Here’s everything ‘Infinite Jest’ got right 30 years ago about life in 2026

Few opuses come quite as magnum as Infinite Jest, an intimidating tree stump of a book that makes for singularly cumbersome beach reading. Entertainment Weekly’s literary critic famously gave up trying to review it upon release in 1996, while The Onion later nodded to its author’s excessive verbosity with the headline, “Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace’s Breakup Letter on Page 20”. Anyone put off by the sheer bulk of Wallace’s masterpiece, however, or its reputation as catnip...