April (pages 1-330): Q4 Structure

[Jen]

Talk about the book's structure. Why do you think the book is structured this way?

[Tracy]

The footnotes are clever, but are probably what causes so many to abandon the book- they make it feel like a textbook, or a nonfiction tome. There are no chapter numbers, but There are breaks between character/place changes- it works, and saves trees/e-space.
There is symbolism in the structure- right now, I think it's a symbol of life marching on, even if the book isn't in chronological order. Memory creeps in and takes a person backwards, but life and time move forward, infinitely. But when I'm done with the book, that idea may change.

[Diane]

The footnotes are a bit much. I have found it easier to read through a section and then go back to read the footnotes, instead of reading them as I go.

[[deleted user]]

The narrative also moves between places the AA house and the tennis academy and also the hill top each place has its own distinct narrative voice.

[Pip]

There is a lot of switching in stories, locations and in the timeline. It is important to keep checking the timeline in one of the footnotes to know when a particular section is placed chronologically. It has a very complicated structure!

[Patrick]

It feels like a ball of colour-assorted threads, each thread is as colourful as the other and unseemingly related to each other. The footnotes probably have the same ironic function (i.e. having a dig at academia) as the footnotes in House of Leaves, but I feel that they were way more useful here than in Danielewski's novel.

[John]

I think the structure, or perhaps lack of structure, is an important aspect of the book. After reading Three Kingdoms, the use of "sponsored time" resonates with the way time was measured by kingdoms, reigns or significant events in ancient China. It seemed that Wallace was making a comment about the excessive role of commerce in modern American life - like ancient Chinese Emperors, it rules everything.

In addition, contrary to Pip, I stopped referring to the calendar chart on page 223 as I felt a lack of certainty about time was part of the effect Wallace was probably after - a modest temporal uncertainty in line with drugs.

End notes - some endnotes were explanatory, along the nature of academic notes. Some were the brand names of drugs, when the street name was given in the text, some were street names when the brand name was given in the text and Wallace usually identified the manufacturer of the drug. Other than the ironic function that Patrick identifies, probably with respect to both academia and the pharmaceutical industry, those endnotes could have been skipped entirely without detracting from the book. In fact, constantly flipping back to read those was itself a serious distraction from the book.

Other endnotes gave important information following the story line, including several very long endnotes that basically constituted parts of the storyline relegated to the endnotes, but that could easily have constituted sections of their own in the main text.

And some endnotes were just jokes, such as note 216, purported to define some reference, which stated merely: "No clue." In the end I found this aspect of the book very annoying.

I agree with Patrick that the book is like a big gnarly ball of yarn of different colors, and while there are times when threads will run from one piece of yarn to another, at the end when the ball is fully unwound you are left with the threads, just hanging there.

I finished last night and will take my time responding to the questions so some of my irritation can bleed off.

[Kristel]

I finished last night, July 10. So right behind John. This book really is a lot of structure or lack there of. The footnotes; I am okay with footnotes until they read like a whole mother aside story. I didn't need to look up all the drugs as that's what I know but I found it interesting when he explained them and who the drug companies were. Like John says above, there is a lot of emphasis on commercialism and that does truly reflect the age, from the wearing of name brands, sports promotions, agencies even buying time. Multiple story lines that were mostly all interesting to some extent but I thought they would come together better and show some connectivity but really they didn't. So like Patrick and John state. A lot of yarns but no real patterns or connectedness.