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Infinite Jest
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Infinite Jest - Chunky- Discussion thread
I just did the same.
Petra wrote: "LauraT wrote: "I think I need a break after this one!!!"I completely understand, Laura. I think a few light and fluffy books are in order for all finishers of IJ. :D"
I'm in!
Thank you for removing the spoiler tags.I have no recollection of that little piece from p. 17. How did you catch that one? I never thought of the wraith as James. I thought that it was Don's own internal deamons. Maybe I should reread that section. I think I am reading this too much on the surface, not deeply enough.
Irene, I wish I could claim I remembered/caught that, but my memory's so bad I barely even remember what I ate for breakfast by the end of the day! I made much use of the Infinite Jest Online Index as I read - whenever a character was re-introduced that I hadn't come across in a while, or if I felt I just needed a refresher on things I'd already read, the index would point me to the right pages to re-read. And that was one of the index entries for Don G.Someone posted a link to the index very early on in this thread, I think. It's at: http://russillosm.com/ijndx.html. (Note: the index does contain spoilers if you read further into the entries than the page you are on in the book!)
I would have been very happy to have given you credit for being such an attentive reader. LOL
Summary (pages808-902)17 Nov YDAU
”O” - Gately in the hospital; he accepts no narcotic drugs, goes through a lot of pain & drifts in & out of consciousness. Tiny Ewell sits @ bedside, tells his story. Joelle visits. Kate Gompert is missing, so is the gun that was used on Gately.
- Geoffrey Day visits Don G. Don is visited by James, the wraith. Ferocious Francis, Bud O, Glenn K & Jack J (Don’s AA sponsor and his cronies) visit Don.
19 Nov YDAU
- M. Fortier & Maranthe discuss possibility of “aquiring” James’ family members. Lenz is a test subject for the AFR & still cheating to get his way. AFRs make plans to infiltrate ETA.
- Gately remembers Mrs. Waite, a sad lady who lived in his trailer park when he was a kid. He gets sad & unfocussed and dreams of the Entertainment.
20 Noc YDAU
- Hal wakes up early (he’s now talking in the 1st person. Are we getting closer to Hal?)
- Gately & Joelle in hospital. Joelle begins to believe that she can remain drug-free. Don thinks of AA’s “13-Stepping” policy
- Hal gets up early. Stice has iced himself to a window. Troeltsch sleeps in Axhandle’s room. Hal & Stice talk about the paranormal. Kenkle & Brandt, custodians hired by James after they helped him home one drunken night when he got lost on the wrong side of the tracks in Boston.
- (Partial Transcript of Weather-delayed Meeting): Tine Sr, Tine Jr, Mr. Yee, Ms. Hooley & Mr. Veals meet to discuss advertising campaign to warn children about watching unknown Entertainment cartridges. Next year will be the Year of Glad.
- D Gately dreams of being offered C-II pain drugs, wakes and remembers his days of crewing.
- Hal has a panic attack; goes to Viewing Room #5, ponders his family & the Moms’ childhood
At the end of this section I was struck by these two sentences:"Hamlet, for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost."
&
"I had understood myself for years as basically vertical. I felt denser now; I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal."
The first sentence, being a Hamlet reference, stood out naturally. The second made me ponder why it stuck out for me.
It seems that the two are rather opposite:
Hamlet, alive = ghostly
Hal, dead (horizontal) = solidly composed
Any thoughts? I'm not sure if this is significant or not.
Here's another episode where I wish I had read Hamlet beforehand:The Entertainment seems to center around the theme of "the woman who killed you in your previous life is your mother in this life". In the film, the baby loves the mother, the woman who killed him previously.
It's a morbid life-cycle, relying completely on female killers and the love their victims feel for them.
In IJ, Avril is (in her own way) a killer of men/sons. She's cold, manipulating, focussed on her needs/wants. Orin has left the family because of her. In a way, she killed him (removed him) and he loves her still.
We don't know much about James' mother. His father was forceful but his mother seemed more passive. Could she have killed James (his spirit, his will) by being so passive and letting his father brutalize him as he did?
Could the lure of the Entertainment be the feeling of love, the perpetual/constant bond between the killer and the victim?
