Friday, December 25, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Pencil Marks In Stephen Burn's Reader's Guide To Infinite Jest:
This transcription of my pencil marks may not make sense to you but they do make some sense to me:
14 - idea of art being a living transaction between humans
15 - his goal of human connection
19 - flows of data more vast than anything the world has seen before
- Ulysses - a kind of encyclopedia
- Joyce - an attempt at "containing the encyclopedia"
20 - "scrotum-tightening", "telemachry"
- the novel is stalked by the ghost of a tall alcoholic author named Jim
29 - his aim is not linear simplification, but to show how one story has "to do with a context created by a larger narrative system of which this piece was a part".
- Infinite Jest's three narratives are designed to suggestively interact, illustrating how individual action effects and is shaped by a larger community
39 - search for an adequate understanding of the self
- "who's there?"
- cold room
- "I am in here."
- empty
40 - somebody unresponsive is there
- no matter how expansive your vocabulary, or how careful your description, a list of words is not enough to make a self
41 - "neither quite a nerd nor quite a jock"
42 - Hal has understood himself "for years as basically vertical," and as his lack of depth begins to depress him...
43- Arizona Garage Scene between James O. Incandenza and his father
- Perhaps most importantly Infinite Jest is a novel that explores the different ways "fathers impact sons"
- "you're a machine"
- seminal definition of what a self is
44 - Wallace attempts to do something real American
46 - Self-forgetting
- The Show
47 - Gaudeamus Igitur: let us rejoice
49 - Hal feels at his own face to see if he's wincing
- insufficient free will
50 - charts the progressive erasure of identity by the pressures of family and academy
51 - beginning with a confident "I" the narrative proper ends with "he"
52 - Erdedy reflects on the light streaming onto the floor (the way I did when I put Mount Jest on the floor of my room? Am I a pot head?) and on the insect (take note Abbot)
53 - To locate the local in larger perspectives
- cool analysis: Burn refers to the coffee cup that knocks on the door ("like the rap of a knuckle", p. 480) of Antitoi Entertainment as Gately drives by the place that houses the Infinite Jest cartridge that he originally stole: Burn likes this small narrative circle (for those who don't believe that there was no narrative line at all, Burn demonstrates how in one small, tight moment, Wallace is able to bring the narrative together then loop of again
54 - emergent networks
- "systems inside systems" of natural ecologies
55 - a novel that is partly about the returning dead
- Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association
56 - Wallace does seem to have attempted to create a mythology
57 - Madame Psychosis = metempsychosis: migration of the soul from one body to another
- there is little in this long book that does not serve some larger purpose
- parallels between Heracles and Gately
58 - during the "missing year" between YDAU (2009) and Glad (2010): "Don Gately and I dig up my father's head."
(Hmm - is Gately alive then? Or maybe this explains why Hal finishes the story speaking like the devil and blowing his admissions interview: he has been to hell/the Underworld?; he has been with Gately? Is Gately now the ghost? And is Himself the head/skull of Yorrick > "a fellow of Infinite Jest (the film)? (In Hamlet the ghost was apparently in Purgatory - like maybe Gately?))
(Burns is in black. I am in red.)
Page:
12 - the kind of emptiness in high talent that Wallace found at the end of his mathematical career
14 - idea of art being a living transaction between humans
15 - his goal of human connection
19 - flows of data more vast than anything the world has seen before
- Ulysses - a kind of encyclopedia
- Joyce - an attempt at "containing the encyclopedia"
20 - "scrotum-tightening", "telemachry"
- the novel is stalked by the ghost of a tall alcoholic author named Jim
29 - his aim is not linear simplification, but to show how one story has "to do with a context created by a larger narrative system of which this piece was a part".
- Infinite Jest's three narratives are designed to suggestively interact, illustrating how individual action effects and is shaped by a larger community
39 - search for an adequate understanding of the self
- "who's there?"
- cold room
- "I am in here."
- empty
40 - somebody unresponsive is there
- no matter how expansive your vocabulary, or how careful your description, a list of words is not enough to make a self
41 - "neither quite a nerd nor quite a jock"
42 - Hal has understood himself "for years as basically vertical," and as his lack of depth begins to depress him...
43- Arizona Garage Scene between James O. Incandenza and his father
- Perhaps most importantly Infinite Jest is a novel that explores the different ways "fathers impact sons"
- "you're a machine"
- seminal definition of what a self is
44 - Wallace attempts to do something real American
46 - Self-forgetting
- The Show
47 - Gaudeamus Igitur: let us rejoice
49 - Hal feels at his own face to see if he's wincing
- insufficient free will
50 - charts the progressive erasure of identity by the pressures of family and academy
51 - beginning with a confident "I" the narrative proper ends with "he"
52 - Erdedy reflects on the light streaming onto the floor (the way I did when I put Mount Jest on the floor of my room? Am I a pot head?) and on the insect (take note Abbot)
53 - To locate the local in larger perspectives
- cool analysis: Burn refers to the coffee cup that knocks on the door ("like the rap of a knuckle", p. 480) of Antitoi Entertainment as Gately drives by the place that houses the Infinite Jest cartridge that he originally stole: Burn likes this small narrative circle (for those who don't believe that there was no narrative line at all, Burn demonstrates how in one small, tight moment, Wallace is able to bring the narrative together then loop of again
54 - emergent networks
- "systems inside systems" of natural ecologies
55 - a novel that is partly about the returning dead
- Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association
56 - Wallace does seem to have attempted to create a mythology
57 - Madame Psychosis = metempsychosis: migration of the soul from one body to another
- there is little in this long book that does not serve some larger purpose
- parallels between Heracles and Gately
58 - during the "missing year" between YDAU (2009) and Glad (2010): "Don Gately and I dig up my father's head."
(Hmm - is Gately alive then? Or maybe this explains why Hal finishes the story speaking like the devil and blowing his admissions interview: he has been to hell/the Underworld?; he has been with Gately? Is Gately now the ghost? And is Himself the head/skull of Yorrick > "a fellow of Infinite Jest (the film)? (In Hamlet the ghost was apparently in Purgatory - like maybe Gately?))
59 - Dymphna is a Catholic saint
60 - raises the possibility that Infinite Jest is basically a religious book
- the novel is about belief
- the spiritual hollowness of a life without belief seems to be one of the most persistent themes
- Wallace interview with Review of Contemporary Fiction: "To me, religion is incredibly fascinating as a general abstract object of thought - it might be the most interesting thing there is. But when it gets to the point of trying to communicate specific or persuasive stuff about religion, I find I always get frustrated and bored. I think this because the stuff that's truly interesting about religion is inarticulable." (Is this like Einstein's view of religion?)
61 - the novel intimates that belief may provide, as the last words hint, a "way out" (or the answer is way out there?)
64 - festival of the dead
65 - Infinite Jest is clearly a book with "wide-ranging and deeply hidden themes having to do with death and time"
- narratives clearly move toward an apocalyptic collision
- 2010 is the very last year of ONANite Subsidized Time
68 - Kakutani of the New York Times said that the book "often seems like an excuse for Mr. Wallace to simply show off his remarkable skills as a writer and empty the contents of his restless mind".
74 - Cioffi's essay talks about the experience of reading the book
75 - Joseph Tabbi's Cognitive Fictions provides an interesting response to earlier criticism as it breaks with the prevailing trend of considering IJ as an extension of Pynchon's work
76 - Zadie Smith expressed admiration for Wallace's work: "Wallace is proving to be the kind of writer I was sort of hoping didn't exist - a visionary, a craftsman, a comedian and as serious as it is possible to be without writing a religious text"
(Nice words from Zadie. It's true: vision, craft, high humour, seriousness - but clearly not dogmatic like the Bible - given the elussive narrative, the inconclusive ending and the creation of a book that is more puzzle and game than it is two stones being brought down from a mountain.)
---
Burns gets at a lot of stuff that I didn't make note of with my pencil marks. The pencil marks were I guess more personal than explaining what Burns concludes. (I guess you'll have to read that for yourself!) Burns does a very good job in a very few pages in putting IJ in a literary context - making interesting references to writers and books that IJ was maybe based on or better yet tried to contain. Burns talks a lot about Joyce and Ulysses and DeLillo and Underworld. Burns also does a good job of clarifying the narrative and the timeline in IJ. A worthwhile quick read. Thanks Abbot!
