reference to Ulysses?
— Apr 20, 2026 08:59AM
Will
is on page 143 of 1079
using the feather boa to connect Poor Tony across different sections with different narrative voice is cool
— Apr 09, 2026 10:26AM
Will
is on page 135 of 1079
Mario’s first remotely romantic experience: brilliant, although I probably feel this bc i find the isolation of both Mario and Millicent relatable… the dialogue is amazing, DFW really captures the talking-past-each-other thing. the section manages somehow to not feel too cruel to either character, or really to make us feel sympathetic to the their experience of cruelty.
— Apr 09, 2026 07:11AM
Will
is on page 95 of 1079
It manages somehow to be both really good and really not very good at all….
— Apr 07, 2026 06:58AM
Will
is on page 54 of 1079
The section about Fenton the schizophrenic is unbelievable. (It’s also all two sentences.) Must’ve read it 4 or 5 times at first, then I dreamt of it, then i immediately picked up the book and reread it when i awoke.
Wallace’s brand of linguistics parody takes some getting used to, especially his pension for redundancy [eg “the late Dr. James … (now deceased”)] and oxymoron (“and but” appears a lot)
— Apr 04, 2026 05:59AM
Wallace’s brand of linguistics parody takes some getting used to, especially his pension for redundancy [eg “the late Dr. James … (now deceased”)] and oxymoron (“and but” appears a lot)
