A totally self-indulgent
waste of time which uses
sophomoric humor to get over the issue that it doesn't have a
plot and pretends it doesn't need one. Felt like a
pretentious teenager who uses big words you know already and then tells you what they mean in hopes of impressing you.
No, seriously. David Foster Wallace's ego is responsible for most of this story: the parts about Hal Incandenza and the Tennis academy are totally useless to the plot, and should have been edited out in favor of Greenly's story of redemption. The footnotes are not only useless, they are only there to give the impression of importance. You could skip every other page of the book without missing anything.
Greenly's story is good. AA is good. The story about addiction is good. But the terrorists, the Infinite Jest movie (a lame ripoff of Monty Python's "fatal joke") itself, and the mystery of what happens to Hal and Ms. Psychosis are boring, useless and left my mouth tasting of the ashes of futility. If you really want to read a book which can fuck with your expectations of plot and reality, read Gene Wolfe, especially Peace.