I never really understood Infinite Jest, and I've tried to read it several times over the past couple of decades. I don't really get on with the "wacky wacky wacky" nonsense humour, and the constant sesquipedalian polysyllablism in every incongruent sentence makes it read like it was written by a smartarse 14-year-old who has just found they can look up long words in a thesaurus and thinks it makes them sound clever.
It's hard work to read with no payoff, I guess unless you like endless drivelling descriptions of drug use, which I don't.
It’s really not. But my suggestion is read some of his journalism (eg “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again” or “Getting away from already being pretty much away from it all”) or his first novel “Broom of the system” and if you like that, you’ll probably like “Infinite Jest”).
He’s also written some really thoughtful literary criticism if you like that sort of thing (“Fictional futures and the conspicuously young” is a good example).
It's hard work to read with no payoff, I guess unless you like endless drivelling descriptions of drug use, which I don't.