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"Besides frequently losing itself in superfluous and wildly tangential flights of lexical diarrhea, the book suffers under the sheer burden of its incredible le

• thatcat 9y ago
  The depth of the tangents and jargon in IJ are an aesthetic DFW adopted to counter the clever minimalism so popular in commercial speech of the late 90s. He called it maximalism. The burden is to some extent intentionally constructed; the reader must flip back between 2 bookmarks to read it at all since there are over >10% of the 1000 pages are footnotes located at the end of the book. It seems to be a meta-satire of two voices always present in late 90s US anti-depressant ads and the fine print that was always read quickly at the end. This burden forces the reader to constantly consider the "fine print" reality of the authors voice behind the fictional nonlinear narrative he is presenting you through the voice of other characters. The form of the novel reflects the content of the message it presents, this is feature not a flaw. The paragraph after the one you quote reads... "if you can come to terms with his dense and labored style, the rewards are often tremendous. There’s no doubt that Wallace’s talent is immense and his imagination limitless. When he backs off and gives his narrative some breathing room, he emerges as a consistently innovative, sensitive and intelligent writer."