David Foster Wallace on Abortion

If you recall the recent grammatical dust-up between David Bentley Hart and a few blogging descriptivists, Hart addressed the issue in his bi-weekly column yesterday. For some reason one of the editors at First Things included a link to David Foster Wallace's superb essay on American usage, which I promptly re-read. As riveting as grammar and usage wars are, this post addresses a short aside in Wallace's essay that has nothing to do with those topics.

Here is the excerpt (which seems to have been excised from the version of the essay on Harpers' site. I got this from the version in Consider the Lobster):

In this reviewer's opinion, the only really coherent position on the abortion issue is one that is both Pro-life and Pro-choice.

Given our best present medical and philosophical understandings of what makes something not just a living organism but a person, there is no way to establish at just what point during gestation a fertilized ovum becomes a human being. This conundrum, together with the basically inarguable soundness of the principle “When in irresolvable doubt about whether something is a human being or not, it is better not to kill it,” appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Life.

At the same time, however, the principle “When in irresolvable doubt about something, I have neither the legal nor the moral right to tell another person what to do about it, especially if that person feels that s/he is not in doubt” is an unassailable part of the Democratic pact we Americans all make with one another, a pact in which each adult citizen gets to be an autonomous moral agent; and this principle appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Choice.

For someone immersed in the culture of liberal academia, it's admirable that Wallace even allows himself to reason his way to this moderate position. However, he can't quite bring himself to go all the way, possibly for fear that his exquisite reasoning has lead him to a standard, conservative, privileged, white, American, male position on an issue that liberal academic circles would be especially prone to suspecting such biases for being the true source of the conclusion, rather than the flawless reason. Indeed, a subsequent passage indicates that just such an insecurity is very likely in play in Wallace's thought.

The point is that the appropriate, logical conclusion of the two Principles that Wallace has formulated is that abortion is wrong because the first Principle overrides the second. The right to life trumps the right to 'choose', and Wallace states no reason these two principles should carry identical weight, which is what he must demonstrate to conclude that an exactly centrist position is best. Additionally, the second Principle is grounded in some "irresolvable doubt" that Wallace has quietly smuggled in. Whence such doubt? The first Principle was formulated with "inarguable soundness." Presumably the doubt comes in because of the second Principle, but the second Principle can't be formulated apart from an extant doubt. Thus the second principle is circular and the real logical conclusion, when these two principles collide, is a Pro-life one.

Not to mention that this Pro-life conclusion is arrived at even while accepting Wallace's claim that a) the origin of human-being-ness question is inadjudicable and b) that the crux of the issue is human-being-ness. Neither of which are compelled by evidence. If we state the principle that destroying a unique, innocent, human life -- all of which a just-conceived embryo is necessarily -- is wrong, then issues of personhood or human-being-ness are superceded. Which only strengthens the argument for a Pro-life conclusion, which is already firmly established by the two principles.

Wallace is one hundred times more intelligent than I am, but I have the occasionally-useful advantage of never having been within 100 yards of a liberal arts or humanities department, and am entirely immune to the unfortunate political correctness that it breeds.

Interestingly, later in the essay Wallace shows that he is acutely aware of just such instances of being technically, indisputably correct about something (just as his argument in favor of Pro-life would be, were he to follow it through), but having the PC, liberal academic machinery rear its ugly head forces him to yield some ground. Not going so far as to admit he's wrong, but that he was perhaps clumsy or insensitive. All this, however, took place over the comparatively emotionally dry topic of the English language:

A vividly concrete illustration here concerns the Official Complaint a black undergraduate filed against this rev. after one of my little in camera spiels described on pages 53-54. The complainant was (I opine) wrong, but she was not crazy or stupid; and I was able later to see that I did bear some responsibility for the whole nasty administrative swivet. My culpability lay in gross rhetorical naivete. I'd seen my speech's primary Appeal as Logical: The aim was to make a conspicuously blunt, honest argument for SWE's [Standard Written English] utility. It wasn't pretty, maybe, but it was true, plus so manifestly bullshit-free that I think I anticipated not just acquiescence but gratitude for my candor. [44] The problem I failed to see, of course, lay not with the argument per se but with the person making it — namely me, a Privileged WASP Male in a position of power, thus someone whose statements about the primacy and utility of the Privileged WASP Male dialect appeared not candid/hortatory/ authoritative/true but elitist/high-handed/ authoritarian/racist. Rhetoric-wise what happened was that I allowed the substance and style of my Logical Appeal to completely torpedo my Ethical Appeal: What the student heard was just another PWM rationalizing why his Group and his English were top dog and ought "logically" to stay that way (plus, worse, trying to use his academic power over her to coerce her assent [45] ).

