Brain Pain discussion
This topic is about
Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest - Spine 2012
>
Discussion - Week One - Infinite Jest - Page 3 - 109
date
newest »
newest »
The Northeast territories now property of Canada. Eight “Subsidized” years by corporations. ETA (the tennis academy) accredited for 11 years. What year do you think is the Year of Glad? And how do the folks keep track of years? Without numbers, I am lost. Wonder how the characters know "what year it is." Before I think about where this is headed, I'd like to know where it started.Instead of future, is this an alternative reality?
right now my money on key character is on Moms--she's the center. Hence, mysterious.
Dr. Avril Mondragon, “Quebecois-Separatist Left” while in grad school, “Macdonald Chair in Prescriptive Usage at the Royal Victoria College of McGill University Moms, taught at Brandeis, wife “fucking everything with a pulse, particularly Canadian” a Quebecer.
She seems to be in cohoots politically and sexually with Charles Tavis, Uncle Charles, ,CT, head of administration. Half brother in law of James. This would follow Hamlet.
Mod
This comes from the wikipedia page for Infinite jest:
(view spoiler)
If Hal is 18 in the Year of Glad, that would make him 10 in the Year of The Whopper, and so on.
Mod
She certainly fits the Queen Gertrude profile.
I haven't quite absorbed the info on Uncle C.T. yet. His dossier seems vague at this point.
Jim wrote: "Phil wrote: "The Northeast territories now property of Canada. Eight “Subsidized” years by corporations. ETA (the tennis academy) accredited for 11 years. What year do you think is the Year of Gla..."Jim wrote: "Phil wrote: "The Northeast territories now property of Canada. Eight “Subsidized” years by corporations. ETA (the tennis academy) accredited for 11 years. What year do you think is the Year of Gla..."
Jim wrote: "Phil wrote: "The Northeast territories now property of Canada. Eight “Subsidized” years by corporations. ETA (the tennis academy) accredited for 11 years. What year do you think is the Year of Gla..."
I understand he's 18 and he's 17 in Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment and that he was ten in YOTW but what I'm wondering is what year numbericaly is it in the novel. The future?
Jim wrote: "Phil wrote: "She seems to be in cohoots politically and sexually with Charles Tavis, Uncle Charles, ,CT, head of administration. Half brother in law of James. This would follow Hamlet..."She cert..."
all we know is he's now the head of admin and Jim's half brother.
by the way, I should say I read this book many years ago and this time I'm reading it without reading any secondary or biographical sources. But given that I am now 60 and my brain's a mush, I only have a foggy idea of the book. Anyway, I will not look up up anything on the Internet. I want to see if this book stands alone as a novel without treating it like technical philosophy, which needs secondary intrepretations.
Mod
click the link that says 'view spoiler'
Mod
"half-brother-in-law" is the vague part. What exactly does that mean?
Jim wrote: ""half-brother-in-law" is the vague part. What exactly does that mean?..."Siblings through adoption? Or, the guy is androgynous? Or very short perhaps... :)
More than any of the other books I've read this year, this one feels contemporary. (I don't want to include Swamplandia, Which irritated me mostly and sent me here somewhat indirectly enough)I particularly dig the endnotes, which although breaks with the "flow" of the physical act of reading, doesn't break with the flow of the novel at all I found....it provided more novel....although gotta love the first endnote being anticlimactic...fell like a lovely flat note.
Endnotes 24 and 45 are the kinds of aggressive narrative violations that make me drool. It's lots of fun to read as well to watch Wallace pull it all off.
Thanks Jim for pointing out the disparity between the sections with Hal and the sections with "I". The first 17 pages of this novel are absolutely wonderful. Perfect highbrow slapstick, and that "I" dichotomy makes it work better somehow,because that's where it all breaks down? Or perhaps Wallace downplays the "I" with the slapstick, which is focused on physical humor anyways. The first sentence of the novel almost works as a declarative statement of the dichotomy between the mental/psychological of an "I" and the actual physical self.
3 Nov YDAU seems to be particularly significant and feels to me like the "present" at least for the present, but I can easily see some sort of weird seismic shift occurring at some point.
