Infinite Jest
discussion
does anybody want to talk about Infinite Jest?
"Hating this book is a moral issue for me. The thought that good trees continue to die to print copies of this monstrosity causes me real pain."Dude, we get it, you hate yourself for not understanding the book and for cowardly bailing on it 150 pages in. Don't take out your self-loathing on us. Either be a man and try to read the book again, or eat shit and leave. K thx, bye.
nate: nor was raised by a militant grammarian. oh but he did:
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave...
And I do think that the overall structure of IJ seems like one of JOI's films, in fact, in moments of certain despair, I think it IS one of JOI's films. Reason: Ever notice that little semi-circle on the bottom right corner of pg. 981? It looks just like those movie dots that show up on the screen when they change reels. It especially looks like that, after you've been up all night trying to solve one of IJ's many mysteries and you're all blurry-eyed and brain dead; and at that point, I can almost hear DFW saying over and over again: "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry...."
**********WARNING, CONTAINS SPOILERS***********ok, i have finally located the quotes in question about AFR sources at ETA as well as descriptions of gately's "square-headed" hospital roommate and the device they are setting up in the bed next to him after otis p. lord checks out.
on AFR sources within ETA.
p. 726
"The deceased auteur's colleagues and relations were under consistent surveillance. Their concentration of place worked in the favor of this. An empoloyee at the Academy of Tennis of Enfield had been recruited and joined the Canadian instructor and student already inside for closer work of surveillance. In the Desert, the redoubtable Mlle. Luria P---- was winning necessary confidences with her usual alacrity. An expensive source in the Entertainment's probably performer's last known employment -- the small Cambridge radio station which Marathe and Beausoleil had pronounced Weee -- where she had donned the defacing veil of O.N.A.N.ite deformity.
Attentions were to be focused on the cartridge's performer and on the Academy of Tennis of the auteur's estate. The fact that the players of the Academy were to play a provincially-selected team from Quebec would have been easier to exploit had the A.F.R. possessed a tennis player of talent and lower extremities. Inquiries into the composition and travel of the Quebecois team were under way from sources at home in Papineau."
On Gately rooming with Otis P. Lord, impaled within a TP monitor during an Eschaton debacle.
p. 809
"The blurred figure in the next bed sat up very still in bed in a sitting position and seemed to have a box on its head."
on the device being assembled for Gately's next roommate, possibly Marathe's spineless and skull-less wife.
p. 920
"The deadly R.N., helping the M.D. clamp some kind of weird stell back-bracish thing with what looks like a metal halo they'd put together from parts out of the big case, clamping the thing to the head of the bed and to little steel plates under the bed's heart monitor -- it looks sort of like the upper part of an electric chair, he thinks -- the R.N. looks down in mid-stretch and says Hi Mr. Gately and says Mr. Gately is allergic and doesn't get any meds except antipyretics and Toradol in a drip Dr. Pressburger do you Mr. Gately you poor brave allergic thing...
...This is while the M.D.'s trying to screw the metal halo itself to the top of the back-braceish thing with bolt-head screws..."
As for my suggestion that the brace could be for Hal, to immobilize him, I've now decided that would be impossible, since Hal has not yet suffered his "episode," and is still at E.T.A. when Otis P. Lord returns. I am wondering if Gately did end up meeting Hal in the hospital, if Hal is admitted to a psych ward, chemical dependency patients and psych patients are often housed on the same floor. If Gately ends up accepting Demerol, (and he might, because towards the end of the novel he seems to be in very bad shape, his condition worsening) then it's possible he could stay on for an inpatient detox and rehabilitation, both to be tapered off Demerol and monitored for his physical recovery at the same time, while receiving chemical dependency treatment. It's obvious he finds Hal, but it's not clear whether Gately tracks him down and finds him or if they end up running into each other. Though, now that I am thinking of it, Hal mentions digging up JOI's head with Gately in the same scene he suffers his episode, before he is wheeled into the ER. So, are we to assume that in the past difficult year, he has hooked up with Gately and tried to avert a national crisis by digging up his father's head, then returning to ETA and attending a college interview after suffering some type of psychologically damaging event possibly brought on by the Entertainment?
