IJ study archive

Unendlicher Spaß (David Foster Wallace) — Perlentaucher-Pressespiegel

source

TL;DR

The German 2009 reception map for Infinite Jest in Ulrich Blumenbach's translation (Unendlicher Spaß, Kiepenheuer & Witsch), assembled as the perlentaucher.de Pressespiegel — a press-review digest that summarizes, one short paragraph each, the six major German-language reviews that greeted the book in late August 2009: Die Zeit, the FAZ, the Frankfurter Rundschau, the NZZ, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the taz. The verdict is near-unanimous admiration shaded by warnings about difficulty: reviewers read the novel as a bleak cultural diagnosis of an entertainment-saturated society (the lethal film that turns viewers into mindless spectators recurs in almost every notice), praise its unironic compassion and moral seriousness, flag the strain of its ~1,500 pages, and salute Blumenbach's translation in the strongest terms. Because this is a digest of reviews rather than a review, its every quoted German fragment is perlentaucher's rendering of another paper's critic — reportable, but not verifiable against the originals — so the note treats each as perlentaucher-quoting-the-outlet, not as the outlet's verbatim. Reception material: it advances no Infinite Jest-internal plot or ending crux of its own; its value is as the single densest snapshot of how the German feuilleton received the novel.

Key claims

(Each Rezensionsnotiz is perlentaucher's summary of one review; the critics' verdicts below are paraphrased from perlentaucher's German, with the short fragments perlentaucher places in quotation marks reproduced as its rendering of the reviewer. Page-count and name variants across the six notices are preserved cite-as-written; see Accuracy notes.)