If for any reason you happen to find yourself sharing this particular student's perceptions and reaction, [46] I would ask that you bracket your feelings long enough to recognize that the PWM instructor's very modern rhetorical dilemma in that office was really no different from the dilemma faced by a male who makes a Pro-Life argument, or an atheist who argues against Creation Science, or a Caucasian who opposes Affirmative Action, or an African American who decries Racial Profiling, or anyone over eighteen who tries to make a case for raising the legal driving age to eighteen, etc. The dilemma has nothing to do with whether the arguments themselves are plausible or right or even sane, because the debate rarely gets that far — any opponent with sufficiently strong feelings or a dogmatic bent can discredit the arguments and pretty much foreclose all further discussion with a single, terribly familiar rejoinder: "Of course you'd say that"; "Easy for you to say"; "What right do you have ...?"

It should be obvious how such an environment could lead one to temper his position considerably on the much more emotionally charged issue of abortion, even when possessing the indisputable truth that is uncomfortable for many in liberal academia  -- especially females -- to hear or deal with.

David Foster Wallace on C.S. Lewis and Tolkien

[In the middle of trying to cajole the otherwise well-read interviewer into reading The Screwtape Letters]:

[Break]

... instead of is it true or not. You don't even have to - I mean, just go, it's in like the first twenty pages. The Screwtape Letters is really - it's weird cause it's a very childlike, simple book. But Lewis is incredibly smart.

And it's, it's weird, it's one of the things I noticed, I don't notice that you argue by analogy or whatever. But it's like, if somebody will say something to you, your reaction is very often to quote a line similar to it. Or to talk about whether that's - whether that's a good line or not. And I think the reason why it doesn't irritate me, but I feel it and I notice it, is that there's a similar component in me. It's a writerly type thing.

But I guess my only justification for saying to you is that I'm like, I'm really - there's something else. There's something else besides that. There's also this, is it true or not. That, does it feel true, does it taste true? And like whether it's clever, or whether, whether it's well said, or whether its fresh or not, is only part of it. It's like - ah, I don't know. It's... I can't quite nail down just what I'm saying.

I think you would find that book intensely interesting. 'Cause it's weird, I read it for the first time when I was thirty. I swear to God, I'll read Renata Adler and Nabokov's letters if you will check that out. I think you'd really like it.

In 2006 Wallace placed The Screwtape Letters atop his top 10 novels ever list . At the time this interview hadn't been published in it's entirety and there was some question as to whether he took the top 10 task seriously, as his top picks are not highly respected, literary titles. Most of them are modern, commercial works. But if you read Lipsky's book, Wallace makes it clear he has this strange admiration for a lot of cheap pop art. And it's not disingenuous, he really does like low-brow stuff on a lot of levels, in film, music and books. And believes there's a lot of artistic value in some of it. Not that he views Screwtape as pop, cheap or commercial, or even all of his top 10 that way. It's not like he just listed bad novels to be funny. For all I know his list might be dead serious, but considering many of his major influences and writers that he loves (i.e more serious, literary stuff, and some more experimental, high-art stuff), as well as his acknowledgment of many of the canonical classics as deservingly held in high opinion, it seems doubtful. Seems more like he was highlighting what he felt to be the stand-outs of certain types of authors that are under-appreciated, or even abhorred, in intellectual literary circles. Or perhaps he was using some quality+commercial-success criteria in order to make some point (though, that wouldn't explain the entirety of the list). Or maybe he just picked 10 books he liked a lot that he knew wouldn't be on anyone else's top 10. In any case, it now seems plainly clear that he definitely loves Screwtape.

On Tolkien and Lord of the Rings (interviewer, Lipsky, is in italics):

[Tells me he read Lord of the Rings five times as a teenager.]

You loved Tolkien. Is it a pleasure to have written a book long enough so readers can lose themselves in your world, same way you did in Tolkien's? [Talking about Infinite Jest]

I think it's different though. 'Cause this is a harder book, and it's more in chunks. I mean, the thing about Tolkien is, it's a very long linear narrative, where you feel like you yourself are on a voyage. And this is much more...

But on the Web boards I've visited, people DO speak about it as if entering a different world ...

That would be very neat.

Having read and loved both Lord of the Rings and Infinite Jest I can attest to the idea that Infinite Jest is an extremely complex, detailed world in it's own right, and is completely immersing in a way that is similar to what Tolkien achieved with LOTR. Though, of course, being extremely different in most other respects.