What's so strange about the opening first person narrative is that Hal seems to be solipsistic yet incapable of human speech and making himself understood. I find this switch back to third-person expect for another short first person interesting. it's as if the first pages are some kind of prologue (though set later when hal is 18). A solipsist is the belief that the only thing somebody can be sure of is that he or she exists, and that true knowledge of anything else is impossible. Descartes starts his philosophy with this. Bertrand russell once gave a talk on the impossiblity of solipsism and a woman said she knew one and wonderered why there were weren't more of them since he was so nice.
First off, thanks for having this discussion. I hope that I can contribute some and can't wait to read others thoughts on IJ.It seems important that the first section starts us off with a major breakdown in communication. Why has Hal lost his ability to speak? The scene is hilariously funny and at the same time shows us a pretty depressing moment in Hal's young life (of which there seem to be more than a few). On page 17 there is an interesting passage "I think of John N.R. Wayne...standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head." Sounds like Hal is going to meet up with the burglar we are introduced to on pages 55-60. Why are they digging up his head?
In the 109 pages DFW has introduced a lot of characters, most of whom are having trouble communicating in one way or another: hal tries to speak, but can't; Himself can't hear his son talk; Erdedy cuts off communication and is left trying to answer two calls at once; Gompert shuts herself out of the world, tries suicide, engages in conversational battle with doctor; Gately leaves a man to die, because he can't understand the stuffed up, gagged pleadings of the Quebecois victim; Steeply and Marathe feel each other out, Marathe is tripling (or quadrupling); Orin and his subject's communication is deceitful; Orin calls Hal with lots to say and the line is cut; Tiny passes letters through a mail slot to talk with his wife after being locked out; Schtitt has a deep conversation with, the invalid, Mario.
The only genuine communications and feelings of togetherness is when the young boys discuss how tired they are in the locker room and have the little buddies meetings. I thought it was funny that John Wayne had Chu give his presentation for him.
There is a lot of talk about marijuana, and how it serves to isolate people, in the first hundred pages... hmm.
The face in the floor section is flat out great. DFW slips in the face in the floor in the "I"'s thoughts and then has the "I" realize what he just glossed over. The true horror is realizing what you have seen and not processed? IDK, but this reminds me of cartoons where the character runs off a cliff and doesn't fall until he looks down. It brings (to my) mind movies and television.
What's this mystery cartridge, "the Entertainment," that's killing people?
And after 109 pages we really have no clue what's going on. DFW has shown his chops in a bunch of different styles and gotten us used to the footnotes. He has written a lot, but we are still in the dark. Maybe DFW is trying to get us in a place to understand that communication takes two sides and bunches of patience, as we delve into the next 800+ pages.
One last thing - after 8 pages of a footnote (24) we come upon a reference to the title of the book.
A second last thing - how about this crazy mold eating story thrown in just as Hal begins trying to talk with the admissions group. Is this related to why he can't make himself understood?
Matthew wrote: "More than any of the other books I've read this year, this one feels contemporary."I agree. Writing it in the near-future, with minor tweaks to reality leaves it feeling very fresh, even 16 years after publication. Large amounts of information with no clear thread connecting them and a lack of two-way communication reads well in modern USA and the internet (social media) age. DFW's style of writing helps, too. Why does it feel so contemporary to you?
Mod
All good questions M-13, Phil, Matthew, Chance. This entire read is going to be a head scratching, mind bending journey through the psychic terrain of the writer and his characters.
I'm guessing that the mold scene is there to illustrate Hal's earliest memory of his mother and how childhood memories impact our perceptions of people later in life. I expect we'll be hearing more about this memory later in the book, in one form or another. Maybe that's why she likes to fuck doctors, in case she needs to reach one in a hurry...
This is kind of a sidebar question, but maybe it's germane to the discussion. Are any of you finding the story to be extra heavy and heart-breaking, given what we know about DFW's real-world struggles with drugs, anxiety, depression, and profuse sweating? I almost wish I was coming to this book with no knowledge of DFW's bio and suicide. I feel like I'm reading through a filter instead of looking at it with a more neutral view. It's too late to change what I've read prior to starting the book, but I would like to acknowledge the phenomenon.
