Lost. Misplaced.

The repetition Gately uses to describe his duties at ETA seems like a very good method of keeping someone off of an addiction and on task. At the same time, it resembles the way some of our favorite druggies use their drug use, with the same monotonous routines and actions, or even methods for getting off of their addictions like Erdedy’s method of curing himself of his smoking habit. Though much of this description is in the third person, it resembles the way Gately would describe his actions if he were describing them himself; it includes his observations about some of the tasks, like visiting the woman’s quarters, and also the diction seems to get more and more… frustrated, perhaps, with the mundane repetition of the tasks he must perform on night staff. For example, as he talks further about the ‘fucking mess’ made by McDade, in the kitchen, with the Krispie treats. We also see Gately in action, narrated by a less omnipresent persona, reacting to Joelle and Erdedy in a muddle of chaos, after hearing much about the bland repetition of his normal routine.

Marathe’s discussion with Steeply on the TV show MASH is another connection we see to our own culture, somewhat dating the conversation, and also relating to something we know to be a concrete idea, as opposed to some of the potential realities discussed.

I get the feeling that Ennet House is not really the best way for its tenants to recover from their problems. I guess this might be that I don't completely understand how Ennet House is structured and what their strategy is, but it seems that it doesn't really do anything to help its residents. From my understanding, the residents have jobs, curfews, certain rules about when they are allowed to leave the house, who they are allowed to be with, and are of course always subject to screenings for any trace of substances. However, the characters always seem to be in great danger from being kicked out of the house. They would be kicked out of the house for breaking rules, or the worst case scenario, testing positive for some substance. However, I think that those people that would be kicked out for insubordinate behavior, disregard for rules, or substance abuse, are exactly the people that need the most help recovering. It seems to me kind of like a hospital that throws out a patient that gets mortally injured.
One reason I considered is that the fear of getting kicked out motivates the residents of Ennet House to keep all their toes in line. They are afraid of being kicked out. But then that raises the question of why the residents wish to be in Ennet House in the first place. What do the residents believe will be the benefit to abiding by curfew, facing strict rules, eating Gately's awful meals, and managing the fear of losing something of value to them (their residence at Ennet House)? Maybe its like AA in the sense that if they believe staying at Ennet House will help them, then they can eventually "fake it till they make it". I guess also they are all living together and undergoing a similar experience, so that camaraderie between the residents might help them work through their addictions. But between the camaraderie and the "fake it till they make it" ideal, whats the benefit of Ennet House over simply attending AA?

-LT

Lining up dominoes

I'm feeling particularly lacking in the ideas-to-blog-about-for-IJ department this week, but I'll try to make up for it with gratuitous comments on other peoples' blogs, I guess.
Only two scenes really interested me in this week's reading. The first is, ironically enough, the scene in which they're draining the pond (with the WYYY student engineer). At first it seems ridiculously slow-paced (which isn't the first scene that seems this way) with this excess of fragments of, often unnecessary, information (did I really need to know that the unconscious hobo with the shopping cart has only one, shoelace-less, ash-colored-sock-bearing shoe?), but as it moves on, in a literary show that makes me imagine DFW setting up dominoes, this overly detailed setting comes together for an action-packed (single-sentence) paragraph that ties into just about every one of those details. The second scene that interested me (it's actually a lot like the pond-draining scene in that narrator-building-up-the-setting sense) is the Don Gately fight scene. Again, the majority of the entire scene's action (the fight) takes place in a relatively short length of text (2 page fight -20 page scene). For what it's worth both scenes make me think of a line from William Gibson's Neuromancer: "The brown laminate of the table top was dull with a patina of tiny scratches. With the dex mounting through his spine he saw the countless random impacts required to create a surface like that." More so because we are looking at all the little "random impacts" that emerged collectively as the action in the scene, than the fact the the character was on drugs when he experienced the sensation (Although that old theory that DFW was on something when he wrote IJ comes to mind).

The passage about Ennet House certainly was intense. It is rather amazing how disturbed these people are- beyond just their addictions- and it makes me wonder whether they are being helped at all be being treated there. They are not at all taking responsibility for themselves, and they are certainly not starting to live "normal lives" without drug addiction, so I have to wonder if any successes they had there would be sustainable in the normal world. Really, the way that they interact there represents the substitution of collective mental illness for individual mental illness, and I think that that is characteristic of their society as a whole. The law requiring people to switch which side of the street they are parked on at midnight comes to mind- in order to make money, the state has arbitrarily made the decision to impose this absurd burden on its peoples lives, a choice that is virtually as insane as it would have been had there been absolutely no reason. And yet it strikes me as rather realistic. I think that that is David Foster Wallace's message here- that American society may be degenerating to the point of this kind of insanity, or that it has the potential to do so. Within the context of that insanity, I think that freedom becomes nonexistent- first because even a liberal state that largely respects fundamental rights could pettily strike at any aspect of people's lives if it were this irrational, and second because when living in such a society would present oneself with only such abnormal choices for human interaction that, even if you could make the choices in your life freely, you wouldn't be free to make a choice to live a non-destructive life because there was no such way to live in your society. This is something that we should watch for.

I think this has been touched on before, but I'm interested:

At some point in this section, DFW was writing about Orin and Joelle and said something like "before she was deformed." Obviously we still don't know what the deal is with Joelle's veil, but the way she described it bluntly to Don Gately was that she's so beautiful that people lose all interest in everything else and can never get over it.
This idea is recurring lately; everyone who has seen the Entertainment is incapacitated and can only mutter gibberish about it. Same thing with the rats with the pleasure-providing buttons, who forgot about all of their other needs. The rat thing was mentioned as explanation for the effects of the Entertainment, but I'm starting to suspect that the reason the Entertainment is so captivating is that Joelle is in it. Orin and Hal call Joelle the PGOAT, and obviously she couldn't have been so captivatingly beautiful when Orin dated her since his sanity is still intact...but could the "deformation" that Orin referred to have made her more beautiful?

