Infinite Jest
Novel by David Foster WallaceWikipedia
84
MENTIONS
33
EPISODES
32
PODCASTS
Search complete. 84 mentions across 33 episodes found for "Infinite Jest".
Nov 4, 2026
Mark MansonHOST
I mean, Baumeister studied violent criminals in the late 90s, so like He consistently didn't come across people who thought that they were evil.
Mark MansonHOST
There's a fantastic quote from David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest from around the same time, coincidentally, where he said that evil people never believe that they are evil people.
Mark MansonHOST
They believe everyone else is an evil person, which if you think about the ability to deceive yourself into doing awful shit to other people, the most logical way to justify that would be to convince yourself that everybody else is evil and you're the only good person.
Drew BirnieHOST
I'll go back to those scales already, aren't we? Yeah.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
Yeah, I mean, for me, a lot of what I'm reading is driven by what I'm teaching.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
And so this semester I'm teaching my Lord of the Rings class that I do every two years and my Infinite Jest class that I do every 10 years.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
And so those are the two things that have been taking up most of my time.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
I'm also a lot of what I read is driven by what I'm working on.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
It's preposterous.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
Even the ones who have never touched it know the story.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
But with Infinite Jest, I do try to do the spoiler line.
Gerry CanavanGUEST
And the only things I really fudge on are that three bookmark method.
Chris WadeGUEST
Yeah.
Chris WadeGUEST
Well, apparently he has the film and TV rights to Infinite Jest, which is a hilarious thing to think about doing an Infinite Jest TV show with the aesthetics of Parks and Recreation.
Chris WadeGUEST
Maybe not quite what people who have read that book imagine, but in some ways it would be like the perfect perversion of what that book is.
BenHOST
The small, small circle of people who have read that book.
GiordanoHOST
We figured you'd bring this up knowing that, you know, you have a podcast dedicated to.
Chris WadeGUEST
Yes.
Chris WadeGUEST
For those who don't know, my wife and I read the entirety of Infinite Jest on Mike and talked about it in a podcast called Infinite Cast, which you can go look up.
Chris WadeGUEST
But we spent a lot of time on that pod, like kind of.
Carley ThorneHOST
Sorry.
Carley ThorneHOST
Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? Sorry, one guy's like, I'm going to write Infinite Jest.
Carley ThorneHOST
The other guy's like, I'm going to write The Da Vinci Code.
Carley ThorneHOST
Well, he was talking, and it was so funny.
TonyHOST
Brilliantly written book.
TonyHOST
oddly kind of funny at times uh and also very much like infinite jest there are extensive end notes that you have to flip back and forth to read as you go along and the end notes are excuse me the end notes are the notes of a group of psychiatrists who are analyzing the letters yeah
AndyHOST
yeah
TonyHOST
Okay, number 76, Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.
35 MINS LATER
AndyHOST
Not mad at all about where it's placed.
TonyHOST
Not surprising to see it there either.
TonyHOST
Okay, number two is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, which we've both read.
TonyHOST
It
Brendan O'MearaHOST
And from there, he boarded a rocket ship and has become one of the most distinct singular entertaining voices in culture writing.
Brendan O'MearaHOST
In this episode, we talk about football and why the violence matters, how his brother-in-law was instrumental in Chuck becoming a professional writer, the moment Chuck realized he'd turn out to be just like his father, the moment where I look like a total fucking buffoon, the struggle of writing a fiction book with real names, Taking the premise of rock and applying it to a hypothetical world where David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest became what Elizabeth Gilbert's He Pray Love became.
Brendan O'MearaHOST
And a rich Q&A where Chuck riffs on unifying themes in essay collections, his movie cameo, artificial intelligence, and a few other things.
Brendan O'MearaHOST
And be sure you're following the show on Instagram at creative nonfiction podcast or don't.
48 MINS LATER
Brendan O'MearaHOST
I don't know.
Brendan O'MearaHOST
What would that look like to you?
Chuck KlostermanGUEST
Okay, so you're saying in this scenario, Infinite Jest is Eat, Pray, Love? Yes.
Chuck KlostermanGUEST
Okay.
Jericho SeronaHOST
It might remind you of other things, but it's so singularly Kaufman.
Jericho SeronaHOST
And I think it's, For me, it's basically Kaufman's version of Infinite Jest, which is the David Foster Wallace.
Jericho SeronaHOST
It's a big, sprawling, postmodern novel.
Jericho SeronaHOST
It's been a bit of a punchline in recent times.
22 MINS LATER
Jericho SeronaHOST
which has all of his strengths and weaknesses, and he has the time and the page length to do it.
Jericho SeronaHOST
So it's like Sinetica New York's, you know, blown up.
Jericho SeronaHOST
It's his, you know, maybe that's his infinite jest.
Jericho SeronaHOST
But Sinetica New York in, like, film form is like the David Foster Walls kind of corollary to me.
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
Okay.
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
I'm sensitive about the next one because there was this big lie like five, six, seven years ago that like guys who like Infinite Jest or like some lit bro...
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
Like, I don't understand it.
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
Frankly, it's just one of the most beautiful, empathetic portraits of an addict and a depressive, like, for an entire community who, like, says we should be kind and narrow atypical people, like, they don't, like, that novel's amazing.
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
I've read it a few times, and I don't care if I'm a lit bro, whatever the hell that means.
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
It's an honor.
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
The boys I know who like infinite jest are gentle and nice.
Kevin ArnovitzGUEST
I was going to say,
Chad HarbachGUEST
Yeah.
Mark CecilHOST
So there's another novel that I know that you really love, a 20th century big novel, and that is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Mark CecilHOST
You know, I heard you on a different panel that you did some time ago where you said at that time, you know, this is one of the best books of the last 20 to 30 years.
Mark CecilHOST
You said it's a book that made you want to be a writer.
Mark CecilHOST
And you said the best thing about Infinite Jest is is its precise description of the contemporary world.
Mark CecilHOST
And I did feel like there's a lot of precision in your work and I could see that being an objective of yours as a writer.
Mark CecilHOST
But just talk about the influence of Infinite Jest and kind of why that wanted to make you be a writer and how there are echoes and influences of that in this book.
Chad HarbachGUEST
Yeah.
JimmyHOST
end they crossed out everything about the minotaur and the last footnote is he chose to get rid of all his minotaur stuff we're not really sure why he added in the beginning but by the end of it he's like i gotta get rid of the whole minotaur section i know i know that happened
MikeHOST
i don't know why that happened i mean i i it was there yeah like the i mean my my biggest criticism of the book is that it was a fucking pretentious exercise like the thing is like I was thinking of Infinite Jest a lot in this book.
MikeHOST
Oh, yeah, definitely vibes.
MikeHOST
But I think that's a very superficial comparison.
MikeHOST
Because Infinite Jest, the footnotes and the going back and forth and the repetitive or recursive nature of it is the theme.
MikeHOST
It's very meta.
MikeHOST
But here, it felt like this...
JimmyHOST
This book is also hyper meta.
23 more episodes mention Infinite Jest.
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