Infinite Summer 2015 discussion
Week 1 discussion (June 8, page 94)
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The opening chapter, "The Year of Glad," is particularly interesting, and presents many staggering questions, all the while leaving the reader begging for more.
Yeah, Dustin. I was really confused. I wasn;t sure if he was at the academy or trying to get in the academy. I loved the title of his essays though "The Implications of Post-Fourier Transformations for a Holographically Mimetic Cinema."
Heather wrote: "Yeah, Dustin. I was really confused. I wasn;t sure if he was at the academy or trying to get in the academy. I loved the title of his essays though "The Implications of Post-Fourier Transformations..."He's a high school senior trying to get into a university in Arizona
What impresses me most about the opening chapter is the tension between what is happening in Hal's head - or what he perceives is happening in his head - versus what the men in the room are observing/hearing. It's a nightmare situation of being unable to communicate, unable to express your feelings, and then to be manhandled as a result. Brilliant writing!
Jim wrote: "What impresses me most about the opening chapter is the tension between what is happening in Hal's head - or what he perceives is happening in his head - versus what the men in the room are observi..."Totally agree. And what makes it all the more amazing is that despite the tension, Wallace's humor also comes blasting out of the gate full-force.
"And who could not love that special and leonine roar of a public toilet?"
...Hal thinks as he's being wrestled to the floor. Wonderful.
...elbows on their knees in the defecatory posture of all athletes at rest...(lovely moments! Coach and C.T. already admitting defeat)
Mod
I found it interesting that the first and second chapters (from the perspectives of Hal and Ken Erdedy, respectively) are both largely about someone being metaphorically trapped in their own heads -- Hal can't communicate with the various U of A staff, though we're not yet sure why; Ken goes around and around, torturing himself while waiting for his large quantity of Bob Hope to arrive.
Plus Ken's bug in the audio equipment shelf's girder sets up let's say an "insect theme" which we already see echoed in Himself's (+ Himself's dad's?) extreme dislike of spiders and Orin's trapping of roaches in their little roach-exhalation death tumblers.
Lots to chew on.
Heather wrote: "Yeah, Dustin. I was really confused. I wasn;t sure if he was at the academy or trying to get in the academy. I loved the title of his essays though "The Implications of Post-Fourier Transformations..."It is a little confusing, but you get to know Hal more and more as you progress. Not to mention all the other characters! I think the opening chapter is a great introduction to Hal.
John wrote: "Jim wrote: "What impresses me most about the opening chapter is the tension between what is happening in Hal's head - or what he perceives is happening in his head - versus what the men in the room..."Haha! Yes! DFW's unique sense of homor is on display here. Love it. You almost need the comedic relief, in the (view spoiler)
So these opening pages are little bursts into the SpaceTime of IJ. Periodically, you're alerted to YEAR OF [SOMETHING]. There is an order, but you don't know it yet. Don't worry. Just don't get in that reading-habit of absently skimming section headings because they don't seem to carry any useful information. You're being dropped into IJ's world and you'll spend the rest of the book picking up clues to understand that world- the products, the politics, the television/movie/visual media, etc. But then you'll recognize names of celebrities from this world. DFW is like a Wes Anderson futurist, painting a quirk-filled alternative reality with just enough real-world touchstones to make it seem somehow familiar. And boy will you find a lot in common with the right now and IJ's world.
And here's something to help keep you motivated: This book has a lot of characters and a lot of relationships. You'll swing through a moment if the IJ SpaceTime and then learn about that moment again in a different context. Things will make more/less sense, then you'll wonder if you missed something and you just need to be ok with that feeling and not dwell on it.
"For Orin Incandenza, #71, morning is the soul's night." (42-49)This section is the first that fully gripped and shook my head with the wondering thought, "Who IS this guy?!" And that applies as much to Orin as it does to DFW. IMO this "psychic darkness where you're dreading whatever you think of" is about as ubiquitous an experience-in-lonliness as there is. DFW will write about many of those experiences-in-lonlieness and they'll hit so close to the mark of how you really feel/think about them that you'll stop and wonder what it means that someone you never met has so perfectly described something you thought was intimately and uniquely yours alone.