On another note, I think Ennet House is becoming more and more interesting. I think it's interesting that DFW goes out of his way to make it such a motley crowd; you have a few people who are entirely dysfunctional and probably shouldn't assimilate into normal society (Randy Lenz & the fork-stabbing woman), and a few people who seem pretty high-achieving and normal disregarding their drug use (Erdedy, Kate Gompert, Joelle). You always hear the shtick about how drug abuse isn't confined to any particular group of people--case in point.

Somersaulting With Your Hand Nailed to the Ground

I titled this post the way I did because I wanted to talk a little bit about cycles. Specifically, it's beginning to hit home just how much of this book is about unsustainable cycles (I really want to call them "annular cycles" but that's redundancy since "annular", mainly, just means ring-like). Certainly any addiction is like that. A lot of other things fall into this category, though: Hal's development, while in some ways an addiction, can, I think, be better described as an unsustainable course of intellectual and athletic improvement. Steeply's Dad's addiction is also very cyclically destructive: it's based around the regular showing of M*A*S*H. On another level, the US's current political situation seemed to come out of the unsustainable cycle of American democracy. Basically, the same old elections/mismanagement kept dissatisfying everyone so they voted third party (& lived to regret it. Take that Green Party & Co!) & everything went downhill. Tennis, also, always comes back to the same place but eventually ends/is unsustainable (i.e. Every serve starts out at very similar position, & then there are sets so even more new positions). Finally, we can't, of course, neglect annular fusion which is a highly unstable cycle. There are more but I think this paragraph is getting too long. Thinking of a few circle images: tennis balls, wedding rings, wheelchair wheels.

I think the somersault w/hand nailed to the ground captures this pretty well: you're cycling (somersaulting) but your hand is nailed to the ground which will, presumably, break your cycle and result in some nasty consequences.

Entertainment destroys circles. Or, rather turns them into single points (circle w/radius = 0?).

A few (more) words on Steeply's Pa: His addiction really mirrors "Marijuana Think" in that he becomes broadly interpretative/abstract about something dumb & then ceases to be able to function. Ah, the quandries of being too intellectual: you can justify anything (as we've seen). Further, he loses the barrier between actor/character in a way somewhat similar to the loss of distinction between conscious and unconscious needs for addiction. (Also, there's the impossiblystuck metaphor)

Also, I was wondering if this was supposed to be slightly self-referential (what isn't?) in the following way: Steeply's Dad basically finds really weird symbology in M*A*S*H because there's SO MUCH of it. Just like you can find interesting sentences in the Bible/Moby Dick/any long work by looking at every nth letter. Is DFW making a slight jab at himself/IJ/us? (i.e. You think there are so many themes, but really this book is just REALLY REALLY LONG).

Oh, & Steeply's Da was right about the new type of time (subsidized!!). Eerie...

A bit on the Incandezas. First of all, a lot is randomly dropped by the section semi-narrated by Steeply (I presume) about the tennis match. First, JOI is definitely the director of Entertainment. Second, Steeply is NOT that pretty (according to Hal). What's up with Orin's taste? What does this say about JVD? Oh, speaking of which, I forget where this was dropped but she was disfigured. Why the Acteon (sp?) syndrome, then? This gets odder still as she still seems to believe that she's really, really gorgeous (her face). Does she know/is she in denial?

More evidence is also given w/r/t Orin's good lovin'. In addition to the liking women with children, Bain gives us pretty solid evidence that Orin is basically just passing on the bad treatment of his mother to his Subjects (i.e. Too much lovin'. Too Much Fun, perhaps? Which was how JVD tried to kill herself... hm.). Not 100% sure how I think this connects back to Avril/J'NR'W being together, but, again, it's clear that Avril needs to feel REALLY good about herself.

In terms of Orin/JVD's breakup, we're given a little tidbit in note 269 (3e) (pg. 1047). The first paragraph of (3e) seems like the BS reason (Bain indicates his doubts & we know that Orin knew that JVD & JOI weren't together). The "fact", however, refers, I think, to a section way back when where Orin writes the name of Avril's lover in the fogged window. It then reappears when JOI is driving and he figures out what's happened/that Avril is cheating on him. (Uncle CT seems a likely candidate for this person, although who knows) I'm not sure exactly how that works out, though. Perhaps it's some chain event (an "incident" is mentioned). Thoughts?

Odds and Ends:

Mario's disease about not being able to feel pain seems to mirror his mental (dis)abilities quite well.

The Canadian Resistance (sans the AFR), is really... well... not that great. There's Lucien & his friend who are pathetic, the guys who get beat up by a bunch of (ex?)-addicts, their leader is killed by a stuffy nose... etc. Gately seems to be single-handedly taking down the Canadian Resistance!

Lenz is, ironically, saved (from Gately's wrath) because some people come to try to kill him.

Why are things disappearing at ETA? Is this connected to Steeply/AFR?

Why does Marathe never think Steeply is being frank? Does he overinterpret just like Steeply's Dad/addicts?

"Saprogenic" (as in "Saprogenic Greetings") = to promote decay. Heh.

Semiallegoricality

This is one of those posts that it would be great to get comments on, to add to the picture I'm constructing here.

I wouldn't accuse DFW of writing something as unsophisticated as a straight-up allegory, and IJ seems more complex than that, but I'd like to type up this as a brief hypothetical thought: what if it were a straight allegory?

