"Do not ask why if you don't want to die Do like your told if you want to get old." (Sic)

I read the most of this section over the course of one Saturday, and I don't think it was digested nearly enough. The book is blurring together more than it should and I don't think it is making as much sense to me as it might in reality, but then again there hasn't been much logic anyway, so I'm not sure why I would expect any now.

ETA as a whole, as we learn more and more, sounds like an increasingly odd but dynamic place to be. Specifically, the classes at ETA, as discussed in the early 300s, sound sort of fantastic, though extremely abnormal and incredibly ridiculous. The premise on page 308, about the agoraphobic kleptomaniac, was definitely something I contemplated about for more than a small amount of time; I can't imagine how great classes like that might be, nor how DFW comes up with half of the stuff in this book. It's sort of how I used to imagine college: crazy sociology teachers and old preaching professors; I can only hope that my own college experience is anything like that, or at least as far away from mundane as one could hope. As mentioned in the related footnote, ETA does indeed seem like an extended term specialty camp, despite the 'classes' they offer and the 'professors' who work there.

Keeping up with Wallace's vocabulary is a tremendous job in and of itself. I am really entertained by times when you can tell that at a specific point he learned a new word or at least started to use it more often, as it will appear frequently over the course of a rather small section of IJ but then disappear or at least fade out.

I'm curious as to why Boston's Alcoholics Anonymous is considered so different in the grand scheme of AA's; I mean this in terms of why the city specifically, as there is definitely much focus on the intricate differences in terms of group.

I've become profusely annoyed with the acronyms that I'm sure DFW is using just to confuse us. On p.325 ish, he even goes into discussing some and somewhat explaining them, but keeping track is really beginning to frustrate me. Though I'm enjoying (ish) more or less reading Infinite Jest, whether I like it or not, finishing it has become more of a conquest, necessary perhaps as only a test of my own willpower; I will read the rest whether my logical and conscious mind likes or not.

Things About Hal

-At our first encounter with him (p.12) Hal’s speech concerning his intellectual prowess (“I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives…I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated…”) is perceived by everyone else present as some kind of seizure/manic fit.

- That extremely bizarre encounter between the professional conversationalist/JOI and Hal that no one (as far as I can tell) really understood…why did Hal initially not recognize his father, what was the purpose of JOI even planning this out, considering nothing important seemed to be accomplished through the conversation..?

-We first hear about Hal’s addiction to pot/secrecy at p.47 (“Hal likes to get high in secret, but a bigger secret is that he’s as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high.”)

-That horribly nauseating conversation between Hal and Orin (p. 247ish) where we discover how JOI actually died, that Hal discovered the remains of his body, etc, and the ensuing incident with the grief-therapist hired by Hal’s mother. That situation was particularly paradoxical and ironic; that Hal is so much more upset by the fact that he can’t “deliver the goods” of his grief to the therapist than by the repulsive death of his father; that the Moms is happy because Hal looks so awful, when in truth he looks awful not because of his grief but because he is unable to fake his grief. And then when he finally manages to convince the grief therapist that he’s accepted the death and moved on…why’d he get over his father’s death (or more accurately, the trauma of seeing him splattered all over the walls) so quickly?

-And finally, shortly thereafter is the mystery of Hal’s sudden “plateau-jump” and Schacht’s suggestion that it is due in part to his increased drug use (“…doesn’t say a work about Hal’s devolution from occasional tourist to subterranean compulsive, substance-wise, with his Pump Room visits and Visine, even though Schacht deep down believes that the substance-compulsion’s strange apparent contribution to Hal’s erumpent explosion up the rankings…”)

I feel like as we’re continuing on, Hal is becoming less and less easy to understand—or maybe I mean his motivations, rather. He seems to be becoming a more and more central figure, and more and more questions are arising regarding him, and hmm…where will it all lead?

Probably many new and exciting places as I finish up the 430 in the wee hours of this morning.

That "Have a Nice Day" Face

The story has definitely taken a turn toward being more coherent, with all the recurring characters and their geographic proximity, and is beginning to seem anything but anticonfluential (which is what I believed it be after that one note about JOI's film making). So now rather than trying to keep track of an influx of new characters, plot points and choatic settings, I feel more like I'm looking at a highly organized scene and trying to find all of the connections to the parts we've already read (I'm convinced there's all kinds of hidden things going on, either because I'm paranoid or because of the way DSW writes {too many details}).

