It is made up of 1m words, it runs to 1000 pages and it has 388 endnotes. It spans everything from addiction and depression to family relationships and the pursuit of entertainment – with Canadian terrorists and a lot of tennis to boot.
This is Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s visionary and daunting novel, which is 20 years old this month. To mark the occasion, Guardian books site editor Sian Cain, culture community editor Marta Bausells and Emma Lee Moss, aka singer Emmy the Great, decided to read it for the first time. Here they discuss the book, its highlights and how much of 21st-century society Wallace foresaw.
Reading list
Infinite Jest at 20: still a challenge, still brilliant
Twenty things you need to know about Infinite Jest
Photograph: Gary Hannabarger/Corbis
Support The Guardian
The Guardian is editorially independent.
And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.
But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.