Interesting take Petra. In a way, I hope you are wrong about the mothers being the perpetual killers. If we can blame Avril and James' mother equally, one for being too strong, cold, calculating and manipulative and the other for being too passive and allowing the father to assume the cold, manipulative role, than women can never win and men are always exhonerated. I think society has done that to women far too often, putting them in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position.
True. Could the Entertainment be centering not on that, though, but on Love? The kind of unquestioning, complete Love that children feel for their parents (in this case, their mothers)?
In IJ, the children are predominantly sons but the baby in the film could also be a daughter. What about this week's episode where Hal remembers Avril's childhood? Her father didn't take her thoughts/feelings into consideration when he just brought home a new family with no warning. That, in its way, must have "killed" Avril, may have been the starting point of turning her into the manipulative, cold person we know.
So, the father killed the daughter who grows up to kill her sons?
(ETA: I'm not at all sure that this is significant in any way. That theme of mother being your former killer is a very dark life-cycle that I hope doesn't exist)
Hmmmm? That is pretty deep.I was thinking less about the content of the entertainment cartridge than thinking of it as a metaphore for our addiction to pleasure. People seem to want their brain stimulated passively for pleasure through out this book: sex wthout commitment, drugs and alcohol, the cartridge, limitless consumption while ignoring the environmental consequences, etc. It is as if the specific source of the pleasure is less important than the desire to be addicted to pleasure. After all, even MASH reruns has the potential to destroy a life. Sure, those addicted to the cartridges were willing to cut off fingers to get their hit. But, the other addicts were willing to submit to even far more deadly self-destructive behavior. And, even worse, they were willing to subject their families to destruction. I am thinking about all the back stories of the characters raised by alcoholic parents. Are these drugs and drink and all the rest the real killers? Hmmm,... are they both killer and the thing that births the user into a new life?
I am still trying to figure out what that teddy bear hugging therapy session that Hal stumbles into was all about.
I think there are groups like that already, Irene. The Teddy Bear group may be an exaggeration but aren't there groups around to get in touch with your inner child? To go back to when Life was simpler? I could be wrong but thought I'd heard of something like that.
Mod
Petra wrote: "I think there are groups like that already, Irene. The Teddy Bear group may be an exaggeration but aren't there groups around to get in touch with your inner child? To go back to when Life was sim..."I'm sure there are!
I am sure there are theraputic groups that invite participants to get in touch with their inner child, but this one was not about a simpler time, but about unmet psychic needs (in a sense, a time when things were more painful). But, why have Hal stumble into that type of a group? There are pool halls and strip bars and coffee shops where folk musicians get a start and he does not stumble into any of those. So, I tend to believe that it was significant. But, then maybe I am approaching this book all wrong. I keep looking for it all to be significant to the story line and maybe much of this is irrelevant and the trick is figuring out the relevant from the irrelevant.
Doh! Sorry, Irene, I completely misunderstood your good point (can I blame my cold??? :D)I saw it as another random meeting of people who have been in contact with each other before. The guy on stage (forget his name) was the brother of Orin's best friend in ETA. He was known to Hal.....random meeting in an awkward situation.
DFW throws these random meetings in all through the book. It's as if he's saying that we're all interconnected and can't get away from each other.
The place where I'm reading now has Bobby C in Gately's memories and the Chinese drug guy who later sells Bobby C the drano heroin......another random interconnection.
I don't know if they mean anything in the context of IJ's story, though. So far, they haven't as far as I can see.
Or it could be, maybe, that DFW is saying that if we got involved (less involved with our wants/desires) and thought of others, we could change their future to something better?
If Hal had interceded, could he have helped Teddy Bear Guy?
If Gately had somehow helped Bobby C get away from the Bookie, would that action have saved Bobby C from what became his fate?
In regards to the "the woman who kills you is your next mother" theme:I saw this posting in another group who read IJ awhile back. The original poster has agreed to let me post it here:
"The Entertainment's lethal appeal is its ability to give viewers what they think they have wanted all their lives: namely, a return to some state of maternal plenitude. The viewer is that child staring into a mirror that sends back a version of the mother APOLOGISING-and for what, exactly? Perhaps for not being there, always, as the provider of pleasure and wholeness. Now she is there for the viewer, providing the very pleasure the viewer has been seeking elsewhere all along. That viewer therefore is done with desire, and done with desiring.
