Infinite Jest ’s Reconfiguration: Delayed Disclosure and Systems Science

ABSTRACT This article argues that David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest teaches readers to think systems-systemically through a crucial delayed disclosure and readerly reconfiguration. Examining the delayed disclosure of James Orin Incandenza’s (JOI’s) childhood epiphany about annulation, which appears more than five hundred pages into the novel, the article examines how this new information prompts the reader to reconfigure their understanding of plot, character, and world. The disclosure highlights Wallace’s modeling of systems theory in both content and form. On the story level, readers must grasp the feedback loop of annulation itself, the distributed responsibility of scientific innovation, and the complex causality leading from annulation to the ecological and geopolitical realities of the narrative present. On the discourse level, readers are cued to recognize the unmarked interconnections among what they’ve read so far, recursively doubling back on previous details in the feedback loop of reading: a cognitive process much like a scientific paradigm shift. Turning to Wallace’s own annotations of Tom LeClair on systems theory, the article argues for the shared structures between narrative form and systems theory, such that Infinite Jest teaches readers to read—and to think—as systems scientists.