Two things have leaped out at me in particular. The first concerns the use of "proto-Fascist" to describe both Schititt and the AA groups' outlook (there might have been one more use of "proto-Fascist" that I can't think of). The second are these weird resonances I picked up regarding Gately's "epiphanic" dream. His description of the "low-rent church basement" made me think of how the AA group is related to religion (which ties back to the notion of temple) and then description of (what I took to be) the personification of the Disease ("from behind a mask that was simply the plain yellow smiley-face circle that accompanied invitations to have a nice day" {p. 359}) brings me back to the medical attache and the "Entertainment" (pg 36), which is described as having "another of these vapid U.S.A.-type circular smiling heads embossed upon it". This (kind of weakly) connects the tow main themes we've been addressing, addiction and Entertainment, seeing as how they're both embodied by the same face. (Looking back this probably doesn't make much sense)

Just a few general I-just-don't-know type questions: What's a fin? It kind of seems like a currency and when it's mentioned it seems worth more than a dollar. And again, who is narrating? From Notes 137 and 142 it seems like someone with a well-developed vocabulary, and even though it's from Gately's perspective, not Gately (unless he likes to not use his own terms).

The Mad Stork!!

So... the recent reality of me being behind on my reading with a looming deadline prompted a frenzy of dedicated page-turning between monday and tonight. And I have to say that while it has been stressful trying to slog through it, it has also been a rewarding experience, especially now that the book is beginning to develop some hint of a story arc, which is comforting to find in novels. I have an interesting feeling where I am somewhat fond of the book right now but its progression hints that it will get better and I am looking forward to when it 'gets better.' And I have even looked past this getting better to the end, where I hope to be a little disappointed that this monster of a book I have taken on has been a sort of thrilling, peculiar adventure.

Enough about that, and on to the reading. I am finding the debate between Steeply and Marathe to become more interesting, and it gets to the point where one character makes a point and I think "wow that is a good point, there is no real argument against that" and the other character responds and I think "well... that was actually a valid counterpoint." Like I agree with Marathe when he asserts that the weakness of falling so easily for a deadly entertainment shows that the american people are not actually free, and are in fact already essentially dead. But I also Steeply's statement that "There are no choices without personal freedom.. these are just the hazards of being free" also seems to ring true for me. This small scene between a wheelchair assassin and a secret agent dressed in drag is actually a very exciting and potent debate, with each side having valid compelling arguments.

My favorite parts of the book so far have been at the tennis academy, which is probably because they are the most simply written and for the most part they clearly indicate a sequence of events, also they are characters close to my age and while I am not at a rigorous tennis academy I can identify with them as I am a teenage boy. Those parts are the most relaxing sections to get through, and when reading feels like less of a slog, as opposed to the more abstract parts like most of the early Joelle sections.

One last thing I thought was exceptional was the description of Poor Tony's seizure and the horrifying sequence of events that led up to it. I felt like the narrative appropriately got more and more abstract as Tony fell deeper and deeper into the mires of withdrawal, it began by identifying his ragged figure and strong urge for 'substance,' then fell into weird inconsistent metaphors personifying time in frighteningly obscure ways, and then the horrible, nightmarish explosion of light that constituted the seizure. It has been one of the more powerful sections so far, and stands out to me as a brilliant piece of writing.

Well that is all I have to say about the book so far... and I am excited to continue reading! And, yes Mr. Karafiol, I do know who the Mad Stork is now!

Operation Enduring Jest

First of all, just let me say that I really, really enjoyed the Eschaton game (mainly towards the end). I don't quite see how the Peemster is utilizing the MVT etc. & I guess I felt that seemed a little thrown in there just so IJ could cover a(nother) random topic. Regardless, I really liked the scene. I felt it captured basically everything in Lord of the Flies in a much, much shorter interval and it was... pretty tragic (even though the tragic bit is preceded by moments of comedy beforehand). Of course, it also relates interestingly back to freedom in terms of: can "free" (USA free) people be trusted to submit to a system/rules for long term gain and forgo the urge for short-term gain? Have USA politicians done this?

The EH section seems to relate back to this from another angle. Obviously the kids at Eschaton grossly violate perfectly rational rules for gameplay (eventually) and the situation (beautifully) degrades into chaos. But is the choice always so "obvious?" In EH, it isn't. The addicts there are forced to subsume their intellects (some of which are quite considerable) to a bunch of banal sayings and useless procedures. On the other hand, this is what allows the EH/AA to work. And the irrationally irritating rules do produce an effect.

