Read this guide AFTER completing the book, or the guide will spoil many of DFW's delightful surprises.
Excellent summation of themes and plot - helped me make connections I missed the first time through INFINITE JEST on my own - Now I look forward to rereading the novel!

"...one of the obsessive themes of INFINITE JEST: the search for an adequate understanding of the self. This melancholy exploration, which is largely (but not entirely) focused on Hal, partly explains why Wallace chose HAMLET as one of the templates for his novel. HAMLET begins with the question 'who's there?,' and if Shakespeare's play answers this with an exemplary excavation of the consciousness of Renaissance man, then INFINITE JEST attempts a millennial update, cataloging the twentieth century's endless efforts to understand itself." pg. 39

".... While each of the characters act individually in their localized environment, their individual actions have multiple connections to lives and narratives beyond their comprehension. And their apparently random interactions tend to form large-scale patterns (and particularly circular patterns) in the novel. This movement from lower-level action to higher-level pattern is characteristic of emergent networks. As Steven Johnson, in his study EMERGENCE (2001), summarizes, an emergent system involves 'multiple agents dynamically interacting in multiple ways, following local rules and oblivious to higher-level instructions' with these interactions resulting 'in some kind of discernible macrobehavior' (p.19). In many ways this seems an apt description of INFINITE JEST's circular ordering, and it is not coincidental that this arrangement resembles the interconnected 'systems inside systems' of natural ecologies (p. 67)." pg. 54

Had some interesting things to say about the book but don’t think it really does much. Probably didn’t really needa read this although the timeline at the end was pretty neat. 3.5/5

800 pages too long for me at this time.

Maybe more interesting than the book itself. Maybe. I await the flame war.

I've been reading this book off and on (but mostly on) for the last month or so. And I LOVE IT. Also, I sometimes hate it. It's totally like having a relationship with a real person, where some conversations are off the charts good, and some you're just checking your iphone obsessively and trying not to yawn. I think maybe that's part of the charm. I also feel like I'm learning way more than I could ever possibly hope to learn about topics like: lenses, rehab, bizarre physical ailments, addiction and tennis.

This came out *just* after I re-read IJ. Had I known this one was on the way, I might have postponed that reading.

This is a surprisingly helpful little books. Despite having read IJ a couple of times, given it some thought, and had some discussions about the book, there were a few major insights here that I'd never considered.

I got the impression that Burn could have written a much longer book, in which he considered a broader range of themes, but he was constrained by the "Continuum Contemporaries" format. And while the editors of that series were correct to apprehend a market for such a book (ie, a thin volume meant to make IJ accessible to more readers), I'd maintain that there's a market for longer, more serious book, something like the equivalent of Stuart Gilbert's commentary on Ulysses.

Now if I can just get my copy of this book back into my hands...

This book had some good Ah Ha moments and I understand the plot and the ending a bit better. It also made me want to read the book again which I suppose it its job. The book has a couple old web references-want to visit an Angelfire site? Tough luck- and it has some sadly dismissive elements. "The essay not for the easily daunted..." (elipses mine), as if a reader of Infinite Jest is easily daunted.

I'd say it was a good companion but I'd suggest buying it used.

There are better resources available on the internet.