What exactly do you guys think happened to Hal? Theories I've read online include that the mold he ingested as a child decomposed into the same fitviavi mold used to manufacture DMZ. (After beginning his speech to the Deans during the admissions interview, Hal says, "I cannot make myself understood, now...Call it something I ate." In the next passage he begins to relate the story of him eating mold and then presenting it to a frantic Avril. This story as related to him by Orin; Hal says he cannot remember it. After this memory ends, we go directly back to the interview, with Hal speaking, and we discover that Hal truly cannot make himself understood, now. Should we call it something he ate?
Another theory I read suggested Pemulis has dosed Hal's toothbrush with DMZ, which he left in the hall in his NASA glass when he went to fetch Kenkle and Brandt to remove Stice from the frozen window. Or that Hal agrees to ingest the DMZ willingly, assuming the urine test will be called off, since Avril and Tavis have already succeeded in expelling Pemulis from ETA, and have no need to catch him with a dirty UA.
JOI created the Entertainment for Hal, so is it possible that he is immune from the debilitating fatal effect inflicted upon everyone else who views it, since they are not its intended viewers? It is made to make the "mute" Hal talk. Is it possible that JOI created the Entertainment to have an effect upon Hal's ability to speak, which backfires because Hal is not really mute, causing his speech to be affected so that now, when he thinks he is speaking normally, he is actually incomprehensible to everyone else, the same problem he suffered when trying to communicate with JOI? Is it possible that the Entertainment's fatal qualities are powerless upon its sole intended viewer, but does somehow affect his speech, scrambling his delivery, pronunciation and mannerisms because its truth-serum-we'll-make-you-talk effect isn't intended to be used upon someone who is actually physically capable of speech, and is in reality articulate and verbose?
This is just wild ponderings, I don't have any basis for this in the book. Can anyone give me their opinion? Why can't Hal make himself understood? Did he view the Entertainment? Did the AFR ever get ahold of it? Who was actually sending the Entertainment through the mail? Does an anti-Entertainment exist? How did Gately and Hal meet? How does Hal get away from the AFR and Gately and resume his studies at ETA as usual? Does Orin end up being killed by the AFR? If Orin was killed, wouldn't Tavis or DeLint make some mention of Hal's "late" brother who attended the University, the notorious punter for the Cardinals until he died by an "unfortunate" incident? It seems to me that if the famous punter mysteriously died or disappeared, that would be of national and public interest, and that that would be mentioned when he is brought into conversation as a credit to Hal's athletic ability and as an asset to getting him admitted to the same college Orin attended. Hal also does not speak of Orin in the past tense. Tavis says "his brother's in the bloody NFL for God's sake." So how did he escape the AFR and return to the NFL unscathed after being made to experience his worst fear (being slowly asphyxiated like a cockroach, and amongst them)?
Also, anyone have any ideas on the significance of the word "knife" being written in a steamed mirror? (in a "nonpublic" bathroom, notes Hal.) This image appears more than once, at one time appearing as a surreal image of an actual knife protruding from a mirror. I think it is interesting to note that JOI suffered from seeing a single word written in steam upon glass, a single word written by Avril post-coitus in the fogged up window of the Volvo. Though what that word was is never revealed.
Paul, you said "Somehow and for some reason, Wayne was incapacitated/killed, and that probably makes more sense if he was up to something villainous." Where does it say Wayne was killed, other than Hal saying Wayne would have won the Whataburger invitational.
Jesse said:I can almost hear DFW saying over and over again: "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry...."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Priceless.
Cathleen said:
"So, are we to assume that in the past difficult year, he has hooked up with Gately and tried to avert a national crisis by digging up his father's head, then returning to ETA and attending a college interview after suffering some type of psychologically damaging event possibly brought on by the Entertainment?"
Yes, I think so.
The eschatology of the book, how the story's plot wraps up, is still a mystery to me. But one thing I just thought of...
Is the book itself the anti-entertainment?
Eureka?
As for Wayne, note "incapacitated/killed" which could mean a number of things, like being arrested or whatever. Could have been killed, too.
Paul,I noted you said "incapacitated," I was just wondering if that was the only instance you're citing illustrating he is out of the circuit.
Yep, it's the only indication. But your attention to that word brought to mind the idea that maybe he got samizdat'd, which I hadn't thought of before. It's just speculation though.
Oh, thanks Cathleen. I stand corrected. Jesse, I know what you're talking about with the film change-over circles that show up in the upper right of the screen, typically, but there is no such symbol anywhere on my page 981. What does it look like? Is it similar to the gibbous moon type symbol that shows up at the start of select sections?
