The triumph of the will of athletes in Infinite Jest

Redgate, J. (2022) The triumph of the will of athletes in Infinite Jest. In: Den Dulk, A. and Masiero, P. (eds.) David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Turns 25 | Children’s Literature and Political Correctness. Series: English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts, 8. Edizioni Ca'Foscari: Venice, pp. 91-104. (doi: 10.30687/EL/2420-823X/2021/08/005)

Abstract

In 1995, in the introduction to Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game, Jay Jennings lamented that there were still “no great” tennis novels. Had the collection been published just a year later, a revision would have been in order. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), the encyclopaedic masterpiece set around the grounds of Enfield Tennis Academy, is a great tennis novel. Yet, when critics discuss Wallace’s work on tennis, the focus is usually on his essays and tends to fall into one of two camps: either emphasizing the bodies of Wallace’s dumb jocks, or the divine inspiration that helps them play so well. Once we recognise that Wallace’s treatment of character was itself always dualistic, we can begin to reconcile these two apparently conflicting points of view. Doing so will shed new light on Wallace’s treatment of tennis as a stress-test of the connection between body and soul, and will raise difficult questions about the fate of a country where that test is so necessary.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Redgate, Dr Jamie
• Authors: Redgate, J.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies
• Journal Name: English Literature
• Publisher: Edizioni Ca'Foscari
• ISSN: 2420-823X
• Copyright Holders: Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)
• First Published: First published in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Turns 25 | Children’s Literature and Political Correctness 2021: 91-104
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence