Week Eight

Before we get into the horror that is Randy Lenz, we meet up with Roy Tony once more, wait out the repercussions of Eschaton in the HrH’s very blue waiting room, the morning sun is about to rise on Marathe and Steeply, Pemulis has some very important info about Avril, Joelle and Don have a hard time talking with each other, and Orin is seduced by a hand model.

Recap

November 9 – NA Beginner’s meeting with Ken Erdedy, Kate Gompert and Roy Tony
Our first introductions to the pains of addiction came from Ken and Kate and their struggles with pot. 500 pages later, we are briefly brought back through the NA meeting, where Ken notes that the feeling of anhedonia, while not mentioned outright, “seemed to hang fog-like just over the room’s heads” (p. 504). Ken makes a critical error trying to avoid a hug from Roy Tony (a serious badass if you will recall from Clenette’s tale of Wardine and Wardine’s momma and Roy Tony p. 37).

November 10 – Hal, Pemulis, Kittenplan, Axford wait outside CT’s office, while Avril “diddle-checks” the girls
What to make of the parallels between the Hal sitting in the waiting room outside Tavis’ office, with it’s deep blue pile rug, and Pemulis’ “rodential squeaking” of his chair (p. 509), and the blue rug of JOI’s father’s bedroom and the “rodential squeaking” of the bedframe from last week’s section? Also, Clenette has been in CTs office the entire time?

CT, an “odd and delicate specimen” (p. 517) has a “pathological openness of manner” (p. 519) and Avril seems to be a master manipulator, in a way only a mother truly can be. (We get a very chilly analysis of Avril from Orin in endnote 234.)

So many instances of the ridiculous presented as the mundane here: Otis Lord still with monitor affixed, eye holes cut out of the monitor’s base, the story of the multi-eyed, yet blind kid with “cranium-issues” who had to wheel an IV cart with a metal brace for his head around on the court (though weirdly this Dymphna, who we know Hal is playing in the Whataburger in Year of Glad is only 9 years old in this segment and would be in the 16s next year?), Lateral Alice Moore (I enjoyed how long DFW dropped references to LAM before finally letting us in on the reason behind the nickname).

Marathe and Steeply
I feel like my criticisms of these sections are starting to imitate the very thing that drives me bonkers about them! If you compiled the entirety of their conversation together, it would read as so repetitive, cyclical, and heavy handed. Yes, the “Oriental myth” and Medusa/Odalisque again brings home the idea that humans will freely choose deadly temptation. We do learn that Marathe is by all accounts a quadruple agent, or perhaps a rogue agent, as he has chosen his wife over the cause. I’d be curious to hear others’ opinions on these conversations on the desert ledge.

November 11 – Don and Joelle have a stilted conversation
Don relates a story from his days Out There, and tries to get Joelle to talk about the veil. Joelle’s movement from plain, relatable language to her academic tone when talking about UHID becomes a sore point for Don, which then devolves into an argument. When JvD finally caves to Don’s repeated question about what exactly is wrong with her, she says she is ‘deformed with beauty.’

November 9 – Pemulis catches Avril and John Wayne together
Beyond the great visual of Avril in splits and John Wayne in a jock strap and football pads, we now know that Pemulis has this information locked and loaded when he enters CT’s office the next day. He definitely planned this “accidental” discovery. How did he know?

Goddamn Randy Lenz
How do we talk about someone like Randy Lenz? Wallace provides so much insight into his psyche, yet I was still left entirely emotionally unconnected to him. He is such a detestable person, mostly for me because of his sense of entitlement and his ‘specialness.’ And of course, his abuse of animals is really, really disturbing. We are given so much time with Lenz that I wanted to shower afterwards. Also in this section, the comedic/tragic death of Green’s mother and the bizarre situation of his father’s irregular leg lengths and descent into murderous despair.

Orin doesn’t seem safe at all
‘Helen’ is gone, after the interview turns a bit sour, and Orin’s wheelchair ‘fans’ are back, as well as a stunning hand model, who seems to know exactly how to woo him, and whose accent is suspiciously similar to the “legless surveyor”(p. 575)

Coaticule Complex
Idris Arslanian (why does a Pakistani have an Armenian name?) gets schooled by Pemulis on the details of Annular Fusion, as Lyle works with poor Doucette, who can’t wrap his head around it, especially “the temporal-flux stuff.”

Reflections

This week, we walk right into rejection, like walking into the wall that is righteously pissed off Roy Tony. You reject his hug, like Erdedy does. Roy Tony isn’t looking for a hug, Roy Tony doesn’t like to hug. But Roy Tony has surrendered his will, has risked sharing his “vulnerability and “discomfort” and Erdedy risks the ass-kicking of his lifetime by acting like he, Erdedy, is somehow above this all and can reject AA’s tenet of Hugs Not Drugs.