I'd guess my copy probably doesn't have the page 981 symbol only because it's one of the 100 or 500 or 1000 signed advance proof copies (the number seems to be disputed) that went out a little before publication. I found it in a pile of books that had been abandoned on a windowsill of my apartment since I moved in.
paul, that's a good theory, i hadn't thought of that either. after all, the AFR has samizdat'd (nice verb, ha ha) their sources before after getting what they needed out of them. for example, the MIT student worker who ran the radio booth for Madame Psychosis. And Fortier planned on samizdat-ing Marathe once he turned up either Joelle or the Entertainment itself for the AFR.
Nate are you telling me that you are READING the advanced signed edition. I paid like 100 bucks online to buy one and never touch it. The version that has the little gibbous moon in the lower right corner is the hardcover edition. I don't know if the paperbacks have it or not. Cathleen you ask some great questions and the problem is that DFW wrote the book so that those questions don't really have concrete answers. I mean yeah Orin survives but like you said HOW? And that is not mentioned anywhere. The text gives evidence for all the theories about what happened to Hal and to me personally the most compelling arguement I've seen is that the mold he ate as a child was reactivated by his marijuana withdrawal. I didn't come up with this theory but read it on Wallace-1. Also I do think Clennete might be a good candidate for the employee who works for AFR but I don't have my book with me so I can't look for solid proof right now. i think this discussion is great and anyone looking for the motherload of DFW/IJ theories and ideas go to Wallace-1 which can be accessed from the howling fantods website and it has a fully searchable archive which has helped me gain sooooo much insight into IJ.
Yeah, my signed copy was the copy I hauled around with me for three weeks every day, so it's not in the best shape anymore. But it wasn't in the best shape after spending about three years gradually warping on the windowsill before I paid attention to it, either. Did he draw a little face in yours too?I agree that withdrawal-triggered self-synthesis of DMZ seems like probably the best possibility for Hal's problem, for all the reasons listed on Howling Fantods. It just seems like DFW went to exceedingly great lengths to string evidence for that explanation throughout the novel. And I can't really imagine why Pemulis would just does Hal's toothbrush on his way out without real provocation.
Speaking of the gibbous moons, any thoughts on the section organizations? Specifically: why do some get the symbols (see here), and why do some get a "Gaudeamus Igitur"? The latter is a little clearer: it is Latin for "Therefore, let us rejoice", appears only in front of certain Enfield Tennis chapters, I believe, and I think I read that it's the title of apopular school-spirit-related song. But I still don't know why only certain ETA chapters get the mark.
Nate: DFW signed my copy Broom of The System many years ago. And he signed my wife's copy of A Girl With Curious Hair. And the copy of IJ that sits on the shelf in our local library is signed by him as well. All three autographs are capped off with the little smiley face you spoke of.I'm thinking this is a DFW thing.
Nate and Aaron -- The last question in a recent interview from the Wall Street Journal(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12121...WSJ: I have an advance copy of "Infinite Jest" that your publishing house sent me in 1996. It's signed—apparently—by you and there's a little smiley face under your name. I've always wondered—did you actually draw that smiley face?
Mr. Wallace: One prong of the Buzz plan [for "Infinite Jest"] involved sending out a great many signed first editions—or maybe reader copies—to people who might generate Buzz. What they did was mail me a huge box of trade-paperback-size sheets of paper, which I was to sign; they would then somehow stitch them in to these "special" books. I basically spent an entire weekend signing these pages. You've probably had the weird epileptoid experience of saying a word over and over until it ceases to denote and becomes very strange and arbitrary and odd-feeling—imagine that happening with your own name. That's what happened. Plus it was boring. So boring, that I started doing all kinds of weird little graphic things to try to stay alert and engaged. What you call the "smiley face" is a vestige of an amateur cartoon character I used to amuse myself with in grade school. It's physically fun to draw—very sharp and swooping, and the eyebrows are just crackling with affect. I've seen a few of these "special books" at signings before, and it always makes me smile to see that face.
:)
I haven't really looked much at it in terms of finding any pattern, but, knowing IJ, once it seems like something is plausible you run smack dab into contradictory evidence. I think it's really along the lines of the chapter breaks in Gravity's Rainbow which are little squares, and there have been theories about how they represent different parts of the V2 rocket and what not. But like I said I've never looked into it or read any compelling evidence for the reason they are placed where they are. It's a great question, and maybe it has to do with the narration and wraiths, who knows?