I'd like to move back to plot/characters for a second.

JVD/Madame P./PGOAT: first off, can someone remind me when/if we're told how/why she & Orin break up? I honestly can't remember. More importantly, though, I am really hankering to know why she wears a veil (& is in the UHID or whatever the acronym is). I've thought of three possible explanations that make sense to me, but I'm very interested in feedback/other suggestions. Oh, & I'll feel silly if it mentioned exactly why she wears it already but it's a risk I'm willing to take...

a) The lame one: she was very pretty and had some sort of horrible accident and wears a veil because of it.
b) JVD thinks her incredible beauty is a "deformity" and so wears a veil (after all, it DID ruin her sex life for a number of years).
c) JVD was never actually pretty. Yes, the narrator told us that she was so pretty that she scared all the other boys away but consider that we don't have to completely trust the narrator. The narrator's job may be to more narrate Orin's perspective and we know that Orin's perspective on women could be/is a bit skewed (I mean, he's going for "Helen" Steeply. Helen... Steeply... really funny addition. Especially considering in the Marathe scene Steeply is described as horribly ugly, so maybe Orin goes for ugly girls?). It would also explain why boys avoid her. It would explain her fixation (on the radio) with scarring diseases in a fairly conventional way. It would also explain why PGOAT is such a sweet name.

Thoughts?

Oh, also on JVD, what makes her and Mario different so that Mario doesn't wear a veil? (self-confidence, obliviousness, innocence all come to mind)

Onto Orin for a second. Any thoughts on why he's such a sometimes? Mario is really nice and very empathetic, oddly. Hal is a pretty OK guy most of the time. So what happened with Orin?

Also on Orin, I guess the fact that Steeply's interviewing him (& that the AFR etc. has come up in their "interviews") & the fact that the AFR stalked/s him suggest that he's in some way related to the Entertainment (possibly through his Dad)?

On Steeply... I was fairly surprised that Steeply got up to defend the good old US of A for a bit. Mostly he seemed to just be taking the punches before. I guess I feel he simplifies the USA "freedom" a bit too much, though. Obviously most things and US society in general require us to give up SOME freedom and most of us take pleasure in reducing others' freedom in small ways (be it winning a game of chess). I guess I also feel that he sort of takes up the defense in the wrong way at first by talking about bidding for the soup. Very corporate. But, really, a society is based around his fall-back argument in which he argues that the two people will be motivated to come to a mutually benficial solution because the bonds (of society) that unite them are stronger than needforsoup. Most societies seem to be based in some part off this: similarities stronger than our differences etc.

Marathe counters by asking if most Americans are really farsighted enough for this to be a sustainable system. Otherwise, why would the government be so keen on keeping the Entertainment unavailable? I guess I was sort of bothered by the use of the Entertainment as the ultimate in long-term decision making. While I can see that it represents that in some ways (life or a cool 10 minute video!), there are perfectly rational reasons for wanting to stop the Entertainment. Some people would want to look because they don't believe, because they don't know, because internet spammers (with twisted minds) would make your computer download and play it... heck, the SMA died from it and he was Canadian... I don't want to bang on the abstractness here, but so far it doesn't seem like a great metaphor.

Questions I have relevant to this: Is US destruction from Entertainment really a "fair" test of our notion of freedom? Couldn't other European nations fall victim to the same fate? Would the US even lose a significant portion of its population after people really figured out that it killed them? Even handing the latter few point to Marathe, do we still violate our notion of freedom in wanting to stop the Entertainment? After all, as even Marathe himself points out, after that first choice to hit "play" you do lose your freedom to pull yourself away. That's a pretty large infringement. (I suppose if most of the US would make that initial choice that's still a bad comment on our society, though. But just thought I'd bring the latter up).

