Infinite Waste?

I have trouble coping with many aspects of contemporary American society. Therefore I approached David Foster Wallace's mammoth book, Infinite Jest, with a lot of interest, as I'd heard that it examines, and satirizes, American culture's obsession with entertainment.  Also, I had read and admired his essay in Consider the Lobster regarding the soullessness of recent American literature, and thought that Infinite Jest would provide a literary answer--that every page would be so packed with heart and soul and important truths, Tolstoy and Steinbeck are standing up and applauding Wallace from their seats in heaven.

When I start reading a book, I slog through the first fifty pages no matter what.  I'm on page 43 of Infinite Jest, and it will take a lot of will power to get to page 50.  I do not like this novel.  I understand that many people and situations are being satirized in it, including the protagonists; but underneath there should be a layer of dead-seriousness (as in Gulliver's Travels), that makes your heart go, clunk, as you tell yourself, yes, he's ripping up everything around him, but only to get at the truth of things.

I felt ripples of seriousness in his description of a man desperate to receive some pot from his supplier so that he can get lost in a three-day solitary dopefest in his apartment.  This was the only section of those first 43 pages that rang true with me, on any level...but then it ended and we were back in endless scenes with boring, eviscerated people.  Now perhaps boring, eviscerated people can serve as the fulcrum on which a novel rests (see certain novels of Sinclair Lewis), but it's pretty hard to pull that off and maintain the reader's interest.

I will perhaps read more than 50 pages because this novel is so beloved by so many people, and my hopes were so high.  Wallace was brilliant and insightful in his essay about the soullessness of contemporary American literature, but this novel seems to prove his point much more than disprove it.