...In her guise as the film's mother-symbol, she (Joelle/Madame Psychosis) also functions as the primary emblem of Incandenza's complex "mother-death-cosmology", itself a pointed critique of Lacan. As the popular radio talk-show host of the strange, formless programme, Sixty Minutes More or Less with Madame Psychosis, broadcast weekly...she provides listeners with something close to maternal security. The primary allure of the show lies in the quality of her voice, which, according to one character, "seems low-depth familiar...the way certain childhood smells will strike you as familiar and oddly sad." (189-90).
Fittingly, in the role of the apologising mother in Infinite Jest, she represents none other than Death herself, "as in the figure of Death, Death Incarnate" (850).
As such, she dramatizes Incandenza's central point, namely that "Death happens over and over, you have many lives, and at the end of each one (meaning life) is a woman who kills you and releases you into the next life."(850). That woman is always, he concludes, your next life's mother.
For the novel's multitude of desperate drug addicts, that seductive, murderous woman is the Substance that controls their lives. Once these characters succumb to their addictions, their pre-addiction selves are murdered, never to rise again, while the woman-murderer, here the drug, that has enslaved them, becomes the mother-creator of their new addictive lives, now little more than "womb(s) of solipsism" and forms of "death in life". The film's debilitating effects on its viewers therefore recapitulates the addictive experience. Not accidentally, Madame Psychosis is also the street name for...DMZ.
...Hence, whether playing the ravishingly beautiful maternal nude or the endlessly apologising celestial mother, Madame Psychosis presents to the film's lonely viewers an irresistible vision of wishes fulfilled, a pornographic object of masturbatory desire( this all takes place in O.N.A.N.,after all), one that provides viewers with the fulfilling desire they have been seeking all their lives. At the same time, the thing you desire most- Lacan's (m)other- is the thing that will kill you.
Such desiring will also lead you to death-in-life, a catatonic state of pure desiring, one that involves a form of self-annihilation similar to the process of metempsychosis."
From Marshall Boswell's Understanding David Foster Wallace.
So, if I am understanding this correctly, DFW is saying that the average person has the emotional or psychic maturity of a 6 week old? We just want to lay there and get our needs met, content to feel unmoderated pleasure. And, like an infant, we will do whatever is in our limited power to achieve that passive pleasure, damn the consequences?
Mod
It does seem that this is the point he is trying to make with this book.
That does seem to be the idea of the Samizdat and the addictions.
Well, isn't he an optimistic guy with a high regard for the human species. I suppose that, if you believe that non-stop self-satisfying pleasure is the point of life, suicide makes sense when you finally figure out that you ain't going to get that out of life.
I think he was thumbing his nose at this attitude & at a society that condones it. I don't think it's one he endorses. Suicide could make sense if you were depressed already and focussed on society's need to be superficially entertained and pampered and not worry about consequences, personal or humanitarian growth. It would be a very dark and ugly place. It's going to be interesting to see how he ties all the stories together. My best guess right now is that Hal is going to share Gately's room in the hospital, they somehow decide to go to Canada to dig up James. Hal somehow winds up back in the States and under Charles' care but scared of him also. I have no idea what happens to Mario, Orin & Avril or our addict friends.
On page 938 there may be a clue to the Teddy Bear therapy:"Gately reached in the dark for the bars of his playpen, grasped them with pudgy fists.........He wobbled like a toddler."
In this scene he's been exceedingly high for days. He's trying to leave the apartment but the drugs keep making him forget that.
Then there's the passage above.
In this scene, isn't Gately's inner child saving him? At this moment his inner child is stronger & more focused than Gately.
I have to think about this. There's a connection there someplace.
DFW does give us a contrast to this superficial pleasure quest by his description of Kate G's depression, and that train collector she meets in the hospital who hangs on through his deep love for his wife.
