Infinite Jest

The wraith pushes his glasses up in the vaguely snivelling way of a kid that’s just got slapped around on the playground and says he personally spent the vast bulk of his own former animate life as pretty much a figurant, furniture at the periphery of the very eyes closest to him, it turned out, and that it’s one heck of a crummy way to try to live

In 2007, Timothy Jacobs, a Canadian scholar, wrote a thoughtful paper marking out the links between The Brothers Karamazov and Infinite Jest.

Every life is defined not just by what happens in it but by what doesn’t. The beginning of Sam’s life is as striking for what didn’t happen in it as for what did. He could see he was different from most other kids. He made no effort to join their games, and they didn’t understand his. He maintained what he later called a “romantically positive” vie