why do people get worked up over infinite jest? I honestly don't understand. it has a rep as a giant exploding pulsing head brain book but it's… actually very straightforward and easy to read and quite simple and earnest in sentiment?

— alice maz (@alicemazzy) August 25, 2020

I don’t know. I didn’t care for that book. It was mediocre. DFW was a good essayist but a bad novelist. I think it’s because Infinite Jest is one of those books that makes dumb people feel smart. Or at least the intellectually incurious.

Read Neal Stephenon’s Anathem instead. Starts slow, but is a better book that is trying to do many of the same things, though it is vastly different in most ways.