He appears in the book mainly either in flashbacks or as a ghost, having committed suicide by placing his head in a microwave oven. It is suggested that he can create and view the Entertainment without becoming entranced because at the time of its creation he is already insane. He was strongly attached to Joelle Van Dyne, his son Orin's strikingly beautiful girlfriend, and used her in many of his films, including the fatal Entertainment. Infinite Jest or 'the samizdat'), an enigmatic and fatally seductive film that was his final and most cherished creation. He is the creator of the Entertainment (a.k.a. James Orin Incandenza, an optics expert and filmmaker (see 'Filmography' entries below in External Links), is the founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy.

Many characters are either students and faculty at the school or residents and staff at the halfway house. Enfield Tennis Academy ('ETA') and Ennet House are separated by a hillside in suburban Boston, Massachusetts. The novel's primary locations are the Enfield Tennis Academy, Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (footnoted 'Redundancy sic' in the text), and a conversation between a Quebec separatist and a U.S. Much of what used to be the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada has become a hazardous waste dump known as the 'Great Concavity' to Americans and as the 'Great Convexity' to Canadians. Corporations purchase naming rights to each calendar year, eliminating traditional numerical designations for example, 'The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment' and 'The Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland'.

In the novel's future world, North America is one unified state comprising the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). Wallace's working title for Infinite Jest had been A Failed Entertainment. In addition to being the title given to the fictional film central to the story, reviewers have also considered the title a 'sly wink at the book's massive girth.' The novel derives its name in part from a line in Hamlet, in which Hamlet refers to the skull of Yorick, the court jester: 'Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!'

3.4 Les Assassins en Fauteuils Roulants.

3.3 The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.

The infinite jest