And so here's this Orin who suffers a complex history according to his present mental state. Issues with "the Mom's"; a Phill-Hartman-as-Anal-Retentive-Chef need to "discard[] both the roach and the tumbler in separate sealed Ziplock"; bizarre thoughts re: sexual relations. And alongside his issues, here's a CBC documentary about a man who's horror is coming true by way of the purportedly benevolent efforts of the medical/research personnel to get the man past his horror.
Orin has a lot to contribute to the IJ story but he's approached obliquely a lot of the time. Where Orin appears, you just feel like there's a puzzle/mystery/riddle to be solved.
Poll: Who here was taught to "shav[e by feel,] upwards, with south-to-north strokes"?
I echo Paul's recommendation to not skim over the year titles in the section headings. It seems like a little irrelevant factoid when you see it up there, but they do lend context and help to wrap your mind around the timeline of the complete work. A tip that I found on reddit (after my first read, of course) was the three bookmark method:
1. Your current place in the book, obviously.
2. (view spoiler)
Note: some people prefer not to look at this page until actually getting there. Suffice it to say that it is a small table that lends clarity to the timeline delineated by the Year of Glad, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, etc. section headings. My opinion is that the extra comprehension gained by seeing this is worth the possibility of missing out on possibly intentional confusion and ambiguity about the timeline, but you should decide for yourself, so it is spoiler tagged.
3. Your place in the end notes.
This method has been helping me a ton. While the book is a mammoth, and the work of it makes you a better reader, there are these little ways to work smarter as opposed to harder.
The insect on the girder is cracking me up!
Thanks for the bookmark tip Griffin!Has anyone else started to pick up on subtle links between each section?
(view spoiler)
(I might be reading too much into this, but it got me thinking about how DFW is starting to overlap some elements from each story).
As I've gotten further along I see the links, but it seems necessary, otherwise it would just be 2 disjointed stories. Unfortunately I read an article about this book which was spoiler city.
This random bit made me lol so much I had to share:Loc 895: medical attache clicking through TP shows, stumbling on - "a redisseminated episode of the popular afternoon InterLace children's program 'Mr. Bouncety-Bounce' - which the attache thinks for a moments might be a documentary on bipolar mood disorders..."
Ok, I'll go there.Wardine.
What do you all think of this infamous section?
At first pass, the attempt at dialect appears, well, clumsy and sort of contrived. I hate to say that about a writer I genuinely admire. So I want to give him a fair shake. As anxious and meticulous as DFW was, I can't help but imagine he worked hard to get this exactly as he wanted it. What is he after?
Do we know the race or ethnicity of the characters here? We get nothing specific from DFW, so we're left with our own assumptions gathered from dialect, names, and locations ("projects"). Do you assume these characters are not white? And do you think DFW is trying to get us to question that assumption here?
John wrote: "Do you assume these characters are not white? And do you think DFW is trying to get us to question that assumption here? "Interesting questions here John. Personally I don't think DFW is trying to get us to question anything here, I think it's just a stark depiction of poverty and abuse.
The dialect did seem a little off to me as well, but I think it may be a geographical thing. I'd be interested to hear if it seemed OK to someone from the Boston area.
*VERY* minor spoiler here: (view spoiler)
John wrote: The dialect did seem a little off to me as well, but I think it may be a geographical thing. I'd be interested to hear if it seemed OK to someone from the Boston area.I grew up in Rhode Island and have spent a decent amount of time in Boston, even living there for a short while. I wouldn't say it's all that geographical; it's certainly not comparable to an inner city Boston accent. DFW himself also spent a short period of time living in the Boston area studying at Harvard.
I wouldn't be surprised if DFW intentionally made the dialect seem a little off. IJ is set in a world much different than our own, and he might have created the fake dialect to accentuate that quality of the book and immerse us further into the world in which these characters live, rather than thinking of them as part of ours.