  • The book, as catalogued. Unendlicher Spaß, David Foster Wallace, trans. Ulrich Blumenbach (from the American), Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2009; ISBN 9783462041125; gebunden, 1548 pages, 39,95 EUR. The publisher's Klappentext (jacket blurb) sketches the premise — James Incandenza's film so bewitching that viewers waste away watching it; his son Hal, a tennis prodigy at the Enfield Tennis Academy his father founded; the Ennet-House drug-rehab; a slightly future-shifted America that forms the Organization of North American Nations with Canada and Mexico and is fought by radical separatists in Canada — and closes by calling Blumenbach's six-years' kongeniale Übertragung (congenial translation — gloss ours) the thing that finally gives German readers access to the novel.
  • Die Zeit (Ulrich Greiner, 27.08.2009): the empathetic, un-ironic reading. Against critics for whom the book was mainly a burden, Greiner writes in sweeping enthusiasm; what strikes him is Wallace's wholly unironic empathy, his “mitleidbegabte Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit” (compassion-endowed perceptive faculty — gloss ours; perlentaucher quoting Greiner), and grief for the author (who took his life the previous year) keeps overtaking the reviewer. The near-future in which the entertainment industry has wholly seized power and now stultifies us for free depresses him despite the comedy. His unsettling takeaway: the three dozen figures are no longer subjects but, in perlentaucher's rendering of Greiner, “Objekte eines neuen geschmeidigen Totalitarismus” (objects of a new supple totalitarianism — gloss ours); the emptiness, ego-loss and God-distance he feels in the book left him “ganz kalt” (quite cold — gloss ours) as he read.
  • FAZ (Richard Kämmerlings, 22.08.2009): reward for the effort, and unbelievable translation. Kämmerlings opens with a kind of apology to publisher and press office for his review, which is nonetheless nearly admiring: reading the 1500-page novel costs “Anstrengung” (effort — gloss ours) and “Geduld” (patience — gloss ours), but the effort is richly repaid. The lethal film that turns everyone who sees it into mindless spectators is, he says, the kulturkritische Kern (culture-critical core — gloss ours) of the huge novel, which in science-fiction dress describes the “Leere im innersten Zentrum unserer Gesellschaft” (emptiness at the innermost center of our society — gloss ours). He calls Blumenbach's achievement “unglaublich” (unbelievable — gloss ours).
  • Frankfurter Rundschau (Guido Graf, 22.08.2009): title as threat, a swan-song for the entertainment society. For Graf the title is less a promise than a threat, like the film at the novel's center, more or less lethal to whoever watches it. The book is, in perlentaucher's summary, nothing other than a “gnadenloser Abgesang auf eine von der Unterhaltungsindustrie vereinnahmte Gesellschaft” (merciless swan-song for a society appropriated by the entertainment industry — gloss ours; perlentaucher quoting Graf) — and that society is ours. Everyone is marked by “Anhedonie” (anhedonia — gloss ours); Hamlet plays an important role in the background; the diagnosis is that world and words have hopelessly fallen apart. The “hochmoralische Überkunstwerk” (highly moral über-artwork — gloss ours) Wallace lays down is the attempt — successful as art, doomed as therapy — to expand the interior space of language infinitely (gloss ours; perlentaucher quoting Graf: “Innenraum der Sprache unendlich auszudehnen”).
  • NZZ (Angela Schader, 22.08.2009): built to be reread, and a laurel wreath for the translator. Schader announces cheerfully that the book is built so that after one pass through its nearly 1,600 pages you can begin again at once — only then does even the first chapter fully open up. She gives a full plot précis (the Incandenza family; the tennis academy; the nuclear-warhead tennis game she calls “Eschnaton”; James Incandenza's film whose viewing shuts down all mental function; the Ennet House rehab under the accidental killer Don Gately; the AA programs). She grants the reading can be “strapaziöse” (arduous — gloss ours), especially when all the “Leitideen” (guiding ideas — gloss ours) are unfurled around the halfway mark, but the “sprachliche Reichtum” (linguistic richness — gloss ours) that Blumenbach carried into German compensates — she would wind him a “dicken Lorbeerkranz” (thick laurel wreath — gloss ours).
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung (Alex Rühle, 22.08.2009): a cluttered toy-box; the end of irony. Rühle is deeply impressed by Wallace's skill and virtuosity yet clear that across 1,600 pages the reading is anything but pure pleasure. The book strikes him less as a seamless spaceship than an “Art vollgeräumte literarische Spielzeugkiste” (kind of cluttered literary toy-box — gloss ours): yesterday's science fiction alongside a timeless human pain-core (the quoted “Schmerzkerns”, printed in its genitive form; gloss ours). Its core diagnosis of American (not only American) society is a craving for lethal “Zerstreuung” (distraction — gloss ours) — literally: the film melts the brain of anyone who watches. It is about the end of irony and the question of what stance might replace it, a question the book cannot answer; reading it is at times a set of “qualvollen Exerzitien” (agonizing spiritual exercises — gloss ours), and the endless re-staging of the ills threatens again and again to “verschlucken” (swallow — gloss ours) the whole book and its author.
  • Die Tageszeitung (Ekkehard Knörer, 22.08.2009): the super-drug and the choir of damaged voices. A novel about addiction in every form — to success (the tennis juniors), to drugs and drink (the rehab patients), and, the widest diagnosis, to distraction and entertainment. The film named Unendlicher Spaß is, for Knörer, something like “das Dingsymbol, das Mysterium, die Super- und Megadroge” (the thing-symbol, the mystery, the super- and mega-drug — gloss ours) of the novel; whoever sees it never finds the way back to reality. Its maker James Incandenza killed himself (head in the microwave) before the narrative present; his wife and three sons are the protagonists, but the cast fans out past overview, so the book becomes a “Gesellschaftsroman als monströser Chor für emotional schwer beschädigte Stimmen” (social novel as a monstrous choir for emotionally severely damaged voices — gloss ours). Whether its “verzerrte Spiegelbild” (distorted mirror-image — gloss ours) of the present as an “Irrenhaus” (madhouse — gloss ours) renders that present recognizable or unrecognizable, the review leaves open.
  • Recurring across the six. Three threads run through nearly every notice: the lethal Entertainment as the novel's central cultural-critical image (the film that kills or stultifies its viewers); the difficulty/length discourse (the ~1,500-page bulk, the “Anstrengung”/“strapaziöse”/“qualvollen Exerzitien” register, offset by a rich payoff); and warm praise for Blumenbach's translation (FAZ's “unglaublich”, NZZ's laurel wreath, the jacket's kongeniale Übertragung). The dating clusters tightly: five of the six reviews are dated 22 August 2009, with Die Zeit five days later.

Theories & evidence

(This is a neutral press-review digest, not an argumentative essay: perlentaucher reports what each reviewer said. So every block below is stance mentions — the source records the reviewers touching a crux, it advances no reading of its own. All evidence is [secondary — DE]: perlentaucher's German summary of an outlet's review, with the quoted fragment reproduced as perlentaucher-quoting-that-reviewer, NOT as the reviewer's verified verbatim, since the underlying reviews are not held.)