Marathe and Steeply do their own Medusa v Odalisque-esque dance of rejection, itself a fitting double bind (or quadruple bind?). The complete essence of their conversation is to offer up and reject each other’s ideologies, disdain loosely hidden behind their sparrings. And yet both have also on some level rejected their own governments (a deep betrayal on Marathe’s part, and a less impactful but still self-positioned semi-betrayal on Steeply’s).

The conversation-slash-argument between Gately and Joelle has always left me feeling very very sad. They speak over each other, and Don gets really testy – the first jerk-like behavior I’ve really seen in him. He seems purpose-driven to share the AA message and actively tries to live according to a moral code. So he really comes up short in this passage (IMHO), rejecting JvD’s assertion that he is driven by shame about what “might be perceived as a lack of brightness” (p. 537). And his bull-headed persistence asking about her hideous deformity forces Joelle to reject his approach and his questions over and over. Neither Don nor Joelle connect with each other, or even listen to each other.

And finally, how do you solve a problem like Lenz? His “impotent rage and powerless fear” (p. 541) is bred deep. Lenz seems borne from a rejection by the entire universe, so his work to “resolve his issues” escalates, as we know it must, with little effect. And then, when faced with a real-life opportunity to connect with Bruce Green, Lenz fears rejection of such intensity that he is paralyzed to tell Green that he likes him (and to leave him alone).

I love DFW’s acceleration techniques. There is a cinematic, madcap, almost Stoogeian feel to the way he stacks narratives on top of each other, alternately piling them up like a swaying tower of bricks, or layering them on like oppressive, heavy blankets. And then to play with this comic technique by paring it with truly grim subject matter (Lenz’ progression from rats to dogs, the Drano deaths, Doony’s accident with the bucket of bricks, the Entertainment itself). It is just so freaking effective. So imagine my delight when I caught up with Pemulis as he talked about “accelerated phenomena which is actually equivalent to an incredible slowing down of time” (p. 573) because that right there is what makes it so great. The slowing down of time becomes this parodic, car-crash scenario that you just can’t pull yourself away from.

Orin’s chasing of various Subjects with toddler-aged children is of course a classic cover for deep feelings of rejection. And Tavis is riddled with fear of rejection too.

I would love to see serialized treatments of the smaller character studies in IJ, like poor Bruce Green’s family saga- done Black Mirror style.

Week Seven

Each week while I prep for this recap, I grab the pages I’ve just read between my fingers and am always amazed at what a small sliver of the book the week’s reading represented, and within that 1/4 – 1/2 inch of paper how many stories were covered.

This week, we wrap up a few threads that began last week (Clipperton, the rest of Mario’s film), we spend a lot of time with Don, and learn the intricacies of am drills at E.T.A, get the back story on Pat Montesian, hang out on the ledge with Marathe and Steeply, are privvy to the last moments of the Antitoi Bros. lives, and hear JOI’s voice for the first time, as he reflects on a childhood experience that later became the film “Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed”

Recap & Reflections

The Death of Eric Clipperton
I got a Columbine-shiver at the description of Eric as a “spectral trench-coated figure.” I am intrigued by the relationship between Mario and Eric, and how Mario has never shared even with Hal the details of their conversations, and Mario’s need to clean the room on his own. He and Eric obviously bonded on a very real level. Thoughts on what Clipperton represents? The ultimate desire for the win, the show, taken to its morbid end? Is this the path LaMont Chu is on?

The second cautionary tale, of the un-named kid from Fresno, devolves into dark comedy with the continued Drano poisonings (and the pathos of the little pajama-clad feet -Damn DFW is good with pathos), and very much mimics the death of the Medical Attache et al.

Back to E.T.A, November 8, Interdependence Day film screening
By now, “Hal’s eyes are fevered and rolling around in his head” (p. 438) That seems bad. Mario includes Orin in the history of subsidized time, though a note on chronology states that this would have been historically inaccurate.

My Respect Grows for Don Gately
His steadfast commitment to sobriety, including his daily cleaning of the (shudder) Shattuck shelter, his honesty about struggling to name a higher power, and the story of lil Bim and his vodka-soaked mother…I just want to hug that big galoot. And I don’t want to know what happened to Nimitz the kitty. I loved the description of him driving Pat’s car, and just want happiness for him. But every time I think I am falling in love with Gately, DFW goes an mentions that terrible Prince Valiant haircut.