I'm assuming many of you have probably read DFW's Authority and American Usage, and you'll probably remember DFW self-proclaiming himself as a grammar snob (SNOOT as he calls it). In it he also acknowledges the grammatical analyses of ebonics and other dialects. I laughed to myself imagining him writing the passage with the dialect, because given his love of grammar. I could see him creating charts and such you'd find in grammar or language textbooks for the grammatical structures for the dialect before actually writing the passage.
Anaplastics, Dipsomania, and Footnote 24One of the things of generally conceded importance is sussing out what happened that made “dig[ging] up my father’s head” part of Hal’s thoughts at the end of the Scene of Three Deans (pg 17ish). One place to start the speculating is JOI’s filmography contained in footnote 24 (pg 64ish/985ish). This can be a tedious footnote because of all the jargon-y film data that just isn’t very interesting. DFW had this personal vendetta of sorts to make challenging fiction and that concept is implemented at narrative and structural levels for all variety of reasons. Moby Dick readers will tell you what a slog all the whaling data was to muck through. N24 is something like that: but only because we’re conditioned to think this sort of product label data is lacking in substantive punch (if you’re in that camp, go read the page at the very front of the book where the publication information is listed: the copyright, publisher, ISBN#, etc. DFW snuck some things in on that page).
So my advice is don’t just muck through n24, and even go back and read it again every hundred pages or so. We’re going to need it. EXAMPLE: The Professional Conversationalist Scene (pg 27ish) has got all manner of oddity to it, including a man who claims to have an anaplastic cerebrum with a gyroscopic balance sensor and mise-en-scene appropriation card (I’ll talk about this stuff later if people want to go into them). This man is by one consensus JOI, Himself, Hal’s father. Another consensus of readers says hold that thought because of a film in n24 entitled “It was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father Without Knowing Him.” Synopsis: "A father suffering from the delusion that his . . . son is pretending to be mute, poses as a ‘professional conversationalist’ in order to draw the boy out.” Date of Completion: YTSDB.
So n24 + pgs 17ish, 27ish, and 64ish raise some questions to keep circling in the discussion. 1. Why/where/when/did Hal really(?!) dig up his father’s head. 2. Are we supposed to think JOI’s head might contain cyborg-ish implants? 3. Is the idea of cyborg-ish implants just a little too literal an interpretation, aka is the Conversationalist Scene something other than a “real life” flash-back of a moment in Hal’s/JOI’s shared past? Is it the script of the film “It was a Great…” and the cyborg thing can be walked back a bit? Is a better reading that the script of “It was a Great…” is a little fantastical and there’s not really a cyborg skull involved? JOI is a drunk skunk at the time “It was a Great…” came out. We know this because pg 64ish says JOI’s death is in YTSDB, the same year the film came out. But then so what to make of the scene itself, set on 1 April – YTMP? JOI is also supposedly into some high concept type filmmaking and the skull accessories kind of sound like components of a high performance camera...
2 things: 1) I love this quote:
"Schtitt knew real tennis was really about not the blend of statistical order and expansive potential that the game's technicians revered, but in fact the opposite -- not order, limit, the places where things broken down, fragmented into beauty" (Loc 1934).
It speaks to so much of Infinite Jest itself (i.e. "not order") and I think it speaks to the writing process more generally too. It also makes me think a lot about the new analytics that have crept into baseball and now basketball.
2) On a completely different note, generally when a chapter is not first-person, who is the narrator of IJ? Should we assume it is DFW, himself? (I would argue no). I know this is an odd question, but one section stood out as breaking a sort of narrative "4th wall."
Look at Location 1953 (8%), still the conversation between Schtitt and Mario: "This should not be rendered in exposition like this, but Mario Incandenza has a severely limited range of verbatim recall."