More on that in a second. I'd just like to interject that DFW is an obnoxiously good manipulator of his readers. I mean, here's the picture: the character I badly want to see horribly suffer and die is separated from his would-be destroyers by one thing. What is the one thing? A character I very much don't want to see harmed or killed, namely Don Gately. My desire to see Don Gately not die ultimately outweighed my desire to see Lenz die, so I was glad to see him wiping the floor with the Quebecois.

OK, back to the allegory thing.

What if different characters in Infinite Jest represented different motivating forces, aspects of humanity, philosophies?

I'm a big fan of Lyle. I think he's just about the smartest character in the book (for example, I think DFW applies the most elevated vocabulary to the narration of Lyle's sections, few though they be.) And since he's a guru, I think he would represent the mystical side of human understanding. He gives advice of a vague and loosely interpretable nature-- but often very helpful-- in exchange for sweat. The sweat-drinking seems bizarre, and it could possibly stand for the kinds of bizarre rituals that we take for granted in religion and mysticism. It also means he gains his sustenance completely from other human beings, making him sort of parasitic (a little like religion.) His advice usually works, though, except when confronted by a single problem: the threat of suicide. Neither with Clipperton nor JOI does his advice successfully stop self-slaughter. It's like suicide is the one issue beyond his scope. Is DFW saying that religion or mysticism is somewhat effective but falls short when placed against issues of the severe degree that is required for suicide?

Hal would pretty obviously be intellectualism.

Mario would be intuition and empathy: he inherently feels for Hal on a gut level, he cares for all, and he understands things amazingly well despite a lack of-- intellectual-- mental power. He is fearless. He is also (worth noting) very small and under-developed in the modern world. He also finds it harder and harder to connect with Hal as his brother gets more and more wrapped up in his own intellect and addiction (AA says that intellectualism is the cathedra from which addiction rules. The Mario-Hal thing would suggest that they're right.)

Orin and Lenz, even though I actually like Orin, could to some extent be the same thing: the desire for power, or rather, the illusion of power. They exert their will over other beings (Lenz kills, Orin nails) to resolve internal issues with power and control. Lenz's animal-abuse and Orin's childhood Mario-abuse seem very much akin, come to think of it. I accidentally read a bit too far and found other stuff that I think supports this parallel, but I won't mention it for obvious reasons.

Would Joelle be shame?

Don Gately is pure fanatical devotion; in a way, maybe he and Marathe are the same? In any case, Don Gately, once he has dedicated himself, is in all the way. He's dedicated himself to sobriety, so he gets Active. He's dedicated himself to being an Ennet House staffer, so he's willing to fight three armed men and get himself injured to protect the people he's sworn to take care of, even though the main target, Lenz, is someone he personally detests (good old Don.)

Avril would be the desire to maintain complete and absolute control.

I'm going to stop here, but anyone who reads this, add comments on the above and consider other characters. Some other good ones to get down would be Steeply, Poor Tony, Michael Pemulis, JOI of course, his father, and John Wayne (I think those characters are likely to click into this hypothetical allegory.)

Spirituality/Egoism/Egoism/Humility

This week's has several important in terms of character development sections.

Fist is Mario, who is revealed to physically have difficulty feeling pain and thus have somewhat of an invincibility illusion. More importantly, however, he appears to be currently the most spiritual of all primary characters as he honestly believes in God. Simultaneously, he is the most open of all characters, to the point of naivette, since he even has trouble understanding others' secrecy and discomfort and the spiritual. Passignly, he notes that he can no longer read Hal's state, which he finds distressing.

Next is Orin, who is described as what essentially is an emotional carnal symbiotic parasity, feeding upon his Subjects' emotions and carnal pleasure, which he himself provided. Simultaneously, he attempts to make himself exclusive and unique within their lives; he wants to practically take over his Subjects' minds.

Then there's Gately, whose relationship with the Residents is extended through the description of his managerial stess and professionalism regarding certain rules(curfew, urine sample) and lax attitude for others(smoking). Gately appears much colder and egotistical in this reading, as all of his actions are done because they are his job, because him not doing them would result in a lot more distress the following day. It is important to note that his protection of the Residents is motivated priamrily from the worry of what would happen if a resident died on his shift. Similary, his beef is something, although he fears admitting it, actively enjoys. His sacrifice is both in the name of his personal enjoyment and temple(job at EH)-recognition, not interpersonal assistance.

Finally, Hal has, misteriously, decided to sober up, to give up on his subtance of choice. The circumstances around his primary motivation is as of now unclear. His descriebd thoughts that he deserved to lose to Stice, however, appear to communciate a certain humility, which was not previously present. Curiously, DFW reiterates during the game in the conversation between DeLint and Steeply Schitt's theory of the inside, unchewable world. An implicit connection is thus that Hal's has finally understood Stice's inclinations(which fits in the chronology, as Hal being high during Eschathon led him into trouble, while later during a.m. drills he was constantly pained by his tooth, whose faith is as well unclear, but I presume has began corroding due to his substance-related activities and may be in part motivation for Hal).

A rainforest of sterebolic anoids.

The passage that begins “Orin (‘O.’) Incandenza stands embracing a putatively Swiss hand model in a rented room. They embrace. Their faces become sexual faces.” , (which is a peculiar but otherwise great line in the first place, describes the sexual interaction between the two in a way that carnal encounters are not often considered, or at least discussed outside the realm of physical or emotional connections of a love/lust combination (p 565-566). Love is an object and O is the victor; sex is made a possession, a necessity, similar to drugs in many cases: they no longer drugs and no longer addressed in the usual manner; they are temples, they are personality traits, they are daemons and they are friends.

The Concavity is spoken of in a manner similar to the way we talked about it in class last week in a conversation that resembles one go on in a math room at Payton, from sports and experimentation to random bits of information of people involved at school to God and triangles to conceptual physics and toxic waste, all the while including phrases like ‘my head is spinning on its axis’ (p 517).