Days of Essays
Is there a lovelier sight than that?
Book forcing open book.
Splaying book.
Forcing another book to speak.
To attempt - attempt - to speak the truth.
To reveal the mystery of another.
In the photo, the book being held open is the Guide to the book that has it trapped.
This is a sweet remembrance of times past. Of university days. And of writing essays at night - with books piled on top of each other, here, there and everywhere - bathed in an amber light.
An orgy.
(Cue music: "Gaudeamus Igitur...")
Monday, August 31, 2009
Neighbourhood Bookshop Closes
Outdoors With Guide
Btw - some cool analysis here Abbot. Have you read this guide yourself?
Btw2 - the insect appears on page 17, Abbot.
Another Gift From The Abbot
Thanks very much Abbot. Good thing I bumped into you in the real-not-virtual-world. As I mentioned to you, IJ has so sparked me as a reader that I have become a regular at Amazon and local bookstores - and I therefore didn't initially know that this book was from you when it arrived in cardboard at my door.
Question is should I start reading it? Right now I am in the middle of reading both the Inferno and Purgatory and The Brothers Karamazov looks longingly at me from my bedside every night.
I may opt for the approach that Mr Ashdale spoke of a while back - especially now that I've earned my spurs by finishing IJ - which is to just read what I feeling reading and books will get "finished" when they get finished.
In keeping with this it has also occurred to me that all of the books ever written and that will be written represent one big book any way. One big book. One big story. All books and stories are linked some way or another, in ways big and small, obvious and subtle.
So maybe I'll just read a page or two of the guide...
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Rearranged String: Jest As Gift:
Taking Down The Jest
I doubt very much that he ended up in Dante's 7th Circle of Hell. That old-school religious mythology is still pretty cool and instructive and well written but I think DFW was treading on something closer to the truth when he tried to marry math and science and philosophy: the idea that everything is connected (maybe by strings) and that there might be more dimensions, something more than this.
If DFW is in fact still conscious, I hope that by now he has lifted himself up from that cold, wet, gray beach that he imagined and has climbed up to that place of incandescent light he so richly deserves.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Gately in Purgatory?
The Purgatory?
A kind of Purgatory?
Dante's Purgatory?:
(Recall how we left him dear Abbot: "And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out."))
(Forgive the long quote (From Danteworlds)):
'More so than for Hell and Heaven, Dante has significant leeway in imagining and representing this realm of the Christian afterlife. While there is no specific reference to a place called "Purgatory" in the Bible, the concept took shape over the course of early Christianity and the Middle Ages on the basis of biblical support for what would later become Purgatory. (This concept has been a major point of doctrinal disagreement since the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation.) Thus Judas Machabeus, honoring the custom of offering prayers for those who died in God's grace, proclaims that it is "a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins" (2 Mach. 12:46). The idea of trial by fire, another important conceptual component of Purgatory, figures prominently in the Bible: "Thou hast proved my heart," sings the psalmist, "and visited it by night, thou hast tried me by fire: and iniquity had not been found in me" (Psalm 16:3). John the Baptist, who baptizes in water, prophesies the greater power of Jesus, saying "[h]e shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire" (Matt. 3:11). Based on these and other passages, medieval theologians introduced the idea of 'purging fires' as a way to imagine the purification of souls who died in God's grace but bore the stains and habits of sin. From the adjective purgatorius arose the noun Purgatorium as the concept of Purgatory received full theological legitimation in the mid- to late thirteenth century (e.g., at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274). The elaboration of this concept can also be seen in depictions of the afterlife in popular visionary literature of the Middle Ages before Dante. (See Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, ed. Eileen Gardiner [New York: Italica Press, 1989].) The author of "Drythelm's Vision" (7th century) speaks of "consuming flames and cutting cold" that punish certain souls; helped by prayers, alms, fasting, and masses, "they will all be received into the Kingdom of Heaven at the Day of Judgment" (61). "St. Patrick's Purgatory" (mid 12th century) describes harsh punishments to purge souls of their repented sins and thus enable their return to the same terrestrial paradise from which humanity was banished (144). The "Monk of Evesham" (end of 12th century) also describes harsh, cruel torments; nonetheless, "[b]y atoning for their crimes or by the intercession of others, in that place of exile and punishment, they might earn admission to the heavenly country" (204). And in "Thurkill's Vision" (dated 1206), the souls pass through a "large purgatorial fire" and are immersed in a lake "incomparably salty and cold" (222). Elements from both theological authorities and popular accounts--including painful (if fitting) torments, at times tempered or shortened by prayers and good works of the living--certainly inform Dante's Purgatorio. However, the poet creates the world's most enduring image of this second realm of the afterlife by fully developing the concept of purgatory in the way we would expect: meticulous geographical and topographical representation of the region; sophisticated application of sources that both reinforces and challenges received dogma; subtle psychological portraits of its inhabitants; dramatic interactions between these characters and Dante himself as well as between Dante and his guide, Virgil; and creative opportunities for trenchant social, moral, and political commentary on the world of the living. Of particular conceptual originality is Dante's Ante-Purgatory, the region rising from the shore at the mountain's base to the gate of Purgatory proper at the limit of the earth's atmosphere. This area is populated by souls who were excommunicated by the Church or who for various reasons delayed repentance to the end of their lives. '
A kind of Purgatory?
Dante's Purgatory?:
(Recall how we left him dear Abbot: "And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out."))
(Forgive the long quote (From Danteworlds)):
'More so than for Hell and Heaven, Dante has significant leeway in imagining and representing this realm of the Christian afterlife. While there is no specific reference to a place called "Purgatory" in the Bible, the concept took shape over the course of early Christianity and the Middle Ages on the basis of biblical support for what would later become Purgatory. (This concept has been a major point of doctrinal disagreement since the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation.) Thus Judas Machabeus, honoring the custom of offering prayers for those who died in God's grace, proclaims that it is "a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins" (2 Mach. 12:46). The idea of trial by fire, another important conceptual component of Purgatory, figures prominently in the Bible: "Thou hast proved my heart," sings the psalmist, "and visited it by night, thou hast tried me by fire: and iniquity had not been found in me" (Psalm 16:3). John the Baptist, who baptizes in water, prophesies the greater power of Jesus, saying "[h]e shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire" (Matt. 3:11). Based on these and other passages, medieval theologians introduced the idea of 'purging fires' as a way to imagine the purification of souls who died in God's grace but bore the stains and habits of sin. From the adjective purgatorius arose the noun Purgatorium as the concept of Purgatory received full theological legitimation in the mid- to late thirteenth century (e.g., at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274). The elaboration of this concept can also be seen in depictions of the afterlife in popular visionary literature of the Middle Ages before Dante. (See Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, ed. Eileen Gardiner [New York: Italica Press, 1989].) The author of "Drythelm's Vision" (7th century) speaks of "consuming flames and cutting cold" that punish certain souls; helped by prayers, alms, fasting, and masses, "they will all be received into the Kingdom of Heaven at the Day of Judgment" (61). "St. Patrick's Purgatory" (mid 12th century) describes harsh punishments to purge souls of their repented sins and thus enable their return to the same terrestrial paradise from which humanity was banished (144). The "Monk of Evesham" (end of 12th century) also describes harsh, cruel torments; nonetheless, "[b]y atoning for their crimes or by the intercession of others, in that place of exile and punishment, they might earn admission to the heavenly country" (204). And in "Thurkill's Vision" (dated 1206), the souls pass through a "large purgatorial fire" and are immersed in a lake "incomparably salty and cold" (222). Elements from both theological authorities and popular accounts--including painful (if fitting) torments, at times tempered or shortened by prayers and good works of the living--certainly inform Dante's Purgatorio. However, the poet creates the world's most enduring image of this second realm of the afterlife by fully developing the concept of purgatory in the way we would expect: meticulous geographical and topographical representation of the region; sophisticated application of sources that both reinforces and challenges received dogma; subtle psychological portraits of its inhabitants; dramatic interactions between these characters and Dante himself as well as between Dante and his guide, Virgil; and creative opportunities for trenchant social, moral, and political commentary on the world of the living. Of particular conceptual originality is Dante's Ante-Purgatory, the region rising from the shore at the mountain's base to the gate of Purgatory proper at the limit of the earth's atmosphere. This area is populated by souls who were excommunicated by the Church or who for various reasons delayed repentance to the end of their lives. '
Strung Up Jest
11-a-side
In theoretical physics, M-theory is a new limit of string theory in which 11 dimensions of spacetime may be identified. Because the dimensionality exceeds the dimensionality of five superstring theories in 10 dimensions, it is believed that the 11-dimensional theory is more fundamental and unifies all string theories (and supersedes them). Though a full description of the theory is not yet known, the low-entropy dynamics are known to be supergravity interacting with 2- and 5-dimensional membranes.