There are some interesting parallels between Gately & Hal right now:- Hal is now horizontal; Gately is horizontal
- Hal memorized the OED; the wraith gave Gately "vocabulary"
- Hal doesn't/can't/won't speak; Gately can't speak due to his tube
- Hal is running through his memories of Himself; Gately is running through his memories of earlier life
Taking away Gately's voice allows Gately to save himself. If he'd been able to speak, he would have consented to taking the drugs offered by the Doctors. Or, it would have made accepting them a lot easier, I think. It's easier to blurt out a "yes" unconsciously and without thought than it is to physically mime a "yes", which action requires more conscious thought and follow-through.
And, Stice, just stuck to the window, not crying out, not panicking, not begging for help, just passively accepting the situation. That has to mirror the psychic state of many in this book.
About Gately's "inner child" experience while on drugs: From the passage from Understanding David Foster Wallace (UDFW), "once these characters succumb to their addictions, their pre-addiction selves are murdered, never to rise again, while the woman-murderer, here the drug, that has enslaved them, becomes the mother-creator of their new addictive lives".
Therefore, in his binge, Gately died and the drug became his new mother in his new life. Although he's already an addict at the time, he was a "maintaining" addict (kept the buzz going), not a binge addict (ultra-high all the time). In that scene, he binged for days, so much so that he wet himself, dried his veins in one arm, was stopped from saving himself from horrible danger, etc.
As it also says in UDFW, "Death happens over and over, you have many lives, and at the end of each one (meaning life) is a woman who kills you and releases you into the next life".
Gately died another one of his deaths during the binge; the drug became his new mother.
Then UDFW says "the viewer (of the Samizdat) is that child staring into a mirror that sends back a version of the mother APOLOGISING-and for what, exactly? Perhaps for not being there, always, as the provider of pleasure and wholeness". This doesn't make sense in the context of that scene since nothing & no one apologized in any way. The girl rang the buzzer and wanted to be let in.
However, that act of buzzing the buzzer, seemed to penetrate into Gately's brain and cause his "inner child" to flex a bit. That "inner child" was made strong (?) and independent by Gately's MOTHER, who ignored her young son in his crib and made him have to pull himself up.
So, maybe, in a way, Gately's real mother saved him from his drug mother by ignoring him when he was young and vulnerable?
Mod
Do you think that DFW actually meant all of the "hidden" things that people take out of this book? Much has been written analyzing this book, but I am wondering what DFW would think? Did he really mean these things? Or is this like when we had to study books in high school, and what the teacher always said the underlying theme meant was always totally different than how I personally had interpreted a book?
And if DFW was still alive, would he answer, or would he just smile and leave us to our debate? :o)
Mod
This part baffled me. Why would Stice sit there for so long (hours), frozen and stuck to the window?? He even carried on a long conversation before admitting that he was actually stuck and could not move. Why?
But then again, most everything in this book had me asking "Why?" :o)
That's the Million Dollar question, Sheila: What did DFW intend to put into the pages of his book?I have no idea but I can't think that he'd write such a behemoth tome with so many random events without having an agenda of some sort.
What he's saying in these pages is really profound in many ways. What I don't get is why he's hidden it so well. I mean.....really......some of those pages of detailed, monotonous descriptions are truly boring and hard to get through. Gately's last section of memories was one of them.
But especially these sections are important because within these boring sections, DFW hides nuggets of truth. This happens always so I don't think it's an accident. He means for it to happen. But why? Why write like that? It has me puzzled.
Irene wrote: "And, Stice, just stuck to the window, not crying out, not panicking, not begging for help, just passively accepting the situation. That has to mirror the psychic state of many in this book."Has me confused, too. I've decided it has something to do with the wraiths that are circling through this book or Stice himself is playing a joke on everyone at ETA.
He's glued to a window, his bed is up at the ceiling, things are moving around ETA.......sounds like a poltergeist or an elaborate joke.
Anyone think this entire book is intended as a joke of some sort? DFW laughing at ????? .....us, the readers? society? shallowness? our inability to resolve things?
Mod
Truthfully Petra, that was what I took away from this book when all was said and done!