"Who's there?" - "I Am."

(spoilers within)

Not being very familiar with Hamlet (I think I read it once a very long time ago, and have seen various film adaptations, but don't recall much), I wasn't aware of the various references and allusions being made to it in Infinite Jest. One of the most interesting that others have pointed out is that the first two words of Hamlet are "Who's there?", and the first two words of Infinite Jest are "I am". I find this interesting because the most overt Hamlet references in the novel revolve around Hal and Himself. i.e. Hal holding up JOI's skull a la Hamlet holding up Yorick's; JOI appearing at the end of the novel as a ghost; JOI's production company being titled 'Poor Yorick Entertainment'; Hal perhaps being a central 'hero of inaction', a la Hamlet and Hal's own essay on the same subject; the title of JOI's 'perfect entertainment'. And the exchange of "Who's there?", and "I am" is a good way to to give a cursory summary of the relationship between JOI and Hal. i.e. JOI trying to reach Hal, and get him to 'speak', or become less solipsistic. Hal declaring who he is in response, clearly (if not audibly). That, as he says a few lines after the opening two words, "I am in here". Whether who he is internally manifests itself outwardly or not.

Also, as to the character relationships that mirror Hamlet, to some degree. I found this overview in the sparknotes for Hamlet:

"When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn.

Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. "

Clearly there are some heavy plot and character parallels here, that might even be clues to interpreting the events of Infinite Jest. Prince Hamlet = Hal, King Hamlet = Himself, Claudius = C.T. and Avril = Hamlet's wife. However, there is no suggestion anywhere that JOI's death was anything but a suicide. Though there is no suicide note, and JOI's wraith never explicitly admits to 'eliminating his own map'. Further, as outlined in previous blogs, there are a lot of hints and clues that Avril has connections with Quebecois separatists, and had nefarious intentions re: Himself and his work. Recall the end of the novel where Orin is captured by the AFR and placed inside a giant tumbler, and they release roaches, his greatest fear, into the tumbler with him. How did they know his greatest fear? They had sent their female operative to be intimately involved with him and learn these details, and are now exploiting them. Perhaps Avril functioned in the same way to JOI, acting as an embedded operative. JOI was an important political figure for numerous reasons. Recall Hal and Mario's discussion about Avril not being sad about Himself's death and (get this) always having to travel to various locations for meetings of various kinds by herself and now she stays at home, always, since JOI's death. Suggesting that her going to meetings was so that she could relay information about JOI to the separatists groups, who have gotten a hold of her and recruited her. And after JOI was gone she no longer had any reason to go to the clandestine meetings. Further it's possible that, in the same manner Orin's deepest, darkest fears were discovered and exploited by the AFR, so to were JOI's (i.e. the fear of his son being terminally solipsistic), and that it was through a similar method that Avril (perhaps in league with C.T. and other separatists) forcefully, intentionally drove JOI to suicide (recall the Wild turkey 'gift' from Avril at the scene of his suicide). Which would complete the parallel between Hamlet. i.e. C.T. and Avril 'killing' JOI for political purposes, and immediately getting together afterward, while the 'mad' son Hal can not, or will not, has some mental block against, connecting the dots. Then JOI's ghost tries to help Hal connect the dots, but, by the 'end' of the novel, he still hasn't (though he probably has by the time he's digging up his father's head).

Speaking of Avril and chapter 1, where is she?

Some Infinite Jest Theories and Thoughts

Infinite Jest is so ripe for discussion and analysis but, to my dismay, I personally know 0 people who have read it. Even in online circles none of my online 'acquaintances' have read it, that I know of. And, what's more disheartening, I can't in good conscience even recommend it to hardly anyone I know, given the large amount of work the novel is. I believe it was well worth it, and will continue to voice my own enthusiasm about it, and look forward to a day where someone, anyone, I know has also read it. Now, on to my theories, thoughts and analysis, mostly for my own benefit of thought-organization since none of this will make much sense to anyone who hasnt read the novel (this will have spoilers).

I'm re-reading some of the beginning chapters of Infinite Jest and it's pretty remarkable. A lot of the stuff at the beginning is introduced w/o much context, so the first time through it doesn't necessarily stick with you. And a lot of the details are details about places, characters and events you know nothing about at that point. And by the time you reach the end of the monstrous tome the events and conversations from the beginning are so far removed, they are not even within recall. The opening chapter with Hal is a bit of an exception, and mostly stays in your mind throughout the rest of the book (though, w/o returning to it regularly some details, such as Hal + Gately digging up Himself's head, will likely not be within immediate recall).

