This was a useful "unpacking" that I read immediately after finishing Infinite Jest. It pointed out several connections that I had missed, and also helped focus my thinking about the novel. The author does stretch a few points that I found implausible, but I would still recommend it to anyone who read Infinite Jest. Best of all, it is a quick read--it would probably fill about 20 pages in the formatting of Infinite Jest.

I purchased this little book while reading Infinite Jest, but quickly realized it contained far too many spoilers to try to read at the same time. However, after finishing Infinite Jest, I've found this book to be very helpful in gaining additional insight. It's also filled with lots of fun facts and directs you to endless other texts related to Infinite Jest.

Kind of a Cliff's Notes for the ADD set. Does not bring much to the Lit.Crit. table.

I didn't really get much from this. There are much better guides available online.

Helpful clarity to Infinite Jest overflow. There is structure in them thar words!

Useful guide to the book. Picked up a lot of things that I missed the first time around. The timeline alone is worth the price of admission.

At the end of the day, this just wasn't what I was looking for or expecting based on the title. It's not a great "guide" for the average reader - it's much more of a scholarly analysis of the work.

This may very well be the funniest book I've ever read. He makes prep school tennis a fascinating subject. He's a genius. It's a must read. It is lengthy, but you won't want to put it down. Promise.

As a companion guide to DFW's Infinite Jest, I suspect one can do better. Use a guide, partially to introduce you to the work, and then mostly to help answer questions. This one was just okay. 3.5 stars.

This is a useful guide to be read after you read Infinite Jest (not alongside or before). The sections that clarify the chronology and make connections between different parts of the book (many several hundred pages apart) are very useful and helped clarify my understanding of Wallace's novel (plot, connections between characters and events, allusions to other works, such as Ulysses and Hamlet, etc.). I found the rest of the book, which tried to place the book in its historical context as a post-post-modernist novel, less compelling. Still, if you felt like you missed a few things in reading the novel, this slight book is a useful complement to the novel.

A reader’s guide to Infinite Jest with not enough analysis on Infinite Jest. I’m sure this serves a purpose in the critical essay world to examine all of DFW’s writing and also set it up as substantive work of literature by finding the connections to Greek Mythology, but I wanted a focus on the novel itself and this is not that. There are pieces that give good insight and even Burns makes the point that a comprehensive look at IJ would be so large that it would defeat the purpose and admits this is only intended to be considered a start, it’s still not enough of a start.

From the sound of it, the first edition of this book was more useful than the second, as the second was changed to concentrate more on DFW's place in literature and less on Infinite Jest per se. While there was some useful and/or interesting material in this book, it seemed too much about the authors opinions (and he's no DFW) and not enough about the book it is supposed to be about.