Nerve gas, Weapon of chemical warfare that affects the transmission of nerve impulses through the nervous system.
According to Ryan Compton's Infinite Jest by the Numbers, Wallace used a vocabulary of 20,584 unique words to write the 577,608-word Infinite Jest. 10. 11. n+1 has a neat story about where the name for Michael Pemulis, Hal's drug-dealing friend at Enfield Tennis Academy, came from.
Time magazine included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. Infinite Jest is a bestseller in literary fiction, having sold 44,000 copies by the end of its first year of publication. The novel has continued to sell steadily and attract critical commentary.