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.