In this weeks’ section, Joelle talks directly about her veil, and the concept of hiding, related to the shame in wanting to hide. I found very interesting the way she speaks of hiding from hiding, putting one’s self out in plain view and being forced into exactly that which you want to shrink away from. Though perhaps a bit counterintuitive, this is potentially logical if the intent is to fight the urge to hide or the related self-esteem or deprecation in terms of the physical or mental cause of one’s veil, whether literally a physical veil such as hers or a veil of one’s actions, traits, or addictions.

TTFN, L.L, PDA

Violence

Last time in class we talked about whether or not it was funny when that one family all died because the one son drank the poisonous NesQuik. That seen was pretty ridiculous and grim to say the least, but it really made me realize how disturbing some of the violence in this book has become. I read that section and did not find it funny at all. Maybe if it had been an isolated story I read in a tabloid or an urban legend, maybe then I would have enjoyed it. But at this point in the book it just really makes me question why DFW is putting the readers in a position to be completely disgusted.

There have been many accounts of violent or graphically distubring events taking place. There is of course people shooting up on Drano and dying. There are certain suicidal fathers who nuke their own heads in microwaves leaving "delicious" aromas. There's the NesQuik incident, spikes driven through people's eyes, forks stabbed into people, etc. Now we can add to that list of disturbingly violent images a drunk being shot in the head and being forced by friends to walk off the wound, and a compulsive animal killer. Maybe these graphic events were funny the first time (I did enjoy the tale about the construction worker being hit by the bricks, although he didn't die, and the story was clearly fabricated). But I can't see what purpose DFW is trying to accomplish by bombarding his readers with these ridiculously graphic images. Does DFW perceive reality to be so graphically violent? Does he believe society is heading towards a point that demands a certain level of graphic violence in order to be entertained? Is it all supposed to be a joke? I certainly don't find his 'joke' very funny. I can only imagine the violence's comedic appeal by thinking of it in comparison to a Three Stooges-esque slapstick comedy. Except give Larry, Moe, and Curly all chainsaws and tasers, and coat every surface with rusty spikes. Is it still funny when they all tumble down a set of stairs in those conditions? Now give them 30 clumsy ways to explore their new chainsaw filled, spike laden environment. Still funny then? The constant flow of graphic violence is just sickening.

Oedipus

So what’s with Mrs. Inc? In the part with Pemulis and Avril, Pemulis is having a discussion about the “Oedipal child” and the mother figure as the Barbie Doll. Then, conveniently, we meet Avril doing splits in the cheerleader outfit with the football player. This reminded me a lot of Orin and Joelle (football player and cheerleader) and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened. I think David Foster Wallace is hinting at some sort of relationship between Orin and Avril. But that’s gross. Maybe that’s why he avoids her all the time. And why James blew his head up. Maybe it's why Orin dates married women, so they will be occupied with him instead of their kids like Avril was with Orin.
There’s an interesting section when Gately is talking to Joelle about the man (Chuck?) being shot in the bar. Gately says that they tried to help Chuck by walking with him instead of taking him to the hospital and it ends with Chuck dieing from the wound. But the men were too drunk to realize that what they were doing wasn’t working. This might be a parallel to Ennet House or AA. AA’s methods only work for some problems, and some people have problems that can’t be cured by AA. Just like Gately and his friends, the AA staff believes that they can cure everyone but in reality may be making their problems worse.

The whole part with Idris Arslanian was kind of odd.

Postmodernism and Infinite Jest

After reading this part of Infinite Jest, I first came to the conclusion that it might only advisably be read in small portions, much as I would imagine it is with the ingestion of arsenic. After partially recovering from the experience that made me come to that conclusion, I next wondered whether the very existence of postmodernism is a significant sign of the possible decline and fall of western civilization, and whether it is intellectually valid only as a target for shooting practice. On reflection (and post-recovery), I think that the book may in fact be trying to make a statement about that. It has been fun to read the various passages of I.J. when not trying to analyze it as if it were a "normal book" in structure whose meaning were straightforward, and I particularly enjoyed parts like the description of the Harvard beach party on page 584. In his use of collectively incoherent stream-of-consciousness passages that do not seem so maddening individually, I think that David Foster Wallace may be parodying the intellectual incoherence and indulgent expression-sans-logic of postmodernism, showing how absurd and nonsensical a philosophical and intellectual system it can be when taken seriously.

Am I the only one who doesn't read these titles?

I'm on character watch as far as those job things are still in effect, and the character of the hour is Randy Lenz. Weird compulsions: knowing the time to an unnecessarily accurate degree, traveling N-NE and being in those parts of the room, and killing things/watching things die. For a while, to me, it seemed as though Randy Lenz wass being introduced for the first time (I could have potentially missed something obvious), but page 562 suggests that we've already met Lenz, under the guise of 'yrstruly' from the weirdly narrated parts:"thundering around due north of where yrstruly and Green strolled through the urban grid"

Also since last time we discussed the book we mentioned destructive cycles and how they don't just apply to individuals (we specifically mentioned broadcast TV/the advertisement agencies as an example) the whole explanation of annular fusion and DT-cycles sounded vaguely familiar. Here's a brilliant idea that seems logical at every step (the processes cancel out each other's poisons) and yet on the whole is terribly destructive (skull-less babies, giant feral hamsters, insects, etc.).

I hope Lenz is eaten alive by feral cats

"Echt and Tavis were both standing, now, in there. Their handshake looked, for the first split-second he looked, like C.T. was jacking off and the little girl was going Sieg Heil." This is a throwaway detail, but I just wanted to point it out because the image of a tiny person (an American incapable of making decisions at a level beyond that of a child) giving a Nazi salute (a pledge of fanatical devotion) to a man masturbating (the pursuit of personal pleasure) seemed like it summed up a lot of what this book is talking about in a nice little image.