This idea is the unique supersymmetric theory in eleven dimensions, with its low-entropy matter content and interactions fully determined, and can be obtained as the strong coupling limit of type IIA string theory because a new dimension of space emerges as the coupling constant increases.
Uplifting?
No - this doesn't look right. As you can see I've suspended the now tied-up pages of IJ from a ceiling hook. I thought that perhaps to have the pages in the air, or moving "up" toward the heavens would capture the power of the book. But I get nothing inspiring from this, nothing beautiful and nothing close to an image of string theory.
The string should do it:
For Immediate Release: the Abbot of Theleme joins Readinginfinitejest.com:
Blog founder John Vivant is pleased to announce that the Abbot of Theleme has joined Readinginfinitejest.com:
"The esteemed Abbot of Theleme is a welcome addition to our team. In fact, the Abbot was not only an early reader of The Book but perhaps its greatest celebrant; a herald really. It was the Abbot who brought The Book, The Thick Book, to my attention and pressed me repeatedly to read it. Having now finally read it, I have to say that The Book is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. Perhaps life altering. To see the Abbot's name now among the list of contributors to the blog has giving me cause to rejoice..."
"The esteemed Abbot of Theleme is a welcome addition to our team. In fact, the Abbot was not only an early reader of The Book but perhaps its greatest celebrant; a herald really. It was the Abbot who brought The Book, The Thick Book, to my attention and pressed me repeatedly to read it. Having now finally read it, I have to say that The Book is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. Perhaps life altering. To see the Abbot's name now among the list of contributors to the blog has giving me cause to rejoice..."
String Theory?
Base Shifting?
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Mount Jest in Post Rain Storm Sunday Afternoon Light:
What has moved the mountain ever so slightly?
A breeze? Movements of my creaky old wood floor? One of my children looking out my window to see what's going on in the hood and inadvertantly knocking it? The thunder that shook the house a few hours ago?
Hmm, everyday the mountain looks different and the light shines differenly upon it and yet the mountain is still there.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Giving More:
I found long ago - but I didn't share this - that after I started reading Infinite Jest I started giving out more money on the street than I ever used too. I have just gotten off the subway. Pictured -with her back to my insidious and invaisive handblogger - is a cross-eyed black girl with a filthy green social services logo-ed t-shirt reading (on the front chest I'm not kidding you) "boundless" - putting my coins into her bag.
What is happening? Why am I giving up my cash now so freely?
She said "Can you spare some change Sir I'm hungry" - and I didn't even question it. I just dug in my pocket for the biggest and best coins I could find.
Cursed book. Poisonous Pages.
Friday, August 7, 2009
My Take On Slate's Analysis Of Infinite Jest:
Here's my take on Slate's Audio Book Club Discussion of The Thick Book. The discussion occurred last March and was initially recommended to me by Mr. Ashdale (Thanks!). Taking part in the discussion were Troy Patterson, Katie Roiphe, and James Surowiecki. I don't know these people but they seem to be experienced literary critics.
Here's some of the highlights of what they variously said about Infinite Jest (I'm for the most part not going to identify who said what. Their words are in note form in black. My comments are bracketted in red):
- Hard to get your handle on the nature of the plot - quite deliberate and frustrating
- Intersections of plot are not explicit
- No resolution - re - the Infinite Jest film in the novel, re - Hal's psychosis
- Not a traditional novel
- No attempt to resolve mesmerizing plots
- Reading book is like getting hit by bus
- DFW enjoys giving us a hard time - yet I couldn't stop reading
- Arresting images, beautifully nuanced passages about human consciousness
- The book is a mess - is not "saved"
- After 500 pages were cut from the original DFW said "everything that's there was meant to be there."
- Never get narrative pay-off - never know who characters are until much later in the book
- incredible passages, language, humour
- DFW's obsessive compulsive gift is taking things apart - the world apart - and analyzing it in a way that is so brilliant that a normal sane person couldn't do - something destructive - taking apart and not stopping
- His level is so far above what normal people would think about
- In his non-fiction his gift is more luminously on display in a consistent way: in A Supposedly Fun Thing he turns something banal into an amazing piece of art
- DFW was like the substance abuse characters he developed: addicted to thinking
- DFW's "analysis paralisis"
- He wrestled with human relationships - not able to fully be able to accept his own goodness or the goodness of others
- Wish there was much more of Mario - favourite character (?- this seems strange to me. OK Mario was a key character but to me not all that interesting. I thought Mario was the most obvious of characters - your token disabled character - no where even close to Gately - who the critics don't talk about til much later.)
- For DFW human relationships are incredible arduous - non-existant and cartoonish, almost gimmicky (hmm- and yet the characters are so human - maybe they are right: characters couldn't fully connect to one another.)
- DFW not good with romantic love - but good with patrimony and fraternity
- Fellowship among recovering addicts is real and sustaining
- When he talks about character's being in "the zone" in tennis scenes, he is hyper-perceptive - but his writing is also about "perceptions", perceptions of the world and as a result uses lots of lenses and screens.
- Some people want tennis stuff cut out
- One of the three critics says: "for me that's some of the best stuff in the book." (me too! For me there is no book without the tennis "stuff"; through tennis DFW gets into the heart of ideas like talent and addiction.)
- Wallace in his interviews talked about a soft spot for gags
- In terms of substance, Wallace is trying to get to something that is real, trying to get to emotion - and yet he seems affraid of sentiment: it almost always has to be kind of refracted in some complicated way
- His book Oblivion is very, very bleak: lots of suicide in it
- Pay-off isn't quite dazzling enough in insight to actually justify the work he puts me through (this comes up quite a few times: the work DFW puts the reader through)
- (They talk about Mario some more and as they do so I wonder if they really understand the book; maybe I don't understand it; but I usually felt like skipping the Mario parts because all along I felt Mario wasn't central to understanding the story, the plot and the riddle of the book. At this point I look at the time remaining in the one hour segment and wonder if they're going to be able to spend enough time on Gately and Hal.)
- JOI's microwave suicide is gimmicky - yet AA and tennis passages are brilliant - and yet still you wonder if it's worth it (I went through this process myself when I referred to the playwright who gave up on reading the book - I was wondering if it was all going to be worth it (I think this idea is fascinating because now the reader is basically talking in existential terms but through the process of book reading; the idea of "if it's worth it" of course also applies to life: is writing this blog post worth it, is writing IJ worth it, is life worth it? What is the "it"? Well... to go back to an earlier comment, the "it" can be the effort, the pain; DFW makes the reading hard, life is hard, cruel, painful.))
- Book inspires fractally incoherent thinking
- Has all of the post-modern apparatus but doesn't believe that individual has disappeared
- The AA stuff is "pretty" earnest - (? Pretty earnest? Is that the best they can say. I say the AA stuff is fantastic and about as authentic as it gets.) - he (DFW) thinks their is a person underneath it all.
- Three critics agree that they don't want to read too much of DFW's suicide into Infinite Jest. They don't want to read the book through what happened to him. (I say - Why not? It's not a stretch at all to do this given how many mentions there are of Suicide in this book)
- The idea that DFW thought that his head would explode (New Yorker article) - why he always wore a headband - you do feel a little bit of that in this book (that DFW's head is going to explode)
- Katie tries to get everybody more positive about IJ by talking about how vivid DFW's portrait of Kate Gompert's depression was.
- Want to tread carefully in this territory (connection between IJ and DFW's suicide); a little easy to be glib about it.
