The Infinite Jest reading, discussion and support group thread

[MApoker]

Originally Posted by mikechike

Highly recommend the two pieces I read at the link below: "Shipping Out" (DWF on a cruise) and "Ticket to the Fair" (DFW at a state fair)

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

These are two of the funniest essays I've ever read.

Even more highly recommended: Get the book that contains the uncut versions; the versions in Harpers are edited down. It's called "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."

[CLawnsby]

Did no one else read this besides 00000 and me? That would be too bad but honestly not that unexpected.

[mikechike]

Originally Posted by CLawnsby

I know we said tomorrow for the first 63 pages, but I'm going to be doing bachelor party stuff for my friend and may not get to the thread until Sunday, so I wanted to post some preliminary questions/discussion topics. Hopefully we have some people reading along?

1) Is the beginning of the book too confusing to be enjoyable? The first time I read it, I remember thinking "I have no idea what the **** is happening and I hate this." Are people having a similar reaction, or is there enough cool stuff in there to intrigue and hook you?

2) Are any themes beginning to emerge? We haven't spent more than a couple scenes with any of the major players of the book, but I feel as if there are a few things already beginning to take shape, despite the murky plot.

3) This might be a stupid question to try to answer this early, but what do we make of Hal in the first chapter? What could have happened to him to cause his behavior?

General impressions?

Anyways, I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to run the thread or anything. I'm just curious to hear what people think, and if you want to ignore everything I've written and talk about other things, that's great too.

1) The "Wardine" section was pushing it for me. Tried to read it a few times and still barely understand it.

2) There's a ton of drug use so far, much of it what I'd call abuse.

3)Can't tell.

A not-too-clear plot point from the first 100 pages:

Spoiler:

Took me a few rereads to get it, but the two spys make it clear (I think) that Hal's dad is the creator of the "Entertainment" that kills the atache and company. The atache had an affair with Hal's mom in the past, which could be the reason he got the tape, "Happy Anniversary" possibly referring to the date of the affair.

[Ineedaride2]

Originally Posted by CLawnsby

Did no one else read this besides 00000 and me? That would be too bad but honestly not that unexpected.

I did, but I just got back from vacation.

I'll just say this real quick. DFW reminds me of Cormac McCarthy in at least one way: It's as if they have every word in the dictionary at their immediate disposal and can put this limitless basket of words together in such a way as to perfectly describe a scene in a way that's never been done before.

Reminds me of someone who can pick up a guitar and just play any music that happens to pop into his head.

[Shark Sandwich]

Originally Posted by mikechike

A not-too-clear plot point from the first 100 pages:

Spoiler:

Took me a few rereads to get it, but the two spys make it clear (I think) that Hal's dad is the creator of the "Entertainment" that kills the atache and company. The atache had an affair with Hal's mom in the past, which could be the reason he got the tape, "Happy Anniversary" possibly referring to the date of the affair.

Right, but I don't think it's the anniversary of the affair. Notice the date - April 1 = Avril I.

[CLawnsby]

Originally Posted by mikechike

1) The "Wardine" section was pushing it for me. Tried to read it a few times and still barely understand it.

2) There's a ton of drug use so far, much of it what I'd call abuse.

1) The Wardine section has always been one of my least favorite bits. I don't really understand how it fits in or why it's there.

2) Yeah, lots of drug abuse in the novel for sure. We're not too deep into the novel yet, but I'd say that the book is about a human need to surrender to something outside of yourself, and for many of the characters, it's drugs they choose to surrender to.


I'd also say that there's something about communication/connection going on here. In the first chapter of the book, Hal simply cannot make himself understood. Then we've got the chapter where Hal is a kid and his father dresses as a professional conversationalist (?) because he is convinced that his son can't speak.

[-Insert Witty SN-]

i liked this sort of aside in the scene where we meet orin. i thought it was very clever + funny . it doesn't spoil anything fyi.

'INTERLACE EDUCATIONAL CARTRIDGES IN

CONJUNCTION WITH CBC EDUCATIONAL

PROGRAMMING MATRIX PRESENTS SCHIZOPHRENIA: MIND OR BODY?'

and had had to lie there, moist and paralyzed, curled fetal on his own sweat-shadow, and watch on the viewer a pale young guy about Hal's age, with copper stubble and a red cowlick and flat blank affectless black doll's eyes, stare into space stage-left while a brisk Albertan voiceover explained that Fenton here was a dyed-in-the-wool paranoid schizophrenic who believed that radioactive fluids were invading his skull and that hugely complex high-tech-type machines had been specially designed and programmed to pursue him without cease until they caught him and made brutal sport of him and buried him alive. It was an old late-millennial CBC public-interest Canadian news documentary, digitally sharpened and redisseminated under the InterLace imprimatur — InterLace could get kind of seedy and low-rent during early-morning off-hours, in terms of Spontaneous Disseminations.

