Pic related is better than Infinite Jest. RPO is a poorly written

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Pic related is better than Infinite Jest.

RPO is a poorly written but nevertheless entertaining novel that manages to excite and enrapture its target audience with an endless litany of 80s references. It pretends to be nothing more and delivers on what it promises. The weak characters and blatant wish fulfillment is forgivable given the book is a paean to video game and "geek" culture, both of which are allowed to take center stage and amuse those for whom the book is intended.

Infinite Jest is the puerile, pseudo-intellectual howl of a man with no discernible talent. It speaks to a very particular experience - that of being an upper class white man from suburbia - in a nauseating and self-indulgent way. It even fails to accurately capture that existence, but instead substitutes it with a vapid and disingenuous image that appeals to what the presumed reader (an insufferable "philosophical, deep, and brooding" hipster who thinks himself an intellectual) wants to read.

RPO is more palatable since it makes no pretense of realism or insight, whereas Infinite Jest is buoyed entirely by that pretense while ultimately failing to deliver.