THEORY: Infinite Jest's lethal Entertainment is the novel's central image of an entertainment-saturated society that stultifies and kills its viewers — a cultural-critical diagnosis, not merely a plot device

  • Crux: entertainment-lethality
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary — DE] FAZ/Kämmerlings: the film that makes everyone who sees it into mindless spectators is the culture-critical core of the novel, which describes the “Leere im innersten Zentrum unserer Gesellschaft” (emptiness at the innermost center of our society — gloss ours). [Rezensionsnotiz FAZ]
    • [secondary — DE] FR/Graf: the book is a “gnadenloser Abgesang auf eine von der Unterhaltungsindustrie vereinnahmte Gesellschaft” (merciless swan-song for a society appropriated by the entertainment industry — gloss ours); the film, like the title, is more or less lethal to whoever watches it. [Rezensionsnotiz FR]
    • [secondary — DE] taz/Knörer: the film is the novel's “das Dingsymbol, das Mysterium, die Super- und Megadroge” (thing-symbol, mystery, super- and mega-drug — gloss ours); whoever sees it never returns to reality. [Rezensionsnotiz taz]
    • [secondary — DE] SZ/Rühle: the society's core sickness is a craving for lethal “Zerstreuung” (distraction — gloss ours) — literally, the film melts the brain of whoever watches. [Rezensionsnotiz SZ]
  • Notes: The single most convergent reading across the six notices: five of the six frame the Entertainment / entertainment industry as the novel's central lethal diagnosis (NZZ's Ausschaltung sämtlicher Geistesfunktionen — shutdown of all mental faculties — and Zeit's “neuen geschmeidigen Totalitarismus” belong to the same cluster). Graded mentions rather than endorses because the SOURCE is a neutral digest reporting the reviewers, not a party advancing the reading — the third-hand digest register caps the stance. Reception-scoped; no claim about the Entertainment's mechanism or contents (entertainment-contents is not touched). Consonant with the archive's anti-entertainment reception poles.

THEORY: Infinite Jest is a post-irony project — its subject is the exhaustion of irony and the search for an earnest stance to replace it, carried by an unironic compassion for its damaged characters

  • Crux: sincerity-definition
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary — DE] SZ/Rühle: the novel is about the end of irony and the question of what stance might take its place — a question the book itself cannot answer. [Rezensionsnotiz SZ]
    • [secondary — DE] Zeit/Greiner: what strikes the reviewer is Wallace's wholly unironic empathy, his “mitleidbegabte Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit” (compassion-endowed perceptive faculty — gloss ours). [Rezensionsnotiz Zeit]
    • [secondary — DE] FR/Graf: Wallace's “hochmoralische Überkunstwerk” (highly moral über-artwork — gloss ours), read as a moral (if therapeutically doomed) project. [Rezensionsnotiz FR]
  • Notes: A mentions-grade reception sighting on the earnest/post-ironic reading of Wallace — the SZ end-of-irony framing is the neatest German-press statement of the crux, and the Zeit unironic-empathy / FR highly-moral readings converge on it. Oeuvre/reception-scoped; the reviews name the theme but argue no IJ-internal claim. Consonant with the archive's large sincerity-definition lane and with the German/Italian translator notes' consonant sightings (Blumenbach's always-moral reading of Wallace; Nesi's underlying-humanity). A mention-level sighting only.

THEORY: Infinite Jest is built as a circle — designed to be reread, its opening only fully legible once the whole has been read

  • Crux: annular-structure
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary — DE] NZZ/Schader: the book is built so that after one pass through its nearly 1,600 pages one can begin again at once — erst dann (only then — gloss ours) does even the first chapter fully open up. [Rezensionsnotiz NZZ]
  • Notes: A single mentions-grade sighting of the reread/circular-design reading, from Schader's NZZ notice — the observation that the first chapter (the Year of Glad interview, chronologically last) resolves only in light of the whole is a reception echo of the archive's annular/ring readings. Reception-scoped, no argument for the macro-shape beyond the reread observation. Not to be confused with the “Eschnaton” game Schader also names (a plot element, and a misspelling of Eschaton — see Accuracy notes), which is not eschaton-function material here (named, not read).