And so but since the old CBC documentary's thesis was turning out pretty clearly to be SCHIZOPHRENIA: BODY, the voiceover evinced great clipped good cheer as it explained that well, yes, poor old Fenton here was more or less hopeless as an extra-institutional functioning unit, but that, on the up-side, science could at least give his existence some sort of meaning by studying him very carefully to help learn how schizophrenia manifested itself in the human body's brain... that, in other words, with the aid of cutting-edge Positron-Emission Topography or 'P.E.T.' technology (since supplanted wholly by Invasive Digitals, Orin hears the developmental psychology graduate student mutter to herself, watching rapt over her cup, unaware that Orin's paralytically awake), they could scan and study how different parts of poor old Fenton's dysfunctional brain emitted positrons in a whole different topography than your average hale and hearty nondelusional God-fearing Albertan's brain, advancing science by injecting test-subject Fenton here with a special blood-brain-barrier-penetrating radioactive dye and then sticking him in the rotating body-sized receptacle of a P.E.T. Scanner — on the viewer, it's an enormous gray-metal machine that looks like something co-designed by James Cameron and Fritz Lang, and now have a look at this Fenton fellow's eyes as he starts to get the gist of what the voiceover's saying — and in a terse old Public-TV cut they now showed subject Fenton in five-point canvas restraints whipping his copper-haired head from side to side as guys in mint-green surgical masks and caps inject him with radioactive fluids through a turkey-baster-sized syringe, then good old Fenton's eyes bugging out in total foreseen horror as he's rolled toward the huge gray P.E.T. device and slid like an unrisen loaf into the thing's open maw until only his decay-colored sneakers are in view, and the body-sized receptacle rotates the test-subject counterclockwise, with brutal speed, so that the old sneakers point up and then left and then down and then right and then up, faster and faster, the machine's blurps and tweets not even coming close to covering Fenton's entombed howls as his worst delusional fears came true in digital stereo and you could hear the last surviving bits of his functional dye-permeated mind being screamed out of him for all time as the viewer digitally superimposed an image of Fenton's ember-red and neutron-blue brain in the lower-right corner, where InterLace's Time/Temp functions usually appear, and the brisk voiceover gave capsule histories of first paranoid schizophrenia and then P.E.T.

[Sclub8]

short DFW piece that is not very well known and that I found absolutely brilliant

http://www.theknowe.net/dfwfiles/pdf...r_and_Flux.pdf

[Ineedaride2]

I feel like a loser for not pulling my weight itt thread, but of course as soon as this thing starts I have the busiest two weeks of the year.

Is there a new goal for this coming Saturday?

[Ineedaride2]

Originally Posted by CLawnsby

I know we said tomorrow for the first 63 pages, but I'm going to be doing bachelor party stuff for my friend and may not get to the thread until Sunday, so I wanted to post some preliminary questions/discussion topics. Hopefully we have some people reading along?

1) Is the beginning of the book too confusing to be enjoyable? The first time I read it, I remember thinking "I have no idea what the **** is happening and I hate this." Are people having a similar reaction, or is there enough cool stuff in there to intrigue and hook you?

I've read it three times now, so I'm a bad example, but the first time I read it I had no idea wtf was going on. That trend continued for each new POV for 150 pages. Chapter after chapter of "wtf is going on?" Unless someone is super gifted, I think this book almost has to be read twice.

2) Are any themes beginning to emerge? We haven't spent more than a couple scenes with any of the major players of the book, but I feel as if there are a few things already beginning to take shape, despite the murky plot.

I suck at figuring out themes. What I've noticed is you get really enlightening internal monologues of people that are pretty ****ed up. It's interesting to get inside people's heads that REAALLY think differently.

[lagdonk]

Originally Posted by Sclub8

short DFW piece that is not very well known and that I found absolutely brilliant

http://www.theknowe.net/dfwfiles/pdf...r_and_Flux.pdf

Yeah see this just makes me want to quit writing forever.

Thanks, pal.

[000000]

I'm up to page 95. So far, reading this book feels like purposely dropping an early model air conditioner on my face in the dim faith that it will make me prettier. There has been some reward for sure. I liked the meditation on the nature of tennis/sport.

At this point we're clearly focused on i guess "fringe" characters. Illness of some kind generally prevails. (Hal, Orin, Kathy Gompert, Mario, Hal's father, peripheral characters like the saudi prince, etc.) Pretty much exclusively maladjusted, incomplete, interesting folk.

At first the huge endnote from page 64 was tedious but became more and more absurd and pretty hilarious. Hopefully the same will become true of the book as a whole and my faith will be vindicated.

Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators, Dial C for Concupiscence, and my favorite, As of Yore: "A middle-aged tennis instructor, preparing to instruct his son in tennis, becomes intoxicated in the family's garage and subjects his son to a rambling monologue while the son weeps and perspires."

I'm no great student of literature. Do those of you who have formally studied it consider this work to be postmodern? post-postmodern? Why/why not?

[kokiri]

I picked this book up from the Reading thread. I was a little underwhelmed to begin with, it felt like a cross between Pynchon and Vonnegut, but by now (about 1/3 of the way through? Just after the big exhibition match) I'm beginning to really enjoy it. My only frustration is that what central plot there seems to be is emerging achingly slowly.

[Neal Cassady]

I have been trying to start every summer for like a decade and finally did last week.

Hopefully I can contribute something useful to this thread when I get rolling.

P.S. I changed user names post hacking on here so I am not a noob. Been a 2+2er since the 90s....lol @ the old guy.

[kokiri]

i'm something like 30%+ through according to kindle, although because of the footnotes, it's a bit more than that.

Spoiler:

At the moment the passages are mostly split between the stuff at the ETA - I read the Eschaton bit a while back - and the stuff about AA. The two halves feel tonally very different, and I'm finding it a bit jarring. The ETA stuff is very ott and ridiculous (not in a bad way), whereas the AA stuff is played much more straight.

I'm also itching to find out more about 1) Joelle's past, and 2) what appears to be pointing to Hal taking the DMZ and going crazy. However, i'm afraid that at least 2) seems like it's going to take the rest of the book to happen.