Adults and Children in IJ, and a little Economics/Finance

For the first time, I think I found an instance in which I could hypothesize why two passages were located where they were in the book. The passage from 317-321 and then the passage from 321-342 make a direct contrast in whether the people in the USA are like children or like adults. The passage from 317-321 is a discussion between Marathe and Steeply about freedom. Steeply and Marathe talk about how US citizens are like children in the sense that they only have 'freedom-from'. Freedom-from meaning that they have freedom from oppression, censorship, duress, and other forces. However, US citizens do not have 'freedom-to'. They do not have the freedom to choose what they wish to do because they were never taught how to chose. Marathe says that US citizens will end up just choosing to satiate their most immanent desires, and he says this by saying how US citizens are like children. Children who want candy. He says that US citizens will not stop in pursuit of the candy that one might dangle in front of their face. They want instant gratification. This idea is continued in the discussion between Marathe and Steeply between pages 418-430 in which they talk about how each individual wants instant gratification. On page 428, they talk about how the delayed gratification of giving a can of soup to someone else is a smaller magnitude of gratification than eating the can of soup yourself. In Economics, this is referred to as a "discount value", meaning that things of a certain value in the future must be discounted when compared to values of things in the present. Reading this section reminded me what my Economics professor from this past summer said about discount values. He said that the people with the highest discount values are 6-year olds. A 6-year old will whine and nag for an ice cream cone right now, and the prospect of getting two or three ice cream cones in a week or so instead of the cone right now is worthless, because the future prospects are worth nothing to the 6-year old. They are highly discounted. So my point is that Marathe and Steeply's conversations about freedom and choice lead to the indication that the freedoms of US citizens have effectively rendered them to be children.


Now my point of contrast and about the relative location of passages. From page 321-342, the kids, the younger kids in fact, play the game of Eschaton. This game is far more complicated than any game I have ever played. There are specific rules, complicated strategies, game theory, computer statistics, negotiations, politics, and history and current events that all play major roles in Eschaton. What I thought was particularly strange was that Eschaton was played by the younger of the children at ETA, and that the older kids were only spectators. For the first part of the game, and from what I gather took place in all previous games, these young kids conducted themselves very professionally during this game and abided by all rules. They conducted complicated and well thought out strategies and played for a very long time that I would not expect 12-15 year olds would be able to focus for. This section gave me the feeling that these kids were very mature for their age and were more like adults than kids. This contrasts with the previous section that made the adults in society out to be more like children. Now of course the game did break down in a very childlike (and humorously depicted) fashion in the end, but for the first part of the game and in all previous years of the game, these children acted with maturity and the coolheadedness of actual world leaders (or terrorist cell leaders, I wasn't quite sure).

On another note, does B.S. stand for something like Before Subsidized time? That was my guess, but I couldn't tell for sure.

-LT

For Sean Maher

In response to a point raised by Jerry: another interesting use of the word fascist, in this case as a pejorative, is when steeply describes Marathe’s vision of ‘L’e´tat protecteur. Steeply describes Marathe’s paternal state as “national socialist,” and Neofascist.” I think that the division between the kind of entirely unlimited negative conception of freedom held by Steeply, and the positive conception of freedom held by Marathe is particularly interesting in the passage from 317-321. Marathe makes the point that the definition of freedom which Steeply holds as axiomatic, a negative one, is as unfree as Marathe’s own, a positive conception in which the choice of the Québécois state as a “temple” takes center stage, and though limiting in some ways, is principally a paternal influence. Marathe’s conception of the states is the father compelling virtue, in his analogy, compelling his children to eat nourishing foods as well as candy. By that analogy the Americans are perpetually childish, so transfixed with the pursuit of ‘candy’ that they become unfree, despite their lack of outward coercion. I think that this is particularly interesting in light of the parts of the text in which we’ve dealt with addiction, and the attendant loss of freedom that so often characterizes it. In all cases, the characters become, like the children of Marathe’s unable to make decisions freely, unable to shun their substances, which while associated with pleasure, can’t be called exactly that. Marathe is correct when he indicates that “the appetite for the appeal” of ‘entertainment’ (also encompassing drug use) is uniquely American. The ‘entertainment,’ the various addictions, all serve as a sort of pseudo temple. It is the natural result when “a people choose nothing over themselves to love, each one.”

I admit that I am torn, I don’t know whether I believe in a negative conception, as I always have, or a more positive version of liberty, which seems to have some merit, but still, to me, seems to hold the threat of “fascism.” I’d like to expand on this at greater length, but at this point I need to submit this, so I’ll save further comments for later, noting that I think the use of Samizdat is particularly interesting. On another note, Fin is somewhat archaic slang for a $5 bill.

