Reading David Foster Wallace in Lockdown: How Infinite Jest Predicted our Over-consumption of Entertainment

Few writers have been venerated as the spokesperson for their respective generation, and David Foster Wallace is one of those writers. His message not only captured the attention of its immediate recipients in the 1990s, but has continued to resonate with each successive era it finds itself in. As a writer, Wallace was distinguished by his experimental use of endnotes and non-linear prose-style, perhaps best shown in his magnum opus published in 1996, Infinite Jest: a title as elusive and obscure as its subject matter. However, despite the novel’s intimidating page number, (weighing heavily on both body and mind), it was well-received as a cultural iconoclasm which continues to assert its relevance well into the 21^st century. Which urges us to ask: why has it stayed relevant for so long? 

The seemingly infinite length of Wallace’s masterpiece insists an equally infinite (and increasingly relevant) concern – entertainment. More specifically, Wallace expressed his concern with the over-consumption of entertainment which he believed led to a loneliness epidemic in Generation X, and generations to come no doubt; he noted it would only get easier and easier to sit in front of a screen than to communicate with people in real life.

The multi-layered novel is centered around the pursuit of a missing film cartridge titled Infinite Jest, but is referred to as ‘The Entertainment’ throughout the narrative/s.  Alongside this plot device, the novel follows multiple characters and their relationship to their individual forms of entertainment and spans across alternate settings – from a tennis academy to a recovering drug addicts’ halfway house.

Remembering the time when even semi-obscure writers were considered TV-appearance worthy, the subject of popular entertainment often made its way into Wallace’s many radio interviews and talk show appearances. Wallace’s concern for our growing susceptibility to boredom, and skepticism for all too accessible and banal TV programs have proven to be more than pertinent, as we’re dragged through constantly changing technological advancements, of which the smartphone and on-demand streaming have rendered the television a dinosaur. 

Since the first lockdown in February 2020, Netflix enjoyed 16 million new sign ups and the television attracted a massive increase in viewers – sufficient evidence that our primary source of entertainment has been an overwhelmingly virtual one. But what happens when our primary form of social interaction is also experienced through technology? Wallace perhaps did not anticipate that we would be coerced to rely on technology as a medium for our social interactions, but the global pandemic has only served as a catalyst to this inevitable reality, with students, and employees alike relying on online Zoom calls. 

Amidst a global pandemic that has reshaped how we socialise and entertain ourselves, reading Wallace’s novel in 2021 begs a consideration of the implications of these social (or asocial) changes to our lives. With the PM’s roadmap to lifting lockdown as our cue to depart from lockdown-bred habits, Wallace’s concerns of this nature are ones to keep in mind for the foreseeable future. However, this is not to suggest that entertainment itself is necessarily bad, but something to think about in terms of what type of entertainment and to what degree we are consuming it. The novel is in many ways a prompt to be mindful of how we seek to cull our boredom, and question: why do you think you need that background noise whilst you eat dinner?

(Image Credit: Steve Liss/Time Life/Getty Images)