I had the great luck to be given Infinite Jest by a friend who had read it, and I cannot praise it enough. It is by far the most amazing book I have ever read,

I had the great luck to be given Infinite Jest by a friend who had read it, and I cannot praise it enough. It is by far the most amazing book I have ever read, achieving a clear and full vision into the world of its characters' internal thought processes to a degree I had not known was possible. After reading Infinite Jest, I have struggled to find any author to equal its vitality, and have been frequently disappointed by the flat hollow fakeness of most works I have read since it, by authors both new to me (Paul Auster) and old (William Gibson). His use of language has a kind of magical... it is hard to get exactly how he does it but his writing brings his characters alive. I am crushed and saddened by his death and the tragedy of its cause. Depression haunts the people in many of our lives. It is a terrible disease made worse by the mistaken notion that melancholy is somehow noble or simply a fact of creativity, an illness to be proud of. It is certainly not.