Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 5: The End?

credit to: Cody Hoyt

So... I finished it. I knew beforehand that the ending was abrupt, but I wasn't expecting that. Not that I thought it was a bad ending, though, don't get me wrong. To be honest I think it was the best (and quite possibly only) way it could have ended. I still threw it down and yelled "what the fUCK?" several times upon getting to that last sentence, but I'm glad it ended how it did.

I could write about the whole "what the heck happened" thing, but there are a lot of people online who have done a much better job of that than I ever could, so I'll leave that part to them (N.B. of course these are still their interpretations, and not all of these people agree with each other on what happened, but for me at least it was nice to read up on what other people thought so I could compare it with my own ideas and reach some kind of conclusion on it for myself)

http://dfan.org/jest.txt

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend

https://tradepaperbacks.wordpress.com/wordswordsword (I've been reading along with this liveblog, and have found it tremendously useful, so I definitely suggest it to anyone who's planning on starting this book).

And as for interpretations on the book itself, I highly recommend this essay on it - a little long, but totally worth it and really really brilliant: http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/thesisb.htm

Now, my own thoughts... I have a lot but I'll try to keep them brief.

Throughout the whole book I kept thinking of the Entertainment as something fatally pleasurable. As described by Steeply, Marathe, and many other characters, you keep watching it over and over because it's the greatest, most wonderful feeling you have ever experienced and you never want it to end. This, however, isn't ever actually stated as being true. Yes, people watch it over and over again but because nobody sees it and lives to tell the tale, we don't actually know what exactly it is that keeps people watching. All we know of the Entertainment comes from JOI and Joelle, and Joelle's description of it is that describing it as fatally pleasurable was meant as a joke, like her saying that she wears her veil because she's fatally beautiful, but in actual fact she's horrifically disfigured. So what if the trap isn't pleasure, but understanding? Entertainment doesn't necessarily have to be pleasurable, it just has to be entertaining - and there's something inescapably lonely about Entertainment for its own sake. Like the novel Infinite Jest, maybe the film Infinite Jest doesn't give you closure - that somehow through the death-as-mother scenario (in Gately's dream Joelle's final word to him after he wants desperately for her to kill him is "wait") you are fatally compelled to go back to the beginning and try to understand it, and each time you do it makes a little bit more sense, you take it apart a little more and things start to come together but that only leads to more and more questions until you're trapped in an endless cycle of questioning. You cannot escape unless you get rid of your own innate need to understand - literal "analysis paralysis". Remind you of anything?

W/r/t the ending, I think the thing is that finding out what happens next isn't the point. You're plopped down into this novel's universe for a while, you experience it, and then you're pulled right back out again. To use a quote from Gately, "it occurred to him if he died everybody would still exist and go home and eat and X their wife and go to sleep". JOI's passages about figurants and his attempts to not have them in his own films also seemed to me to reflect the novel itself. We get Hal, we get Gately, but we also get Erdedy and Wardine and Poor Tony and Barry Loach. Every single character is equally im- and unimportant.

The length of the novel, the complexity of it, seemed to me to not be some kind of turn-off or a sign that DFW was trying to be smarter than everyone else in the room, but in fact the opposite. Reading this book is kind of like going through your own little 12-step program, one of the largest results of which is learning to get out of 'analysis-paralysis'. Understanding every tiny minute detail, getting all of the math and the politics and the tennis and the long involved drug terminology -- that's not the point. The point is that you don't have to 'get' everything, you don't have to break everything down and have a hold on it all. It felt like a kind of trap for "intellectuals", we who are so used to always being right, always having the answers for everything. We, like Hal "obsessed with the fear the [he] was somehow going to flunk grief-therapy", are obsessed with getting this book "right". "Here was a top-rank authority figure and I was failing to supply what he wanted ... I'd never failed to deliver the goods before".