I also found Alexander’s idea interesting. In some cases, things in the novel have been shown to be so pleasurable that they cause death, sometimes spiritual, and at others corporal. I am inclined to draw from Neil Postman’s Future Schlock, (albeit with great reluctance, considering my earlier objections to Mr. Postman’s claims,) where he talks about the destructive power of entertainment. The majority of the piece is concerned with the mechanism by which this destructive power manifests itself, an examination not for our purposes immediately relevant, but the underlying message of the piece, that we can be spiritually devastated, oppressed, by not only statist authoritarianism, but by that which we love, rendered, Postman claims, insensate and stupefied by the warm glow of entertainment. I think that that’s definitely a point which deserves further exploration.

Also, as far as Jest, and humorousness goes, I think that there are a number of occasions in the book in which the entertainment value is gained entirely from the hyperbole of the situation, in a manner that is almost cartoonish. I first noticed this when on page 314, the book describes orin’s attempt to correct the drooiness of Mario’s “declaring” lid, giving it a “smart downward snap,” the kind which one would apply to a “dickey” shade, and this reminded me of nothing more than a kind of bugs bunny logic, in which umbrellas stop anvils, and the laws of physical reality, and frankly, mortality are stayed. I noticed this on a number of occasions, particularly in the Eschaton debacle.

Too Much Fun

I know that I'm posting a few days early, but I don't want to wait until Wednesday night to post and forget all the things I've noticed.

Joelle Van Dyne refers to her suicide by cocaine overdose as "Too Much Fun," with that exact capitalization, by which (the capitalization) Wallace managed to lure me into contemplating that phrase as a central thematic concept. In class we've discussed the idea that, through an addiction, something which is supposed to be fun ceases to be fun (e.g., Erdedy's pot addiction and the masochistic masturbation routine that accompanies it, Kate Gompert's pot habit, which goes through cycles of fun and not fun, and of course Eschaton, the game so in-depth with maturity and roleplaying that it is clearly not even remotely fun,) but as Van Dyne's suicide* illustrates, something which is supposed to be fun can also reach an intensity so great that it kills you.

Van Dyne herself is the P.G.O.A.T., or prettiest girl of all time (the fact that this acronym spells "goat," usually thought of as something ugly, seems like no accident to me,) a person so sublimely beautiful that she is effectively ugly, alone, dateless and virginal through high school and into college, so beautiful that she alienates everyone around her so much that she joins the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed and wears a veil to hide her ugly gorgeousness. I think the concept of being so beautiful that you are effectively ugly is closely related to the idea of something being so pleasureful it kills you.

The title of the book, Infinite Jest, seems in itself to be an expression of the concept of Too Much Fun, and they could even be regarded as paraphrases of each other. Jest seems very difficult to separate from Fun; they aren't synonymous, but they are closely related ideas, and it is not a huge leap of the imagination to go from Infinite to Too Much. Infinite anything is usually too much of it; infinite crack makes you OD; infinite entertainment makes you sit and rot away and die.

The connection to entertainment comes from, unsurprisingly, The Entertainment, which I am becoming more and more certain is the film Infinite Jest. The cartridge, when viewed, leads the viewer into inertia, stagnation, and eventual death. The connection between the cartridge and death through too much pleasure is substantiated by Marathe on pages 317-321, though unsurprisingly I can't pick out a neat short quotation to illustrate this. He also refers back to his idea of the "temple," the idea for which you are willing to die, and suggests that once entertainment or pure pleasure becomes the temple, you are already effectively dead, ("What you call the death, the collapsing: this will be the formality only.")

Unrelatedly, I find that David Foster Wallace is enjoying messing with our minds. We've been reading about Mario for hundreds of pages before he abruptly decides to finally tell us how truly bizarre he looks, making us have to revise all of our previous conceptions of him ex post facto. I'm more amused by the sadism he directs towards his readers than annoyed by it, and I had to cringe and chuckle when I applied this new image of Mario back into the section with the USS Millicent Kent, which is now even more grotesquely hilarious.

Also unrelatedly, is anybody sure what the Concavity is? I imagine it as a combination of landfill, nuclear waste dump, and possibly site of some considerably massive nuclear explosion in the recent past (I imagine this as what makes it so concave, though I could be wrong. I don't have much textual basis for that part.)