My review:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Well, I think I proposed a theory that DFW was playing a joke on the reader parallelling the movie thing of James at which movie goers just watched themselves on screen. Most folks got up in anger when they realized that it was simply the audience being projected on the screen. But, the experts wrote all sort of critical articles of acclaim about its deep meaning. And, I suggested, in fear, that the reader of this book was being similarly duped by DFW. But, the farther I got into it, the emphasis on the blue which usually symbolizes sky, made me wonder if the INFINITE JOKE was his image of "god" in some sense or atleast the meaning of life (which some connect with GOD.
Sheila, I'll read that review in 28 pages. :DTonight is my tai-chi class so I probably won't finish tonight but Friday is the day!
.....only a half page of footnotes left to go!
We should all quickly pop over to the "currently reading" thread to say we're reading IJ. It'll be our last chance to do so. LOL!
Irene, nice one! The blue sky has been a continual theme. I didn't put God and blue sky together.
I think Hal says also that he hates blue or blue sky.
Finished. Huh. Complete ramblings because I haven't put this together yet in my head:
Hal's breakdown: DMZ on his toothbrush? Who would have put it there? The unknown person under the tree, who might have opened the bathroom window and climbed in? Who besides the wheelchaired AFR want to target the Incandenza family? The guy under the tree was on foot, not in a wheelchair....wasn't he? What happened to Pemulis? Where did he go after his stash was missing? Did the mysterious guy under the tree steal the stash or one of the kids in ETA?
I really liked the redemption of Gately. C protected him from the worst of the experience, gave him a second chance, which he took. In some ways, the worst event in our lives (being caught in that situation) can, in unexpected ways, turn into the best thing to happen to us (finding his way out to a chance to start clean). We're given the chances but it's our choice/responsibility to take them.
Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. The Teddy Bear group. Connection? In the sense that most of the book takes place in a year named after an adult diaper.....that, maybe, the adults in this book need/want to/do regress back to simpler times or maybe a place where they can start again? Aren't the men in the Teddy Bear group trying to reconnect to their true selves? So are Gately, Hal, Joelle and others...all to various degrees of success (or, in cases like Lenz, failure)?
I'm going to have to give this some time to percolate in my head.
I found this blog entry about the end of IJ:http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend
I don't buy it all but I do like the part about Hal, eating mold and DMZ. It makes sense.
I don't buy that the wraith (James) has that much influence on things. He might but as a ghost why would he need to knock down the ceiling tiles to get the DMZ? He's a ghost. If he can pick up the pills after dropping the ceiling tiles, then he can ghostily appear in the space above the tiles, without disturbing them, and remove the pills.
I don't think a ghost took the pills; a human did.
Thinking about my above comment about the guy under the tree being on foot. It could have been Maranthe. There was one mention of Maranthe having artificial legs but not using them often. He was at Ennis House; therefore, was in the area. He could have "disguised" himself with "normalcy" by wearing his legs. That would make more sense.
He may have brought his own DMZ supply (a coincidence to Pemulis having some; there was some DMZ in Antinoi's shop). Pemulis' DMZ may have been stolen by any of the boys in the school who may have seen Pemulis stash his stash.
Mod
DFW: There is an ending as far as I’m concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an “end” can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you.
I like that he says the book can "fail" for some people. So this really is a love it or hate it type of book. :o)
Wow, that explanation was fascinating. I totally missed all of that. I just found the entire thing unconnected. Guess I am not smart enough or an attentive enough reader to catch and connect all of those loose threads.So, what is the infinite jest of the title?
Mod
I think there can probably be a couple answers to this. There was the movie named "Infinite Jest" that everyone was looking for, so I think we are led to believe that is what is implied by the title, but in the end, I personally think that the infinite jest is the book itself. It is a book without an ending, it is a book where things don't wrap up, it is a book with lots of unanswered questions and unfinished stories. The book, itself, is the infinite jest I think.
Irene, that ending may not be what DFW intended. It's someone's interpretation/imagination. I'd like to hear what DFW has to say about the ending of the book. I agree with Sheila that the infinite jest may be the book itself. Kind of like James' movie "The Joke". We're the audience.
On the other hand, I'm not sure about this either. DFW wouldn't thumb his nose at his readers, would he? I'm sure he'd be trying to say something instead of pulling off a big joke on his readers? I mean, what if he'd lived? Would he risk alienating his audience, like James did?
