So - who finished?

I wish I could say that I did. Life totally punched me in the face, and my copies of IJ are sitting on my desk and my iPhone and glaring at me balefully, waiting for me to complete them. Which I plan to, dammit.

BUT. This event netted me some cool new friends, and I *will* finish the book.

How did you do?

I finished Infinite Jest last night, a bit before the end of The Infinite Summer.
( not really spoilery, but don't read on if you're worried about it )

So, I finished last night, and I was thinking about assembling a playlist for Infinite Summer.

Here's what I've got so far:
Ani Difranco - Independence Day
Coldplay - Politik
Billy Bragg - Cindy of a Thousand Lives
Frente! - Accidentally Kelly Street
Le Tigre - What's yr take on Cassavetes
Hüsker Dü - Pink Turns To Blue
The Mountain Goats - Dilaudid
Bob Dylan - Shelter from the Storm
Cobra Starship - The Kids Are All Fucked Up
Emilie Autumn - Gothic Lolita
Robyn Hitchcock - Furry Green Atom Bowl
The Dresden Dolls - Boston

Now it's your turn! What songs would you add?

(Posted over at the Infinite Summer forums, but what the heck.)

The Eschaton section is freighted so awfully damn heavily with explicit and implicit reference and symbolism, you have to wonder how seriously DFW was taking the enterprise as he wrote it.

You've got the map/territory discussion internal to the game reflecting the map/territory questions out there in the world of the novel. You've got the map-as-life or map-as-face thing going on which now has another facet altogether as we need to wonder, if "eliminating one's map" is suicide, then what territory does that map refer to? How much does the formation of O.N.A.N. and the Great Concavity/Convexity involve actual changes to territory vs. changes to maps? Which are people actually fighting over?

Having the role of "God" in the game played by Otis P. Lord is about as subtle as a flying mallet, and calling him "O. Lord" just makes it worse, but it's kind of an interesting exercise to read some of the exchanges as prayers and responses. And finally you get God's head stuck inside a monitor.

But also notice the last sentence about Hal: "For a brief moment that Hal will later regard as completely and uncomfortably bizarre, Hall feels at his own face to see whether he is wincing." There it is, in a flicker, a half-acknowledged moment of recognition that something's wrong, that there's a disconnection between what Hal thinks and feels or what he thinks that he feels and what he displays to the world.

Oh, and I've read but cannot recall where, that the math in Endnote 123 has some serious flaws, which some think must have been deliberate given DFW's mathematical competence (displayed elsewhere, I guess). 

The kids' obsessive study of the game and its documentation were spot-on as far as I'm concerned.  Certainly my D&D buddies and I back in college devoted far more time to the study of the Monster Manual than any of our texts, and I bet there are plenty of you out there who as kids memorized absurd quantities of equivalent information.

Is anyone else way behind? I'm only on pg 95. :(

But if you're obsessively concerned about such things, you can skip it if you like. 

Endnote 61, from p185, is about "anticonfluential cinema",  "...characterized by a stubborn and possibly intentionally irritating refusal of different narrative lines to merge into any kind of meaningful confluence". 

It's pretty clear that, having thrown a big bunch of settings, characters, voices, deliberately obscure dates, and a generally non-linear and fractured set of narratives at us, DFW is sort of saying, 'yeah, this will frustrate and probably irritate a whole bunch of people.'  But from here we can take it a couple of ways.  As a simple acknowledgement of your (the reader's) possible frustration and irritation, even if it's not apologetic it's at least granting that you have an arguably legitimate gripe.  That's good, I think.  You could read it as a knowing wink at the audience, an attempt to share a cheap po-mo laugh at the text itself, but to me it doesn't come across that way. 

( Read more... ) 

I live in the Boston area and I'm fascinated by David Foster Wallace's depiction of Boston.  It's reasonably accurate, even if it is located in a future where the Combat Zone still exists in some form. (His descriptions of Comm Ave and a few adjecent areas are anachronisms even by 1996 standards.)  It is also quite affectionate, which is odd considering that being out in Western Mass as a freshman in college seemed to throw him into a culture shock that fueled his first significant breakdown. 

( Discussion Questions, Cut for Possible Spoliers )

I am not finding my reader's guide to be very useful. I have "Elegant Complexity" by Greg Carslile, and it just seems to sum up the most basic plot, which I already understand.

Is anyone else reading with a guide? Is it helping you at all?

I just got the book and I've read to about page 60.  I'm struck by two things:  the similarity of Wallace's prose to Don DeLillo's -- the lilt of many conversations recalls many of the conversations in White Noise, and the sheer giddiness of the book.  It strives to be quirky and weird, which suprises me because I've read some of David Foster Wallace's other writings and he seemed fairly down to earth for a man who used ten dollar words so often. 

Anyone in St. Louis and interested in meeting up?

Is it just me, or did anyone else have the desire to make, or at least see made, some of the films?

