30 Years of Infinite Jest: A Fearless Fiction reading group

Fearless Fiction uses experimental literature to change the way we see ourselves, our neighbours, and our world. Join us as we read, wrestle with, and revel in David Foster Wallace’s postmodern masterpiece, Infinite Jest, for its thirtieth anniversary.

What is Infinite Jest?

The quintessential encyclopedic novel? A postmodern masterpiece? Something that leaves you ‘inclined to shoot [the author]… somewhere right around page 480’?

Infinite Jest is absolutely about tennis. About film. About addiction and anxiety, advertising and Alcoholics Anonymous. It is certainly about the Québécois. It reflects on physics, on optics. It features an eerily accurate premonition of President Trump.

Like all the greatest literature, Infinite Jest evades easy answers – it is, more than anything, an enigma. And like all the greatest literature, that density – that darkness – is what offers the most exciting opportunities for illumination. For enlightenment.

Welcome to Fearless Fiction: the fourth installment of a literary project that since 2022 has guided diverse and dynamic groups of Londoners through some of the planet’s most infamous fiction: Ulysses (2022), Finnegans Wake (2023), and In Search of Lost Time (2025).

This year – with generous support from the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) – we come together over the course of sixteen sessions to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

As always, beginners are welcome – no prior knowledge of Wallace or any other literature is necessary. Each week, participants will read a section of Infinite Jest in advance and discuss the text together in person at the John Harvard Library (211 Borough High Street, London SE1 1JA). Meetings will be focused on discussions rather than lectures, with guidance from the moderator. We will use the 30th Anniversary Edition from Little, Brown Book Group (ISBN: 9780349121086). All sessions will take place from 5:45-6:45 PM. The group will then migrate to a nearby pub for further discussion until 7:30 PM.

Feeling anticipatory imposter syndrome? Think again. Fearless Fiction’s central assertion is this: that no book is unreadable. Experimental literature is for everyone. And when the going gets tough, remember what Infinite Jest itself has to say: “No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.”

Jack Chellman, the moderator, is a Marshall Scholar and CEO of a London-based climate mitigation charity. Since 2022, he has partnered with the Institut Français, the Irish Cultural Centre, the London Irish Centre, and Camden Council to lead reading groups on infamous and experimental literature. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and presented that work at the 2019 North American James Joyce Symposium in Mexico City, Mexico.