Maybe more specifically, I feel like a psychiatric voyeur, finding little clues in the writing that might explain later events and why he decided to check out so young. I don't want to belabor the point, but I feel a little bit "icky", for lack of a better term.
Meehanm13 wrote: "First off, thanks for having this discussion. I hope that I can contribute some and can't wait to read others thoughts on IJ.It seems important that the first section starts us off with a major b..."
M13,
Your reading is compassionate and astute.
I agree with your words on communication. Dope smoking is important too. Each character is addicted to something. Sex, dope, alcohol, secrecy. Addictions make you a solipsist. How can they find connection with others? Or do they?
Re: footnote 24. That’s about the only footnote I like. I guess having footnotes in a novel is another argument/debate. Anyway, this one is hilarious. So IJ was James’ “first attempt at commercial entertainment UNRELEASED.”
Jim wrote: "Meehanm13 wrote: "A second last thing - how about this crazy mold eating story thrown in just as Hal begins trying to talk with the admissions group. Is this related to why he can't make himself un..."Jim,
Now remember I’ve read the book before—before Wallace killed himself. I didn’t know anything about him at the time, but in recent years I’ve read so much, I’m tired of it. I even tried to read his philosophical dissertation on free will (I do have an M.A. in philosophy)
I do like to know about the author and autobiographical themes—I just read a wonderful bio on Hemingway and his boat--but I believe the novel should stand alone. Case in point, The Recognitions. We don’t know anything about Gaddis. Also, V (my favorite Pynchon)—we don’t know anything about Pynchon (he may not even exist). Those novels are self-contained.
I did not give IJ a careful reading last time. I actually didn’t like it but I didn’t get it. I’ve never met anybody who ever read the book so I couldn’t discuss it.
This time, I am going to follow your reading schedule, listen to other readers, and contribute, and not give away spoilers. I am not going to read secondary sources or biography. My memory is hazy from 15 years ago.
This time I will a close reading and see if there’s a payback. I will not feel “icky.”
Otherwise I will follow Dorothy Parker’s advice in a critical review from long ago and applies literally to this book.
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
Because a writer is depressed, an addict, goes to AA, an asshole, commits suicide—does not make her a good writer.
Okay, that’s where I am coming from.
Jim wrote: "I'm guessing that the mold scene is there to illustrate Hal's earliest memory of his mother and how childhood memories impact our perceptions of people later in life."This may be true, but it's not even his memory, rather Orin has told him the story... it's a second-hand memory. Where does this leave us? Is it even true?
Jim wrote: "Are any of you finding the story to be extra heavy and heart-breaking..."
For me, IJ informs me more about the author and his mind-state rather than vice versa. There are a lot of clues to why DFW would decide to "check out early" if you read IJ as his take on the world. On the bright side writing it may have kept him alive long enough to write for another 10+ years... so there's that. I see where you are coming from with "extra-heavy and heartbreaking", but I never thought of feeling "icky."
Whoops, forgot the post part.@M13:
You did a really good job showing how nobody is able to really communicate with each other in OJ, at least most of the characters. And I think a lot of it has to do with that. And the solipsism.
However, it seems to me that looking around the place I live in the real world, we are more cut off from each other, and in some ways more solipsistic. We talk to each other through other through various media, we purchase things remotely, and if we chose to some of us could get by without talking to another living person in the flesh. I can even buy groceries at the store without really talking to someone, or even use an "automated" line where no person is needed.
That's one of the reasons that it feels contemporary. Another reason is the focus on efficiency. When I think about Hal and watching tennis videos of a perfect forearm serve over and over, I think of efficiency experts and trying to reduce tasks to the minimum of repeated movements that a wage slave gets to call their "job".
Also, I keep thinking of "flow". That point when you do a task so well you can just do it and and not actively think about it. I have that kind of dull repetitive job that I do rediculously well, and yet don't have a ton of passion for.
This too, leads to thinking about something else. If you do something so well, you don't have to think about, then why bother? I think about books when I do my job. and I'm sure I'm not the only person with dull meaningless employment who wanders off elsewhere (in their head, on their computer, on their phone)
So yeah, some things that made me think it felt contemporary.