Did anyone think, when they reached the end, that Gately died? I was reading in another group and the general consensus was that he did. I didn't get that impression.
I got the impression that he was fighting for life and remembering about another time in his life where he was "on the edge". I saw the end as his moment of decision (should he give in & die or keep on fighting & living) and the beach scene as a rebirth, so to speak, and a decision to keep on fighting & living.
The only clue we have is in the first chapter Hal mentions Gately and at the end of the book he hasn't met Gately yet.
But Hal may be hallucinating in the first chapter himself. But how would he conjure up a person he didn't know and in the context of digging up his father's skull?
So, did Gately die? Now I'm wondering.
Mod
Was the beach in the rain reality? Was it him waking up from a drug trip? Was the whole book a drug trip that Gately went on?
I took it as the beach in the rain being a memory of the time when Hackelmann (?) stole the gambling money and C was sent to "even" things out. C, at that time, saved Gately's life. He could have killed him but he drugged him (to not see what happened to Hackelmann....or whatever his name was), to save him that experience, then Gately was removed from the scene and placed on a beach. He was, in a way, reborn. It was, I think, his "rock bottom" moment. It was his moment of decision....his rebirth, the moment he discards his "mother, the person who killed him in another life"....the moment he takes control of his life (?...not sure about this; but a rebirth anyways). I took the final scene in the book (the part where Gately is in the hospital; not his memory) as Gately's second rock bottom moment. The first was drug related; this one was life related. He's burning up with fever, he feels awful. He's got to decide whether to continue fighting for life or give up. His memory brings back his first moment of redemption, it's a positive one...and (as I took it) he decides to continue fighting and living.
Joelle has that same decision to make. Last we see of her, she's standing in front of Ennis House and there are police cars outside. They seem to paralyze her and she can't enter. It's her moment of redemption/decision as well: if she enters Ennis House, she's committing to her recovery; if she doesn't enter, she's giving up.
I hope she entered.
Okay....another question that I find puzzling:
Matty Pemulis. What was his role? We meet him once, as a passive character (he's sitting in a restaurant, watching the street). We learn his & Michael's story. He then disappears. The story adds nothing to Michael's role in the book. It's very background and a frivolous scene in a book with no frivolous scenes.
Any idea why Matty is introduced?
ETA:
I keep forgetting:
That scene that Gately is remembering (in the apartment), Hackelmann's eyelids are sewn open.
These things struck me in that scene in regards to the Samizdat:
- the eyelids are sewn open (must watch what's happening)
- drops are put into the eyes (acid was my first thought but then he wouldn't be able to watch what was happening; my second thought was those drops the eye-doctor puts into your eyes that blur your vision....the Samizdat is a blurred movie)
- they bring the TV over close to Hackelmann and the drug lord guy (gosh, I'm awful with names!) is on it (blurry vision, movie being shown of "your mother, the person who killed you in your previous life"...the drug lord is about to kill him. So, in a way, that death scene is another version of the Samizdat?)
(where in the book was there another scene with eyelids being cut off? Or am I remembering incorrectly?)
I found this quote but don't know where it comes from. It might be from Understanding David Foster Wallace but I'm not certain:(I added the bolding)
"The grief therapist is ecstatic at Hal’s "grief-therapist-textbook breakdown into genuine affect and trauma and guilt and textbook ear-splitting grief, then absolution" (256). After this session, Hal’s traumatic grief is "professionally pronounced uncovered and countenanced and processed" (257).
At first sight this section about the grief therapy might suggest that Hal thinks he can solve his problems from pure theoretical learning, that he thinks he has to pass an exam in order to be emotionally cured. It seems as if Hal is not being fair to the therapist and to himself. But there is of course a flip side to this coin. The grief therapist thinks Hal is cured only because his patient finally matches a prototypical patient. Hal reached out for library books with knowledge about grief partly because the therapist does not understand Hal’s situation. Hal’s reaction is the result of the inadequacy of his therapist who fails to see the particularity of Hal’s tragic case. Hal is truly looking for a way out because he is afraid "he is going to end up in a soft quiet room somewhere" (254) and when he finds out the therapist cannot be a little bit more flexible with the knowledge of his own professional training, Hal decides to just give the therapist what he was looking for. But Hal remains uncured. Hal's encyclopedic knowledge of the O.E.D. and the therapist's bookish learning both fall short when deeper human feelings are involved.
