Try the audiobook, although I’m sure purists would consider it cheating. You can zone out and it keeps going and something will pull your attention and you can rewind to get the context.

Wallace was a masterful writer of short fiction, and I think IJ is best read as a (very) long series of short pieces with much that interrelates them.

Past a certain point on my first successful read through, maybe ~300 pgs in, I started realizing that, with very few exceptions, the more abstruse, boring, or frustrating the vignette, the more powerfully it ended; and at that point, I couldn’t put it down. So, in my opinion, skipping around would not make it more fulfilling, and would certainly not make it make more sense (and I do think it would be easy to understate how much they do compose together into a functioning plot for the novel). I could only advocate cultivating an appreciation of the individual vignettes themselves as more-or-less complete short stories.

"rambling stoner conversation". Lol, you've clearly made it to Ken Erdedy's section, which is literally that. That's a brief passage in the book, and honestly one of the hardest parts to read.

I'd say there's a lot of groundwork laid in the first 60 - 100 pages or so. After that, I honestly don't think it would be harmful to cherry pick interesting passages from the book. You could research interesting sections of the novel and target those for a first pass read through, then maybe later read it sequentially. There aren't really plot spoilers as the book is somewhat plotless.

Even still, I'd recommend the first read through be sequential. My first read through was, but I also skipped around a little bit. My favourite thing about DFW is his writing style. Also might help to whet your appetite for his voice by reading something like "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", which is a hilarious anecdote and commentary about his trip aboard a cruise liner.

In general, I'd say the best advice is to free yourself from the burden of 'understanding' the novel on your first read through and just enjoy the chaos. Besides, there is so much ambiguity in the novel that, even if you do crystallize some understanding, there's likely many alternative interpretations. That's where the re-reads get really fun.

I think the order in which the different elements of the book are introduced is crucial, as it leads to a lot of "aha!" moments.

> What put me off it is it just kind of reads like a rambling stoner conversation.

Yeah well, that book may not be your cup of tea then. The book _is_ rambling, plus a lot of the characters _are_ actual stoners/addicts/recovering addicts. But keep in mind that most of the book is in the third person, not in the first (as the first few pages would make you assume).

I like some of David Foster Wallace's writing, but I'm afraid Infinite Jest never did much for me. My copy is copiously annotated and I listened to the audiobook as well, so I doubled up.

I found Ulysses more engaging. I have a copy of Gravity's Rainbow which I will try to get into at some stage.