I'm pretty sure Lenz is just about the most despicable character I've ever read about; I hope he gets what he deserves, whether its from the owners of the last dog (who conveniently enough seem to be Quebecois separatists, so they could be sufficiently vicious) or from just random misfortune (it'd be poetic if he somehow found his way into the eastern Concavity and got torn apart by an angry mob of feral cats [or hamsters.]) Anyway, my point is, I hope Wallace brings him to a terrible end; I want it to be painful, I want it to be slow, and I want to watch.

Unrelatedly, from way earlier (somewhere in the 420's) Marathe and Steeply argue about how two people ought to decide who should get a can of pea soup that has just become free for anyone because the two people's friend, its previous owner, has just abruptly died. Something about the absurdity of this situation, the idea that your friend would die and you'd be there arguing over his pea soup, seems very intentional. As though Wallace is suggesting that Marathe and Steeply are arguing over the wrong thing, or arguing something irrelevant, or that Canada and the US are doing the same; it's hard to tell with Wallace. But in general, I don't think we're supposed to agree with either Marathe and Steeply, because they're both made completely ridiculous by the narration. I don't know what the third perspective is, or whether their argument really matters. I think Wallace has been hinting at something though, and that he might clarify it later.

Since we hear a lot in this class about how useful lists are, and since suicide is one of the major motifs in the books (up there with drugs and tennis, which we have discussed) I thought I'd make a list of suicides, w/o/r/t success and intentionality.

JOI
JVD (unsuccessful)
Clipperton
C (unintentional)
Kate Gompert (unsuccessful)
Tennis Player Who Injests Poison

I thought the list would be longer than that, so I may have forgotten some. Does anyone remember any others.

w/r/t what DFW is actually supposed to be saying with this suicide motif, my only real observation is that it may be connected to the idea of the Temple.
The Temple is supposed to be that for which you would be willing to die, and obviously if you will directly kill yourself because of something, it's probably your temple. JVD's temple of Too Much Fun leads to her suicide; Clipperton's temple is tennis success, and once he achieves that goal his temple seems taken away and he actually goes through with suicide; marijuana leads to Kate Gompert's suicide, just as heroin leads to C's unintentional self-slaughter. One can't be sure why exactly JOI put his head in the microwave, so one has to in turn wonder what his temple was.

Also, just as a note, I've had this thought for a while, but in case anyone hasn't thought of this, don't we think the ETA situation is somewhat Hamlet-like? This makes sense, since the book's title comes from the play. The father is the headmaster (maknig him a sort of monarch), he is dead, the son's uncle is the new monarch (is C.T. amorously involved with Avril? Or at least, was he at some point? I felt that this was implied at various points, though the new John Wayne development puts a bit of a twist to that,) and Hal seems sort of like a syncopation of Hamlet (just cut out the "m" and slice off the "et".)

I haven't thought about it enough to extend that parallel any further.
Hamlet and IJ certainly have themes of suicide in common.

Meatloaf With Cornflakes

Joelle is pretty clearly beautiful although she hasn't removed her veil. But if, as she claims, removing her veil "drive[s] anybody with a nervous system out of their fucking mind," how did she and Orin date? Was she wearing a veil as a cheerleader or no (I forget if it says; it seemed like it was never mentioned and thus I'd've assumed...)?

I want to learn more about Joelle's Own Personal Daddy. He was the only person to really make Joelle feel safe (what is it about him that does this?). Also, why doesn't she seem to be in contact with him (she mentions that he is living)? She does say "That's how he puts it" (referring to his "still sucking air") so it's not like they're estranged but it doesn't seem like she spends time on the phone with him. Also... is the relationship... incestual at all?

Interesting about the Moms and J'NR'W. I assume the whole football deal suggests that Avril misses Orin a lot more than she is letting on?

More on the Incs. Does anyone remember if there are significant differences/discrepancies between Hal's telling of the mold story and Orin's?

Interestingly enough, we're given a few hints as to why Orin doesn't talk to his parents but not really much definitively. Like, when "Helen" Steeply asks Orin about his parents he talks a lot about how they're insane but not really if there's one specific thing that's bugging him.

The swiss hand model, on the other hand, gives us a little more definitive insight. Orin very much needs to be in control which is probably why he only sees his Subjects once and then leaves them. Also, he absolutely LOVES taking so much control over the Subjects that they transfer their need for their children to him (relating to his mother? Oedipally?). This part also says that Orin was irreparably broken by Joelle. I guess I want to know even more now what happened. Was Joelle hurt too and does this have anything to do with her veil?

I like the addition of Lenz, by the way. It makes the book a lot more interesting to read because Lenz is a, well, very interesting character. I also feel that Lenz brings in a lot of emotion to the book that before it had sort of been lacking in (for me).

Freedom is not Free, and Whiners

In the previous section we saw a lot that made us think that members of AA are not really free. In this section when Gately is talking about how he must choose a God to help him in his AA experience, at first I thought that this was an indication of freedom. God could be like his temple, and he got to choose it so he was free. After I thought about it some more, I realized that before AA, Gately had not chosen to understand any God or to pick someone else's God to be his own. Therefore, when AA says that he must pick a God, he really wasn't that free. He was free to pick any God he wanted, but he wasn't free to abstain from choosing a God at all. If you are forced to make a choice between a few things, then you are not really free. It is similar to the fact that the AA members can choose whatever they want to talk about when the get on the podium, but they cannot choose whether or not they talk at all. All the members always have to "keep it coming".