I think I might have found who was going to be put in the hospital along side Gately after Otis left. The text on pg 920 states:p. 920
"The deadly R.N., helping the M.D. clamp some kind of weird steel back-bracish thing with what looks like a metal halo they'd put together from parts out of the big case, clamping the thing to the head of the bed and to little steel plates under the bed's heart monitor -- it looks sort of like the upper part of an electric chair, he thinks -- the R.N. looks down in mid-stretch and says Hi Mr. Gately and says Mr. Gately is allergic and doesn't get any meds except antipyretics and Toradol in a drip Dr. Pressburger do you Mr. Gately you poor brave allergic thing...
...This is while the M.D.'s trying to screw the metal halo itself to the top of the back-braceish thing with bolt-head screws..."
This sounds an awful lot like the description of Dymphna the mutated, blind tennis player. Check out the description on pg 518:
"the kid apparently had on-court use of only one hand because the other had to pull around beside him a kind of rolling IV-stand appliance with a halo-shaped metal brace welded to it at head-height, to encircle and support his head"
so I'm thinking what Gately sees as a "back braceish thing" is really the IV stand. Their is more on pg 518 about Dympnha and he is mentioned by name on pg. 17. As to why he's there I'm not sure, but maybe one of you guys has an idea?
I'm sure you've all heard by now that DFW took his own life yesterday. Speaking for myself, and I imagine for the rest of you all (with the exception of the curiously a-holeish Chuckell who has hopefully stopped reading a discussion post for which he has such brainless disdain), we lost a tremendous imagination and a true author last night. I doubt that any writer will be able to come close to replacing the types of stories he gave us, and it's a tragedy along the lines of anything he, himself, would have penned.
The loss of David Foster Wallace is a real blow to the American literary world. His writing was always challenging and utterly uncomprimising. Authors of his caliber and uniqueness are often the subject of scathing, petty criticism. In a profession as solitary as his, fragile egos can be easily crushed. I don't claim to know the man's brilliant mind (who could?), I just know that he will be deeply missed by his family, fans, and the good people of GoodReads.
Strange that after penning such a tragic, tantalizingly truncated novel, DFW has departed his own narrative unfinished. The literary stage is a dimmer and emptier place for it. I'm at a loss.Paul, I think we're in relative agreement about questions of IJ narration, though you have worked through it much more extensively than I have. I'm glad you're running this blog and will be intrigued to follow your musings in this. I may just try to read along again, too, if only off and on.
Jesse, very good work, I should say, on your Dymphna research, but I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. Dymphna has always been a character I've found perplexing. The repeated references and now his placement in the hospital with Gately seem to indicate great significance, but I really have no idea how to interpret him.
Thanks Sophia for sharing your remembrances. I was a student of his many years ago when he was still a professor at ISU and my recollection of him is very much like yours.He chewed toacco during my classes, too. And he once told the entire class that if we didn't stop using commas incorrectly that he would "fuck us gently all semester." One of the best professors I've ever had and that opinion is far separated from my personal love of his writing.
I've made a major discovery in regards to whether or not Joelle disfigured with beauty or acid burns. On page 223 it says, 'Jim's eldest, Orin - punter extraodinaire, dodger of flung acid extraordinaire...' This is 400-500 pages before the untrustworthy Molly Notkin gives her testimony. I believe that Madame Psychosis is truly disfigured!
oh man if only it was that simple. dfw purposfully put in hints that could go either way. i don't think there really is an answer. but i used to think that she was scarred too.
I just finished Infinite Jest on Sunday and wanted to discuss this amazing book with someone. I'm sad there will be no more new books by this literary genius. Rarely does a book make me laugh out loud and improve my vocabulary at the same time. Thanks to all of you who loved this book as well, and your many insightful comments.
