Kevin’s Reviews > Infinite Jest > Status Update

Guys I figured it out. Its part sports drama, part manual for how to survive if you ever find yourself inhabiting the body of a gifted but depressed teenage boy in the 1990s, part reference book for the obsessive wordsmith/drug enthusiast, and part laugh at all the horrible ways you can find yourself living and dying. Got it.

This book is like if someone sent you a video of your dog getting hit by a dump truck but your dog was actually your childhood best friend and helped you through a miserable childhood but you had to leave it behind because it was your parent's dog and they were the reason you were miserable and the reason you left but also who sent you the video and for some reason had added the Price is Right trombone to the video.

"The Advanced Basics chairperson looks like a perfect cross between pictures of Dick Cavett and Truman Capote except this guy’s also like totally, almost flamboyantly bald..."

This may be the only instance in the history of the english language where the phrase "flamboyantly bald" was used.

As if he were writing about my teens and early 20s:

"Pemulis starts very slowly to lean over toward Kornspan, looking around confidentially. He gets so his face is right up near the side of Kornspan’s mesomorphic head and whispers. ‘Hey. Eliot. Hey.’
Kornspan, bent over, chest heaving, rolls his head a little his way.
Pemulis whispers: ‘Pussy.’"

At 87 pages, I'm feeling a little lost. Looking for a point among all of the well everything maybe pointless. Or is the point just the absurdity of it all. Haha!