But, for example, the 3rd chapter with Hal going to a professional conversationalist (who turns out to be his father, JOI, Himself in a disguise), hints at a bunch of things that only make sense in the light of the rest of the novel. Hal is conversing fully with JOI, apparently, yet JOI insists that Hal is silent. And this is when Hal is only 10 years old. Hal calls this an illusion of JOIs, and we have a pretty good picture by the end of the novel that JOI committed suicide because of his inability to get Hal to 'speak'. It isn't clear whether JOI is so mad that he truly, literally believes that Hal can not or does not speak, or whether he hears him speaking but feels that the things that Hal says are so empty, withdrawn and solipsistic that Hal is effectively, figuratively 'silent' from Himself's perspective. Or it's possible that Hal believes that he is speaking in Himself's presence when he really isn't. We see that Hal experiences periods of detachment from himself [not 'Himself', capital H], where his inner monologue doesn't match his outer one. There's an example of this happening 'before' the events of chapter 1 (and before whatever happens after the end of the novel, whether he drops DMZ or whatever). Specifically his fits of hysterics near the end of the novel, where he has no clue that he is laughing. So while his 'subanimalistic' behavior in chapter 1 is very likely tied to later DMZ use, his inner/outer monologue discrepancy can not be attributed to that.

Also in this chapter Himself references Avril cavorting with 30 Arab medical attaches, and asking Hal about Quebec separatism. In the very next chapter the Arab medical attache receives the sazmidat on April 1 (Avril I). Joelle says near the end of the book that Himself didn't want the sazmidat released but rather wanted it buried with himself. What connections does Avril have with the Quebecois separatist terrorist groups? Did she steal and help disseminate the sazmidat against Himself's wishes? It appears that might be the case. And now, at the end of the novel, Himself's wraith is attempting to remedy the situation, turning to the man that killed DuPlessis, and beat up some Quebecois separatists (perhaps not realizing Gately did these seemingly politically motivated things accidentally/incidentally).

Still another revelation in this chapter is that Himself claims that he has some kind of film cartridge device implanted inside his own cerebrum, emphasizing the literal, physical structure of whatever it is. It is likely that he is haunting Gately and Hal to get them to retrieve this, because it's only through this device that they can possibly craft something to counteract the sazmidat that Avril helped to disseminate. Himself was simply trying to reach Hal with the sazmidat; he had no interest in releasing it ever.

I'm eager to see if there's a point where Himself answers a phone in the book (I don't recall if there is one). It is said in a section here early on that sons answer the phone in the same way their father did whether they knew their father or not. Hal proceeds to answer the phone "mmmyellow", as does Pemulis later in the book. We know Avril isn't a pillar of fidelity, so my temporary theory is that Hal might not be Himself's son, by blood. Rather the result of an affair of Avril's, perhaps with Pemulis' father. This theory could easily be derailed with a little more research, or confirmed if there's an instance in the book where Himself answers a phone and doesn't say "mmmyellow". And actually, just as I am typing this, I recall the physical description of Hal that occurs a couple times in the book. Darker, olive skin, very dark black hair. And now recall that Himself told Hal that his mother 'cavorted' with over 30 Arab medical attaches. Further, in the prior chapter with Himself, it's mentioned that Hal (again, even at 10) is a fan of Byzantine erotica, and in the next chapter, at the Arab med. attache's house, is a stand of Byzantine erotica. Even further, in chapter 4, with the Arab medical attache', note his conscious effor to be 'unlibidinous', and only look at a catalog of women's clothing where the women are clothed, head to toe. Now recall Hal's own seeming lack of a libido (like father like son), when later in the book he says that he's a virgin and pretty much plans to stay that way. While his brother Orin has a raging libido (perhaps not just a personal difference, but a genetic one). Evidence mounts that Hal is not a true, full-blood Incandenza. So I'm further convinced Hal is the product of an affair of Avril, but am pretty much scrapping the notion about Pemulis' father, going instead with the idea that Hal is 50% Arab.

With the last 2 paragraphs in mind recall that Infinite Jest the film, the sazmidat, features a pregnant mother who is also Death. And Himself made this film to reach Hal, on the subject of mothers. i.e. Hal's mother, and the truth about her.

Also in an early chapter Hal converses w/ Mario about Himself's death, and Avril not seeming sad after he died. Mario keeps saying "hey Hal?" while Hal is talking. This could be another case of Hal believing he's speaking out loud when he isn't, because Mario keeps repeating 'Hey Hal?' after he had asked a series of questions, while Hal seems to be addressing those questions. So either Mario, being in some senses simple/slow, is just repeating himself trying to get Hal's attention, but it seems more likely now that Hal just isn't speaking, but believes he is. The first time reading through it seems maybe that Mario is just naive re: the Moms, but in a second read through it seems possible that she just really wasn't sad. That in fact she likely contributed in some way to Himself's death and had nefarious intentions re: his work.