Thanks for the brain stoking M13.
Jim wrote: "Maybe more specifically, I feel like a psychiatric voyeur, finding little clues in the writing that might explain later events and why he decided to check out so young. I don't want to belabor the point, but I feel a little bit "icky", for lack of a better term. "That pretty much sums up how I feel. Oh, how I wish I'd read this years ago.
Mod
That unpleasant feeling surfaces very distinctly in our week 3 discussion when Joelle is ruminating on suicide.
Right. Not get there yet. Forewarned is forearmed.
Greetings all,So I was in our group way back when we started IJ, but am only now getting to read it. (I'm glad I'm not the only one a little intimidated!!)
Just finished the first 109 (and I'm going to stick with the schedule as far as reading post's and whatnot) and I have one glaring question: Where is the humour everyone keeps talking about?!?!?
Much of what I read (reviews, etc.) and posts here hinted at some sort of wonderful humor and that the book was hillarious. I didn't even find a chuckle. (with the lone exception of the footnote referance to IJ, that was funny)
I have a dark sense of humour, at least enough of one to understand it, but I can't find anything here at all funny. Even the exchange of the secret agent in drag was just a wonderfuly vivid scean, not so much a laugh out loud moment, do me.
Am I missing something?
Mod
So I was in our group way back when we started IJ, but am only now getting to read it. (I'm glad I'm not the only one a little intimidated!!)
Just finished the first 109 (and I'm goi..."
I suppose you might think of it as 'gallows humor' 'ironic humor', or 'If I wasn't laughing I'd be crying humor'. I wouldn't say there is 'hahaha humor' so much as comic situations. The meeting between Marathe and Steeply is funny in its strangeness. I don't know if you've read Wallace's non-fiction, but he has a painfully dry, deadpan style that's funny in ways very similar to IJ. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again has some wondefully comic moments, especially when he visits the Illinois State Fair.
Ah-ha. I guess I was expecting more of the laugh out loud kind, but the laughing so you don't cry, THAT I can see.
I think the publishers were marketing it to sell to a lot of copies and I guess humor sells more then the horrifying drug addiction and violence that the novel portrays. And once the copies are bought, they could perhaps care less if you actually finish the book. (Just thinking about the bottom-line approach most businesses have these days.)Granted, I thought it was hilarious and horrifying at the same time.
Mod
Still bitter about Subsidized Time, are you?
Wallace does his best to skewer big business/government throughout this book, although mostly in the background. O.N.A.N, the Great Concavity, the catapulting of waste into what is now southern Quebec, and so on, not to mention the superficiality of the Gentle administration and its emphasis on cleanliness. Sick stuff!
Not to mention the parodies of academia and art films. JOI's filmography is a hoot; that it was adapted IRL breathtaking.
Mod
JOI's filmography is a hoot; that it was adapted IRL breathtaking."
True!
@Caleb - IJ is a big investment of time, attention, and intellectual processing. You are going to come to conclusions that aren't supported by the text and you are going to question what kind of country America really is, as well as what kind of man could write such a book. What I can tell you now is that it's worth the trip. I learned to read in 1966 and since then have read literally thousands of books and out of that mountain of books, IJ easily holds its place in my top 10.
Enjoy the trip!
@ Caleb: You are reading the right book with the right group – the second part is very important cause this is a book that demands careful analysis & indepth discussions & that you'll find here.IJ is a very special book for me for various reasons,one of which is through it I came to know Brain Pain & Jim ( both are inseperable!). Enjoy!
@ Rand: welcome to BP! So happy to see your happy avatar here!
Bump.Yes, I am two years late to the discussion. I should have done a lot of things --including read Infinite Jest -- sooner, but I didn't.
Thoughts that struck me as I paged through your discussion:
1. I was also struck by the amount of drug use and drug information in the book, though maybe not quite in the same way Jim way (the author suicide filter).
aside: When I think about DFW's suicide, mostly I regret that there is a now finite corpus of writing, and get this feeling like I'd better make the extant books last; but I don't find it affecting my reading directly. (It occurs to me that in this sense, DFW is kind of like Jane Austen for me: oh no, I've already read the six completed works and the juvenalia (which was almost worse than having nothing, frankly) and now there's NOTHING LEFT! It's sort of a bizarre comparison, but there you go. Lucky for me I've only just started with DFW, and this book alone is worth like 3 Jane Austens in terms of sheer heft.) That aside had its own aside. I'm all done now.
