3/1/2026
Michelle Zauner wrote an introductory essay to the 30th Anniversary Edition Addition of Infinite Jest. I believe the book is exactly the same as it was. It’s just been republished with this short essay in the beginning. The publishers fixed the audiobook so now the footnotes can be heard in the proper order where they belong in the text.
Unfortunately, the publishers want people to pay $80 for the new audiobook when they could have just made it right in the first place. I don’t have any sympathy for these publishers and furthermore they made a gigantic mistake which we are going to look into in this essay.
The Infinite Jest 30th Anniversary Audiobook is available for free on Spotify with limited listening times. Spotify sells the book for $80. Spotify has a better sound quality than Audible where audiobook is the same price. People on Reddit are pleased with the audiobook.
When Michelle Zauner was selected by the publishers to write an introductory essay to the 30th Anniversary of Infinite Jest I can only assume they were hoping that the book would be noticed by more women and and non white readers. I make that assumption based on the content of her essay.
Let’s unpack a little bit about Michelle Zauner. She’s a biracial woman Caucasian and Korean. Zauner is known for writing a book called Crying in H Mart (for which a movie may be in the works) which is a memoir about the struggles she experienced as a biracial child growing up and about her Korean mother’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
Zauner’s Essay opens with this quote:
“I’m not what you might consider Infinite Jest’s target demographic.”
She goes on to say that because she is a biracial woman and that Infinite Jest mostly appeals to white male college students or the so called “lit bros”. She calls this book a rite of passage for them. She cites the books Little Women and Pride and Prejudice as being rites of passage for women.
I immediately began to disagree with her. I am a white woman who absolutely loves Infinite Jest. I’ve devoted more posts on this blog to Infinite Jest and David Foster Wallace than any other author or subject.
What follows contains Spoilers for the book Infinite Jest.
Zauner goes on to say that the overall theme of Infinite Jest is about the psychological and sociological problems of a white male protagonist.
Her quote: “its (Infinite Jest’s) defining feature seems to be the centering of male loneliness. A white, male protagonist, isolated and misunderstood, stands at odds with social norms and expectations”
But even though Zauner said she read Infinite Jest in her college days she failed to notice that the protagonist Hal Incandenza is a biracial character.
In the chapter called “Dad Professional Conversationalist”. Hal’s father James Incandenza has a very surreal conversation with Hal while pretending to be a child therapist.
James tells Hal he is not his biological son but in fact the son of a medical attache who is from Saudi Arabia. The descriptions of Hal in the book call him dark skinned or swarthy.
The quote is “that your blithe inattention to your own dear grammatical mother’s cavortings with not one not two but over thirty Near Eastern medical attachés…?”
Hal is only eleven years old and he fails to understand what his father trying to convey. However he does notice that the therapist is actually his father in disguise. Perhaps James did not want to tell Hal as himself because he was afraid Hal would tell his mother Avril Incandenza?
Shortly after James Incandenza’s suicide the character Charlie Travis who is the half brother of Hal’s mother replaces James by moving in with the Mom’s. This is similar to the Hamlet theme where the uncle is responsible for the plotline. Although there may be an incestuous relationship between this half brother and sister couple there is a lot more than that under the surface that needs to be considered.
David Foster Wallace may have inspired by the Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita) book Ada in which the brother and sister characters spend their lives together after the death of the sister’s first husband.
This is what I think happened. The publishers asked Michelle Zauner to write the forward because they were hoping to bring in a more diverse readership. They hoped she would praise the book more saying something like “although I am a biracial woman, I like this book” and point out the reasons why women and minorities would enjoy the book. White people aren’t even the majority in many communities anymore. We need to throw out these archaic terms like majorities and minorities. If a majority becomes a minority then it’s no longer a valid term.
Unfortunately they forgot to preview what she was going to write. If they did proof read it they would have instantly realized the mistakes that she was making. After much contemplation I came to the conclusion that they are not aware of these fundamental plot points in Infinite Jest.
While it’s true I can’t expect publishers to be literary scholars, the Entertainment Cartridge was created by James (the father) so he could better communicate with his son Hal who is actually not his biological son. The irony comes from the publishers failing to communicate what they truly wanted in the book forward and then not even considering how they could ask Zauner to change it.