- New Yorker piece implied too strong a correlation - argued a little too much for a biographical reading of his work - I don't want to read this book through the lens of DFW's depression
- I think that this is an incredibly sad book (I agree: a sad and brilliant (incandescent) book - beautifulsad)
- Gately has a journey and changes his life (the three critics are now trying to find the positives in a book that they have had little good to say)
- From the 1996 Salon interview, DFW says of IJ: "I think this is about a particular kind of sadness." (Hmm - particular? Like what wasting talent? Or unfullfilled love?: Gately and Joelle? Hal and his Dad? DFW and...? Or just the plain old sadness that comes out of chemical imbalance?)
- The book is haunted by over-analysis and lack of connection; an amazing sense of loneliness
- Inside of Hal there is pretty much nothing at all
- The afterlife of DFW - in danger of Sylvia Plath phenomenon - of his suicide eclipsing his work (I don't know - does Zidane's headbutt eclipse his career?)
- Idea of him as a doomed person does strike a chord
- When alive DFW embodied artistic purity
- Katie: I don't see artistic purity - I see extreme showiness: "Look at me - look at how talented I am"
(I kind of wondered about this too throughout my reading. But I still think he was an artistic purist. And I don't think the book was all ego. What I wondered was if the big theme in the book was about talent. Perhaps DFW's own talent. But more about DFW thinking about talent in general through his own experience with it. I think it's clear, quite clear, that he knew he had talent - I think he also knew that his talent caused him pain and confusion - and what he wanted to do was explore it: what talent meant, how to develop it, what were the pitfalls, what were the inevitabilities (addiction, depression). Having said all that I think that DFW's "showiness" is trumped by his artistic vision. I think his vision for the book was beyond talent and about aspiring to something greater than your own talent and power - aspiring to the great glory of literature, The Beyond, to the magic of the universe, to the afterlife and maybe even an outstretched hand to the idea of some kind of God (string theory?). I mean Gately, what a figure to find in a post-modern novel: he is so Christ-like: he battles (evil) addiction. He abides. We know Gately as the football player who "coulda been a contender" (Brando references earlier in novel) but my goodness does Gately ever redeem all of his sins. He fights to the death. Ironically he fought the Nucks to the death and then he fights addiction to his death. He is prepared to accept his own death to achieve something higher - a goodness. And you all know my first take on the last line of the book - I think DFW has put Gately on the shores of Dante's Purgatory - a place that acknowledges his sins, that will ask him to reflect on those sins and then eventually reward him with what he deserves - getting spirited out of that nihilistic beach setting - and into a sunnier place, sunnier even than that Pharm-Grade Sunshine. And who knows - maybe he will even get the girl - get Joelle. What a picture of love that was that DFW painted huh? - between Joelle and Gately? Love, yeah, that too. So, I would order it like this in terms of where DFW is coming from:
1.Trying to achieve high art (I want to look at some key aspects later - like all of the Freudian Stuff (Avril-John Wayne-Hal), The Shakespearian stuff, the Dostoevsky stuff, the possible Dante stuff and think I will finally need to read Joyce's Ulysses.)
2. The Power of the Human Spirit (Salvation)/ The Afterlife
3. Love
4. Talent
5. DFW Showing off & joking/jesting/trying to "entertain" his audience (with his talent).)
- But it is a pure book in that it is not compromising
- Physically a very hard book to read
- Wallace's non-fiction is going to live forever
- His sensibility was more analytic than narative
- As a journalist in a class with not too many people
- What's maddening about this book is that if you took out the best passages - it matches the best of anyone - the problem is having to go in there and go through everything else.
- Feels like Ulysses
- Katie: only men write like this - like they want to build something (What do you think he's trying to prove with this book?); There is a "look at me, look at me," quality to this book. That 's why I'm not getting the purity from the novel somehow.
- In the 1993 Review of Contemporary Fiction interview DFW talks about his weaknesses as a writer: "...grossly sentimental affection for gags...I have a problem with concision: communicating things in a brisk way that doesn't call attention to itself..."
- He admits to wanting to be liked: communicating to the reader: "Hey, look at me, hey look at what a good writer I am, like me."
- Endearing: his self-consciousness, total awareness of who he is...
- never allows him to create a story we can care about or get immersed in, or that bothers to resolve itself (there's that word again - resolve - it's funny - I deliberately stayed away from criticism of the book until I finished reading it - but - and I'm sure it's in a few of my posts - but I started to worry long before its end that the book might not resolve itself. I don't know why I worried (I've never minded a Euro-film that ended without resolution). Maybe the book was such a big investment of time and energy (unlike a relatively short 2 hour French film) and I wanted something tangible back from it - like the weak-assed critics who did this Slate Audio Book Club (they keep talking about resolution).)
- Gets hostile toward the reader. Was hard on reader.
- It's about a work of art that is destructive and harms you - does destroy the reader; when you want someone to love you so much you end up hating them? (But did he try to destroy the reader? My feeling was one of being really challenged. Like the book was a game, a puzzle, a riddle to be figured out. It's this frame of mind that took my down that path of Dante vis-a-vis the ending. I'll probably be completely wrong about that. But I figure that if a book can keep you thinking like that after you're done reading it - that is a great thing. (I guess one criticism that springs to mind just now is that if the book is challenging like a game - it is not a game for everyone - and it is therefore not very accessible and maybe even intellectually elitest(?).))
- All agree that there are miraculous and amazing parts - but the fact that DFW doesn't try to create unity to this book - is a betrayl. The end is a betrayl because he resolves nothing. (Betrayl? These people are thinking small. Funny that they use the word unity because string theory is known as a complex theory in the world of physics that UNITES other theories and is also known as the Theory of Everything.)
- Structurally the book is webbed (I think this is Troy Patterson speaking and this is good. This gets closer to string theory or the Theory of Everything) and I don't know if that's going to lead to narrative satisfaction but maybe the novel is it's own species of thing. (I like that - own species of thing; still a novel though.)
-Katie: ideal thing is - and this is very rare - you come out looking at things differently - and very few even very good books do that, have that power (this was my experience with the book and author as I mentioned above; very powerful experience)
- Overwritten quality
- Continued doubts about human interaction
-Rabbit Run more my style
- DFW interested in filling the thing all the way to the top and putting everything into it that he knew and thought
- The non-fiction - where's that guy?
- IJ is a book you can pick it open it in the middle and start reading it
- Good insomniac book - little perfect chunks
- Parts of him were in every character
- A+ for effort...
Here's some of the highlights of what they variously said about Infinite Jest (I'm for the most part not going to identify who said what. Their words are in note form in black. My comments are bracketted in red):
- Hard to get your handle on the nature of the plot - quite deliberate and frustrating
- Intersections of plot are not explicit
- No resolution - re - the Infinite Jest film in the novel, re - Hal's psychosis
- Not a traditional novel
- No attempt to resolve mesmerizing plots
- Reading book is like getting hit by bus
- DFW enjoys giving us a hard time - yet I couldn't stop reading
- Arresting images, beautifully nuanced passages about human consciousness
- The book is a mess - is not "saved"
- After 500 pages were cut from the original DFW said "everything that's there was meant to be there."
- Never get narrative pay-off - never know who characters are until much later in the book
- incredible passages, language, humour
- DFW's obsessive compulsive gift is taking things apart - the world apart - and analyzing it in a way that is so brilliant that a normal sane person couldn't do - something destructive - taking apart and not stopping
- His level is so far above what normal people would think about
- In his non-fiction his gift is more luminously on display in a consistent way: in A Supposedly Fun Thing he turns something banal into an amazing piece of art
- DFW was like the substance abuse characters he developed: addicted to thinking
- DFW's "analysis paralisis"
- He wrestled with human relationships - not able to fully be able to accept his own goodness or the goodness of others
- Wish there was much more of Mario - favourite character (?- this seems strange to me. OK Mario was a key character but to me not all that interesting. I thought Mario was the most obvious of characters - your token disabled character - no where even close to Gately - who the critics don't talk about til much later.)
- For DFW human relationships are incredible arduous - non-existant and cartoonish, almost gimmicky (hmm- and yet the characters are so human - maybe they are right: characters couldn't fully connect to one another.)