Maybe the scarred or not is like Schrodinger's cat; where the cat must be considered both dead and alive at the same time until, when you open the box, the two possibilities are collapse into the one oberved fact. Maybe the idea is that Joelle is both scarred and not under the veil.
that is a very interesting idea and wallace did have a background in philosphy, but in all the interviews where he talks about "ij" he continually states that he wanted to write a very SAD book and that most of the critics that liked it, liked it for the wrong reasons (usually postmodern ones). so i'm not so sure that philosophical quandries was what he was going for. i think he made these things appear that way, so that interested (read obsessive) readers would look deeper and re-read, and in doing so they would see past all the jokes and pyrotechnics and see the deathly black sadness that pervades the inner life of all the characters, save maybe for gately. the first 2 times i read the book , i was so busy trying to answer these unanswerable questions that i was missing the whole point of the book - it wasn't until the 3rd time around that i resigned myself to the fact that there was no answers and began to pay attention to the characters and their inner turmoil. sadly, i came to this conclusion about a week before dfw hanged himself. needless to say his death only maybe the sadness in "ij" that much more interminable.
Interpretations are always a little like Schrodinger's cat, especially post-New Criticism. As far as the reader's search for meaning goes, Joelle can be both scarred or unscarred to suit the needs of a particular angle of interest. This seems partly intentional. Even if one specific version (scarred or unscarred) is actually proveable and true, the ambiguity surrounding her allows Joelle to contribute to more thematic threads.As far as the sadness of DFW goes, I just lent my copy of Oblivion to a friend. While I always found many of those stories darkly hilarious (if just as often tragic), he's completely unable to see through the shadows cast by the suicide, and found the whole book horribly depressing. So I imagine that more readers will be finding Infinite Jest all the more desperately sad now as well.
My big theory out of my most recent (and very recently completed) read is that Don Gately is Jim Incandenza's oldest son, from a brief romance right before he met Avril.But that's probably just my readers mind looking for confluence in the Wraith's arrival at Don's bedside and MP's attraction to Don when there is no confluence there...
Also, in Hal's flash-forward to digging up JOI's head, do you think John Wayne is wearing a gas mask or some kind of costumed mask?
what led you to believe that gately is his son? any pg. citations? the book is so damn big you gotta at least have some pg numbers if anyones gonna be able to check out the idea.also i think that wayne is wearing the domino mask that the afr wears, the same ones worn in the scene were they kill the antitoi's (484). its part of there get up.
That mask has always been part of why I took Wayne to be separate from Gately and Hal in that vision/memory. Guarding them rather than helping them, and so support for his ties to the AFR. And I didn't even remember that the AFR wore masks.
Interesting thread. I just finished my first read of Infinite Jest. I'm still processing a bit and I don't really have theories to add, but I've enjoyed reading all of yours.
im at work and have limited internet time, so i apologize if this has been addressed already.did this book seem to have an ending to anyone? i read the last 100-200 pages on edge wanting to know what happens and then it just... sort of... stopped.
i guess i can infer a lot of what happens to the characters by going back to the beginning and re-reading year of glad and looking through the filmography, but i feel like i got exposed to such an awesome bunch of people and then POOF they were gone.
for the people who loved this book, what is it that appeals most to you?
It has always sort of felt to me as if the world and cast that DFW created for the novel could not possibly be contained within any bindings, and thus flood out at both sides indefinitely. On the other hand, the book most accurately seems to "end" somewhere in the first 50 pages or so from the beginning, at least as far as the semi-converging plotlines go. And the rather than "conclude" at a single point, the conclusions seem more or less spread throughout. If that helps, or is at all satisfying. It's not an ending, but it's the best I've been able to do with the book.
It also seems that the book ends with a scene similar to or leading up to the novel's opening passages. In essence, the novel ends where it began. As a reader, you are basically starting the novel over again as if it were so vastly entertaining that you can't help yourself but read it over and over again. If you've read the novel, this should sound familiar...
also in interviews dfw talked about making the book alluring enough that the reader will want to do the intellectual heavy lifting involved with a book that is this unconventional. so yeah the book purposefully ends without answering the most pressing questions in the reader's mind. but the after going back and reading it again trying to find answers to these questions that you THINK are important, you slowly stumble onto what the novel is really about: sadness. i can't tell you how much reading/listening to interviews by DFW (especially ones done for this novel) have helped me reconcile the many unconcluded aspects of IJ. so many questions go unanswered, and when you look for clues, you find them, BUT they are purposely contradictory. so yeah it took me three in depth readings to come to this conclusion. and it's one i am happy with (and even have some evidence in support of). the saddest thing was coming to this conclusion the week he died, i have barely been able to pick up the book since. just heartbreaking.