Anyway, I more found myself wondering what the author is on about with the encyclopedic catalog of drugs and drug use, and in a way that surpasses a sort of "how does this work in the novel" way. It's a little pinprick of doubt about the author, not very well-defined, but it's there whenever I see a class of drugs and its sub-sub-sub classes described, or when a character swears off a drug for the last time, again. I was also especially struck by how, when speaking about addiction, pot is sort of the IJ go to drug (though this could change, and I've already seen at least two other important drugs in future sections, it does seem prominent here). So far here are two characters with a pretty serious problem/thing, plus there's Hal, whose relation to getting stoned seems to be about more than the drugs themselves. It seems an odd choice for talking about obsessive and destructive addiction, but maybe that's just me.
2. Endnotes. I am better adjusted to them now, and there is one long endnote coming up in future sections that is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing so far in IJ, but....
Dude. FOOTNOTES, not endnotes. Endnotes are one of mankind's great evils. Their negative effect on quality of life is not to be underestimated. I say this from years of experience in grad school and beyond; to this day I suffer the crippling long-term effects of multiple paper cuts, wrist strains, and the pyschic pain of multiple lost places in the same book. Breaking up the narrative with a physical flip is not to be desired, I just can't get with you on that. I love the notes themselves (though I think the filmography came too early in the narrative for me to really enjoy it properly), I find the footnote to be a unique and flexible structure for the kind of digressive discourse that I, myself, am helpless to resist, and I think DFW is a master of their use for comic effect.
But dude. ENDnotes? Do you hate me in some way?
That's all for now. See you in the week two thread, assuming "you" are actually out there (and that I have the stamina).
Brain Pain
Books mentioned in this topic
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (other topics)Swamplandia! (other topics)
Gravity's Rainbow (other topics)
The Recognitions (other topics)
V. (other topics)
Hal howls and wows the University Admissions staff. Erdedy’s waitin’ for the (wo)man. Hal’s dad can’t jive him with that conversational drag. Orin calls to say how much he has to say. The medical attaché watches an unmarked cartridge while his wife has her gal’s night out. Wardine show her stripes. Bruce Green and Mildred Bonk bunk together. Mario tries to have some pillow talk with Hal. Orin battles the fauna of Arizauna. Hal tours the tunnels with his one hitter and his secret fans. Don Gately expounds his theories of Burglary and the Burgled in Modern Times. Jim Troeltsch enters a fugue state while a random “I” longs for home. Some background ‘fo on “himself” daddy’o, while Orin comes in for a landing. Pemulis shares secrets of shrooms to a room of disinterested youths while the random “I” is dreaming alone. Kate Gompert makes a shocking plea. Mario engages in Socratic dialogue with Gerhard Schtitt. Tiny Ewell changes his Florsheim’s and his address. An endless-loop party is under way at the medical attaché’s place. Marathe and Steeply practice for their dinner theater performance of “Dr. Strangelove meets Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: A Love Story” while J.A.L. Struck Jr. cheats his way through l’histoire de la Game of the Next Train (in vain). Descendants of Ward and June raise a little dust in the Great Concavity. Tard and exhausted, jr. players hold a bitch session on the blue crush carpeted locker room floor while little buddies watch from the sidelines. Marathe and Steeply debate: Love v. Country – which should you die for?
And so we enter the world of Infinite Jest, where dysfunction is the norm and “To hear the squeak” means the end of the line. Structured in a way similar to Gaddis’ The Recognitions and with echoes of Pynchon’s V. and Gravity's Rainbow, Wallace takes us on a highbrow tour of the slimy underbelly of the Post-Syndication O.N.A.N.(istic) psyche.
Lots of characters to track and lots of leaping forward and backward in time, but somehow, Wallace holds it all together as best he can. After the first 109 pages, a big question looms, “Where might all this be headed?”
To avoid spoilers, please restrict your comments to page 3 - 109