"I'm not what you might consider Infinite Jest's target demographic. The novel's reputation precedes it as a book infamously few ever finish, and those who do tend to belong to a particular breed of college-age guys who talk over you, a sect of pedantic, misunderstood young men for whom, over the course of 30 years, Infinite Jest has become a rite of passage, much as Little Women or Pride and Prejudice might function for aspiring literary young women."
"Most readers come to the novel in their formative years, but I was a late bloomer. It wasn't until the winter of 2023 that, at the age of 34, smoking outside a party in Brooklyn, I found myself suddenly motivated to embark on the two-pound tome. A boy I knew from high school brought it up, and as I happened at the time to have developed a casual interest in those works one might attribute to the lit-bro canon (Bret Easton Ellis, Hemingway, etc),"
A late reader began Infinite Jest at age 34 in winter 2023 after a high-school acquaintance mentioned it while smoking outside a Brooklyn party. The novel carries a reputation for being difficult to finish, with a subset of college-age men treating completion as a rite of passage. Works associated with the 'lit-bro' canon frequently center male loneliness, featuring solitary male protagonists who clash with social norms or respond violently. The canon's settings tend toward male-dominated arenas—war zones, finance offices, fight clubs—and these works are stylistically accessible, psychologically resonant, commercially successful, and subject to online backlash and counter-backlash.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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