Also, I've just come to the disturbing thought that Orin's Helen, the oversized reporter on whom he has a growing crush, is actually 'Helen' Steeply, the transvestitic undercover B.S.S. agent, who is probing him for information about his father because of course JOI made the Entertainment. Only possible reactions: "Ew," and, anticipatorily, "poor Orin"

*EDIT: OK, so it didn't take that much more reading to find out that she isn't actually quite dead. This weakens the immediacy of my point but I still think I'm on to something.

HELLO THAR BLOGOSPHERE

By Popular Demand:

Week	Date	Reading
1	1/11	1-87
2*	2/1	87-181 (but you’re encouraged to read ahead)
3	2/8	181-306 (not a total disaster if you don’t finish)
4*	3/1	306-430
5	3/15	430-530
6	3/22	531-589 (end @ “accomplice’s breath, potentially.”)
7	3/29	589-662
8*	5/3	663-808 (we probably won’t discuss all this, but better to get a good lead going into APs)
9	5/10	809-876
10	5/17	876-end

The Twelve Steps

Straight from Wikipedia:
"
These are the original Twelve Steps as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
"
I think it's interesting to note that half of these relate directly to "God as we understood him" and how that relates to "freedom" at Ennet House. We kind of touched in this today.

PS-This is not my weekly blog post.

This is intended to be a response to Peter's post. I tried but apparently I'm not a "team member" whatever that may mean? Anyways...

I definitely agree that it's becoming much more manageable. I remember when I came into the first class and I told Graham that I hated the first Prince Q----- section, and he's like "That part is hilarious!" The comedy just didn't make sense to me. I think the comedy comes more naturally because as readers, we've become used to the ridiculous prose Wallace applies. Instead of reading a section and saying "GOD, THAT IS STUPID, WHY DID HE USE THOSE WORDS," we can be like, "on one hand, that's hilarious, and on the other hand horrible" which connects directly back to what we discussed in class. I think the reason he does that with nearly every section in IJ is because it always creates an interesting dichotomy. I kind of think that DFW is a bit sadistic in that sense. He purposely creates this thin line between comedy and tragedy as a poke in the eye to the reader (less like a poke in the eye, because that hurts a bit too much). I think one of the biggest thing he likes to do is leave it up to the reader. Is it tragic? Is it hilarious? It's up to you, and everyone's going to be different. I like that you brought up the title again, because I think it relates directly to this. There actually is infinite jest in this book, and I think it is derived from these stories and how you think of them. As you continue to analyze them, there are always new and interesting parts that you may have missed before, and I think that's pretty cool.

P.S. sorry for the late post, I got home at 10.

Infinite Jest week three-Year of the obnoxiously long passages

Though I appreciate the focus that has been created around Hal’s story, I was beginning to enjoy the jumping around, confusing nature of each chapter and the impossible time progression. It was as if each story was its own fascinating tale, but had a small meaning in the greater picture of the Infinite Jest world. I liked the idea that we were to draw meaning from the stories on their own, but it’s coming to a point where the story is being told for us, as it is in most novels from the start, though I guess that is to be expected.

The description of the Recovery House (193) gives us a picture of a concrete subject that we can distinctly imagine. It is one of few cases where we are given a scene and allowed to picture it as described, unlike the otherwise obscure stories and concepts that are presented. Interactions between characters, drugs, tennis, etc., are the only ideas we are given to feed off of for the most part. As we talked about on the first day of class, comparing Infinite Jest to a movie in book form, this is one time where we are given concrete details to define our setting, from what seems to be a more or less unbiased or opinion. We know for sure, or as sure as we can be, of the layout of the building, etc, and can build off of this firm concept with other information we have about the place, which is uncommon as far as we have read.

One of my favorite things about reading so far is the ridiculous amount of allusions with which D.F.Wallace fills the incredibly large pages of Infinite Jest. For example, pages 232-233 were so intense I had to stop and reread them (not that that is uncommon for many other pages and chapters so far) in an attempt to make sense of all the concepts he introduces, many of which I’m sure I missed anyway. Wallace throws together French and Japanese film and all sorts of movies and philosophy and music and chemistry with such convex (!) ideas in two(ish) pages, and does this on a number of occasions, all of which playing into the same dialogue/narrative that happens to be fitting to the character he is talking about at the time.

To be honest, though I appreciate Wallace’s writing so far, I’m really looking forward to a tangible conclusion or logic made to all this brilliant nonsense.