If you are a "what the hell is going on" kind of person, the "conversationalist" section, p27-31, is important.

The filmography (endnote 24) has a bunch of interesting tidbits.  I mostly skipped it the first time through, and kept going back to it as references to the films pop up later in the text.  But even in the first 63pp of the main text some things are worth noting.

P989, The Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass.  One of Hal's essays mentioned on p.7 is "A Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass".  What the change in the article could mean, I have no idea.

Kinds of Light, p986 and Kinds of Pain p987- The number of frames and the running times don't jibe.  The first is supposed to be 4,444 frames in 3 minutes (note this is just over 24fps, normal film speed).  The second is only 2,222 frames, but 6 minutes. Yet both are said to "REQUIRE[] PROJECTION AT .25 NORMAL SPROCKET DRIVE".

Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat, p990.  "Possible parody/homage to B.S. public-service-announcement cycle of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" - with a footnote that starts with "See Romney and Sperber".  Mitt Romney, a well-known Mormon, ran for Senate from Massachussets in 1994.

It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father Without Knowing Him, pp992-993. Exactly what relationship does this film have with pages 27-31?  Note that the main text section has none of the expository material associated with Hal's first-person scenes.  But it's dated April 1 Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, while the film is from the following Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar.  Could the main text scene be the script for the film?  Or is it a real event that Himself later transforms into a movie?  If the movie is based on the real event, how did Himself manage to write the script?  Did he understand at some times or on some level that his perception of Hal's silence was unreal, or was he merely working from what other people told him?  I prefer the latter - poor tortured J.O.I. remembers his pathetic attempt to draw out his silent son, and "imagines" what his son's replies were, subconsciously remembering every word Hal said and transcribing them verbatim.

( Spoiler-ish.... )

Caution: I'm a second-time reader, so whatever I think about any passage is informed by that fact.

During the opening scene with Hal, we find that there's a huge divergence between Hal's internal state (including his perception of his external appearance and actions) and what everyone around him can see.  In the crucial* "conversationalist" scene, we find that years before, Hal's father believed Hal was mute, or at least mute in his father's presence.  And somewhere along the way, we learn that the family refers to Hal's father as Himself.

So  in the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, Hal is unable to communicate with Himself.  By the Year of Glad, Hal is only able to communicate with himself.

Insight, or just a half-clever turn of phrase?  I don't know.

*Yes, this passage is much more relevant and revealing than I thought the first time through.  Even if it's James O. Incandenza's delusions, the fact that Himself believed them is important, I think.

So I work in a used bookstore, and in the last 4 days I've had 2 people come in asking for copies of Infinte Jest. Cool to talk to people I do not know who are doing Infinite Summer.

We haven't had any copies of IJ come in for a couple of weeks, though. I've sent them to the new (independent) bookstore a couple of blocks over.

Have you had any trouble getting a copy?

Poll Time!

Poll #1419807 Used, New, Rent to own?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

Your copy of the book, is it:

If you bought it, did you buy it:

Hello infsum.

This is my book.

There are many like it but this one (for the internim) is mine.

Let's see your book. If you like, take a picture and post it in the comments.

Then, at your leisure, go back to reading.

Two thoughts to share (nothing plot specific). I started IJ a bit early, so I'm up to about pg. 240. I tried to read this in college and never made it, and I had this impression I'd gotten up to maybe the 200s. But based on what I'm remembering I think I probably never made it to even page 100. Judging by my pace, my interest level (substantial) to this point, and the fact that I still know what's going on, and am in fact quite into it, there's no reason to think I won't finish this time. So anyway:

1. I found the first 80 pages or so sort of tough going. It was fascinating, but tedious (well, what's a word that means the same without the implication that it was boring?). It took me a week to get through them, but then I covered twice that much over just this weekend. So what I'm saying is, if you're finding it slow going at first but are still liking it, stick with it, and you'll probably find yourself more in its groove. Agree/disagree?

2. DFW's style reminds me a lot of Neal Stephenson. I love Stephenson, and have read several of his books. He has the same meandering remarkably brilliant style, only a lot nerdier. I guess I'd characterize Stephenson's digressions and details as more mathematical or scientific, while Wallace's are more humanistic. Anyone else read any Neal Stephenson (specifically, Cryptonomicon?)

Hooray!

Ladies and Gentlemen (and anyone else who identifies as anything else), START YOUR ENGINES!

LET US BEGIN.

Questions, comments, etc, post them here. THIS IS INFINITE SUMMER WEEK ONE.

Please, no spoilers past page 63. We should have another post up later this week. We will use the Handy Dandy Bookmark Page Guide as our, um, guide as to where we should be.

Also, please feel free to post you very own posts if you so desire. If you have spoiler-y questions, put them behind a cut, and note the page in the cut text so anyone who has read that far can click it if they want and those who haven't, won't. (did that make sense?)

Questions? Statements? Abuse? Leave it in the comments!

Have you started? I'm on page 43.