Infinite Jest.

Wallace, David Foster (author).

Wallace delivers on the promise of his first novel, Broom of the System, with one of the best (and, God knows, longest) American novels of the decade. Many readers will blanche at the length (and more than 100 pages of end notes), but the engrossing, subplot-heavy narrative is absolutely engrossing. Set in the near future (we’ve abandoned numbered years for corporate sponsorship, so part of the book is set in the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment), the book follows drug addicts, tennis prodigies, and the enigmatic “Himself,” whose last film is entitled Infinite Jest. It’s a really, really great movie--so perfect in fact that it kills all those who watch it. They lose the desire to do anything else and waste away watching the movie again and again. The many parallel narratives are endlessly clever and complicated, and the book’s satiric attack on American culture and values is often hilarious, but what finally makes this such an extraordinary novel is Wallace’s ability to populate this surreal world with real, recognizable, and vivid characters.