Other themes in Infinite Jest include people using television and other forms of entertainment to completely give up on life by entertaining themselves to death. The character Hugh/Helen Steeply tells Rémy Marathe that his father died from watching too much TV. What started as an innocent distraction became a full blown obsession as he tried to figure out the inconsistencies in the TV show M.A.S.H. Eventually he could only communicate with others in terms of episodes of M.A.S.H. and then eventually he stopped communicating, speaking eating and drinking became catatonic and died. His wife tried to help him but never took him to doctors or psychiatrists because she was ashamed and wanted to take care of him at home. But she treated his death like an inevitable tragedy such as a death by an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer.
When Hal’s brother Mario who is the son of Hal’s mother and Uncle Charlie asks Hal what his problem with God is Hal says that God is pro death and he doesn’t agree. None of the brothers know that they are not fully biologically related to each other. Although it’s possible that they have some suspicions about their mother.
In particularly the eldest brother Orin is obsessed with his mother. Because of this he sends a he sends a copy of the Entertainment Cartridge to the medical antiche on April 1st which is the anniversary of the day James committed suicide. Hal’s father known as the medical antiche watches the cartridge and therefore dies along with his wife and many other characters come to the house attempting to locate the medical antiche and provide him assistance. Hal never learns who his real father was. This spares him the trauma of the death of his real father but there’s nothing to shield him from the suicide of his fake father.
At the very end of the book there is an omitted scene in which Gately and Hal attempting to dig up James’s body to find the Master Cartridge which was reported to be inside James’s head. But James’s head had exploded due to his suicide by microwave. Only the Master Cartridge is strong enough to allow new copies to be made. The Canadian Separatist Terrorist organization is attempting to get their hands on the Master Cartridge because they cannot make a copy from a copy.
What is inside James’s head explains what’s inside David Foster Wallace’s head. The Master Copy of the Entertainment Cartridge is only found inside the mind of the deceased character James. In the book people who view the Entertainment Cartridge become unable to look away and die even if they have a strong character.
The real location of The Entertainment (The book Infinite Jest) is inside the mind of the creative individual David Foster Wallace. In the book inside the filmmaker James who created the Entertainment Cartridge has whatever qualities it would be needed to create the master inside his mind. Upon his death the entertainment can never be replicated again. This means the world is safe from the Canadian Separatists who are terrorizing the country in the novel Infinite Jest.
The reason the Canadians are so angry is that the US President named Gentle Johnny an obvious nod to Johnny Carson is now dumping garbage and toxic waste in Canada and Maine. An ecological/environmental crisis causes the action in the book. Except now the US has incorporated Canada into itself along with Mexico forming one giant North American Trade Association Therefore the president is not really a U.S. President, he is the president of the O.N.A.N or the Organization of North American Nations. We could compare President Gentle Johnny to Donald Trump who is now attempting to annex Greenland which he says is for US national security.
The bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey shaped like a glass turkey with a red bow around it’s neck is left for James which causes him to have an alcoholic relapse. This is what causes him to commit suicide. James is found by his son Hal who is 13 at the time. Orin, Hal’s half brother explains in a phone conversation that James was the victim of a practical joke.
It’s easy to see why Hal might in fact be a traumatized person who possibly becomes catatonic as a result of all of these things. Hal ended up institutionalized in the Year of Glad. Although Hal still remains optimistic that he will be released from the psychiatric hospital the next day by his Uncle Charlie.
Hal’s mother Avril Incandenza fails to act appropriately when her son Hal has possibly consumed toxic mold. It is also possible that this mold has done Hal permanent psychological damage. Hal may not be actually catatonic but nobody can hear him speaking. This goes back to the overall theme that people in Infinite Jest are unable to understand each other even when they’re trying to communicate simply.
Michelle Zauner has been taken advantage of by these publishers. I have not read her books, but I think she’s a good writer. I only wish they had chosen somebody who had even a slightly better understanding of Infinite Jest than she does.
If they had asked me to write the essay I would have written about how society has changed since the writing of the book in 1996.
Some of the predictions contained in Infinite Jest came true such as the advent of video calls and people wearing digital filters to hide their faces and make them look more attractive before they take a video call.
Infinite Jest is dystopian science fiction novel written in 1996 and placed in the near future. The last year of the novel the Year of Glad is believed to have taken place in 2012. Compared to the predictions in the novel Infinite Jest we are actually doing fine right now. I think that should make us feel a little bit better and happier.
Macy Makes Magic 