Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 2: Sincerity

I am now on page 310 of Infinite Jest, having just finished reading a 17 page endnote on fictional Quebecois politics and continuing to be blown away by this book in pretty much every aspect. One thing I can say for sure is that I definitely didn't expect Canada to have such a prominent role in IJ, but it's nice to know that the fact that I am Canadian and was lucky enough to have a really great Canadian history teacher last year makes all of this a little bit easier to understand (god knows otherwise I'd be looking things up every 5 seconds to figure out what the hell he means when he talks about Trudeau, Levesque, Chretien -- spelled Cretien in IJ for some reason?? -- the FLQ, and the Meech Lake Accord). Although, let's be honest, I still had to do some serious brain wracking to keep it all straight in my head.

Another round of assorted reactions:

• I LOVE LYLE. I'll bring this up more later but the way characters are written and handled in this book makes me so happy on so many levels
• The rise and fall of videophony was both hilarious and scarily accurate -- it's interesting to read a novel set in the "future" that was published in 1996 (two years before I was born, holy shit) -- he gets the technology wrong (the idea of "teleputers" is one of many examples I could list that show how he's in the right area but not quite exactly) but damn does he ever get the people right. The "bilateral illusion of unilateral attention" has gone even further in present day, I think, with most people I know rarely even using the telephone to have voice calls with people anymore, sticking mostly to texting and online messaging. Whenever I'm talking to someone on Facebook I always have several other tabs open at the same time
• "Urine trouble? Urine luck!"
• The monologue-chapter between JOI jr and sr was amazing -- I actually stopped and re read the last two pages of it out loud once I finished it. "... how the drunk and the maimed both are dragged out of the arena like a boneless Christ, one man under each arm, feet dragging, eyes on the aether". 
• The "things you learn in a halfway-house" section fucking destroyed me. By the time I got to the end of it on page 205 (before it goes into talking about tattoos) I was crying and I had to take a break. Pages 203-205 are the most highlighted and underlined pages I have so far, I think.
• I find the mentions of "anticraze" and "antifashion" that have come up a couple of times in the novel so far really interesting. It's all tied into what DFW is trying to get across about sincerity, I think. Like irony and trying not to risk things by allowing yourself to be vulnerable (kind of the opposite of "giving yourself away to something" that's also mentioned a lot). Also brought up in Hal's paper on the postmodern hero, too -- another of many Hamlet references so far is when he mentions the hero of "inaction".
• Another possible Hamlet reference is Joelle, I think, and her Too Much Fun suicide attempt in the bathtub -- Ophelia?
• The descriptions of addiction are always so ... gripping? I'm not sure what word to use to describe it, but they (Erdedy, Joelle, Poor Tony, etc) always seem to land in the area of being deeply disturbing but extremely compelling - like watching a car crash. Writing this made me think of a quote from the book Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood, where she describes something as being "sacrosanct, at the same time holy and deeply shameful".
• I also didn't expect to see myself in Hal as much as I do. I mean of course his characteristics are pushed to a higher, almost farcical extreme, but it's a little unnerving to think that he's one of the closest fictional characters to myself w/r/t my flaws and how I think. This book is also fucking me up because a lot of the times it feels like he's somehow found the keys to my brain and figured out how to articulate everything I'm struggling with and feeling and done a better job of it than I ever could. I'm not addicted to anything but I can hugely relate to the 'analysis-paralysis' we encounter in Ennet House, and Hal being "obsessed with the fear that [he] was somehow going to flunk grief therapy" is ME. IT'S ME. I've had these exact conversations with people in my life. From various discussions I've had with my drama teacher at the end of this year, my main point of growth moving forward into grade 12 is getting over my need to be "right" or do things "correctly" -- this obsessive need for validation. "Here was a top-rank authority figure and I was failing to supply what he wanted. He made it manifestly clear I wasn't delivering the goods. I'd never failed to deliver the goods before" -- or endnote 76, which (although, again, pushed to the extreme) could have been a parody of my own childhood.

One of my favourite things about this book so far is its sincerity. A lot of writers seem to be making fun of some of their characters -- like a character will exist purely to be stupid or be wrong about something or the butt-end of a joke. DFW's characters are all sincere because, yes, they're flawed, but even the ones who would be mocked in the hands of a different writer are treated with a kind of tenderness. Like the anticraze kids and "beautiful tits" girl on page 229. They are funny, and they do make a point, but it doesn't feel like he's looking down on them or allowing you as the reader to look down on them. I read his essay on television and US fiction a couple of months ago and I've had it in the back of my mind through a lot of my reading of IJ. His whole thing with irony is that it's used nowadays as a tool to make you feel like you're in on some joke because you're smarter or somehow better than these characters. It may not be perfect, but I really do think this book achieves the sincerity he was looking for when he wrote that essay. He doesn't allow you to feel superior to anyone in this book. Anyone. Not beautiful tits girl, not Lyle, not Geoffery Day or Poor Tony or Steeply or CT or even good ol' Ken Erdedy. Each and every one of them is treated with enough empathy to keep anyone (or at least me) from looking down their nose at them, because we can see ourselves in all of them. 