Perhaps the Lonesome Death of Joelle van Dyne

Having finished a decent portion of the assigned reading for this week, I found myself preoccupied no longer with the process of reading the book (which has over the past few weeks painfully come to represent nearly my ever reaction to IJ) but rather with this notion of addiction which seems to have dominated conversation both in class and on the blog (understandably of course— it is clearly a prevalent theme).

I was particularly interested in the chapters focused on Joelle van Dyne, Orin Incandenza’s ex-lover, Jim Incandenza’s favorite cartridge subject, and certifiable crack addict. Yes, we’ve clearly encountered addiction before (the list constructed on the board in class last week serves as testimony to that fact), but I didn’t find the other examples of addiction nearly as provocative. In the pages detailing the character of Joelle van Dyne, both at her friend’s party and otherwise/elsewhere, I feel that Wallace seems to address a lot of the recurring questions raised in class (I deliberately choose the word ‘address’ as opposed to ‘answer’; the issues we discuss in class are not easily resolvable if resolvable at all and Wallace doesn’t intend to provide apparent solutions), for instance the differing opinions concerning tragedy and comedy. My first inclination to the chapter that begins with her seated at the dinner-party is that it is one of terrible tragedy. Over the next thirty pages or so we’re taken through a whirlwind, consisting of memories, the hours leading up to the party, and the party itself right up until the climactic moment locked in her friends bathroom smoking crack cocaine from a crudely assembled conglomerate of everyday items (soda bottle, coat hanger, etc.) while a man who pretends he’s Continental is knocking furiously on the door, trying to stall his bladder by hopping from foot to foot and loudly complaining of a “queer” smell to the party’s host. The pages leading up to this moment are sort of like a somber journey through the mind of someone who is excruciatingly unhappy—so unhappy, in fact, that it appears she sets out to kill herself via overdosing in the bathroom at her good friend’s party. That this high session is orchestrated with the intended result of suicide is an especially despairing notion. Furthermore, there are scattered instances throughout these pages that allude to her degree of addiction—she describes how she often searches the ground for remnants of the Material, and how she often ends up smoking anything that might have any remaining residue. Apparently she even tosses her paraphernalia, committed to quitting. Needless to say, it’s a particularly despairing scenario. Yet through all of this description Wallace drops little bits of detail that are undeniably comical. Between lovers who believe in the limited nature of erections and stories about a drunk and subsequently vulgar Winston Churchill, Wallace manages to interject these two chapters with humor. Yes, in the two aforementioned instances, the humor is perhaps a bit detached from the plight of the main character, but even in the last scene, while Joelle prepares for what might be her death, “vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub”, there is still that Continental-impersonator hopping like mad outside the bathroom. Does Wallace mean to juxtapose the two, comedy and tragedy, perhaps in order to emphasis the latter? Or is he perhaps blurring the line between two genres that are too often considered diametrically opposed? That Joelle refers to getting high as Too Much Fun was for me the most telling contrast.




On another not entirely unrelated note, I liked how Wallace threw in the little bit about Joelle standing in front of the advertisement for cartridges in which the cut-out of a paraplegic, arms outstretches, seems to yearn almost desperately for said advertised cartridge.

Also: what’s with the veil in these chapters? I missed that.

Ennet and Tennis (they sound kind of like palindromes...)

I have a fear that the separate stories won’t connect together because of the part about anticonfluential cinema on page 185. If you look at the endnote it says that this was an irritating refusal to merge different narrative lines into any kind of meaningful confluence. It also says that J.O. Incandenza was a fan of this method. It seems like a warning of some kind.

Although on the other hand we see lots of forgotten characters like Tiny, Bruce Green, Kate Gompert, Erdedy, and I think some others. So it looks like they’re all starting to come together, which would be nice. It also just so happens that the Ennet House is right next to the Tennis Academy, so maybe somehow the characters will come together or maybe not, maybe there’s a parallel being made between them (we know Hal visits the “objay darts” on occasion).

I suppose the Ennet House is a place for addicts to come for reformation, in contrast to the academy, which seems to force the students to become “addicted” to tennis in a sense. I got the sense that the Ennet House “patients” were all childish and have to be reprimanded constantly by the staff, which is quite the opposite of the academy where these young boys are honing their skills to become these mature tennis players. Both places have urine tests though. For drugs.

Also, what does /w/r/t mean? He uses it a lot and I think I’m missing something.
Also, what exactly is the difference between O.N.A.N. and the U.S.? At one point they make a distinction between O.N.A.N. dollars and U.S. dollars.

