Infinite Jest: 30th Anniversary Edition

David Foster Wallace, with a new foreword by Michelle Zauner, New York Times bestselling author of Crying in H Mart and singer/songwriter for indie band Japanese Breakfast
Infinite Jest: 30th Anniversary Edition
(Back Bay Books, February 2026)

 

The New Yorker asks, ‘Infinite Jest’ Has Turned Thirty. Have We Forgotten How to Read It?
The Atlantic asks, Was Infinite Jest Right About Everything?
The Paris Review wonders, What’s So Funny About Infinite Jest?
GQ asserts, “Infinite Jest Came Out 30 Years Ago This Week. If You’ve Never Read It, There’s Never Been a Better Time”

The “grandly ambitious, wickedly comic” modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America, now in a new 30th anniversary edition (Seattle Times).

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human — and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

Praise for Infinite Jest

“Volleying between arch irony and deep sincerity, Infinite Jest draws from a wealth of literary and pop cultural wellsprings. Homer, The Bible, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, DeLillo, William James, The Beatles, the Alcoholics’ Anonymous “Big Book” manual, M*A*S*H*, and the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are all, somehow, woven together. It is a kind of mega-text…a big, fat, funny, smart book that demands and rewards sustained attention.” — Wired

“Little or nothing I’d read [before Infinite Jest] had come close in terms of sheer pleasure. The book had more brio, heart, and humor than I thought possible on the page. It was bizarrely grotesque and howlingly sad; it was sweet, silly, and vertiginously clever. …In a distractible age, Wallace made an argument for the long novel that is won simply by being heard.” — The New Yorker

“Uproarious…Infinite Jest shows off Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything.”―Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“A work of genius…grandly ambitious, wickedly comic, a wild, surprisingly readable tour de force.”―Seattle Times

“A virtuoso display of styles and themes…There is generous intelligence and authentic passion on every page.” ―Time

“To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other.” — Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

“The next step in fiction…Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty…Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think.” —Sven Birkerts, The Atlantic

“As readable—and relevant—as ever …read it for the dazzling similes and metaphors, the virtuoso set pieces, the meditations on addiction that beat any self-help book, and the startlingly well-observed moments… By demanding a lot from the reader, while dispensing pellets of wit and style on every page, Wallace offers an alternative to the grim timeline we now find ourselves in.” — Jason Guriel, Air Mail

Read an excerpt from Michelle Zauner’s introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition of Infinite Jest in The Guardian
Lit Hub examines Infinite Jest’s new 30th anniversary redesign
StereoGum highlights new foreword by Japanese Breakfast and Crying in H Mart‘s Michelle Zauner 
A former assistant to his editor looks back at David Foster Wallace in The Washington Post
Wired observes, “Infinite Jest Is Back. Maybe Litbros Should Be, Too”
The Independent: Debunking the myth of the toxic ‘Infinite Jest bro’ 
The New Statesman: Infinite Jest is a novel for 2026
Lit Hub: This Week in Literary History: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Was Published
Lit Hub: On Creating the Cover For David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
AnOther Magazine: 30 Years On, Infinite Jest Offers a Map to an Increasingly Chaotic World
Air Mail examines the stunning prescience of Infinite Jest on its 30th anniversary
Prospect Magazine praises “The awesome prescience of Infinite Jest“
The Los Angeles Times chooses Infinite Jest as one of its 101 Best Book Club Picks
Read the essay “‘Infinite Jest,’ the Internet, and the Politics of Reading” in the Los Angeles Review of Books

 

David Foster Wallace wrote the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System and the story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Girl With Curious Hair. His nonfiction includes the essay collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and the full-length work Everything and More.  He died in 2008.