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?"
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