The Unfortunate Case of Me

Probably because I read the first few pages right after we talked about addiction and its symptoms, Mario's mention of "periodic" to describe his desire to do something (p 190) leapt out as being part of this resounding theme. By the way, what does Mario look like? I mean I get that he's abnormal, but I really don't understand how he's different (police lock, huh?) even though it should be obvious. On that same page Madame Psychosis says, quoting the circular from the Union for the Hideously and Improbably Deformed, "Medusas and odaliques both..." which coincidentally (but not, because we decided that everything means something) is also very close to the name of one of JOI's movies.
I still don't understand the connection between JOI's movies and the book, but going back and reading them again has given me that same feeling I got when I started reading the book for the first time: there are all these little bits of information and connections that sort of want to come together, but nothing really locks into place to give a firm answer. Madame Psychosis has quite a few roles in his movies which is interesting, and appears in "Infinite Jest" which nags at my curiosity even more, but doesn't tell me much. It also mentions the Continental Reconfiguration a few times, which sounds like it has something to do with the Great Concavity/Convexity, which still hasn't been explained.
I like where Cory was going in his blog about ETA being higher than EH literally, and would just
like to add that Gately's description on page 197 - "the weird sodium light that spills down from
the snooty tennis prep school overhead on its hill" evokes a sort of "light on the hill" imagery
that makes me think of it being metaphorically "higher" too.

Fun Times With Drugs?

I have to say I'm growing to appreciate DFW's sort of expert puppeteer style of writing: i.e. very conscious of the way he is trying to move the reader. On this vein, I liked note #61: "...characterized by a stubborn and possibly intentionally irritating refusal of different narrative lines to merge into any kind of meaningful confluence..." :)

I guess that made me a little (only a little) disappointed to have part of the veil of IJ removed through the EH. Speaking of which, though, let me steal a question from Graham:

1) What connections/constrasts are there between EH and ETA?

A few that seem big to me are:

a) Privilege, in that many ETA's (not all, though) have a fair bit of money. Pretty much all of them have a bright future ahead of them, though. In contrast, EH's usually have pretty crappy background (e.g. Emil/yrstruly). The ETA is also, literally, "above" the EH.
b) Drugs
c) "Freedom" (as per Marathe). At EH, your life seems pretty much controlled whereas at the ETA students are allowed to progress freely. Or, alternately, the ETA restricts students' freedoms by sort of choosing their temple as tennis. In either event, both have "rituals."

2) On that note, how does ETA "freedom" compare with EH "freedom?"


Moving along, I'm sort of interested in the narration. Before we'd speculated about Hal being the overall narrator (as the somewhat main character as well as a character who gets to use "I"). Still, mainly he's been third-personated and the role of narration seems to be increasingly left to the somewhat omniscient nameless "narrator" (writer of the footnotes). In retrospect, DFW does this with other characters: he lets them narrate or almost-narrate (e.g. Emil/yrstruly) and then back to 3rd person with them.

3) Why do this?

Onto the Incandezas. At least two scenes (JOI & his Dad, "conversationalist" JOI and Hal) have been films. This means that either we're seeing films in the book or JOI just takes a lot of films from his life (supporting the latter point is (At Least) Three Cheers for Cause and Effect is essentially about the damage to the EH building because of the ETA and his wife's affair).

4) How much of what is not specifically narrated is objective/subjective (such as one of JOI's films)?

5) Oh, speaking of which: is this death-by-Entertainment cartridge of the SMA IJ (V?)? Is that why the AFR is shadowing Orin?

6) If that is the case, are we "supposed" to be viewing this supposedly irresistable Entertainment? (goodness knows that the book is self-referential enough)

Drugs, Drugs, Drugs: Notes & Errata From Your Favorite TA

I. Check out the super comprehensive venn diagramme:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drug

II. Drāno now sounds like the most dangerous thing in the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drano

III. It is really helpful to understand addiction and the philosophy of the Ennet House through alcoholics anonymous: the book will start to get more in depth on what addiction recovery is like, so this might be interesting to you, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous

IV. Mr. Karafiol's Sufjan Stevens reference totally fell apart. Oy vey. But here is the punchline to ONAN:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan

I will be finding a way to distribute the notes we have taken on addicts we know and love: possibly through email. See you guys next week!