David Foster Wallace Wiki : Infinite Jest (original) (raw)

Welcome to the Infinite Jest Wiki

To become a contributor/editor, Create an account.

Infinite Jest: Storyboards —
Aaron Buchwald created the storyboards for himself as an aid to understanding the book. Thankfully, he decided to post the storyboards online so others could benefit from his efforts. Check them out here »

Infinite Atlas — Google Maps meets Infinite Jest
The Infinite Atlas Project is an independent research and art project seeking to identify, place and describe every possible location in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. "Infinite Atlas" — a Google Maps-based guide to 600+ global locations described in Infinite Jest — is just one part of the project. Check it out here »

Infinite Jest Character Diagram
Sam Potts created an amazing diagram that includes pretty much every character in IJ and their connections. In researching this, Sam tapped the knowledge of a number of IJ experts. Every fan of IJ simply must have this! It's 3' wide by 2' and you can check it out here »

The Pale King
David Foster Wallace's unfinished posthumous novel was published on April 15, 2011. You can learn more about it on Wikipedia.

This is the Wiki for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, published in 1996 by Little Brown. Besides using the page-by-page annotation, you can also read the reviews, or provide insights or observations.

Special thanks to Andrew E. Mathis whose own IJ wiki was folded into this one. Andrew's content gave the page-by-page annotations a great kickstart. And to Erik Ketzan whose encouragement and prodding was instrumental in getting this all together. Erik runs his own excellent Literary Wiki website.

1 How to Use this Wiki
2 Page by Page Annotations
3 Wallace Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines
4 External Links
5 Featured Articles
6 Gallery

How to Use this Wiki

The Spoiler-Free Annotations by Page allows the reader to look up and contribute allusions and references while reading the book, in a convenient and spoiler-free manner.

Apart from that, it's up to you.

Page by Page Annotations

An alternate form of commentary on the text. The guiding principle of these annotations is to remain spoiler-free, so that readers can follow along without the fear that later parts of the book will be revealed..

Wallace Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines

Click here for help with editing and creating pages.

We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:

When creating a new page, first check to make sure a page/article about what you want to write about hasn't already been created, by checking the list of all Wiki pages on the Infinite Jest wiki. If a page already exists, please modify that one.
To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index or Page by Page Annotations, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg [[Discussion Subject|'''DISCUSSION''']]) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in bold and full caps, so it stands out a bit.
More help for this wiki available here.

External Links

Featured Articles

Wall Street Journal: David Foster Wallace: His Secret Life As a Philosopher Interesting article by Moira G. Weigel: "A new book from Columbia University Press reveals what his mentors and friends had long known: Wallace was also a talented philosopher."

If you missed David Lipsky's excellent and sad "The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace", which appeared in Rolling Stone in the Oct 2008 issue, and used to be available online, it's too late. However, Mr Lipsky has a new book out, a memoire about his time spent with DFW, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace.You can read The Atlantic magazine review.

New York Magazine: Great long article on the friendship of Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides that began in the mid-1990s.

A lovely remembrance by Laura Miller on Salon.com »

Interview with DFW Book Club Founder, Peter Merriman