When you really think about it, most of what this book attempts to do is get across simple, single-entendre principles. Like the cliches of Boston AA that sound simple and banal but are incredibly difficult to actually implement: cliches about love, and family, and happiness, and what success actually means. By placing them in a long and complex novel, we are almost tricked into repeating these cliches for ourselves -- and as with a 12-step program, once you repeat a cliche long enough you start to believe in it.

“The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows. ” 

- "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction"

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 4: Prince Hal

Just a bit over 100 pages from the end of Infinite Jest, I'm in a kind of emotional tug of war between wanting to read it constantly, and knowing that if I do it will very shortly be over.

Instead of a full-on point form recap this time (because I think that was starting to get excessive), I'll just do a quick note on where I am right now. 

There have been a ton of Hamlet references throughout the book so far, but I think this point is where it's really starting to all line up - or at least the scene I just read seems to be quite similar to the opening scene of Hamlet. You've got the ghost of Himself, who is possibly the reason for everything being moved around at Enfield (and Ortho's bed), Ortho stuck to the window kind of "standing watch" over the grounds, Hal's facial expressions doing weird things (is he mad? is he pretending? is everyone else mad or pretending? who do you trust? though this be madness, yet is there method in't?) ... I still don't know what's going on but I'm loving every second of it.

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 3

So I'm officially past the halfway point - just finished page 619, so I'm considerably further along than I was in my last post about it. Cause there's so much to fit in, I'll just keep it to some point form notes, plus a few photos of my highlighting and underlining because goddamn there are so many wonderful passages in this novel.

• Although I can't pick one single favourite character by any means, every passage devoted to Mario that I've read thus far has been unquestionably excellent. He's one of the best examples of what this book is trying to get across, I think, especially w/r/t sincerity and love and what it means to be a human person. "He took citizens' kindness and cruelty the same way, with a kind of extra-inclined half-bow that mocked his own canted posture without pity or cringe"
• Marathe and Steeply's conversations continue to be endlessly fascinating - I especially liked the passage on page 319/320 on temples and freedom. Also their 418-430 section made me realize that they're essentially having a Hobbes/Rousseau argument (and, as Hal tells us in the first chapter, Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror). Plus, "Unmentioned by either man was how in heaven's name either man expected to get down from the mountainside's shelf in the dark of the U.S. desert's night" - both sides are right and wrong, and neither really know what to do about it or offer any kind of solution
• ESCHATON! The math went entirely over my head, but that's just part of what makes this book what it is, I think. If you're too hung up on understanding everything exactly perfectly, you won't be able to appreciate it (or anything, really, which I feel like is intentional on DFW's part). 
• Also, the idea that "the map is not the territory" seems to continue throughout a lot of the novel, and I don't think that the slang use of map as face (especially to do with suicide - "eliminating one's map") is coincidental. Eschaton, moving to President Gentle, moving to Clipperton, make this clearer as well. It's reasonable that de-mapping would become slang in a time that parts of the map/territory are literally being eliminated
• Also why hasn't anyone made a version of the ONANtiad puppet show, I need it
• "T'war a tard in t'loo. A rail tard" (probably one of the single funniest sections of dialogue I've ever read - and somehow it still manages to be sincere and kind of beautiful)
• "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you"
• I had no idea that the "this is water" fish story -- albeit a rougher and more explicit version -- was used in this book (and years before the Kenyon college speech!)
• "va chier putain!" - having a working knowledge of the French language, Canadian history, and philosophy, have all been very helpful in my appreciation of this book
• ^ Also, this plus the description of the ominous squeaking and cowboy-movie-esque scene where the store is surrounded by wheelchair assassins were hilarious. The best part though was that it managed to be both funny and scary - I was breathing in through my teeth in suspense and out through my nose in hilarity (made for a strange kind of forced hyperventilation)
• Speaking of which, Lucien's death was incredibly disturbing -- probably one of the most cringe inducing sections of the novel thus far -- but at the same time absolutely beautiful, especially the last passage on page 489. All of it was another great example of how he doesn't let you look down on anyone (even aphrasiac half-cellular insurgents)
• "you gone risk vulnerability and discomfort and hug my ass or do I gone fucking rip your head off and shit down your neck?"
• More (of many many) Hamlet references, with Avril and CT being very clearly set up as Gertrude and Claudius
• Lenz. oh god. Need I say more? And you're compelled to somewhat empathize with him, even as you hate him and reel back in terror. 
• Pages 467-574. DAMN. Some absolutely A+ writing. First off (as with almost everything in this book) it's written in 3rd person omniscient, but at the same time told from a single person's perspective (the Marathe/Steeply sections, for example, use french grammar phrasing so you can tell they're from Marathe's perspective). This is used to great effect here as the whole thing is told only in sound and dialogue, because Idris is blindfolded through all of it. Also I just love that the entire thing is such an unabashed excuse for excessive exposition -- similarly to the ONANtiad puppet show. There is no exposition at all for basically the whole first quarter of the book, you're just kind of thrown into it and things are mentioned as if you understand all of it already because you live in this universe or whatever, and then when things are finally explained, they're done in such huge obvious chunks that in any other context could be seen as bad writing. But in here somehow they work? And it works better than it would if it was slowly explained as you went along, because it allows all of the different phrases and world structures and stuff to become a part of your vocabulary as you read, even if you don't necessarily understand them, and then when they are revealed and explained it's SO satisfying to put together. Like how subsidized time isn't explained until page 223, or how the convexity/cavity and feral hamsters and giant infants are mentioned casually in passing, and you have no idea what it all means and have almost dismissed it as some absurd and untied detail when it's finally explained in full
• Brucie Green is my new favourite (and apparently Gately's as well) and getting to see him opposite Lenz just puts an even bigger perspective on what a really shitty person Lenz is.
• Pages 601 to 619 are like one giant fast paced movie scene and so much happens that I was absolutely reeling by the end of it, it was so goddamn good. I probably only breathed about three times between when the 'Nucks showed up and when the passage ends on 619. I also made various noises of surprise and dread out loud -- vocalizing my reactions to this book have been another kind of surprising thing that happened without my realizing it. I do sometimes laugh out loud when I read something particularly funny, and I have been moved to tears by a couple of other books, but I'm pretty sure this is the only novel I've ever read that has caused me to vocally express pretty much my entire range of emotions (another reason, apart from the fact that it's huge and I like to write in it, that I don't carry it around with me and read it in public)