CONNECTION: The German feuilleton receives Infinite Jest as an encyclopedic maximal novel — ~1,500 pages that burst any literary cosmos, arduous to read but richly repaying, a cluttered literary toy-box

  • Crux: encyclopedic-design
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary — DE] SZ/Rühle: the book is less a seamless spaceship than an “Art vollgeräumte literarische Spielzeugkiste” (kind of cluttered literary toy-box — gloss ours), holding yesterday's science fiction and a timeless human pain-core at once. [Rezensionsnotiz SZ]
    • [secondary — DE] NZZ/Schader: the reading can be “strapaziöse” (arduous — gloss ours), especially once all the “Leitideen” (guiding ideas — gloss ours) are unfurled around the halfway mark, but the linguistic richness compensates. [Rezensionsnotiz NZZ]
    • [secondary — DE] FAZ/Kämmerlings: reading the 1500-page novel costs “Anstrengung” (effort — gloss ours) and “Geduld” (patience — gloss ours), effort richly repaid. [Rezensionsnotiz FAZ]
  • Notes: mentions-grade reception texture: the notices describe the maximal, overflowing, difficult construction (the jacket's jeden literarischen Kosmos sprengt — bursts any literary cosmos; the three-dozen-figure cast; the arduous midpoint) but argue no self-conscious encyclopedic bid (encyclopedic-design's actual crux). Convergent with the translator-desk term-density testimony held in the German/Italian/French translator notes. A sighting only. The difficulty/length register (“Anstrengung”, “strapaziöse”, “qualvollen Exerzitien”) is reading-difficulty reception, adjacency only to prose-tempo-design (the maximal sentence as design is not discussed anywhere) — logged, not folded.

THEORY: The novel's title and frame draw on Hamlet

  • Crux: hamlet-frame
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [secondary — DE] FR/Graf, in perlentaucher's own summarizing sentence: “Hamlet spielt im Hintergrund eine wichtige Rolle” (Hamlet plays an important role in the background — gloss ours; this is perlentaucher's voice, not a quoted fragment of Graf). [Rezensionsnotiz FR]
  • Notes: A bare mentions-grade name-check — the FR notice notes Hamlet's background presence but the digest advances no reading of Hamlet as organizing intertext (no Yorick, no “a fellow of infinite jest,” unlike the Kerline note's title account). A mention-level sighting only.

Themes

The German 2009 reception of Unendlicher Spaß: near-unanimous admiration shaded by difficulty-warnings; the lethal Entertainment as central cultural-critical image (the film that stultifies or kills its viewers; the entertainment industry that has seized power and stultifies us for free); the post-irony reading (the end of irony and its replacement; unironic empathy; the “hochmoralische Überkunstwerk”); addiction in every register (success, drugs/drink, distraction); the encyclopedic length and difficulty discourse (~1,500 pages, the “Art vollgeräumte literarische Spielzeugkiste”, the arduous midpoint, the reread design); anhedonia, ego-loss and a new supple totalitarianism of objects rather than subjects; the Hamlet background presence; and — running through FAZ, NZZ and the jacket — warm praise for Ulrich Blumenbach's translation (the “unglaublich” verdict, the “dicken Lorbeerkranz”, the jacket's kongeniale Übertragung).

Cross-references

  • blumenbach-trashpool-2011 and blumenbach-spiegel-2009 — the two Blumenbach translator primaries: the maker of the translation whose reception this Pressespiegel records. The reviews digested here salute exactly the achievement those interviews describe from the inside — the FAZ's “unglaublich”, the NZZ's “dicken Lorbeerkranz”, the jacket's kongeniale Übertragung answering Blumenbach's account of the 28 jargons, the historical dictionaries and the invented words. This note is the German public's verdict on that six-year labor.
  • esposito-ij-around-the-world — the English round-up of IJ's translators and their receptions; the natural cross-language companion, of which this is the German-reception detail (the Esposito piece carries the Germany-2009 Blumenbach data — the 70,000 copies, the Grimm dictionary).
  • letraslibres-no-necrologica-2008 and lapresse-infinie-comedie-2015 — the Spanish (Fresán) and French/Québécois (Sarrazin) non-English reception primaries; this German Pressespiegel is the third national-reception snapshot in that set, and the densest, gathering six reviews at once.
  • The end-of-irony / sincerity readings — the SZ end-of-irony and Zeit unironic-empathy notices sit beside the archive's treatments of Wallace's post-ironic, earnest program.

Notable passages

Each fragment below is perlentaucher's rendering of the named reviewer — quotable as perlentaucher's text, not as that outlet's verified verbatim (the underlying reviews are not held). German is the anchor; the English in parentheses is our gloss (paraphrase). The source prints its quoted matter in straight ASCII quotation marks; the citation wrapper here is ours.