Who is speaking the "This should not be rendered in exposition like this..."? Again, I think it's a mistake to assume that is DFW. We're definitely dealing with a third person omniscient narrator, but it's odd for that narrator to address the audience directly with a comment on the writing itself. I guess it is pretty common in postmodern lit and metafiction, which IJ clearly is. I would bet the point is to slyly wink at the idea of a narrator's omniscience and to have us question the form of narrative itself and the role of the narrator.
John: with regard to who the narrator is when the text is in the third person, I'd say it's told from the perspective of the character that the section is primarily centered around, not Wallace himself. It's not so much a matter of who the narrator is as it is a matter of whose perspective is being described (at least in my opinion) and that perspective is constantly shifting from character to character.
I disagree, especially in this case. The quote I pointed out is speaking in third person about the text we are reading. You're right that in third person omniscient narration "It's not so much a matter of who the narrator is as it is a matter of whose perspective is being described," but when the narrator comments on the text as a text, something different (and interesting) is happening.
edit: Not exactly the same, but imagine if you were watching a film and suddenly the director stepped around the camera to say directly to the audience, "look, I know this scene is weird but bear with me" and then went back behind the camera. It would be a break in the traditional logic of how we know a film is supposed to operate. We know the camera is there, but it is omniscient and we forget about it. But once that boundary is broken, something weird is going on.
You're right. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, to me, the identity of the narrator doesn't much matter if their narrative angle is still primarily centered on the character being described. This is different if the text itself is being alluded to, as it opens up the possibility of the narrative being a retelling after the fact.Considering your point about stepping outside the text and alluding to it (breaking the 4th wall, pretty much) I'd say it's a mix. My argument for this would be that the voice often changes to suit the perspective of who it is centered around. The Wardine section is a good example. So, at times, it may be from the perspective of a character, and at others it must be some person with enough knowledge of the situation that they can step back from the narrative and allude to it (the author himself or a character storyteller).
Yes, I do see what you're saying about the voice changing to suit the changing perspectives. I agree. But when the narrator changes from third to first back to third so quickly (basically in one sentence) something weird is going on. I agree that in most occasions the identity of the narrator matters very little if at all. But I think on this occasion (and others like it), DFW wants us to ask who is speaking and why, for what purpose. The shift draws attention to itself.
John wrote: "Look at Location 1953 (8%), still the conversation between Schtitt and Mario: "This should not be rendered in exposition like this, but Mario Incandenza has a severely limited range of verbatim recall." "
Hmm, the Kindle cloud reader shows that as location 1821. Weird.
Anyway, I think most of the Omniscient 3rd person is supposed to be narrated after the fact by Hal. This certainly does not apply everywhere though.
There are two pieces of evidence for this that I can think of offhand:
1. The first chapter is obviously chronologically later than the rest of what we've been reading. At the end of this chapter, Hal speculates that a "Cuban orderly" will ask him "So yo man what's your story?" So we can guess that after that Hal begins telling his story.
2. This bit of info is from the Eschaton chapter, which begins at approx. page 321: (view spoiler)
That doesn't make sense. 1) Why would Hal tell the story and take on the voice of multiple other characters? It doesn't really work. Yes, sometimes the story is first person from Hal's perspective, but I don't think that Hal is narrating the entire book.
2) By definition, third person omniscient is, well, specifically not a character. The closest you can get, I think, is the voice of the writer, DFW, interjecting.
Hmm. I'm not sure why a character can't tell a story about other characters within the story itself. That seems to make perfect sense to me.I definitely did not say Hal was narrating the entire book. I said "this certainly does not apply everywhere". I don't think it's appropriate to speculate further than that, in a topic devoted to the first section only.
We can definitely agree to disagree though, I have no reason to argue the point :) I think if there's anything we can say for sure, it's that nothing about this book can be easily answered.
Sure, a character *can* tell a story about other characters within the story itself. But that's more than likely not happening here. Why would Hal narrate a conversation between Schtitt and Mario? It makes more sense to see this tiny narrator intrusion as DFW interjecting and breaking a "4th wall," kind of having a little fun as he tends to do. It takes a lot more logical gymnastics to try to suggest it's Hal.