Time jump back to late October
Hal is dreaming about losing his teeth, and Madame Psychosis is off the air. Mario is agitated after seeing her screen in the booth. This confused me for a moment because I assumed that Joelle’s OD at Molly’s party on Nov 7 was when she would have stopped doing the show, but apparently she had quit the show earlier.

Back to November 9 at E.T.A – Drills and skills
Hal appears to be better than he was yesterday, at least physically. Otis P Lord is back after the Eschaton debacle, but with the monitor screen still on his head with shards dangerously pointing at his throat. Schtitt lectures the boys, speaks of the new type of citizen they are turning the boys into, ones who are “Citizens of this sheltering second world” of the tennis court, inspiring, or demanding, that they put aside the complaints of the outside world (too hot, too cold) and grab the opportunity for a “chance to occur” (pg. 459) within this second world, which is both the court and the mind. Anyone else get a Werner Hertzog vibe from Schtitt?

Marathe and Steeply talk p-terminals, MK-Ultra, and Canadian experiments
I doubt there is a Canadian of a certain age who read this passage without thinking of this Heritage Minute ad (Doctor, I smell burnt toast!). Steeply’s discussion of Canadian scientists developing p-terminal stimulation techniques, and the non-deviant young Canadians who lined up for the leathal treatment is a bit heavy handed in its regard to the Entertainment. We also know that both sides have copies of the Entertainment at the ready!

Bonjour/AuRevoir, Antitios Brothers
I love how Wallace is weaving all of the stories together. As Gately drives Pat’s car through the streets of Boston, the tires send a plastic cup into the air, hitting the window pane of Antitois Entertainment, sending Lucien (who cannot speak French!) to investigate. As he closes the door, it oddly continues to squeak, until he discovers that it is indeed the AFR, come for the master Entertainment tape they believe is being kept by the brothers. Oh that demise. So terrible. It reminded me of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Why does AFR think the master was stolen in the DuPlessis burglary and that the Antitois would have it? Did Steeply plant it then tip them off? Why? If Gately actually did take it while “stripping the Brookline home as bare as a post-feral-hamster meadow” (p. 58) where is the master?

A Different Kind of Squeak
We end this week with an excerpt from “The Awakening of my Interest in Annular Systems,” where JOI, as a recognized pioneer of annual fusion, reflects on the day he realized, um, something important, about how the “cycloid’s standard parametric equations were no longer apposite” and I’m just gonna have to take your word on that James. BUT first, we are treated to the tale of JOI’s drunken father’s attempt to find the cause of a squeak in his bed.  Another amazing example of DFW’s stellar characterizations and dialogue. The filmed version of this story, a ‘possible Scandinavian-psychodrama parody’ actualizes the father’s claim that it sounds like rodents.

Week Six

In this week’s pages we attend a dark and brutal AA meeting, learn about the birth of O.N.A.N through Mario’s Interdependence Day film screening, follow the growth of Inter-Lace, and talk pea soup with Marathe and Steeply.

Recap

We go out to a White Flag AA Meeting
For thirty-six pages I was sitting in one of those metal chairs, right in the front row next to Gately, truly feeling the howling fantods listening to the speakers as they went on their Commitments. Needless to say, the stories of It and the baby with a serious bio-viability problem were horrifying and heartbreaking, and oh my god there were children there listening! And the story of John L.’s bowel movement was hilarious.

We spend Interdependence Day (post Eschaton) watching Mario’s puppet-filled tale of O.N.A.N.
Like the highly adaptable Eschaton game (see last week’s Decemberists video), I would love to see someone take a stab at recreating Mario’s film. The script is right there, all laid out! The history of O.N.A.N. as told through headlines is one of my favourite parts of this section (I love how we also follow the failing career of a nameless drug-addled headline writer).

Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner, has come to power with a sweeping victory for the Clean U.S. Party. He has nullified NATO, named himself chief of newly configured O.N.A.N, strong arming Canada to join. It seems Mexico came along fairly willingly. Luria P seems to be the brains behind the ‘gifting’ of much of the now highly-toxic northeastern US to Canada “Allow me to illustrate what Lur – just what the president means.” (p. 403). Intrigue!

The fall of advertising and the rise of InterLace
Hal’s seventh grade paper sheds light on InterLace and Subsidized time, with the failure of network television, the success of Viney and Veals advertising agency (Nunhagen Asprin! NoCoat tongue scrapers! Johnny Gentle’s campaign!) – our friend Ken Erdedy worked for V & V – and Noreen Lace-Forche’s fiber optic pulse, satellite and 4.8 mb diskette service. Basically Netflix, but with news and sports. InterLace is firmly in the Gentle administration’s pocket if headlines are to be believed (p. 392).