- DFW not good with romantic love - but good with patrimony and fraternity
- Fellowship among recovering addicts is real and sustaining
- When he talks about character's being in "the zone" in tennis scenes, he is hyper-perceptive - but his writing is also about "perceptions", perceptions of the world and as a result uses lots of lenses and screens.
- Some people want tennis stuff cut out
- One of the three critics says: "for me that's some of the best stuff in the book." (me too! For me there is no book without the tennis "stuff"; through tennis DFW gets into the heart of ideas like talent and addiction.)
- Wallace in his interviews talked about a soft spot for gags
- In terms of substance, Wallace is trying to get to something that is real, trying to get to emotion - and yet he seems affraid of sentiment: it almost always has to be kind of refracted in some complicated way
- His book Oblivion is very, very bleak: lots of suicide in it
- Pay-off isn't quite dazzling enough in insight to actually justify the work he puts me through (this comes up quite a few times: the work DFW puts the reader through)
- (They talk about Mario some more and as they do so I wonder if they really understand the book; maybe I don't understand it; but I usually felt like skipping the Mario parts because all along I felt Mario wasn't central to understanding the story, the plot and the riddle of the book. At this point I look at the time remaining in the one hour segment and wonder if they're going to be able to spend enough time on Gately and Hal.)
- JOI's microwave suicide is gimmicky - yet AA and tennis passages are brilliant - and yet still you wonder if it's worth it (I went through this process myself when I referred to the playwright who gave up on reading the book - I was wondering if it was all going to be worth it (I think this idea is fascinating because now the reader is basically talking in existential terms but through the process of book reading; the idea of "if it's worth it" of course also applies to life: is writing this blog post worth it, is writing IJ worth it, is life worth it? What is the "it"? Well... to go back to an earlier comment, the "it" can be the effort, the pain; DFW makes the reading hard, life is hard, cruel, painful.))
- Book inspires fractally incoherent thinking
- Has all of the post-modern apparatus but doesn't believe that individual has disappeared
- The AA stuff is "pretty" earnest - (? Pretty earnest? Is that the best they can say. I say the AA stuff is fantastic and about as authentic as it gets.) - he (DFW) thinks their is a person underneath it all.
- Three critics agree that they don't want to read too much of DFW's suicide into Infinite Jest. They don't want to read the book through what happened to him. (I say - Why not? It's not a stretch at all to do this given how many mentions there are of Suicide in this book)
- The idea that DFW thought that his head would explode (New Yorker article) - why he always wore a headband - you do feel a little bit of that in this book (that DFW's head is going to explode)
- Katie tries to get everybody more positive about IJ by talking about how vivid DFW's portrait of Kate Gompert's depression was.
- Want to tread carefully in this territory (connection between IJ and DFW's suicide); a little easy to be glib about it.
- New Yorker piece implied too strong a correlation - argued a little too much for a biographical reading of his work - I don't want to read this book through the lens of DFW's depression
- I think that this is an incredibly sad book (I agree: a sad and brilliant (incandescent) book - beautifulsad)
- Gately has a journey and changes his life (the three critics are now trying to find the positives in a book that they have had little good to say)
- From the 1996 Salon interview, DFW says of IJ: "I think this is about a particular kind of sadness." (Hmm - particular? Like what wasting talent? Or unfullfilled love?: Gately and Joelle? Hal and his Dad? DFW and...? Or just the plain old sadness that comes out of chemical imbalance?)
- The book is haunted by over-analysis and lack of connection; an amazing sense of loneliness
- Inside of Hal there is pretty much nothing at all
- The afterlife of DFW - in danger of Sylvia Plath phenomenon - of his suicide eclipsing his work (I don't know - does Zidane's headbutt eclipse his career?)
- Idea of him as a doomed person does strike a chord
- When alive DFW embodied artistic purity
- Katie: I don't see artistic purity - I see extreme showiness: "Look at me - look at how talented I am"
(I kind of wondered about this too throughout my reading. But I still think he was an artistic purist. And I don't think the book was all ego. What I wondered was if the big theme in the book was about talent. Perhaps DFW's own talent. But more about DFW thinking about talent in general through his own experience with it. I think it's clear, quite clear, that he knew he had talent - I think he also knew that his talent caused him pain and confusion - and what he wanted to do was explore it: what talent meant, how to develop it, what were the pitfalls, what were the inevitabilities (addiction, depression). Having said all that I think that DFW's "showiness" is trumped by his artistic vision. I think his vision for the book was beyond talent and about aspiring to something greater than your own talent and power - aspiring to the great glory of literature, The Beyond, to the magic of the universe, to the afterlife and maybe even an outstretched hand to the idea of some kind of God (string theory?). I mean Gately, what a figure to find in a post-modern novel: he is so Christ-like: he battles (evil) addiction. He abides. We know Gately as the football player who "coulda been a contender" (Brando references earlier in novel) but my goodness does Gately ever redeem all of his sins. He fights to the death. Ironically he fought the Nucks to the death and then he fights addiction to his death. He is prepared to accept his own death to achieve something higher - a goodness. And you all know my first take on the last line of the book - I think DFW has put Gately on the shores of Dante's Purgatory - a place that acknowledges his sins, that will ask him to reflect on those sins and then eventually reward him with what he deserves - getting spirited out of that nihilistic beach setting - and into a sunnier place, sunnier even than that Pharm-Grade Sunshine. And who knows - maybe he will even get the girl - get Joelle. What a picture of love that was that DFW painted huh? - between Joelle and Gately? Love, yeah, that too. So, I would order it like this in terms of where DFW is coming from:
1.Trying to achieve high art (I want to look at some key aspects later - like all of the Freudian Stuff (Avril-John Wayne-Hal), The Shakespearian stuff, the Dostoevsky stuff, the possible Dante stuff and think I will finally need to read Joyce's Ulysses.)
2. The Power of the Human Spirit (Salvation)/ The Afterlife
3. Love
4. Talent
5. DFW Showing off & joking/jesting/trying to "entertain" his audience (with his talent).)
- But it is a pure book in that it is not compromising
- Physically a very hard book to read
- Wallace's non-fiction is going to live forever
- His sensibility was more analytic than narative
- As a journalist in a class with not too many people
- What's maddening about this book is that if you took out the best passages - it matches the best of anyone - the problem is having to go in there and go through everything else.
- Feels like Ulysses
- Katie: only men write like this - like they want to build something (What do you think he's trying to prove with this book?); There is a "look at me, look at me," quality to this book. That 's why I'm not getting the purity from the novel somehow.
- In the 1993 Review of Contemporary Fiction interview DFW talks about his weaknesses as a writer: "...grossly sentimental affection for gags...I have a problem with concision: communicating things in a brisk way that doesn't call attention to itself..."
- He admits to wanting to be liked: communicating to the reader: "Hey, look at me, hey look at what a good writer I am, like me."
- Endearing: his self-consciousness, total awareness of who he is...
- never allows him to create a story we can care about or get immersed in, or that bothers to resolve itself (there's that word again - resolve - it's funny - I deliberately stayed away from criticism of the book until I finished reading it - but - and I'm sure it's in a few of my posts - but I started to worry long before its end that the book might not resolve itself. I don't know why I worried (I've never minded a Euro-film that ended without resolution). Maybe the book was such a big investment of time and energy (unlike a relatively short 2 hour French film) and I wanted something tangible back from it - like the weak-assed critics who did this Slate Audio Book Club (they keep talking about resolution).)
- Gets hostile toward the reader. Was hard on reader.
- It's about a work of art that is destructive and harms you - does destroy the reader; when you want someone to love you so much you end up hating them? (But did he try to destroy the reader? My feeling was one of being really challenged. Like the book was a game, a puzzle, a riddle to be figured out. It's this frame of mind that took my down that path of Dante vis-a-vis the ending. I'll probably be completely wrong about that. But I figure that if a book can keep you thinking like that after you're done reading it - that is a great thing. (I guess one criticism that springs to mind just now is that if the book is challenging like a game - it is not a game for everyone - and it is therefore not very accessible and maybe even intellectually elitest(?).))