  • Die Zeit / Greiner: the figures are no longer subjects but “Objekte eines neuen geschmeidigen Totalitarismus” (objects of a new supple totalitarianism — gloss ours); Wallace's “mitleidbegabte Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit” (compassion-endowed perceptive faculty — gloss ours); reading it left the reviewer “ganz kalt” (quite cold — gloss ours).
  • FAZ / Kämmerlings: the novel describes the “Leere im innersten Zentrum unserer Gesellschaft” (emptiness at the innermost center of our society — gloss ours); Blumenbach's achievement is “unglaublich” (unbelievable — gloss ours).
  • Frankfurter Rundschau / Graf: the book is a “gnadenloser Abgesang auf eine von der Unterhaltungsindustrie vereinnahmte Gesellschaft” (merciless swan-song for a society appropriated by the entertainment industry — gloss ours), a “hochmoralische Überkunstwerk” (highly moral über-artwork — gloss ours) whose attempt is to expand the interior space of language infinitely — “Innenraum der Sprache unendlich auszudehnen” (gloss ours precedes); everyone is marked by “Anhedonie” (anhedonia — gloss ours).
  • NZZ / Schader: the reading can be “strapaziöse” (arduous — gloss ours) once the “Leitideen” (guiding ideas — gloss ours) unfurl, but the “sprachliche Reichtum” (linguistic richness — gloss ours) compensates, and the translator earns a “dicken Lorbeerkranz” (thick laurel wreath — gloss ours); the warhead tennis-game she calls “Eschnaton” (as printed — a misspelling of Eschaton; see Accuracy notes).
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung / Rühle: an “Art vollgeräumte literarische Spielzeugkiste” (kind of cluttered literary toy-box — gloss ours) with a timeless human pain-core (the quoted “Schmerzkerns”, in its printed genitive form); reading it is at times a set of “qualvollen Exerzitien” (agonizing spiritual exercises — gloss ours), and the ills threaten to “verschlucken” (swallow — gloss ours) the whole book; the craving is for lethal “Zerstreuung” (distraction — gloss ours).
  • Die Tageszeitung / Knörer: the film is “das Dingsymbol, das Mysterium, die Super- und Megadroge” (thing-symbol, mystery, super- and mega-drug — gloss ours) of the novel; the whole becomes a “Gesellschaftsroman als monströser Chor für emotional schwer beschädigte Stimmen” (social novel as a monstrous choir for emotionally severely damaged voices — gloss ours), a “verzerrte Spiegelbild” (distorted mirror-image — gloss ours) of the present as an “Irrenhaus” (madhouse — gloss ours).

Accuracy notes

Cite-as-written throughout (variants preserved as printed in perlentaucher's text).

  • “Eschnaton” for Eschaton. The NZZ notice names the nuclear-warhead tennis game “Eschnaton” (line 221); the novel's game is Eschaton. Reproduced as printed — the slip is in perlentaucher's rendering of Schader (we cannot tell whether it originates with the NZZ review or perlentaucher), cite-as-written.
  • John Incandenza for James. The FR notice calls the father Vater John Incandenza (line 195); the character is James O. Incandenza, correctly named James Incandenza in the jacket blurb (line 111) and the NZZ notice (line 222). The FR variant is reproduced as printed (cite-as-written).
  • Gately presiding over Ennet House. The NZZ notice describes Ennet House as the rehab the accidental killer Don Gately presides over (line 225); in the novel Gately is a live-in staffer at Ennet House, not its head. The accidental-killer tag itself matches the novel. The notice's claim is reproduced as printed (cite-as-written).
  • dastellt for darstellt. The taz notice quotes “das Dingsymbol, das Mysterium, die Super- und Megadroge” and then continues in its own unquoted voice: des Romans dastellt (lines 275–276) — a typo for darstellt (represents). Reproduced byte-true, not silently corrected.
  • Doubled sich. The author-bio paragraph reads erhängte sich sich im September 2008 (line 312) — a doubled sich. Reproduced as printed; the fact (Wallace hanged himself, September 2008) is correct.
  • Page-count figures vary across the notices. The catalogue gives 1548 pages (line 104); FAZ speaks of a 1500-Seiten-Romans; NZZ of knapp 1600 Seiten; SZ of 1600 Seiten. All reproduced as printed — they are round approximations of the 1548-page edition, not contradictions of fact.
  • Ennet-House vs Ennet House. The jacket hyphenates Ennet-House (line 116); the FR and NZZ notices print Ennet House (lines 199, 225). Reproduced as printed.
  • Biographical facts check out. Wallace born Ithaca, New York, 1962 (correct); died September 2008 (correct); the KiWi edition is 2009; Blumenbach worked six years on the translation (correct, per the Blumenbach primaries).

Advances