Recall also Avril's affair with John Wayne, both Canadian. Recall John Wayne, wearing a mask, ALSO present at the site of Hal and Gately digging up Himself's head. Perhaps wearing the smiley-faced mask of the AFR. John Wayne is the best young tennis player alive (or close to it), so it's concievable he's so athletic that he is able to dodge trains so well that he is the lead, young member of the organization that feeds members to the AFR. And is embedded at ETA as a spy, or secret operative.

Infinite Jest: The Film

Infinite Jest is clearly influenced heavily by film. Many of the sequences are highly filmic in nature. Some of the surreal elements of the novel are reminiscent of David Lynch's work. And of course, the central driving plot element around which everything revolves is a film. Much of the content of Infinite Jest deals with films and directing, specifically everything involving James Incandenza. Him directing films, people watching and interpreting those films, etc. Certainly one of the central themes of the novel is entertainment and why we watch what we do, what it says about us, etc.

With all that said, an adaptation of Infinite Jest for the screen would seem inevitable, right? Well, not really. Much of IJ is so overtly literary in nature that it just couldn't be made into a film and retain all of it's structure, power, meaning, etc. However, I do think you could make a film of the central narrative threads of IJ. It just couldn't really be what IJ the novel is. But it could be something very cool, unique, intelligent and entertaining.

Some of the most filmic elements of IJ (mild spoilers):
* The opening chapter. Use of perspective so that Hal's seeming external dialogue is revealed to really be internal dialogue, and the 'switch-over' that comes at that moment. Would be tricky but could definitely be done.
* Eschaton. Like a microcosmic Lord of the Flies meets War Games. It would be awesome.
* Gately destroying the 'Nucks. This is a no-brainer. Gately could be played by Mickey Rourke. Think of a less-cartoonish version of his character from Sin City. Big, sensitive oaf, who is capable of mass destruction out of loyalty, duty or in defense of others.
* James Incandenza's visiting Gately's hospital bedside.
* Hal at the 12-step meeting near the end. It's kind of a Fight Club-esque scene (beginning of Fight Club), but more surreal and absurd than those in FC. And of course it would be hilarious.
* The mildly futuristic elements, i.e. IWD dumpsters being launched into the convexity, ATHSCME fans in background etc.
* All of the wheelchair assassins movements and activities

And many other parts, but with these sticking out particularly in my mind.

There are some things that could be omitted without losing too much. Such as long chapters about ancillary characters/events. These are necessary in the novel and don't feel like excess at all, but for length purposes chapters about Ederdy, Kate Gompert, the psychological reasons behind the failure of videophony, obsessive technical detail about everything, a shortened meeting between Marathe and Steeply etc. Much of this stuff is extremely well done and adds depth and texture to the novel, but would be simply untenable in a film.

I Survived Infinite Jest!

The ending of the novel is pretty spectacular, almost as much for what isn't there as for what is. So many questions in terms of the narrative and what happens, exactly, are left open ended. Questions drive the intrigue in the narrative throughout the book. Elements, characters, places, events are introduced abruptly and without much background, which immediately leads to questions. Infinite Jest is continually hitting us with questions and shrouding the answers in mystery. Why is Hal the way he is in the opening chapter? Who is Joelle van Dyne? Why does she wear a veil? Why do members of AFR have no legs? Who are John Wayne and Don Gately, and why do they go with Hal to dig up Hal's father's head? Some of these questions are introduced early in the narrative and most of them get answered, either fully or partially, as the book moves along. These questions are always lurking in our mind, and as we get answers, more mystery is injected. But the pacing, and structure of the question/answer ratio keeps your senses fully alert at all times. The narrative is wonderfully structured.

Yet, even after the last page is read, many other questions that have since been introduced, have gone 'unanswered', at least directly. Certainly this is for a reason, and with explicit purpose. I'd like to list some of the questions that are foremost in my mind right now, just so as not to lose them. Many are very fresh in my mind, and I don't want distance to get between me and my memory of events, though the events of this book will be very difficult to forget. What a haunting, profound piece of work this is.

Questions (and therefore perhaps some spoilers):

-Did Joelle really think JOI was joking about making a 'perfect, terminal' entertainment? If not, why lie to Steeply about it? If she's not lying, how come his film really DOES have that affect? Or is she just confused?