I thought it was strange that Gately was so surprised by the fact that progress with overcoming your addiction comes through pain (pg 446). The members' addictions had put them all through so much pain. Many of them tried to quit their addictions before, unsuccessfully. Now Gately goes and thinks that AA does not only work miracles on its members in terms of breaking their addictions, but it also works those miracles with not work or cost on the part of the member. I think Gately should have expected that he learn to break his addiction through pain.

I'm not sure what the point of having such a large number of pages devoted to describing in detail what ETA's morning practices are like. We already know the kids work very hard. We already know they complain about it. We already know the coaches are brutal and seemingly merciless and for the most part disliked by the players. So I don't see what the value in explaining to the readers the exact sequence of warm up drills and technique stuff was. The only part I did find valuable was on page 458 when Schtitt chides the players always complaining about it being "too hot" or "too cold". The conditions during a match, or even during practice will not always be ideal. The players could benefit from playing in rougher conditions than they are used to. They should not expect that perfect practice conditions will always be there. The players should look at each practice as an opportunity, and even if the conditions are awful, they should not complain about the conditions and use them as an excuse. They should train hard and do their best in spite of the conditions. I think thats somewhat the argument Schtitt tries to make about the players' complaints.

-LT

We can see that the text thus far, this section specifically I suppose, deals with extreme or totally contradictory aspects of going about things (e.g. intellectualism vs. anti-intellectualism, etc.) Nevertheless both of these extremes leads us down a temple-less or at least a tainted-temple path.

At the start of our reading we see this duality: a EHrelated section, than an ETArelated section obviously to juxtapose the two and further emphasize the similarities in even the most extreme differences of lives. However, ridiculous, it definitely seems as if DFW's view of society (maybe what the book is about) can be paralleled with the classic political spectrum (semicircle) where idealistically fascism and communism can be considered direct opposites, economically there are many similarities and similar results (e.g. corruption) often occur from these extremes. These extremes are less different from each other, than are different from the middle (consumer capitalism) as both Hal and Gately are dealing with completely different issues in an external sense (one being intellectualism vs. anti-intellectualism blatantly evident throughout our read). Internally, though, we see they both are dealing with addiction, they are both lost without a temple, they both competitive. Whereas the 'typical' archetypal man, although not yet seen to my knowledge within IJ, cannot relate with either of the extremes despite the fact if the may play tennis or they may be a janitor, that is they are externally more similar to either Hal or Gately.

As entertainment is also dealt with in extremes (where entertainment can include addictions). Although The mouse that repeatedly presses the button to stimulate the pleasure glands within his head eventually dies from failing to recognize the real world, one who enjoys entertainment casually could not fathom such an occurrence (outside of the world of non-human animals we can apply Joelle Van Dyne) whereas one who dismisses entertainment altogether (an intellectual?) can more clearly relate to this dedication towards one single 'passion,' if you will.

Regarding the book's state as a puzzle, it seems like its one of those ten million piece puzzles that you work on for a weekend away from home, never come close to finishing it, but nevertheless enjoy doing it. Also, the Eric Clipperton bit was seemingly pointless and hard to connect with the rest of the reading (for at me at least) but it (re)introduces this idea that there is so "much more" to IJ than DFW has began to discuss.

This was overall a quicker read, I feel it might of gone a little too quick and some sections I should maybe look over.
Peter

If IJ is indeed like a puzzle then it has yet to yield any sort of solution. Having now struggled through almost half the book I feel it’s an appropriate time to ask why and expect an answer. Yes there are interesting themes but where are they leading and why are footnotes and daunting vocabulary necessary to articulate them? Again there are some great segments, but the rest often seems by and large unnecessary. Wallace is undeniably clever—but so what? Just out of curiosity: am I alone in my discontent?

Anyways—a few thoughts:

I’ve found that insofar of the different competing storylines (although I suppose they become less and less competitive as the book continues and the different stories begin to merge together) the one involving the philosophizing of Marathe and Steeply perched atop the rock shelf on the cliff to be by far the most rewarding. While the other stories articulate ideas or concepts primarily through actions, Marathe and Steeply skip the presentation and delve into –often- the same concepts and ideas in their dialogue. I liked the story (and subsequent conversation about the story between the two) about the masochistic mouse who presses the button created to stimulate pleasure in his brain repeatedly, so many times in fact that he ends up killing himself having successfully neglected basic bodily necessities (water, rest) in order to pursue his pleasure addiction. There has been a lot of mention concerning the pleasure (the danger of pleasure/pleasure addiction) but in my opinion none more forceful than this one.

The descriptions of life as an aspiring professional tennis player, especially the accounts of the unaffiliated-Fresno-kid (pretty funny) and Eric Clipperton (really not so funny at all), when juxtaposed next to the various vignettes about substance (that is, drugs and alcohol) addiction, seems to strongly suggest that for these young athletes playing tennis is an addiction forced upon them, whether knowingly or unknowingly, and often with terrible consequences. (Actually I think they’re probably more addicted to success in tennis than tennis itself, making it to the Show, etc.).

Despite whatever disdain I may harbor for Wallace and IJ, I really find episodes like the one about the unaffiliated-Fresno-kid’s undeniably entertaining. Bits like this make me empathize with Hesse’s disillusioned character Goldmund who articulates the despair of living in a world rank with horror and suffering: “…everyday I try to pick flowers growing in the midst of hell”. (For me it is as if this little tale was flower, a gem, lodged in the flesh of the unsightly beast that is this book).
In this regard Wallace shares a number of stylistic similarities with John Irving—he takes what many people would immediately categorize as disparaging scenarios and twists them with a little taste of absurd, a pinch of ridiculous, whatever, just enough to provoke a reaction of simultaneous laughter and sympathy (schadenfreude? Interestingly enough a few pages earlier Marathe seems to go on a bit of a tirade about what appears to be the oft unrecognized proclivity of American’s to shadenfreude). (On a bit of a side note: I’ve mentioned how Wallace tends to create these situations that prompt conflicting emotions in previous posts, and I’ve noticed that I often describe them as ‘tragic’, but having just been required to read excerpts on tragedy from Poetics, it makes me wonder whether these situations in which for the most part innocent people meet unfortunate fates are in fact ‘tragic’—if they were truly tragic, would we the audience be able to derive even a morsel of pleasure from them?)

