Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace, 1996 DNF

I made it to page 192 and encountered: homo- and transphobia (including the use of the term "transvestite"), rape, violence against women, racism, pedophilia and child sexual abuse, non-sexual child abuse, and a man taking hormones to pretend to be a woman because he's "undercover".

This isn't why I didn't finish the book. I gave up after a 5.5-page long chapter of a man verbally abusing his child.

The basic idea is interesting. However, the idea is barely mentioned in the first 200 pages of the novel (which is about 1000 pages long - so in the first 1/5th of the novel the plot is barely touched on).

I'm noticing a trend here. The novels I haven't been able to finish - The Crying of Lot 49, Catch-22, and now Infinite Jest - are all considered "satirical" and "humorous". Scoop, which I just barely managed to finish and hated, had the same tags. Clearly, something about the style of "classic satire" just does not ring my bell.

Time to read: didn't

ReReadability: Couldn't make my way through it once

Classic: Whoever entitled this a classic clearly doesn't understand the definition of "novel".

a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

What I see is that with this novel and Catch-22, there was no narrative. With The Crying of Lot 49, the narrative was disconnected and disembodied. I guess my brain feels like novels are supposed to tell a story, and these "novels" just don't do that.