La broma infinita

A critical, amusing, and reflective novel about addiction, consumerism, and the loneliness of American society, written with great wisdom and humor.

A place: Enfield, Massachusetts. A hundred miles from the Great Concavity, a radioactive wasteland filled with mutant babies the size of airplanes, skull-less creatures, and hordes of wild hamsters.

A time: the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, in Subsidized Time, in an America governed by the ecological totalitarianism of the ONAN, itself ruled by the obscure Office of Unspecified Services, in perpetual war against the ultraviolent antiONANism of Quebec.

An institution: the Enfield Tennis Academy, ultra-elitist and where a discipline aimed at abolishing all pleasure prevails.

A family: the Incandenzas. James Incandenza, military optician turned avant-garde filmmaker, and his wife, the promiscuous Avril, who maintains dark connections with the Quebec guerrilla. And their three children: Orin, a brilliant American football punter and transnational seducer; Mario, a dwarf and deformed, a filmmaker like his father and possessing a prodigious sensibility, and Hal, a promising junior tennis player tormented by a terrible secret.

And a film: The samizdat. The Entertainment. Infinite Jest. With the power to drive anyone who watches it mad and thus destroy civilization. The perfect weapon for which everyone will engage in the Final War for control of America.

Reviews:
«Colossally disruptive... spectacularly good.»
Walter Kirn, The New York Magazine

«After twenty years, Infinite Jest remains a challenge, remains brilliant today.»
The Guardian

«It still feels so transcendent, electrically alive.»
The New York Times

«Wallace, when he resorts to erudition, when he dissects all the pop culture of our time, is masterful.»
El Mundo

«It is an intelligent, difficult, brilliant work and, make no mistake, it is worth reaching the end. As critic Sven Birkerts stated, those who do will have the rare privilege of contemplating the universe illuminated by a torrent of black light.»
Eduardo Lago, El País