Discussion - Week Nine - Infinite Jest - Page 809 - 902

[Jim]

This discussion covers Page 809 – 902

Begins: The ceiling was breathing. It bulged and receded.

Don Gately lies in his bed in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital’s Trauma Wing, watching the ceiling bulge and recede just like his childhood’s Herman used to do. Tiny Ewell delivers a lengthy Sharing to Gately, apparently unaware or unconcerned about whether Gately is conscious or not. Pat Montesian pops in to ensure Don that all is well back at Ennet House. Next up is Calvin Thrust, who teases Gately by presenting and withdrawing, as porn stars tend to do. Geoffrey Day pops in but makes little impact. A garden variety Wraith does his impression of the ghost of Himself, who Gately really thinks should have Come In. Balbalis leads team le switcheroo down route #91. Dreaming about Mrs. Waite, Gately stumbles onto the samizdat plot. Hal stands on one foot and contemplates the meaning of fallen snow. Joelle shares her family photo album with Gately. Up and about early, Hal finds Stice stuck. Tine Sr. previews a pre-emptive PSA with a few mucky-mucks. More fun in the Trauma Wing with Gately Entertaining an old craving. Hal discovers horizontality.


To avoid spoilers, please restrict your comments to page 809 – 902 (and the earlier pages).

[Phil]

It was tough. Too tough. I will have to reread the rest of my life if I want to understand 800-900. Of course, if I did read the previous 800 pages, I must have gotten at least 30%. if I read the pages closely enough. This is harder than Heidegger.

Anyway, these two sections are killer--

Pages 832 to 845.
JOI/The Wraith has entered Gately’s consciousness with “ghastly intrusive force.” A lexical-bionic force to be sure. I see this as a kind of metaphysical part of the text which seems to identify just about every theme and concept of the novel. JOI as the author come to explain. This is some of the nastiest stream of consciousness I’ve ever read; almost unreadable, yet so crucial to continuing to tie up the strings as we near the end. As I wonder what’s going on with Gately, this near-death hallucinatory prose. Is he dying?

Page 845:
19 November. Several things of importance. At the shop of Antitois.
Marathe reported back “negatively for all signs of this veiled performer.” He had “made his decision.” MP will meet Steeply. At this point he seems to be the quadruple agent.

Finally, who says Wallace doesn’t give narrative satisfaction? Resolution? Two of the most horrible characters meet their end here—if we can say you meet your end viewing the Entertainment. To further field test “viewer willingness,” “Without-home” man Randy Lentz severing the digits of P.T. Krause, rather than his own digits, “marring the statistics of the field experiment.” That Randy and that Poor Tony.
I just laughed out loud.

Fortier had moved to Phoenix to interview Orin. Given footnote 302 and page 774 with Kate meeting Remy, I wonder if they will both see the Entertainment perhaps together as part of their dispatch from the book.

[Jim]

The scene with Gately and the garden variety wraith is packed to the rafters with big ideas. Fathers and sons, lost hope, isolation, addiction and denial - a kind of microcosm of the book, really.

This is the moment where we finally hear from JOI's heart. His pain and concern for Hal is genuine and touching, especially as tied-in to the description of sitcom "figurants".

A brilliant comic touch to have Gately go into AA counseling mode as he listens to JOI. Even in his fevered hellish pain, the regimentation of the program kicks in.

And speaking of AA, to have Gately suffering excruciating pain and still refusing demerol is an amazing struggle to witness. It was a brilliant touch to have him muted by the breathing tube. If he were able to speak, he would have talked himself into accepting the drugs. With his voice taken away, he had to confront the dilemma without recourse to the tricks of verbal abstractions. If he survives his injuries and is able to resist the demerol throughout, he will be "cured" at a level he would have been unlikely to achieve in the artificial environment of Ennet House.

[Phil]

yes, it's very dramatic the idea that he won't take the demerol as an addict. I suppose the Indian or Pakistani doctor was somewhat amusing talking about the drugs. It occurs to me that the book is somewhat racist in that Wallace is always showing Asians as buglike with awful syntax. Of course, it's true with the Quebecors too. I can't help but notice since my wife's chinese. Sorry to bring up.
Gately and Hal seem to be merged as one in their speechlessness.

[Casceil]

When I was reading the scene with the wraith, I assumed the wraith was some sort of allusion to Hamlet's father's ghost. But this puzzled me, because he was appearing to Gately, rather than to Hal. Is there some sort of identity or link between Hal and Gately that I am missing? Or is one developing this late in the book?

[Phil]

I think Hamlet is a red herring in this book.
The Wraith is James Incandenza. He is a real “character.” He’s really visiting Gately. All those words he says to Gately the reader had to also had to figure out since many of them “he doesn’t have any idea what it means.” He’s come to plant memories and lexicon into Gately’s head. I’m not sure why the Wraith couldn’t go to Hal directly. If anybody knows, jump in.
At any rate, JOI on page 839 admits he was a bad father to Hal and has come to Gately to tell him about the “Last resort”—The Entertainment. If Hal watches it, solipsism, anhedonia, death in live would be reversed.

Now on page 17 in the beginning, which is the end, of this circular novel, we know Gately, Hal, and Wayne dig up Hal’s father’s head. I think this is the only Hal/Gately meeting in the book. At least up to 900.

So, it seems the JOI/Wraith did push events forward.
Somehow Hal/Wayne/Gately (and Joelle?) got together to dig up the body.
But then, Hal didn’t seem in good shape in the beginning, so I’m confused. When they dug up the head, I think there was no Entertainment inside.

Now I feel all this is very unsatisfactory. But in a funny way, I like the wraith. After all, if we look at this book metafictionally—the Wrath is the narrator! He is the “little voice inside”—the narrator’s voice.

Again, stop me if this is going too far.

[Casceil]

There is such a wealth of detail in this very long book, and I have a little trouble keeping it all straight, but I think I noticed that Hal halucinates about a face in the floor, while Gately thinks there is a face in the ceiling. Seems like there must be some connection there.