It's also a book about addiction, in all its forms, so the gripping questions pulling you to the ending form a sort of analogy (if you read it like I did, at least. Then you have all the shock of going cold turkey, maybe feel a weird unresolved emptiness, and probably "relapse" by turning back the the beginning and starting again. Someone else somewhere (earlier in this thread?) referred to seeking methadone in discussions like this one. Methadone... or perhaps a support group.And then there's also that the book is structured as one of JOIs nonconfluential films (or is, in fact, his final work; see post 53 from Jesse) which also makes sense of the sudden stop.
And as Aaron said, there's also the novel as life-consuming Entertainment, and Jesse's observations that the book forces you to stick around until a bigger picture rises above the minutiae.
I think that all of these, and probably several others, are intended readings, and so valid ways of explaining the odd (and to many, frustrating) structure.
...
Jesse, I agree that it is a terribly sad book, and indeed, the closer I scrutinize the characters, especially the Incandenza family the more dismal their situation seems, but even so, I'd still say that it's more a book about addiction. You believe that "sadness" is the overarching focus of the book? What is DFW trying to say then? I would argue that the sadness is more symptom than primary condition, but I guess I really need to go read some of these interviews, huh?
yeah i think dfw was using addiction because it has become the way modern man tries to quell the sadness and loneliness that is created in modern, urban societies where you are always surrounded by people, but rarely have an intimate meaningful connection with any of them. this is made even worse in a family like the incandenzas where they are all completely detached from one another: avril seems to be acting the part of a loving mother, while JOI is in a drunken stupor never engaging with his children in any meaningful way (besides mario whom, ironically, isn't his). i think this was JOI's greatest fear for his son hal and the reason he made the movie infinite jest. he thought that his son was slipping into solipsism, the same solipsism that turned their family into isolated, disconnected individuals. he wanted to make a movie entertaining enough to draw his son in and open some sort of dialogue with him, as JOI believed hal wasn't speaking at this point. in reality, this was probably a alcohol-induced delusion of JOI's, however, metaphorically this was around the time that hal was beginning his slide into solipsism. the scene where joelle goes to thanksgiving with orin (744-47) are just excruciating to read, especially the parts with hal, who is obseqious to a fault in trying to please his mother. as far as gately i think dfw was making a statement about how maybe hyper intellect acts as a barrier rather than a conduit when it comes to genuine human interaction. it seems that gately is the only character who really starts saying what he means, and he tries to be a KIND person and not just live life in constant battle to make his own life more peasurable, but also SACRIFICES his body/freedom (and risks his sobriety) to defend someone who, frankly, should have been left to the canadians to be thrashed (lenz). i guess the specific theme of the novel is addiction, but the universal theme (and what drives individuals toward addiction) is sadness and loneliness. i think this is realy what makes IJ so devastating for me: underneath all the blindingly brilliant writing, and comical highjinks, there are characters just dying for a different kind of life - a life where they stop serving themselves in order to tear down the selfish, defensive walls and make a real human connection. what do you think?
Well now on reflection I suppose that addiction could be equally viewed as symptom of sadness.For those who haven't seen it, there's a good long article about Wallace's third unfinished novel, to be published next year, in this week's New Yorker, along with a worthwhile and intriguing excerpt.
Having just finished IJ yesterday -- and finding that, unlike with most books, the final page/paragraph/word/punctuation mark provided me with very little sense of closure -- I figured I'd chip in with my two cents' worth, which will assume the form of something like a Unified Theory by which to understand the novel (and apologies if that sounds horribly, irredeemably pretentious).So then: Going by another poster's theory of JOI as the narrator, I'm taking the whole of IJ to be a creation of Himself's, which makes sense in view of its anticonfluential structure and open-endedness (which open-endedness is responsible for my reaction to the novel's physical end, and hence this irredeemably pretentious writeup).
What's interesting to me is that the entire novel is an exercise in BREAKING DOWN (OK, "deconstructing," if you must) what could have, in fact, been a more or less run-of-the-mill (confluential) narrative.
What I mean is: For all its shifts in voice, tone, form, time, etc., the astute reader can use various "clues" sprinkled throughout to assemble a fairly straightforward narrative (though one that is shrouded in mystery): that of the AFR's infiltration of both ETA and the Ennet House, and how this eventuates in Hal's and Gately's (likely forced) march up to the Concavity/Convexity to dig up Himself's skull in an effort to locate the master cartridge.
