Infinite Jest is a ridiculously long book that makes some nice points about addiction; whether it's televisual or neurochemickal or etc. Whether it's worth slogging through all 1088 pages of it (paperback version) is questionable. (One could say, for example, that it collapses under its own weight. Of pages, that is.) I enjoyed it, but I have a compulsion to read fantastically long books that is, perhaps, not very healthy.

I don't like the book as much as my friends do (Eichimus, et al., one of whom has read the damn thing twice!), and I always hesitate to recommend books this long.

If you want to get a feel for David Foster Wallace, I would recommend both: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

If you like those, A LOT, then I'd recommend Infinite Jest.

As for being someone else's conversation: sometimes it feels like that to me. So, take it as you will.