- Many ways book doesn't succeed but does succeed in a fundamental way - it's about 1. perception; 2. substance abuse; 3. ways of philosophies: it changes the way you think - in a good way; the way he engages human consciousness refreshes my understanding of it. (For what it's worth this Novel That Doesn't Resolve Itself has changed the way I speak, the way I write, the way I see the world, the way I live my life (remember my post about starting to give more on the street?))
- Epigram - talent is its own expectation
- A lot of passages incredibly hyper-real
- Radical disorientation - see things others don't see
- Long sections of the book that have nothing to do with any of the major characters
- Number of characters who are grotesque: Wallace is saying: they're still human beings - amazing number of physical and pschological deformities
- Long parts of plot that have nothing to do with the plot are part of his refusal of story-telling - willful desire to BEDEVIL the reader (or challenge him - like a game?)
- What do you have at the end of this book? What does it add up to? (Well you have exactly what you have: Gately "conscious" on a cold, rainy beach and - if you're smart enough to have figured out that story ends at the beginning - you have Hal doing an incoherent admissions interview. And it is up to you - the reader, the determined reader who had the ability to endure the long journey - to figure out these two things at the end. What I figure is that Gately has died, but is alive again in another realm and that Hal did not make the Show but is about to embark on a more enjoyable university career.)
- All agree that there are miraculous and amazing parts - but the fact that DFW doesn't try to create unity to this book - is a betrayl. The end is a betrayl because he resolves nothing. (Betrayl? These people are thinking small. Funny that they use the word unity because string theory is known as a complex theory in the world of physics that UNITES other theories and is also known as the Theory of Everything.)
-Chose to use fragmented narrative but you hope in the end you're going to come out of the fragments with some larger thing - Ulysses comes together for example.
- Do you think it's not a novel and perhaps some kind of other prose experience that needs its own name? (I had in the middle of my reading wondered too if it was in fact a novel but to me now that I have finished and reflected on it and come to love it - IJ is most definitely a novel and great novel.)
- Have to work incredibly hard to get anything out of the book - but it's just not there. (These critics complained the whole time about how hard they had to work at IJ. Maybe I did too in a way - but the pay-off is so great - for me anyway.)
- He refuses closure (He wanted to refuse closure? I don't think so. Or did he want to remain open to the possibilities of art, life and the universe (String Theory? Or even God? Or that they are in the end the same thing? Einsteinian view?)
- Doesn't want you to enjoy it that much. (Or he wants to challenge you? Challenges are often not enjoyable.)
- Refuses a certain kind of narrative pleasure
-Katie feels cheated (whine, whine, whine): you want these plot lines to amount to something, or come together in some way that is satisfying - but it doesn't have to be a neat perfect ending.
-Some sense that he didn't just stop (these people don't get it - he doesn't just stop - he deliberately leaves something for the reader - something even harder that getting through the thousand pages - he leaves a riddle for us to solve - which makes his "entertainment" infinitely more challenging and human and considerate and liberating than The Entertainment - which is just supposed to trap us, put us in a cage, sew open our eyeballs and kill us.)
- Structurally the book is webbed (I think this is Troy Patterson speaking and this is good. This gets closer to string theory or the Theory of Everything) and I don't know if that's going to lead to narrative satisfaction but maybe the novel is it's own species of thing. (I like that - own species of thing; still a novel though.)
-Katie: ideal thing is - and this is very rare - you come out looking at things differently - and very few even very good books do that, have that power (this was my experience with the book and author as I mentioned above; very powerful experience)
- Overwritten quality
- Continued doubts about human interaction
-Rabbit Run more my style
- DFW interested in filling the thing all the way to the top and putting everything into it that he knew and thought
- The non-fiction - where's that guy?
- IJ is a book you can pick it open it in the middle and start reading it
- Good insomniac book - little perfect chunks
- Parts of him were in every character
- A+ for effort...
Ziplock:
The pages remain free - for now - in the open air and light.
You see how thorough and tidy I was in my dismembering? Nothing - not one bit of paper, string or glue - was wasted or left unaccounted for. This was no reckless stunt of mine - this dismembering and reading and handblogging of IJ. This was something serious. An act of love. Avril would be proud of me, I'm sure.
And perhaps Hal and DFW would laugh if one day Abbot you and I closed the door of my second floor office at 705 Carlaw which houses the Sacred Pages - and took the contents of the ziplock - so carefully and lovingly preserved - rolled it up in the finest paper - and smoked it.
I wonder what kind of trip that - especially the glue - would produce?
Would it take us to Don Gately's freezing, rainy beach? Would it let us spy the afterlife? Would it permit us to interface with the departed?
Towering Pages
What's left of the spine (bits of paper, glue and string) is in a small ziplock bag. You'll recall that the spine proper is in the possession of the Abbot, who was last seen sporting it as a kind of headband at a downtown restaurant.
So what do we have if we don't have a spine? Well basically - we have a precariously stacked thousand plus pages that look much taller than when they were squeezed tight by that vice-like binding.
The number of pages are quite impressive when they are stacked like this. Mountainous. Looking maybe like a layered mountainside that is maybe going to give way into a rockslide. Daunting. But impressive. The pages looking actually like they have withstood the test of time. Containing a long history. And so vulnerable.
I've put them under my window where they are sunning in the morning light and am sitting on my couch (the couch where I often fell asleep trying to finish IJ) - listening to Slate's Audio Book Club take on IJ (Yes, finally, Mr. Ashdale) - and I'm wondering about all the things I need to do (you know both the tying up of loose ends and the sacramental things) with the pages, beloved pages, before I return them with gratitude to the Abbot - my sponsor and guide in this epic reading and spiritual journey.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Sleepless, Pageless...
What to do now? Start on The Brothers Karamozov?
But all I really want is my next hit of IJ. A little hit - just a page - or maybe two - and I'd be able to sleep.
I don't need a Dilaudid mountain of IJ. Just a little shot to get me through to the morning - when I'd be of clearer mind to properly decide what to do about my long-term needs.
Yes reading! - instead of this arduous handblogging. Writing. Not pleasant - writing: the emptying of the soul, the tank. I don't know how he did it - DFW.
I don't want to empty myself, post by post - rumminating. I just want to be filled with reading. I want IJ coursing through my veins and mind again.
And - more than that - I really want to understand what happened to Gately and Hal in the end.
What did the snow storm and the cold, rainy beach mean - in terms of Hal and Gately respectively?
When should I give in to my instinct to incredibly - yes! - start re-reading IJ - because I suspect that the beginning of the book is actually the end of the book, that the book is maybe circular - or - perhaps like the sideways eights that Orin traced on woman's bodies?
When should I resume this infinity symbol of a story so that I can understand it and enjoy it even more?
Tonight?
Tomorrow?
When I've hit rock bottom?
Page 981: Done:
And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.
Page 969: Compassion, The Brothers Karamazov and Ativan (Note 384):
Ativan is a word that is part of my story too.
The autopsy showed traces of Ativan (Lorazepam) in my brother's system after his suicide. The coroner also gave me a copy of the Emerg paperwork which documented that prescription and noted his anxiety. The drug and his secret emerg visit - were small parts of a complex and hidden story which would only make some sense later.
Some sense.
Wonder what I'll conclude about DFW and IJ?
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Page 950: Hal Longs For His Childhood Home:
"It seemed always to be summer or spring. I could remember the Mom's voice high overhead at a screen-porch door, calling us in as dusk drifted down and leaded fan lights began to light up at homes' doors in some sort of linear sync."
Page 948: E.T.A. Deprived Hal:
Hal reflects on the snowstorm that is I think poised to save his academy/tennis career:
"I had never once ridden a snowmobile, skied, or skated: E.T.A. discouraged them. DeLint described winter sports as practically getting down on one knee and begging for an injury."
The question is - given his life of deprivation - should he actually have in the end been "rejoicing" over the snow that "saved" him?
Is that question soon going to be answered?
Reading Page 947...
The good thing is that I have not made the mistake of giving up drink and my wife is not Xing a teenage tennis prodigy and her stepbrother, nor am I in turn Xing my son's girlfriend - which would without a doubt make me at some point want to eliminate my own map given that my son has just turned 10 and the oldest girlfriend he's ever had was a year older than him which would of course make me evil and jailable - and we know that I cannot accept cages and cannot nobly Abide by much pain any more unlike the heroic and godlike Don Gately.