-Is there some supernatural, or meta- connection between Hal and Gately? Or any other type of connection? They're effectively the 2 central characters, yet they never meet within the events of the book. Hal mentions digging up JOI's head w/ Gately at beginning of novel, presumably looking backwards. Gately envisions that same scene near the end of the novel, presumably in a premonition, looking forwards (see: 'annular' nature of book, below). Also, Gately, when feverish from pain, has ghostwords come to his mind which only Hal would know and use. Or perhaps they're just JOI injecting the ghostwords.

-Why does JOI's ghost have interest in Gately? Just because Joelle does? As a wraith he had to wait a long time to interface w/ Gately. Why does he care about Gately? Gately killed DuPlessis, then later beat up some other separatist 'nucks (both accidentally), so perhaps JOI sees him as some important player in the intercontinental struggle, or whatever it is. JOI himself also seems to be a key political player, and also in an incidental, indirect way.

-Hal seems to have near out of body experiences. Is this JOI's ghost pulling him out of his body, like, by force? As JOI attempted to do in life with the samizdat? That is; JOI feels Hal is an empty shell of a person, which mirrors Himself. That's what drove him to suicide; Hals anhedonia, and soberly seeing a reflection of himself in Hal. He wanted to bring him out of the shell w/ the sazmidat and failed and now wants to bring him out so he haunts ETA and Hal?

-Did Hal end up dropping DMZ w/ Pemulis? He didn't seem very interested in the idea in his last interface w/ Pemulis. If not, what caused his condition? His condition goes far beyond simple marijuana withdrawal (animal noises, seizures, disconnect between his outward actions and what takes place in his mind i.e. not realizing he's hysterically laughing when he is, thinking he's answering a question eloquently when he's making animal noises and flailing about). Possibly a delayed effect of the samizdat? Why is Hal immune to the samizdat? JOI's ghost claims he showed it to him. Perhaps Hal's being possessed by JOI? Some of the 'symptoms' that Hal exhibits are starting to show before the chronologically later events of chapter 1. That is; Hal is already experiencing disconnect between his inner and outer self (laughing hysterically, not realizing he is). So at least THAT aspect of how he's behaving in chapter 1 can't be explained by him possibly dropping DMZ, but rather by something that has already happened or is happening. Though the seizures/noises could still be attributed dropping DMZ, which I think is most likely (Hal: "Call it something I ate").

-Orin and Avril?

-Is the adult 'Mikey' at the end of novel at AA an adult Pemulis? A flash-forward? I assumed so. Though the adult Mikey is such a dullard, and Pemulis was pretty sharp.. but perhaps that fact is supposed to illustrate the degenerative effects of the drug use.

-Why is AFR (and everyone else) so concerned about a master copy of the samizdat? They already have copies to use to kill people with. It's unlikely, and there's no reason to believe there is, any 'antidote' to be found.

-Who does Hal see outside sitting in the snow on exhibition day? It seemed as though it was a person of importance, but nothing comes of it.

Thoughts:

-Annular fusion ('annular' means having to do with rings) is a theme throughout the novel (the way ONAN is seemingly energy dependent through this process of waste-energy recycling, that JOI invented). Cycles and circles recur throughout the novel as well. This all seems to be a metaphor for the structure of the novel itself, which also seems to be circular in nature. As soon as the novel is completed you feel a very compelling need to go back and read Ch. 1, and when Ch.1 is done you feel like just going on to Ch. 2 again etc. Even though you just took multiple months and countless hours to read this novel once to begin with. Clearly Wallace has structured the novel to be 'annular', intentionally, as a kind of literary samizdat in structure. This isn't much of a revelation; the title of the book is the same as the title of the samizdat. Clearly the novel functions as a meta-novel in various ways, and this is one of them.

- JOI didn't like AA because AA didn't tolerate his abstraction. Hal goes to check out AA, but his nature is that of JOI's, and he has a similar aversion to it. Parent-child cycles, and more allusions to the 'annular' themes within the novel. The 12-step meeting that Hal attends is so bizarre and surreal I'm tempted to think that JOI's ghost is attempting to steer Hal away from it, encouraging Hal to use so that he can go on 'functioning', and making him see the meeting as more bizarre than it actually is. JOI's quitting alcohol, combined with a sober view of his son and himself, is what drove him to suicide. So now he is trying to 'save Hal', and he knows, or believes, that Hal needs substances to function. And Hal does, seemingly, need them to function competitively, and possibly just in general.