"Are we not all of us fanatics?"

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 1.5

A thought: I went out to see a movie with a friend of mine last night and I brought IJ with me so I could read it in the car while I waited for her to meet up with me in the parking lot of the theatre, and when we left and I locked up the car I had this really weird moment of being concerned that because it was sitting out so obviously on the passenger side car seat that someone would break into my car and steal it – which, like, ???? But the idea of losing my copy of the book is really upsetting to me which I’ve never really had with a book before because I can always just buy a new copy, but for IJ I can’t because it’s got all my underlines and margin writing and sticky notes.

It’s weird to think that there are very very few things in my life that aren’t completely replaceable. Basically everything I need to “keep” is saved on the internet somewhere, so other than the cost of buying new stuff, I could essentially lose everything I own and be cool with it. The only things of mine that aren’t replaceable are my journals, IJ and maybe one or two other books, and a couple of things I have that friends of mine made for me as presents.

I feel like this is symbolic, somehow. Or indicative of my generation - but not really in a bad way or anything. Like my grandmother just recently left her house to move into a retirement home, and she was very upset because she could only take so much with her and she had a huge amount of “stuff”. Just things, objects, that weren’t replaceable. I don’t really have “stuff”. I have no desire for “stuff”, when I’m older I don’t want a house or any kind of permanence, really. I feel like the world now is moving more toward an experience-based culture, rather than a stuff-based one. I don’t want to have things, I want to do things. Not that people didn’t want to do things before, or that people now don’t want to have things anymore, but I think there’s just been a wider shift in what people consider to be of value. Not much is permanent anymore, but the things that do hold a kind of permanence are held in much higher regard than they were in the past, I think, because they’re few and far between.

If that makes any sense?

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 1

Before I started reading Infinite Jest, I was worried it was going to be one of those books that I’d like to have read, but not actually read. Now I’m 127 pages in, and I honest to god just love reading it. I like being in / a part of this book. My continued interest might be partially because it’s still just a bunch of thus-far unconnected vignettes, so nothing is held on to for too long, although it is now finally starting to go back to some of the characters introduced at the beginning.

Here’s a somewhat coherent list of my reactions:

• Half the time I read into everything heavily and make notes in the margins, and the other half of the time I just float along and hope that it’ll all make sense eventually (note-making hasn’t ever really been plot related, though) 
• This is the first book I’ve ever written in (I’ve written in plays but that’s different) 
• It’s also the first book I’ve used multiple sticky notes in that hasn’t been for school reading purposes 
• I’m glad I’ve read a lot of his essays (like, a lot) because apart from getting me used to DFW as a writer, it’s interesting to see how he brings up a lot of the ideas he’s written about before, but in a fiction novel context. Like solipsism and “giving yourself away to something” and the “endless war against the self” 
• It feels like each plot line has its own unique style of writing 
• I already quite liked tennis - one of the only sports I actually like - but I’ve reached a whole new level of tennis appreciation thanks to DFW
• Like really. I love tennis right now. It's surreal. I want to play tennis immediately
• Lemon pledge as sunscreen ? 
• Herd of feral hamsters ??????????? 
• The first scene with Hal, Erdedy waiting for the woman who said she’d come, and Kate Gompert in the mental ward, are three of the best short pieces of fiction writing I have ever read 
• Other favourite scenes are Hal & Mario talking about God, the professional conversationalist, Schtitt and Mario discussing the infinite/finite nature of tennis/life/dedication to a cause, and the intense switching-back-and-forth-between-characters-without-explanation bit at ETA with all the Big Buddy/Little Buddy scenes (all of which, by the way, would make sUCH great short films or something, holy shit) 
• I love Mario Incandenza 
• I cannot believe I read an 8 and a half page long endnote 
• Wow. This book. Wow. 
• wow???
• wowwww 
• W O W

And But So it Begins

Well, with just a little over one week left of school (and school itself basically over - exams start on Tuesday) I went out and bought myself a copy of Infinite Jest and am about to get right into it. I'll be semi-liveblogging it on here as I go along, but not at any kind of regular interval. I plan on just writing about it whenever I feel it fits. I've read a ton of DFW's other stuff (mostly his essays) so this seemed like the next logical step -- plus, seeing this is my last summer while still being in high school (grade 12 next year!!), I've got more free time to attempt to plow through this monstrosity. Although plow probably isn't the right word. Some kind of mountain climbing analogy is required here, I think. 

I'm already prepared with two bookmarks and sticky notes and the emotional mindset required to allow myself to write in the margins of a book. Writing in margins, by the way, is something that I feel should probably be done more often, and I'm not sure what weird anal-retentive habit has stopped me from doing it before now. I write in the margins of plays all the time, and I've always loved annotating articles and things for English class. Books aren't so holy that writing in them would somehow damage them. It makes them more permanent, I think. The book becomes yours. Plus I'm sure it would be interesting to re read a book you wrote in years ago and see what you thought of it at the time. Reading should be a conversation, a give and take between you and the author of the book, not just a kind of passive state where the information washes over you and you hope that you somehow absorb it through literary osmosis. 