Page 944: Self-Forgetting:
"...one way of looking at Himself's abandonment of anti-confluentialism is that in his last several projects he'd been so desperate to make something that ordinary U.S. audiences might find entertaining and diverting and conducive to self-forgetting..."
Hmm - and self-forgetting was also thought to be the optimal state of the Enfield tennis player - whose talent could thereby more readily make it to the Show: by self-forgetting. That's what Schtitt so eloquently said anyways in his German-accented lectures.
Page 940: Jim's films a joke:
"He used to refer to the Work itself as 'entertainments'. He always meant it ironically."
Page 940: What Killed Himself:
"He'd stopped being drunk all the time. That killed him. He couldn't take it but he'd made a promise."
Page 940: Lenses: Infantile Perspective:
Cameras for the filming of the Infinite Jest opus were fitted with Himself's homemade auto-wobble lenses designed to "reproduce an infantile visual field".
Page 930: Incandesce:
"But a high-watt bulb is slowly starting to incandesce over Fackleman's moist head."
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Last batches
Did you ever notice that tears is spelled exactly the same as tears? (Am I sounding like weedless Hal?)
Yes - I'm going to miss this all, this golden period in my reading life.
But enough with the "tears".
I need to separate pages 917-954. Free them of their CAGE of string and glue - so they can be read.
That will leave the final batch and pages 955-981 to be emmancipated.
Page 916: Gately Cries Like A Baby At The Loss Of Organized Ball:
After watching an out-of-nowhere punter (Orin) star for B.U. While he used an iron to laminate stinky, fake IDs.
Page 903: Gately Had Talent
"Gately was the only one of them truly dedicated to football, and that was probably just because he'd been told over and over that he had real talent and limitless futures. "
Page 886: Incandescently:
"Gately imagines the MD smiling incandescently as he wields a shepherd's crook."
SP?
I notice also that the penmanship is scraggled - almost as though the editor has been shot with a bullet in his good shoulder and must write with his wrong hand.
The writing is also almost wraith-like, eerie.
Dunno.
Does every copy of IJ come like this?
With mysterous scrawl?
I feel special.
Page 864: Crying At The Academy:
Hal, as the first person narrator, up early, walking the dorm halls, wondering what the snow will mean, hears crying:
"The high wind's moan and doors rattle were worse in the uncarpeted hall. I could hear faint sounds of early-morning weeping in certain rooms beyond my line of sight. Lots of the top players start the A.M. with a quick fit of crying, then are basically hale and well-wrapped for the rest of the day."
Page 864: Accepting The Cage:
Gately - in hospital and coming out of his bullet-induced fevers - has just finished fantasizing about possible marital bliss with Madame Joelle but catches himself. He knows that first-off staff should never cavort with residents. That is weak. But second off - and weaker - is that through his love for Joelle he is looking to escape, to get out - and there is no Out when you are an admitted alcoholic - when you have accepted The Way, The Steps:
"...wanting somebody else to take care of his mess, somebody else to keep him out of his various cages. It's the same delusion as the basic addictive-substance-delusion, basically. His eyes roll up in his head at disgust with himself, and stay there."
Could this be instructive to the GymTeacher? Should the GymTeacher simply accept the cage of the Education Ministry - and other cages - and instead of eternally longing to get Out, make the best, the most of The In?
Like Gately?
Hmm - Gately is seeming like more than just the "hero" many people make him out to be. He has a fortitude and a philosophy that I am tempted to say is Christ-like. But this is no longer a Christo-centric world. There are probably other great spiritual figures from other faiths to compare him to. Ah - let's not get all religious here (though at some point we are going to have figure out what DFW intended by the appearnce to Gately of the Wraith (how could Gately make up the story of a James Incandenza he didn't know?) let's just call him, Gately, a god. Bigger than heroic. Especially if his philosophy is strong enough to deprive himself of almost irresistable Joelle.
"...wanting somebody else to take care of his mess, somebody else to keep him out of his various cages. It's the same delusion as the basic addictive-substance-delusion, basically. His eyes roll up in his head at disgust with himself, and stay there."
Could this be instructive to the GymTeacher? Should the GymTeacher simply accept the cage of the Education Ministry - and other cages - and instead of eternally longing to get Out, make the best, the most of The In?
Like Gately?
Hmm - Gately is seeming like more than just the "hero" many people make him out to be. He has a fortitude and a philosophy that I am tempted to say is Christ-like. But this is no longer a Christo-centric world. There are probably other great spiritual figures from other faiths to compare him to. Ah - let's not get all religious here (though at some point we are going to have figure out what DFW intended by the appearnce to Gately of the Wraith (how could Gately make up the story of a James Incandenza he didn't know?) let's just call him, Gately, a god. Bigger than heroic. Especially if his philosophy is strong enough to deprive himself of almost irresistable Joelle.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Page 852: Snow Falls On Enfield To Give Hal Hope:
"It only then occurred to me to wonder whether and where we would play today's exhibition meet...I couldn't remember ever actively hoping not to have to play before. I couldn't remember feeling strongly one way or the other about playing for quite a long time, in fact."
Gaudeamus Igitur
Along with coming out in the first person, "He"/ Hal /DFW also subtitles this chapter, on page 851 - as "Gaudeamus Igitur" (or, "Let us rejoice therefore," the first line from the song De Brevitate Vitae):
From Wikipedia:
"De Brevitate Vitae" (on the Shortness of Life), more commonly known as the Gaudeamus, is a popular academic commercium song in many European countries, mainly sung or performed at university graduation ceremonies. Despite its use as a formal graduation hymn, it is a jocular, light-hearted composition that pokes fun at university life. The song dates back to 1287[1] and was already known by the time of the founding of the alma mater of all European universities, the University of Bologna. It is in the tradition of carpe diem (seize the day), with its exhortations to enjoy life.It has been known as a beer-drinking song in many ancient universities and is the official song of many schools, colleges, universities, institutions, and student societies.
The lyrics reflect an endorsement of the bacchanalian mayhem of student life while simultaneously retaining the grim knowledge that one day we will all die. The song contains humorous and ironic references to sex and death, and many versions have appeared following efforts to bowdlerise this song for performance in public ceremonies. In private, students will typically sing ribald words.
The song is sometimes known by its opening words "Gaudeamus igitur" or simply "Gaudeamus". In the UK, it is sometimes affectionately known as "The Gaudie". The many centuries of use have given rise to numerous slightly different versions.
Johannes Brahms quoted the hymn in the final section of his Academic Festival Overture. Sigmund Romberg used it in the operetta The Student Prince, which is set at the University of Heidelberg.
The Lyrics:
Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus.
Post jucundam juventutem
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus.
Let us rejoice therefore
While we are young.
After a pleasant youth
After a troubling old age
The earth will have us.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos
In mundo fuere?
Vadite ad superos
Transite in inferos
Hos si vis videre.
Where are [they] who before us
Were in the world?
Go to the heavens
Cross over into hell
If you wish to see them.
Vita nostra brevis est
Brevi finietur.
Venit mors velociter
Rapit nos atrociter
Nemini parcetur.
Our life is brief
Soon it will end.
Death comes quickly
Snatches us cruelly
It spares no one.
Vivat academia!
Vivant professores!
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivant membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.
Long live the academy!
Long live the professors!
Long live each student!
Long live all students!
May they always be in their prime!
Vivant omnes virgines
Faciles, formosae.
Vivant et mulieres
Tenerae amabiles
Bonae laboriosae.
Long live all girls
Easy and beautiful!
Long live mature women also,
Tender and lovable
Good [and] productive.
Vivat et respublica
et qui illam regit.
Vivat nostra civitas,
Maecenatum caritas
Quae nos hic protegit.
Long live the state as well
And he who rules it!
Long live our city
[And] the charity of benefactors
Which protects us here!
Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores.
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.
Let sadness perish!
Let haters perish!
Let the devil perish!
Let whoever is anti-student
As well as the mockers!
