Infinite Jest is pushed in everyones face as an example of what a novel "should" be / best book ever written (yea right) and he has an evercrooning group of adorers who make Pynchon fans look reasonable and sane.

Personally I find it him to be turgid and overwrought but I get why people enjoy him and come back. His essays are entertaining but I've never gleaned any great insight or inspiration from him.

It's people who look at a book that's 1100 pages long (1600 if you use standard font/page sizes), and call it pretentious.

Is it? Sure, but that doesn't make it any less of an absolutely insane/enjoyable journey. There are parts of this novel that absolutely shook me (the parts on addiction/suicide, and the "that if..." part on the halfway home), while others had me in tears laughing (the parts on the insurance claim for the brick layer, the part about the camera phones, the "heart thief"... etc).

Thanks for replying! After I asked here I googled around and saw DFW had some mental issues resulting in odd behavior. I then wondered if that is why there was a hating fad.

About pages, one of my childhood experiences was a popular girl getting everyone to laugh when I checked out one of Asimov's foundation trilogy books from the school library. Unfortunately she and I are close friends today so there is no "what goes around comes around" story to report :)

If there's a fad, it's a small one. My sense is that people have been more critical than they were immediately after his death, but that's not really hating, just retrospection.