#5 in Literary fiction
Infinite Jest
- 1,104
- Pages
- about 20 h
- Reading time
- 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction
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Our view
“Infinite Jest” is a huge, deliberately difficult novel that repays the effort with unnervingly precise writing on addiction and depression. Its more than eleven hundred pages move in self-contained scenes rather than a straight line, and hundreds of endnotes interrupt on purpose; the irony is constant, and some readers find the prose showy. Some also note moments of sexism, racism and ableism that cannot all be blamed on the characters.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by American writer David Foster Wallace. Often considered Wallace’s magnum opus, the book has been categorized as an encyclopedic novel due to its unconventional narrative structure and hundreds of extensive endnotes, some with footnotes of their own.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.5 across 453 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 76% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Literary fiction average of 8.1. That is how 8.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.4 | 28 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 8.5 | 425 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is Infinite Jest?
It has 1,104 pages — longer than 97% of the ranked books in Literary fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Literary fiction — with scores between 7.6 and 8.4, closest to this book.