"Why make simple entertainment...if you do not fear so many USA's cannot make the enlightened choices?"

Marathe comments that the U.S.A. tries to bring happiness through freedom, though there is no way to make everyone happy all the time, we have to use a utilitarian system to determine happiness. Though, no one can ever be happy all the time. Some people gain pleasure from what may be painful to someone else. How do we know who is more deserving of pleasure than others? And then he asks whether being pleased is a choice. If we think of the Ennet House or ETA, all of them are manipulated in a way to achieve pleasure. At Ennet House, drug abusers are pleased by whatever their addiction is, but it doesn’t last forever and eventually they can’t gain pleasure from pot or heroin, but become dependent on it just to achieve a most basic sense of satisfaction. They are no longer happy because they are enslaved by their vices and undermines the American system.
Marathe also questions whether freedom is good for society, assuming that freedom means that people learn from their mistakes to improve themselves. Ennet House shows us that this may not be true. Here we see people who have become addicted to various drugs and in the rare case that they do want to improve themselves they can’t because they’re physically dependent on it.
I also liked when Marathe says that Freedom has been generalized and abstracted. Steeply has some trouble saying precisely what freedom means, perhaps due to the face that freedom is a word thrown around so much that it’s meaning has been lost. The definition of freedom differs from person to family to region and is so hard to grasp due to the fact that it’s never rightly defined. I don’t know, maybe I analyzed that one wrong. But that’s what I thought when I read it.

Emptying Intent

Apologies if this post is a little more of a ramble than is typical for me. My notes (and thoughts) about this bit are not well organized.

Starting off, I think that the first thing that struck me was how so many things in IJ are not quite as they appear. I guess the thing that set me thinking about this was Mario's savant empathy for Clipperton. More so, though, his extremely decisive (and persuasive) action. It's hard to peg anyone down as anything in IJ because they always have something more to reveal about themsleves.

Oh, and I really await the day when there is a "typical" person in IJ. :)

Since we've been hearing a lot from Hal and Gately, I thought a little bit about comparing the two of them. One clear contrast is that one is working through an addiction whereas the other is getting more and more addicted as time goes on (Hal lying to the Moms was pretty bad). Another seems to be that Hal is highly intellectual/academic whereas Gately is not dumb but certainly not inclined to be academic about anything. This seems to pretty clearly relate back to AA's whole anti-intellectual deal (that thinking people basically think themselves into justifying addiction).

Speaking of Hal, it seems pretty clear what sort of road he's headed down now (although I guess it was told to us in the beginning). We see now that he is physically subject to the effects of marijuana addiction which is presumably what causes his speech problems later on (either that or the uber-drug that got sold to Pemulis). Now, it also seems likely that drugs will account for Hal's dismal SAT scores. The real question is whether Hal is brain-damaged (he does still seem to understand his esoteric essays etc.) or not. In either case, though, it seems that Hal ends up giving away his academic "temple" (if you will) for his addictions. One of these addictions is marijuana, but I think it could be argued that another is really something of an addiction to overachievement. After all, part of the reason Hal got so good at tennis was drugs, no?

This also, of course, relates back to the Entertainment which is now clearly something written by JOI. Entertainment sort of being the mother of all addictions. Perhaps the question regarding Entertainment will be whether or not it should be freely available? While I'm on this, note 223 (explaining why Marathe and Steeply laugh) references one of JOI's films. I guess it was supposed to be the narrator alluding to the film although it seemed like it could be taken to mean that Entertainment was another version of that film (I which seems wrong as Entertainment should be Infinite Jest V or whatever #).
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Odds and Ends:

Why is there, for the first time an enquivocal (and somewhat horrible) death scene? It's not something that can be funny and we hardly knew the character (just a few vague references). It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book that has pretty much avoided "objective" (narrated) death scenes more than any other book that has so much potential for death. (So, maybe Poor Tony died but it's not clear) JOI's death is NOT narrated even though JOI is probably more important than Lucien. Part of it is probably just that JOI is revealed slowly, but I'd find it odd if DFW narrated JOI's death.

I like how DFW's writing is self-similar. The way he slowly reveals everything through little tiny hints (e.g. Ennet House is mentioned on pg. 87 or so but unless you're super-cognizant it doesn't mean much) which mirrors the telling of individual stories (i.e. most start out fairly innocuously). Also, it could be argued that much of the deeper meaning moves through the vehicle of more innocuous but sensical plot-lines.

Should we believe that Marathe and the AFR have never been tempted?

JOI had some messed up parents, but so do a lot of people who come out far better than he does. Is there any other reason he's messed up?

Erdeddy and the hugs are hilarious!! Especially since it illustrates the whole drilling of cliches.

Are we ever going to meet this drug dealer with the snakes? He kind of dropped out of the story.

Freedom and Society in O.N.A.N.

One thing that reading this section has made me think about more has been what David Foster Wallace might be trying to say about American society through his portrayl of O.N.A.N. I think that, ultimatly, the characters in Infinite Jest are living in a totalitarian sociey from which they have no freedom. Their society has become so consumed by addiction and people have come to behave in such surreal and irrational ways that they have no options for interaction with other human beings that are mentally non-traumatic, creating a viscious cycle in which this causes them to develop more of these mental problems and those problems just make them more addicted and, in their interaction with others, surreal and irrational. From reading the book, I get the idea that it would be impossible to stay sane living in it, and honestly that inability to remain sane, just like the inability of individuals not willing to accept great personal harm to remain free under a totalitarian system, is oppressive. By demonstrating that, at least in theory, a society whose political system is a liberal democracy and whose government respects human rights can still be unfree if that society itself it perverse enough to deny humans non-harmfull interaction, I think that D.F.W. shows how unfree American society could potentially become without our even noticing it, and that certainly is interesting.