And yes, I have no real dog in this race to argue the point further. I'm just always intrigued by fourth-wall breaking because it's such a weird thing that does not happen very often. Why does it happen and whose voice is it? And for sure there's nothing in this book that can be easily answered. :)
You could be right -- I do strongly think that there are sections being narrated by Wallace directly, and sections being narrated by other characters using the 3rd person.*But there's not much to prove that this is the latter, and actually now that I look at the section again, there is a paragraph that begins "But so". Phrases like that are definitely Wallacisms, so that is evidence for your view.
*as I said above, the (view spoiler) is definitely an example of this. I also think (view spoiler), although I don't have any evidence off the top of my head.
I thought that the relationships between the central family members were strange, and I'm not sure if that's related more to certain themes or just to the world in which the book is set. I'm curious where that's going though.For example, Orin seems to be very psychologically influenced by his parents. He also has his father's fear of insects, he still shaves the way he was taught, and he dreams about his mother's floating head (p47). The footnote (#2) implies that there's a deeper meaning to the dream. What do you think that is?
And the list of movies that Himself made. A lot of the plots seem very similar to events that happened in the book, or the actual relationships between his family. It seems kind of strange- like wouldn't the rest of his family pick up on this? The similarity between the plots and his personal life seemed almost ridiculous.
Mod
Re: narration, I noticed a few fun tics and oddities too. I'll grab citations tomorrow, but aside from the Mario chapter already referenced, I noticed the narrator using an "I" statement in one of the chapters. Stood out, to be sure.
And re: the family dynamic, this is one of the most interesting themes / mysteries in the book, to me. What parts of the story do we get from Hal's perspective, what from Orin's, what from Mario's? And do they all match up? Is the chapter with the professional conversationalist actually a transcript of JOI's film on the same topic? (Fascinating theory and something I hadn't considered!) Or is it a real and really weird conversation between a disguised JOI — mask dripping down his face — and a young Hal? (Also note themes here of speaking and not being able to be heard, at least by the person you want to communicate with. This is all over the place in our first week's section: Hal's first chapter obviously, the whole conversationalist bit, and even the poor Québécois attaché [I believe he was] whose head cold makes him a tragic victim of Gately's too-effective gag technique. Barriers to understanding centering around language or the lack thereof.)
Okay, and this part is just hard and horribly sad: the whole Kate Gompert chapter and how DFW (through Kate) describes depression, given that we all know the author killed himself about ten years after this book came out, is just so heart-wrenching. I thought it was a really interesting way to frame the scene from the perspective of the young doctor, who is obviously empathetic but seemingly totally unaffected himself by any lack of mental fortitude or cheer. Simultaneously showing us a take on suicide from within a depressed person's experience and also from an outside, "rational" observer. It makes me appreciate Wallace so much.
Okay! I didn't intend to write that much all at once but here we are. Any favorite passages / jokes / turns of phrase so far? Questions or mysteries to pose to the group? My favorite word in IJ so far is "complexly". I think we've seen it at least twice already!
From the Kate Gompert case the part I read the just grabbed me was: 'I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all.'Later we learn it's because of the drugs she's doing. Now I've never done drugs, been suicidal or nothing but there has been points in my life I felt like that.......a depression, tiredness and feeling of not wanting to "play anymore" mainly because of how at certain stages in life you should be here or have accomplished that and when you haven't met those expectations it can get at you. Now some people can get completely consumed by those feelings that arise that can then lead them to a dark path. Fortunately for me I always manage to nip it in the bud after a couple of days. Anyways....I'm not going to go into details but hope you get the idea.
Here are some of the quotes that just made me LoL:"John Wayne, as do most Canadians, lifts one leg slightly to fart, like the fart was some kind of task, standing at his locker, waiting for his feet to get dry enough to put on socks."
and
'Phrases and clauses and models and structures,' Troeltsch says...'We need an inflation-generative grammar.'
Keith Freer makes a motion as if taking his unit out of his towel and holding it out at Troeltsch: 'Generate this.'
