Title: Infinite Jest
First published: 1996
Description: A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Subjects: Saddness, Compulsive behavior, Entertainment, Tennis, Addicts, Fiction, Separatist movements, Motion pictures, Humorous stories, Family life, Coming of age, Friendship, Dominance (Psychology), Fiction, humorous, nyt:trade-fiction-paperback=2008-10-05, New York Times bestseller, Fiction, humorous, general