Lyle is licking kids and handing out advice
The guru helps LaMont Chu understand the double-bind of fame (“You burn with hunger for a food that does not exist” p. 389) and gives advice to Ortho about his moving bed, as well as a supporting story about the man who didn’t underestimate his chair.

A few of JOI’s films are expounded on
Two of Incandenzas’ ‘anticonfluential’ films (“characterized by a stubborn and possibly irrationally irritating refusal of different narrative lines to merge into any kind of meaningful confluence” – e. 61), Medusa and Odalisque and The Joke are given extended descriptions. The description of the audience in The Joke hit a little close to home for me ☺.

Eric Clipperton, Suicidal Tennis Player
The rest of Clipperton’s story will come next week. We know the film of his suicide is likely buried in JOI’s grave along with Infinite Jest V. Mario crafts a parodic scenario of Johnny Gentle being “willing to eliminate own map out of sheer pique” in reference to Clipperton’s penchant for playing tennis while holding a Glock to his temple.

What would you do for a single serving of Habitant?
Steeply tries to understand why exactly the AFR, with seemingly with no political motivation are so set on causing extreme chaos and death to U.S. citizens. Marathe doesn’t really answer Steeply, but instead counters with his parable of the can of soup, trying to get Steeply to admit that Americans are controlled by self-interest? This section is interesting, because neither agent really succeeds in making his point, or getting the information they are seeking. We are however privy to a detailed description of how ugly Steeply’s feet are.

Reflections

I was completely enraptured by the description of how exactly AA works, according to Gately. The process of Identifying, the trite slogans that you fight against in their seeming meaninglessness, the bottom that is hit, or rather the cliff that you are ready to fall off of, when you finally Come In, face hanging down around your knees, the support the crocodiles, with their geologic amounts of sober time, offer. My heart is definitely with Gately and the Ennet House residents.

By the end of this section that AA meeting seemed really far away though.  On many of my earlier re-reads, before the true chaos of America raised its ugly head and said “we aren’t even going to mask our brutality anymore” I had never really felt much from the story of O.N.A.N.  But after 2016 – ugh. The Totalitarian’s Guide to Iron-Fisted Spin indeed. 

The majoroity of this segment focused on world building the political upheaval and the very very heavy results of Annual Fusion’s waste. We didn’t really get any more deeper into any of our Ennet House or Enfield friends.  To me, this section felt like those fast paced, funny pieces we read back in Week Three, but more fully expanded on.  There was great humour to be found here amongst the poltitiking – I loved the definition of a refugee, and the work to ensure the babies were not naked and the number of homemade wagons was kept to a minimum.

Week Five

Wherein we traverse 47 endnotes (!), get some perspective on Orin and JvD’s relationship, shudder in a bathroom stall with Poor Tony Krause, brush up on our Quebecois separatist history, understand the extent of Mario’s disfigurements, check in with Marathe and Steeply, and play a game of Eschaton.

Recap

Orin Incandenza, All American
We learn more about Orin’s transition from tennis to football, and his relationship with P.G.O.A.T. Joelle van Dyne (aka Madame Psychosis). The way that Avril plays Orin to go to Boston U. is a very clear view into their distorted relationship. Orin describes Avril as “a contortionist with other peoples bodies.”

Ugh – I just think CT is a mealy-mouthed usurper.  If James Sr. sounded like Foghorn Leghorn, CT’s long screed about not expecting any ‘thank yous’ reminds me of…maybe Rick from Rick and Morty??

We move very quickly in this section from Orin’ full ride to Boston U, his transfer from tennis to trying out for football because of a certain baton twirler, the moment of fate that reveals his true talent at punting, the courtship of JvD (who approached him), their moving in together, her budding drug addiction, finally to her later film work with JOI. It’s a very dense, and narratively traditional, excepting the 11 endnotes that are peppered throughout. Endnote 134 tells us that on November 8, YDAU Joelle van Dyne entered Ennett House, one day after her attempted de-mapping.

It’s November 14, YDAU, the last day of Poor Tony Krause’s life.
There is only one endnote in Por Tony’s  section, so there is very little to break the grotesque description of Tony’s withdrawl and resulting seizure on the subway, though the one endnote on “Then he had a seizure” (p. 305) jumps us out of the frame, just to learn the scientific definition of a seizure, before we jump back into the subway car. This section is so moving, so heart-breaking. We also learn it was Tony indeed who stole the heart in the purse, know that he also has a connection to the Antitoi Bros, and by context know that yrstrly is Emil Minty.  The German word Zuckung, which means convulsion, is somehow put in his head. Poor Tony Krause.