Conceiving of the form of the novel in this way, we can chalk up its having a narrative blind spot (how do Gately and Hal meet? Why is Gately marched up to the Convexity/-cavity in the first place? What, exactly, happens to Hal by the Year of Glad?) to a willful attempt on the part of the narrator (Himself) to dismantle a confluential storyline that he, by virtue of infiltrating his subjects' heads, has inadvertently hinted at throughout.
***SPOILERS ALERT***********what a great thread. Like the book, it ends abruptly. Are you folks still out there? Just got through IJ on my third try, it was un-put-downable this time. Loved it, disturbing, great. I figure DFW was 10 years ahead, and I'm about 3 years behind, so it all worked out... have many ideas, questions etc, and as someone said above, would appreciate the "methadone" support group to help process... frinstance:
•anybody ever do anything with the idea of the life/person 'in a box.' it's an image that's repeated from tennis court to addict and elsewhere. Are we trying to get out of the box, but doing so renders us incapable? not sure.
•Is Hal the 'catatonic hero' predicted by his paper?
Is Gately? Gately appears a 'action hero' and then by the end 'catatonic hero...' finds his salvation in being more high than ever before and doing nothing, which saves his life... and 'bureaucratic heros' certainly the Ennet House head (name? J___ Montasian?) and maybe ETA's CT?
•love the idea of IJ the book as addictive entertainment like IJ the film, except that the book's theme is that you shouldn't get caught up in addictive entertainments... like IJ the book... and so the smily face on IJ's cartridge cover, its sly ID, gets even more fun when you place it in the context of the smiley face DFW put on his signatures... on my signed copies (from a reading of Brief Interviews) he crossed out the titles of the that and A supposedly fun thing... anybody else have that?
•Anybody play out the Hamlet refs: Orin to Avril, CT as Claudius... but where does it go?
•I found the 'first thesis' on howling fantods helpful...tough sledding in places, but references to other authors can mostly be skimmed without peril. everybody's got a little piece of the puzzle it seems to me.
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/thes...
anybody out there? anybody at all?
While reading this book I can't help but imagine it as a Wes Anderson film. The characters, situations, etc. keep making me think of him. I am only on page 121 and already love this book. The writing style is amazing and it's an "active" reading where you actually have to think while you read. (Like the Dave Eggers foreward says.)
So far I have really enjoyed any parts involving Hal and Steeply Marathe exchanges.
Also the Kate Gompert discussion of what her depression that isn't depression but a feeling feels like starting on page 68. I'm not exactly sure why this passage is poignant to me, it just is. The amount of emotion expressed through it is staggering. Top notch.
While reading INFINITE JEST about the last filmmaker that came to my mind was that flabby little namby-fartsy twit Wes Anderson. But I can't really say that any filmmaker came to my mind at all. I can't think of any filmmaker who'd be a good match for Wallace.
Just a weird thought I had while reading.
Has anyone used any of the IJ reading guides? (Elegant Complexity...)
i've heard elegant complexity is the best one, i've only read parts of it, but it seems the most comprehensive.
Steven Soderburgh or Paul Thomas Anderson could possibly have pulled off a passable movie adaptation...but they won't, and shouldnt.
Agrimorfee wrote: "Steven Soderburgh or Paul Thomas Anderson could possibly have pulled off a passable movie adaptation...but they won't, and shouldnt."David's mother Sally was a professor of mine at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois. She once told me-- and this was many, many, many, many, many years before David passed-- that the rights to Infinite Jest had been sold to Gus Van Sant.
The question of who is narrating the book seems somewhat beside the point of the incredibly complex mixture of human emotions and motivations, some ebullient, some pathetic, some hilarious but all meaningful from a genius of contemporary writing.I especially thought the ending was brilliant.
On to more of his books and have not been disappointed yet.
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...and so, maybe JOI is telling Hal's story, for Hal, because Hal can't or doesn't want to?
"And yet, DFW probably neither read the entire OED, nor was raised by a militant grammarian. So it is possible. But I concede this is your most compelling evidence, by far. I also like that it provides a tidy explanation to people who complain about the excessively obscure wording."
JOI has instant and limitless access, as a wraith, to Hal's mind and Avril's mind. He can use them as if they are reference books, if he wants. Characters' perceptions are not only enhanced by JOI's thoughts, JOI can enhance his own perceptions with their thoughts. Wraithhood is a two-way street, no?