Long tall mystery cocktail

Infinite Jest's biggest draw is that Wallace creates so many mysteries. Not necessarily about events, but about characters. Of all of his figures the best example of a character rich with mystery is Mario Incandenza.

Mario is the youngest of the Incandenza brothers*, and not quite normal in any way. He's a person with a lengthy list of maladies and deformities - so lengthy, in fact, that it's hard to visualize just what he looks like. On top of that, any section from his perspective has this odd sense of childhood longing about it, as if Mario is the personification of Hal's feeling like he's missing someone he's never met before.

This mystery laden character is nonetheless the richest on in the book. Along with his utter uniqueness, and the paradoxical ease with which you can identify with him, I think the book's length is another major factor in Mario's draw. After all, anticipation and gradual pay off are two important elements in any good mystery resolution.

Speaking of mysteries and their resolutions, the book's title is indirectly explained on page 765. Yes, "infinite jest" is what Hamlet describes Yorick being a man of in that old Shakespearean gem. But, Wallace adds a spin to the phrase when Avril (the Moms) explains to Mario that people afraid of certain emotions could fear them because they seem bottomless - infinite.

Infinite Jest is now considered an encapsulation of the 90s. If there's one thing that characterizes that era, it's a sense of needing to be politically correct, to make sure you offend no one. This felt need lead to self censorship, and a lot of people taking themselves way too seriously. Wallace upends that and dares to laugh at everyone for 1000+ pages: Alcoholics, addicts, the disabled, sports proteges, women, children, teachers, executives, the government, the homeless - everyone.

But he does so in a way that makes his jesting deeper, a long form comedy nuanced with characters and subplots. Then he makes the book's subtext into a text in the form of "the Entertainment," a thing so infinitely entertaining people die from watching it. Plus, this transformation happens over the course of the novel.

It's definitely no mystery as to why the book's so long.

*[Correction: Mario is actually the middle child of the Incandenzas. His true place in the birth order only deepens the mystery around him, particularly because Hal, the true youngest, seems to be physically usual.]