This causes the reader to wonder about what all this knowledge leads to. The size of the novel is a clear manifestation of this problem. The incredibly detailed descriptions, the occasional chaos of print, the innumerable suggested but unclear correspondences between innumerable plotlines serve to confuse the reader and make him feel the same way certain characters in the novel do. The reader cannot absorb and process all the incoherent information and only sees a weak indefinite cohesion between plotlines in this novel without a resolution. The only alternative for the reader is to reconstruct, from the data in the novel, his own "plot", his own sensible universe, a self-constructed alternative universe, which in a way could be dangerous and result in solipsism as is the case with Hal Incandenza who at the end becomes totally mute.
In a response to a master’s thesis long ago, DFW admitted to having four “projects” going on in IJ. I believe that one of these projects was to write a book about addiction that would itself be addictive. A second was to structure the book as a particular type of fractal. The center of a Serpinski triangle is empty, much like how the IJ the book revolves around IJ the film and its auteur, both of which are essentially missing from the book. We never really find out what makes IJ so interesting and JOI is never really present– he is remembered, we read his writings, we meet his ghost.
Each of the three main subplots, which are bound together by JOI and IJ, also has a question at their center which is left unanswered. What happened to Hal? Will Gately survive and stay sober? Will the Wheelchair Assassins capture IJ and subdue America?
JOI was a founder of the Anti-Confluential school, and IJ the book has an anti-confluential plot. There is the promise that it will all come together eventually, a promise that is supported by endless connections between the characters and subplots. The connections are everywhere and leave the reader with the impression that with closer reading, they can discover the answers to the open questions at the end of the book. So you jump back to the beginning and start over. In this sense the book becomes infinite, and the jest is on you– because the connections don’t lead anywhere conclusive. They are there as a mechanism to suck you back in. "
Mod
I really like this part at the end too:
The connections are everywhere and leave the reader with the impression that with closer reading, they can discover the answers to the open questions at the end of the book. So you jump back to the beginning and start over. In this sense the book becomes infinite, and the jest is on you– because the connections don’t lead anywhere conclusive.
I wonder if that is why so many reviews for this book say they now want to read it over...to try to make sense of it...to try to see what they missed...except what they "think" they missed might really not be there at all. That might be the "infinite jest".
When I read the final line, I did not think of death. Rather I thought of Gately as a younger person. Didn't he grow up near a shore? I had the thought that he was waking up from a bad drug trip as a much younger man, that this was just a very bad and complex drug trip.
I saw that last sentence as his moment of redemption...the moment he knew he had to enter AA. It explains how he became such a model recovered addict. He saw the very worst of the worst. That's what makes me feel that he lived through the fever, too. He made it through that bad drug moment, he can make it through the bad fever moment, too. This seemed like his second moment of redemption.
I thought that drug scene showed a soft side to C as well. Bobby C is the guy who died from the drano heroin earlier in the book. He was a tough, mean individual who you wouldn't think had much compassion for people.
Yet he saved Gately: saved him from seeing the worst of what happened to Hackelmann, from being arrested (got him out of the apartment) and put him somewhere safe until he woke up. Without C, Gately wouldn't have gone into rehab. He would have died at that point and been completely out of the story within IJ.
Sheila, right on! That could very well be the infinite jest in/of this book. You've got to hand it to DFW for being able to pull that off. That took some mental manipulation and thought. That man had a very active and detailed brain.
I am so grateful for this discussion because I missed 90% of this book on my own. Petra, you have been an awesome discussion leader for this book.
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Irene, can you never see what is in the spoiler tags? If not, maybe we can remove them? I think we're all in the same place in the book?
ETA: I've removed the spoiler tags from my last few posts. Irene, I can go further back, if you like. Just let me know.
After reading this behemoth with us, you should be able to read all the posts in their entirety. :D