House of Leaves is a great novel. Will feel like a completely fresh take on narrative form.
Infinite Jest is also great, if you haven't read it. It gets a lot of bad press mostly due to being fetishized by a particular type of insufferable person. The book has its flaws, but is a great piece of writing and (depending how old you are, where you are in life, etc) may offer a different lens. Also, the writing is excellent.
I didn't finish Infinite Jest. I found it kind of insufferable. I really don't want to detract from anyone who found it enjoyable; it's surely a monumental work. But personally it felt incredibly depressing and that made it hard to read.
The dialogues made it feel like experiencing isolation and disconnection from other people; the characters talk to each other, but don't listen or care for anyone but themselves or the ones/things they deify.
The thing is, I think that was kind of the point of the book (at least as far as I read). But I couldn't handle it. That, on top of the many paragraphs of needlessly esoteric language he peppers in, made me feel like I was reading a book written for someone else.
Should I go back and finish the book? What makes it compelling to others?
My favorite aspect of the book is the way in which it depicts “addiction” in its many forms such as being addicted to drugs, playing sports, consumer products or work. It makes you think hard about the elusive nature of happiness and fulfillment.
That was my primary takeaway as well. Some people I've talked to about it didn't quite get that theme from it, but I think it helps frame its point in a less scattershot way. It is still a concept I constantly think about, though it doesn't help me avoid the pitfalls much, which I think is also kind of the point.
I've just started it - I'm about 10% of the way in and I'm really engaged - enjoying it but with a kind of mental equivalent of full-body exhaustion way after a big day at the beach - it's fun but also hard and sometimes just plain difficult. I think DFW was swimming in so many ideas & feelings that Infinite Jest was a way of letting it all come out in a Kerouacian-stream without much thought for concision.
If it helps anyone decide whether to give it a go, two recent books I read and loved were 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and Underworld by Don DeLillo, and Infinite Jest is satisfying me in the hard-earned way they both did.
I've read both of these, and don't recommend them.
House of Leaves has a very uninteresting plot, and raises more questions than it answers. It's physically painful to read, because most pages, you have to rotate the entire book every which way since the words go in spirals.
Infinite Jest is good, but way too long. A good 70% of the book could have been cut out or condensed. The writing is also intentionally bad, which makes it harder to read. There are definitely good lines, but it's kind of like DFW used a random sentence generator and some of the lines just happened to be amazing, but 90% of it is garbage.
Re House of Leaves, I don't recall it being most pages. There was a flurry of those at the end, but I found it was an effective machination that heightened the drama rather than distracted.
House of Leaves blew me away when I read it after it came out. I agree that is a fresh take on narrative form, and I personally found the process of reading it quite fun.
Infinite Jest has been for a long time in my must read list, but never got to reading it. Heard not much, but only good things about it.
>depending how old you are, where you are in life, etc may offer a different lens.
Could you elaborate more on this? I am curious. Maybe I could be right now in that situation. So in that case it would be optimal to start reading it now instead of in a year or two.
Frankly I don't know what the parent is really referring to, I think you can enjoy it at any age. I think quarantine is a great time to read it because it is a looooong read and it should provide some much-needed laughter.
Infinite Jest is also great, if you haven't read it. It gets a lot of bad press mostly due to being fetishized by a particular type of insufferable person. The book has its flaws, but is a great piece of writing and (depending how old you are, where you are in life, etc) may offer a different lens. Also, the writing is excellent.