Oh, one other interesting thing that just occurred to me, with regards to the third-person narration: I noticed that in the sections featuring Marathe, DFW will often narrate in a style that obviously is meant to emulate a native French-speaker's English. It's a subtle and brilliant way to get you in the mind of the character.Mercurialgem wrote: "John Wayne, as do most Canadians, lifts one leg slightly to fart, like the fart was some kind of task, standing at his locker, waiting for his feet to get dry enough to put on socks." "
The locker-room scene is so great. DFW certainly nails the dynamic of friendships among teenage boys. One interesting thing I learned when reading this section: DFW makes a scatological reference to Martin Luther, because apparently Luther did actually have a bit of an obsession with defecation. I can't find the reference right now, but I will try to look it up later.
Sarah wrote: "Welcome officially to week 1! Loving the discussion so far. Thank you for expressing your various points of view while keeping it civil and respectful.Re: narration, I noticed a few fun tics and ..."
As the debate continues re: who the various narrative voices are, keep in mind the sometimes over-looked quirk of IJ's quotation marks. IJ uses single quotation marks which is not true of all DFW fictional work (See Broom of the System). Some readers make a big stink about this as an indicator that the entire book is to be thought of as something like a monologue, that a set of implied double quotation marks envelope the entire text. Considering such a possibility certainly makes room for those moments when the narrative voice acknowledges and reflects on the difference between what a character would be capable of saying and how the thought/event is presented to the reader.
Other readers say the single quote is merely an aesthetic quirk of IJ and not really indicative of anything. They sometimes point to British grammatical conventions and sometimes also to the fact that IJ employs a lot of metric measurements as an indicator that the quotation mark "thing" is a red herring.
There's an arguable third camp that point to the prevalence of double quotes in DFW's non-fiction and single quotes in his fiction as some sort of nod by DFW to the reality that fictional characters never once actually said anything ever, but rather that the author of the fiction, DFW in this case, 'said' those things.
Lauren wrote: "I thought that the relationships between the central family members were strange, and I'm not sure if that's related more to certain themes or just to the world in which the book is set. I'm curiou..."Well, as Katherine Hepburn said in Lion and Winter..."What family doesn't have its ups and downs?" I have a towel in my room that says, "If you met my family, you'd understand." I still shave the way I was taught MANY years ago. I think this family so far is strange but not abnormal at all.
Sarah: Also note themes here of speaking and not being able to be heard, at least by the person you want to communicate with...I hadn't noticed this before, but I would also include Orin in this theme. In many ways, he is having the exact reverse of the problem that Hal is having in the opening section: Orin wants to be understood only as an athlete, and is being forced to communicate himself personally through the personal interest interviews (most of what I'm saying is pulled from page 66, although it's very likely I'm reading too much into it). Hal's issue is that his personal identity is being overlooked in favor of his athletic promise, whereas Orin's athletic promise is being overlooked in favor of his personal life.
In addition, that theory that the conversationalist section is directly from JOI's film is super interesting! I had never thought of that.
I'd say my favorite section so far is Hal and Mario's conversation from pages 39-42. It reveals so much about their relationship (one of my favorites of any book I've read) and their thoughts on their parents. It does this so beautifully and efficiently. Does Mario have any flaws?
I also love the Kate Gompert section. Wallace does a really interesting piece of word play when describing what the doctor perceives as empathy:
"The doctor... was able to look directly back at her with a kind of bland compassion, the expression of someone who was compassionate but was not, of course, feeling what she was feeling, and who honored her subjective feelings by not even trying to pretend that he was. Sharing them." (p 74)
The "not even trying to pretend he was" could refer to either the "feeling what she was feeling" or the "honor[ing] her subjective feelings." It's an intentional ambiguity that hints, I think, that the doctor really doesn't care about honoring her feelings at all, adding to the helplessness of Kate Gompert's attempts to communicate herself.