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. 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

This book, including the "Odds & Ends" extra content at the end, is 678 pages long. I started reading it on Friday and, after a fiction novel dry-spell of about 6 months in which I only read plays and essays, I finished it this afternoon.

I was given it as a birthday present back in January, but both its length and my skepticism at the possibility of me really loving a novel about a couple of guys who write comic books in the 40s, meant that I put off reading it until now -- and boy, did it ever prove me wrong.


The driving force of this novel was its characters, and the fact that just about every person you meet, however briefly, has been intricately fleshed-out and filled with life. Say what you will about it being self-indulgent at times, or its possibly disorienting time skips, or it being too sentimental or optimistic or fantastical, but that's the point. The point is that the world that Chabon writes about underneath all of this is dark and messed-up in the realest way possible, and the characters he populates this world with are just as messed-up. And the point is they're all trying their hardest to confront and escape from all of it at the same time. It's witty and cheerful and optimistic and it rips your heart out and leaves you wondering what on earth just happened, everything was going so well a minute ago, wasn't it? There's a hell of a lot of death in here for a book called "The Amazing Adventures ..."

Its shiny layer of idealism and resolution is paper thin, and it deals with some really difficult stuff without giving you a bow-tied picture-perfect ending. The way these two things come together creates a kind of paean to hope -- to people's ability to keep going, to (finally, eventually, and not even specifically written out on the page so much as suggested that they're headed in the right direction at last) find happiness.

It had its faults, but it was the first book I've read in a while whose characters I've well and truly fallen in love with, and that was more than enough to keep me riveted through all 678 pages of it. It made me care.

"The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves of dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place." - pg. 339