While ETA has rigorous academics, the prorector’s classes are a bit…off.
We get another peek into ETA which starts from the perspective of Ted Schacht, and then seamlessly moves into Hal’s POV. I would take all of these prorector classes.

Through another “why isn’t this just part of the book?” endnote, we are party to the phone message from Orin, the letter from Avril and Orin’s form letter response. and Hal and Orin’s phone call about why Quebec would make an abrupt right face and fight O.N.A.N. ‘for” Canada, and mention of Steeply’s questions about the samizdat, as well as twelve subnotes to the endnote.

Poor Mario Incandenza…
The description of all of Mario’s birth defects just goes on and on. The section opens with the odd sentence “The first birth of the Incandenza’s second son was a surprise” (emphasis mine). We also learn that optics have played a role in the history of the Incandenzas going way back (his great-grandfather invented xray specs), and an odd endnote (e. 114) shifts time by announcing that the Year of Glad was indeed the last year of subsidized time, assuming a historic perspective from the author.

Back to the ledge with Marathe and Steeply
This conversation seems to basically re-summarize the 18 page endnote phone conversation of Orin and Hal. Do we really learn anything new from this section?

Eschaton!
Twenty-one pages are dedicated to the description of a game of Eschaton gone horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a huge section that just whipped by for me.

The dense, detailed Eschaton section is in turns so cinematic and so numbingly academic. I love it. But Hal sure is acting strange, and we are kept at a distance from his thoughts that we aren’t accustomed to. He seems to be struggling to articulate his ideas, the narrative voice just scratches the surface, and never dives deeper, and near the end, Hal feels at his face to see if he is wincing (p. 342), a gesture we saw in the opening section of the book in the Year of Glad.

It’s November 8, YDAU. Have we started to lose Hal already? It’s another great piece that really fills out the ETA universe, with detailed descriptions of the students and the game.  It’s also Interdependence Day and there is a stranger in a green car watching the game.

Endnotes!
This section was pure joy for me to read as it was a prime example of DFW’s playful fuckery w/r/t the endnote structures. We are tossed all around in terms of voice, time, perspective. It’s a complete, beautiful mess. I was tickled by Pemulis’ narrative on the Mean-value formula, as told to and later transcribed by Hal, who interrupts editorially. It assumes Pemulis/Hal are indeed writing this to someone – are they speaking directly to us? Endnote 127 seems to be written entirely by Pemulis, who can’t help himself by adding a “P.S. Wolf-spiders Ruleth the Land.” Also, what on earth did Pemulis do to the mirror to torment M.H. Penn?

• I love the description of Avril and CT colliding in the hallway as they avoided Orin and Mario, respectively (e. 98)
• I know who Andrea Dworkin is, but is Pizzatola anyone I should have head of? No google results found (e.105)
• There are also the two “overshot the chance to add….” endnote addendums. I can’t articulate why that is funny to me.

Reflections

As I mentioned in our last group meeting, I am fascinated by Orin, the hale and handsome eldest Incandenza. Orin, the tennis player with a terrific lob, wooed by colleges, courted by a beautiful cheerleader. Orin the punter, effortlessly finding his place in O.N.A.N’s (nee America’s) most prestigious sport. He exudes wholesome, conformist, almost banal ideals. But Orin is the odd one out. Within the Incandenza clan he is very much the other. His form letters to his mother, his lack of knowledge about his father’s death – Orin has put significant space between himself and his family. (Hal has a lot of very pointed thoughts on this – mostly about Orin’s sexual proclivities and how they may or may not relate to his mother).

In juxtaposition, the details of Mario’s otherness read like a medical textbook was put through a Burroughs-esque cut-up technique. Yet he is a welcome confidante for Schtitt, has carried the torch (or lens) of his father’s craft, and stays close to Hal by being his bunkmate. Mario is not seen as an outsider at all. In the world of Infinite Jest, as in the U.H.I.D, all are welcome.

Poor Tony Krause. Poor, poor Tony Krause. Isolated, drug sick, “gender-dysmorphic” Tony. His own body becomes the Other as he detoxes in the Armenian library washroom stall. During the complete breakdown of his corporeal self, culminating in a subway seizure, (“watching his tumid limbs tear-ass around the car’s interior like undone balloons” – p. 305) Tony is back in his childhood, worried that his “red-handed Poppa could see up his dress, what was hidden” (p. 306), having lived a life that is true to his own self, but decidedly in the realm of otherness as far as his father is concerned.