Edit: I also had a question for you all: On page 64 JOI and Avril's marriage is described as "May-December" and then in the footnote as "more like July-October." What do you think is meant by this?
Griffin wrote: "Edit: I also had a question for you all: On page 64 JOI and Avril's marriage is described as "May-December" and then in the footnote as "more like July-October." What do you think is meant by this? "
I think it just means that they are really only moderately far apart in age?
John, what connection are you seeing to their age? I'm only seeing talk of the marriage. The most obvious answer would be that the marriage was only a few months long but that doesn't seem possible.
John, what connection are you seeing to their age? I'm only seeing talk of the marriage. The most obvious answer would be that the marriage was only a few months long but that doesn't seem possible.
The phrase "May-December marriage" is usually used to refer to a marriage between a very young person and a much older person. i.e., in May the year is fresh and new, in December it is almost gone:http://marriage.about.com/od/lifestyl...
So, July-October would simply be a less extreme interval.
You learn something every day! I had never heard that before. Thanks!
I was going to recommend the Tense Present essay as well! (http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads...) The snoots reference ties into why I think I find DFW so rewarding. One of the arguments he makes in the essay is that having non-rigorous usage means that you have to work harder for comprehension. And that extra work is undesirable and/or deleterious to human progress or whatnot. But of course basically all the DFW fiction (and to a lesser extent non-fiction) requires mental gymnastics, and IJ in particular is one heavy puzzle box of clues and callbacks to things we don't know yet and frustratingly gnomic foreshadowing.
I don't know why DFW would be so cranky towards descriptivists and then go out of his way to write a real head-scratcher. You could possibly argue that what motivates prescriptivists is the pinched joy of knowing something someone else doesn't, or the thrill of looking down one's nose when pointing out typos and malapropisms and so forth. So possibly DFW had an impish cruel streak, or maybe he just understand how satisfying it is to figure something out.
Which is why I love DFW even if there are a dozen or more of his stories and essays that I find truly irritating: when he does a bit of a reveal and you have that ping of recognition of all those little phrases you'd puzzled over a bit until just now.
Sara mentioned speaking and not being heard, and I would extend it a bit to not being able to fully represent your interior to others. "I am in here." "I am not what you see and here." All the secrecy in addiction that is both thrilling and isolating. And there's a bunch of deformities and scarred pelts and so forth throughout the book. It's not exactly a new theme, the dislocation between your interior and your presentation, but it sure is ceaselessly interesting to us.
And all the fun stuff:- "defecatory posture" awesome
- I'm also childishly always amused by the "O.N.A.N" acronym (or initialism?)
- And also at the idea of subsidized time
- Thank you to whomever up there suggested I go check out the copyright page. That was new to me!
- If you have the Eggers foreword... I felt such glee when he calls out Franzen as the fun author to Gaddis's substantial one. DFW seemed to inspire real masculine jealousy in his group of author friends (Franzen in the New Yorker [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...] and, well, Freedom; Eugenides in The Marriage Plot; also see this: www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/10/...), and I bet this just chapped Franzen's hide.
And this is everything I had to google in this first section:
- Venus Williams career start (1994 at 14)
- pleurisy
- ad valorem (and let's just say all latin phrases from here on out)
- incunabular
- concupiscence
Oh! And one more thing. I do think that endnote 24 is particularly sadistic, and I entered it thinking, "this feels like the 17th planet I had to explore in Mass Effect". HOWEVER. This time I noticed how much family biography it gives for the Incandenzas, so it's worth going back to read if you did a hard skim.Also, it has this amazing nugget: "Documentary and closed-caption interviews with participants in the public Steven Pinker-Avril M. Incandenza debate on the political implications of prescriptive grammar during the infamous Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts convention credited with helping incite the MIT language riots of BS 1997."
Please note: with this and all weekly discussion threads, proceed at your own risk if you're behind. Discussion of anything through the weekly progress milestone (in this case, page 94) is fair game! And of course, if you're reading ahead, please be considerate and save your comments on subsequent developments for later weeks' threads.
Let's go!