-Connected with this, after Gately comes into contact with JOI's ghost, at the very end of the novel he starts reliving past memories of drug use. He says he's doing this to 'Abide', and I don't know much about recovery personally, but it seems to me that dwelling on past drug use is not a healthy, normal part of recovery. JOI could be functioning as an agent of 'the Disease' to Gately.

-Wallace has referred to 'Infinite Jest' as a 'failed entertainment'. In the novel James Incandenza moves from area to area in life, after he 'masters' something he takes up a new challenge. He ended his life still directing films because he never became a successful filmmaker, Hal says. 'Infinite Jest' the novel was intended to be the "perfect entertainment", but Joelle says this was tongue-in-cheek.

On Eschaton

I'm 91% done with Infinite Jest and I'd like to make a rough theory about the end of the novel before I get there and see if my theory has any predictive power. My theory is basically this: that the Eschaton game, somewhere in the middle of the novel, is an allegory for the structure of the novel Infinite Jest, specifically w/r/t the ending. It just so happens that I read Surprised by Hope concurrently with IJ, and in Surprised by Hope the subject of 'eschatology' is addressed. 'Eschatology' is the study of the end of things, finality, death, judgement etc. I was unfamiliar with the term until I read Surprised by Hope, and shortly thereafter I read the 'Eschaton' chapter of IJ. I don't recall whether within the Eschaton chapter there are any references to the root of the word 'Eschaton' or whether the game itself is said to have anything to do with endings, but it's my stance that it likely does. Not just endings in general, but with the end of Infinite Jest

So given this, what can I predict about the end of the novel? Only some rather vague things. But within 'the map' of Eschaton, in this particular run of the game, it doesn't reach a logical conclusion. Presumably previous years of Eschaton games did end orderly, and logically, within the map of the game. But in this run, the end game is approaching within the map of the game, elements are aligning, the end is approaching, and before we get there chaos erupts outside of the map, and prevents the game from ending within the map. The game does abruptly end, but not due to the rules and the parameters of the game. Thus the real elements of the game are left in limbo. All the while Hal is observing this and is dumbstruck, frozen, watching the events occur as though there is something profound about them that he can't pinpoint.

All this leads me to believe that certain narrative elements will be drawing to what seems to be a conclusion within the novel (i.e. within 'the map'), and that Hal will likely transcend the narrative in some meta- way and observe them from 'outside' the parameters of the novel itself. That the narrative elements won't reach what seems to be their inevitable, logical conclusion, but will rather abruptly end due to 'external' forces (i.e. some meta- consideration).

Recall that the beginning of the unraveling of this game of 'Eschaton' was snow falling in real life onto 'the map'. 90% through the novel and snow has just begun to fall on E.T.A. Insane amounts of snow. I had already suspected 'Eschaton' was an allegory for the end of the novel, but the snowfall just triggered that suspicion.

As to Hal transcending and being, or becoming, external to the events of the novel, there are some hints that something along these lines is occuring already. Feverish Don Gately (within 'the map'), is becoming conscious of words that only Hal (or maybe Avril) would know and use. Is Hal the author of the novel Infinite Jest that we are reading, perhaps as a tribute to his father, attempting to create a literary sazmidat? And inserting himself as a God like figure into the narrative? Clearly the language used by the author of Infinite Jest is language that Hal, and perhaps only Hal, would use. Note that the author of the novel we are reading uses phrases that the characters themself use. The author refers to people 'eliminating their map' when referring to suicide or homicide. He uses 'interface' colloquially, as do the characters within the novel. As well as various other phrases and words that only people within the world of Infinite Jest use. And, of course, the author has a massive vocabulary, as does Hal. Also, single, rather than double, quotation marks are used throughout the novel, perhaps to indicate that the entire novel is in double quotes, i.e. DFW quoting Hal, Hal the author of the largely autobiographical Infinite Jest. Recall the end of chapter one, where someone asks Hal "What's your story?" I don't know about any of this exactly; it's all very highly speculative, especially since I'm not done with the novel, but it does seem to make a lot of sense.

Infinite Jest's Structure/Length as Metaphor for Life/Addiction

I found a funny old 'review' of the book, that is highly ironic in light of the chapter I just read. Here's an excerpt from the non-review review:

"It sits there like a dare, like a reproach, like a doorstop. It is 1,079 pages long. It's a terrific book, I'm sure -- all the other reviewers tell me so. But right now INFINITE JEST (Little, Brown, $29.95), the defiantly dense new novel by the intriguing young writer David Foster Wallace, sits on my desk like an infinite burden. I cannot lift the thing to crack its wonders, and I'm beginning to despair.