Field Trip 2015

Field Trip is a two day music festival started by Toronto record label Arts & Crafts. It was the first music festival I had ever been to, and if it’s anything to go by, it won’t be my last. According to their website, Field Trip is “Toronto’s downtown community music and arts festival”, and it certainly fit the bill.

The first thing I noticed when my friends and I arrived there just past 1PM on Saturday (we were aiming for earlier, but that’s a long story involving cancelled subways, missed GO buses, streetcar confusion, and an overall inability to navigate downtown public transit) was the vast range of ages of the people there. I was only really expecting to see teenagers and twenty to thirty year-olds, but there were a ton of younger kids and older people as well. One of my favourite moments of the day was seeing this woman who was probably in her 70’s or 80’s getting really into dancing to Pins & Needles -- don’t let anyone tell you you’re too old to go to a music festival.

There was a lot offered for the really young crowd as well. Not only was the whole festival free for anyone under twelve (a 5’2” friend of mine joked that she should have pretended to be someone’s little sister), but they had a whole kids’ section with everything from bouncy castles to face painting, and an afternoon performance by the ever-cheerful Sharon and Bram. I won’t pretend I wasn’t at least a little jealous -- or tempted to run through the giant plume of bubbles that I passed by on my way to the TD Fort York Stage.

There were artists selling handmade pins and hats and and flower crowns, there was some kind of immersive technology game that I didn’t get a chance to check out because the line up was too long, apparently there was a stand up comedy show that I never got around to seeing either, someone was painting a mural, a couple of women were doing some pretty impressive hula-hooping, and that’s not even mentioning the food trucks! I had a portobello burger for lunch, which is essentially a hamburger except instead of meat it’s just one giant mushroom (I know, I couldn’t believe it either). Dinner was mac and cheese with gelato for dessert, and by that point I had to stop buying food or I wasn’t going to be able to afford the bus fare home.

Now, as much as I could spent the whole time talking about everything else, the most important part of any music festival, of course, is the music. I think the main thing I kept thinking about during the whole experience was that there was so much going on I’d never be able to see everything, but I managed to get to a hell of a lot. After seeing a great set by Pins and Needles at 1:30, we walked over to the other side and spent most of the time at the Garrison Stage. We lay down our blankets near the back of the field and ate lunch while listening to The Belle Game, and then moved right up to the front for the next act: From Jamaica to Toronto. We were pretty lucky in that we got to stay pretty close to the stage throughout the whole evening, as the crowd got bigger and bigger through De La Soul, The War on Drugs, Arkells, and finally the headliners for the night, Alabama Shakes. I wasn’t too familiar with most of the bands there, but not knowing all the lyrics didn’t stop the whole experience being pretty spectacular overall. Alabama Shakes were definitely my favourite, so thank you for that, Field Trip, I don’t know if I would have found out about them otherwise. Brittany Howard has a voice like you wouldn’t believe, and the whole thing was a perfect way to cap off a great evening. I think the sense of community in the audience was at its peak by that point, because I could almost feel the buzz in the air around me like something alive. Being shoved in at close quarters with a big crowd may have its downsides, but my god if there isn’t something magical about jumping up and down and cheering to the same beat as a thousand other people.

New Words - May 2015

prolegomenon - a critical or discursive introduction to a book
Peter Principle - a concept in management theory in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role
paucity - smallness / a small amount of something
nadir - the worst or lowest point of something (directly opposite the zenith)
atavism - the tendency to revert to ancestral type
titivate - to make smart or spruce, make small enhancing alterations
preterit - bygone, former
quixotic - hopeful or romantic in a way that is not practical
denude - to strip something of its covering, to make bare
sybaritic - fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent
belletristic - literature regarded as fine art, especially as having a purely aesthetic function
diaphanous - (especially of fabric) light, delicate, and translucent
epicanthic fold - upper eyelid folds
accretive - growth in size or extent
appurtenances - accessories or other items associated with a particular activity or style of living
prurient - having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters
puerile - childishly silly and trivial
formication - a sensation that exactly resembles that of small insects crawling on (or under) the skin
mordant - sharply caustic or sarcastic, as wit or a speaker; biting
perfunctory - (of an action or gesture) carried out of a minimum of effort or reflection
echelon - a level of command, authority, or rank. Military - a formation of troops, ships, planes, etc
phatic - linguistics an expression whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information
picayune - petty, worthless
unctuous - (of a person) excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily
punctilious - showing great attention to detail or correct behaviour
concupiscence - an ardent, usually sensual longing; the selfish human desire for an object, person, or experience
thanatotic - Death as a personification or philosophical notion
sedulous - (of a person or action) showing dedication and diligence
pleonasm - the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy