Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

‘Well. Rémy, but I don’t think Dick Willis’s “empty of intent” quite does it. Captures it. The eye-factor. Hoyne, the Arab internist. The old man. Not for eyes like that.’ ‘You would say it does not capture these eyes’ expression.’ Looking up while squatting, this made Steeply’s neck appear thick. He stared past Marathe, at the shale. He said ‘The expressions seem more like—fuck, how to say it. Fuck,’ Steeply said in concentration. ‘Petrified,’ Marathe said. ‘Ossified. Inanimate.’ ‘No. Not inanimate. More like the opposite. More as if… stuck in some way.’ Marathe’s neck itself was stiff from so much time looking out and down from a height. ‘What is it this wishes here to mean? Glued?’ Steeply was doing something to a toenail’s cracked polish. ‘Stuck. Fixed. Held. Trapped. As in trapped in some sort of middle. Between two things. Pulled apart in different directions.’ Marathe’s eyes searched the sky, which this was already too light blue for his pleasure, filmed with a sort of eggy plura of heat. ‘Meaning between different cravings of great intensity, this.’ ‘Not even cravings so much. Emptier than that. As if he were stuck wondering. As if there was something he’d forgotten.’ ‘Misplaced. Lost.’ ‘Misplaced.’ ‘Lost.’ ‘Misplaced.’ ‘As you wish.’

What is it we misplace when we’re addicted? Perhaps Steeply unconsciously alludes to his own father. The thing misplaced: sanity, reason, a connection to reality... meaning.