On another note, considering how we refer to Infinite Jest as IJ so much, I just remembered that the IJ also happens to be a lake in the Netherlands north of Amsterdam that was transformed from the the Zuiderzee, an inlet of the North Sea, into a lake by Dutch land reclaimation efforts. Considering that land reclaimation has caused sea levels in the Netherlands to rise, and how some people now worry that it will not be possible to keep the land from sinking underwater in the long term, I wonder if, in light of the analogous "sinking" that society in O.N.A.N. is experiencing, the name of Infinite Jest could be a reference to the lake. It certainly is obscure, but it would be interesting if it were true.

Coatlicue Complex

Ever since the first scene in the book, I always feel like I never hear enough about Hal from a neutral (maybe not neutral, but third-person) point of view. So, when Dr. Dolores Rusk is referenced as talking about Hal's "Coatlicue Complex" (pg 516), I was instantly intrigued. Unfortunately, after trying to find out what that even means I've come up with only a loose theory at best.
Wikipedia says that Coatlicue is essentially the Aztec fertility goddess/mother of the gods and represents the Life/Death/Rebirth cycle as well as the power a mother has over her infant. From which I took "Coatlicue Complex" to mean that Hal's mother appears to Rusk to exert an unnaturally strong influence on Hal, or that Hal (this is less likely) deeply reviles Avril (the babies of Coatlicue {all four hundred of them} eventually get together and decapitate their mother). All that to say it's fairly certain that Hal has the type of unusual relationship with his mom that would give Freud the howling fantods.

Just some other stuff:
What's the significance of JOI's first interests in annulation? (From what I understand, JOI invented a new type of fusion that became the main energy source for the ONAN called annular fusion {annular means "circular" or "ringlike" which reminds me of those giant torus-shaped plasma containers} which made him insanely rich)

The happy-face symbol shows up again, this time on the face of the leader of the Quebecois insurgents, this doesn't exactly fit with my previous theory, as Quebecois insurgents only indirectly correspond with the themes of addiction and Entertainment, but it does reaffirm my belief that it's an important symbol that should be looked further into.

a.m.

I'm finally caught up compltely(woo-hoo!). Here's some paragraphs of thoughts , in no particular order:

Unfortunately, the last reading and a half no longer has the surrealist quality that was evident in the first two readings. The events depicted within this last reading are much more coherent and informative, providing many clues regarding the overarching plot. Much of the "weirdness" and paradoxes that come about are much clearly connected with Substance Abuse and thus, for me, a certain enigmatic, magical feeling that the book started off with has been lost. Conversely, I found it though gratifying how the seperate plotlines seem to converge around the Enfield Area and the persona of James Incandenza.

The depiction of AA as the inverse of Disease implies some interesting notions. Don Gately cannot explain and neither does the narrator on why exactly and how exactly AA works. Whereas Substance Abuse initially lead to in a viscious circle of what I labeled communication breakdown, AA works apparently by restoring communication between people. The notion communicated by Gately regarding actually hearing what people had to say, and saying exactly what is on your mind as the major turning points in his recovery are only more evidence that the anti-thesis of Addiction is Communication. It is interesting then to note how all new residents of Ennet House argue against the AA Program by saying that the communication is at fault. They claim it doesn't make sense either logically or grammatically, that it is trite and cliched, whereas the point itself is that Communication needs to be honest(as evidenced by Gately's thoughts on the series of speakers).

Echaton is a continuation of the idea that rules, fundamental axioms, enable a beautiful game of wonderous possibilities. Most of the segment seems as if depicting how the violation of one single axiom within the game (which is absurdly grand) quickly reduces the game to chaos and then to unregualted, unstoppable violence and destruction. At the same time, this segment demonstrates more vividly Hal's addiction to both marijuana and sugar/nicotine(the latter revealed later at the gala) and how it essentially paralyzes him(not unlike Erdedy or Kate or Poor Tony), preventing him from interfering and restoring order. Hal's addiction makes him powerless to both physically (he is stuck over the bucket, unable to spit or move) and thin (his brain locks down on nearly trivial abstractions, deeming them too complex).

Interestingly, footnote 110 details some important character features of Orin and Hal and their relationship. Hal accuses Orin that he blames and hence hurts their mother for their Father's death. Orin accepts this calmly while Hal apologises for losing his temper, but not for his words. It seems then that the issues Orin has with his mother are well-known even if Orin seems to not acknowledge them or seek any resolution. At the same time, Hal's suggestion that Orin projects their mother on his Subjects(as sick as it is) leads us to believe that part of Orin's addiction with sex (explicitly mentioned to have taken the place of drugs for him) is also, as nearly every other one in the novel, due to his failure to communicate honestly.

There is an interesting juxtaposition between the avant-garde counter-confluencial films and ideas of the Mad Stork and the rise of Interlace. The rise of Interlace, as detailed in Hal's paper, was due to advertising wars geared toward the idea of Entertainment of the audience as the supreme virtue. J.O.I.'s films in contrast purposefully made the audience either hyper-involved (The Joke) or hyper-isolated (Medusa vs. the Odalsque), neither of which sought to entertain the audience. Thus, the interesting question of whether James' final movie, Infinte Jest, is in fact the Enteratainment whose dessimination Undisclosed Services wants to curb.