From Wikipedia:
"De Brevitate Vitae" (on the Shortness of Life), more commonly known as the Gaudeamus, is a popular academic commercium song in many European countries, mainly sung or performed at university graduation ceremonies. Despite its use as a formal graduation hymn, it is a jocular, light-hearted composition that pokes fun at university life. The song dates back to 1287[1] and was already known by the time of the founding of the alma mater of all European universities, the University of Bologna. It is in the tradition of carpe diem (seize the day), with its exhortations to enjoy life.It has been known as a beer-drinking song in many ancient universities and is the official song of many schools, colleges, universities, institutions, and student societies.
The lyrics reflect an endorsement of the bacchanalian mayhem of student life while simultaneously retaining the grim knowledge that one day we will all die. The song contains humorous and ironic references to sex and death, and many versions have appeared following efforts to bowdlerise this song for performance in public ceremonies. In private, students will typically sing ribald words.
The song is sometimes known by its opening words "Gaudeamus igitur" or simply "Gaudeamus". In the UK, it is sometimes affectionately known as "The Gaudie". The many centuries of use have given rise to numerous slightly different versions.
Johannes Brahms quoted the hymn in the final section of his Academic Festival Overture. Sigmund Romberg used it in the operetta The Student Prince, which is set at the University of Heidelberg.
The Lyrics:
Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus.
Post jucundam juventutem
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus.
Let us rejoice therefore
While we are young.
After a pleasant youth
After a troubling old age
The earth will have us.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos
In mundo fuere?
Vadite ad superos
Transite in inferos
Hos si vis videre.
Where are [they] who before us
Were in the world?
Go to the heavens
Cross over into hell
If you wish to see them.
Vita nostra brevis est
Brevi finietur.
Venit mors velociter
Rapit nos atrociter
Nemini parcetur.
Our life is brief
Soon it will end.
Death comes quickly
Snatches us cruelly
It spares no one.
Vivat academia!
Vivant professores!
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivant membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.
Long live the academy!
Long live the professors!
Long live each student!
Long live all students!
May they always be in their prime!
Vivant omnes virgines
Faciles, formosae.
Vivant et mulieres
Tenerae amabiles
Bonae laboriosae.
Long live all girls
Easy and beautiful!
Long live mature women also,
Tender and lovable
Good [and] productive.
Vivat et respublica
et qui illam regit.
Vivat nostra civitas,
Maecenatum caritas
Quae nos hic protegit.
Long live the state as well
And he who rules it!
Long live our city
[And] the charity of benefactors
Which protects us here!
Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores.
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.
Let sadness perish!
Let haters perish!
Let the devil perish!
Let whoever is anti-student
As well as the mockers!
Page 851: Huh? Hal speaking in first person?
"I was in a zoo. There were no animals or cages, but it was still a zoo..."
"I didn't feel good at all. A sort of nausea of the head. The feeling seemed worst first thing in the morning. I'd felt for almost a week as if I needed to cry for some reason but the tears were somehow stopping just millimeters behind my eyes and staying there. And so on."
Page 848: Mrs. Waite's Cake:
"The cake was uneven and slightly tilted to one side, but it was dark chocolate and decorated with four cursive names and clearly had been made with care. "
Page 838: Wraith Tried To Concoct Conversations With His Son:
"Games hadn't done it, professionals hadn't done it, impersonation of professionals hadn't done it. His last resort: entertainment. Make something so bloody compelling it would reverse thrust on a young self's fall into the womb of solIpsism, anhedonia, death in life. "
Page 838: The Hidden Boy, The Bottle and The Unrealized potential
I am recalling the Brando scene now. Hundreds of pages ago. And am now - with about a hundred pages to go - going to make a call on this book, this novel - been thinking about this for days: this book is at it's core about talent. We'll see...
Page 837: The Wraith's Horror:
"No horror on earth or elsewhere could equal watching your own offspring open his mouth and have nothing coming out. The wraith says it mars the memory of the end of his animate life, the son's retreat to the periphery of life's frame. "
Page 791: Avril's Wild Turkey Gift One Possible Cause Of Auteur's Suicide:
"-That it did not striker her, Molly Notkin, as improbable that the special limited-edition turkey-shaped gift bottle of Wild Turkey Blended Whisky-brand distilled spirits with the cerise velveteen gift-ribbon around its neck with the bow tucked under its wattles on the kitchen counter next to the microwave oven before which the Auteur's body had been found so ghastlyly inclined had been placed there by the spouse's widow-to-be--who may well have been enraged by the fact that the Auteur had never been willig to give up spirits quote 'for' but had apparently been willing to give them up quote 'for' Madame Psychosis and her nude appearance in his final opus."
Page 788: Kitchen Appliance Suicides:
Madame Psychosis's mother had killed herself four months before the film's (IJ) auteur.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Reading Footnote 321
It starts on page 1063.
And I am hurrying through it thinking, "I've got to get through this so I can get back to the "book", the "real" story - when the reality of course is that the footnotes are part of the story; and it's maybe beautiful (and cruel) (beautifully cruel?) how the "author" (never called him that before (usually it's the affectionate and familiar Dee-Eff-Double-You)) bounces you from page 785 (origin of the endnote) to page 1063 (actual endnote), then back to 785 - making you feel like the "book"/"novel" is never going to end: like the "author" is drawing a sideways-eight plot for me (on my hind-quarters?) the fading, weak, conventional reader - and all I have to do - all - is keep going. Keep going.
Page 778: Marathe Tells Kate How His Act Of Love Helped Him Conquer His Cage:
Gompert:
"Hang me upside down and fuck me in both ears. You pulled yourself out of clinical depression by being a freaking hero?"
Marathe:
"In one instant and without thought I was allowed to choose something as more important than my own thinking of my life. She with one blow broke the chains of the cage of pain at my half a body and nation."
Friday, July 31, 2009
Page 764: Hal is Sad
And this feels ominous for both me and the Moms:
(Moms To Mario:)
"Is there someone specific in whom you're intuiting sadness?"
"Is this about Hal? Is Hal sad and for some reason not yet able to speak about it?"
"And you have no idea where he is or whether he left the grounds this evening sad?"
"Hypothetically, then, you may be picking up in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disassociation from itself, maybe, Love-o"
'Well, love, but you know the idiom "not yourself" - "He's not himself today," for example,' crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. 'There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them."
Sometimes you read and you fall asleep
And loved ones find this humorous and snap secret pictures of you then email them to you as if they've got something on you. But they don't. Because napping is not a crime. Especially in the summer time:
String and glue and paper:
The Secret World of Book Batches:
Page 756: Fit Schtitt:
"Mario records him sleeping for a little while, looking very old and white and frail, yet also obscenely fit."> Photo
Page 754: From the Academy to the Halfway House:
"E.T.A.'s a private school. We (Ennet House) usually get some residents on up there, part-time. It's just up the hill."
Page 750: Spines:
"...Marathe could scan along the plastic cases of cartridges' spines."
Could.
I look across the room at the spineless carcass and wonder how it will look on the Abbot's bookshelf once I am done dismembering it.
I wonder if the Abbot will eventually be able to do what Marathe did and scan along his library of other precious Works and see IJ nestled there?
What will it be like for the Abbot when he has to deal with a dismembered, tortured, spineless "novel" when he gets it back?
But I do not feel guilt. I just wonder. For I am a bold and disciplined reader. I believe in how I read.
I do acknowledge however, that without a spine, the book could eventually just lose form, flop, fall away, it's pages dispersed, lost - eventually fragmented, devoid of complete meaning.
And I wonder, will the novel, still be a novel, if even one page goes missing?
Because I do know that this book is a novel whose every page, every scene, every obscure vignette, every crazy line, is heading toward one final, brilliant, incandescent message and conclusion. And without even one page, all this meaning will fall apart. It's light will fragment as has been demonstrated by the "Investigation of Light Fragmentation Products and Pecularities of Nuclear Fission at High Energies of Incident Particles" (P.A. Goritchev et al, Radium Institute, Academy of Sciences, Leningrad, USSR).
Incident particles...
Thursday, July 30, 2009
A novel !
It says so right there on the front cover.
From Answers.com:
Novel:
n.
A fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters.
The literary genre represented by novels.
[Ultimately from Italian novella, from Old Italian, piece of news, chit-chat, tale, from Vulgar Latin *novella, from neuter pl. of Latin novellus, diminutive of novus, new.]
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