Carrying the 3-pound, 2.7-ounce book to read while commuting is out of the question; I might as well heft dumbbells in my backpack. Propping it on my knees to read in bed or in the bathtub is tricky: Too much concentration and left-hand grip strength is needed to prevent the tome from toppling over while turning the pages. It is occasionally possible to read 20 or 30 pages at a clip while sitting at home in a special chair, but then I look up, realize there are 900 or 600 or even 400 pages to go, and fall into profound dyspepsia, longing for an unedited Joan Collins manuscript. Skimming isn't possible. Reading the last page first reveals nothing."

I definitely sympathize with the reviewer's sentiments (though, thanks to Kindle, my version isn't as impenetrable, physically). I'm about 89% through the book now, months after I started it, and interestingly just as I read this review Infinite Jest responds to the criticism within it's own narrative, metaphorically. Don Gately, a recovering alcoholic, talks about a time when he had to do jail time and was forced into white-knuckle withdrawal, and the only way he could endure it was to live inside of every second. In this section he's looking back on the experience from a hospital bed where he has to endure intense pain, and again can only get through it one second at a time. If he thinks about the millions of seconds that lie ahead of him lined up, each second filled with pain, the idea of that pain, for that amount of time, becomes almost unendurable. But each second in and of itself is not unendurable. And he talks about times that he or others had relapsed, or people that he know committed suicide, and how those things happen because that person was not living in the now, but was getting too far ahead of themselves. Another character talks with Gately about this and says how she used to count her days of sobriety, and after she got to a certain number of days, say 14, the idea of 100 more days, or 800 more became too frightening, and caused her to relapse. [note the structural similarity of the sentence I just wrote to the bolded sentence of the review]. Which is why, for the addict, and properly understood, the AA slogan 'One Day At a Time' isn't a trite cliche, but is actually kind of profound. You do have to take it one day at a time, literally. Or one page at a time, as it were.

I can't really do justice to the chapter in summary, but the advice it gives for dealing with the daunting task of life and/or addiction can be translated to dealing with the daunting task of reading Infinite Jest. I don't know if the intention was to anticipate and preemptively respond to critics of the novel's length in some meta- fasion, but it does function on that level whether it was intended to or not, which I found interesting.

David Foster Wallace on Cormac McCarthy

Just stumbled across this conversation between the two and found this part of the interview interesting since Cormac McCarthy is my favorite living American author, Blood Meridian is my favorite book of his, and Wallace is quickly becoming one of my favorite modern writers.


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GVS: Who are some of your favorite writers?

DFW: You're really wielding the old baton on this aren't you? To be honest... my faves?

GVS: Yeah.

DFW: Ones that people don't know all that well? Oh, that's right this is a British magazine so they won't have heard of a lot of these. Cormac McCarthy, have you read "Blood Meridian"? It's literally the western to end all westerns. Probably the most horrifying book of this century, at least fiction. But it is also, this guy, I can't figure out he gets away with it, he basically writes King James English, I mean, he practically uses Old English thou's and thine's and it comes off absolutely beautifully and unmannered and ungratuitous. He's got another one called "Suttree," God that one, God that would make a fantastic movie.

GVS: (perks up) What's it called?

DFW: It's called "Suttree."

GVS: How do you spell that?

DFW: S-u-t-t-r-e-e. It came out, oh golly, mid 70s. But it's about a down and out college educated man named Cornelius Suttree who has kind of abandoned everything to live in a houseboat in Knoxville, Tennessee in the late 40s and early 50s and all of his friends in his entire world are derelicts and retards and twisted people. It's about four hundred pages of the most dense lapidary prose you can imagine about characters who are at the level of functional idiots and are drinking rot-gut. "Suttree" is the book that got him a MacArthur grant and he used the MacArthur to go to Mexico and do the research for "Blood Meridian."

Infinite Jest excerpt

I'm 72% through Infinite Jest. So far it's been a thoroughly entertaining and engaging read. Wildly different than any other novel I've read, and experimental in a way that works incredibly well. The structure is somewhat similar to other pieces of literature and film we're all familiar with. With a sprawling cast of characters with seemingly disconnected lives and plot lines that come to intersect and intertwine in various ways. What is wholly original is Wallace's dense, intelligent writing style, narrative gear shifts, the complex characters, and the genius ways in which the characters stories intersect.

Anyway, came across a passage today that I thought I'd share:

It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip—and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naїveté on this continent (at least since the Reconfiguration). One of the things sophisticated viewers have liked about J.O. Incandenza’s The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naїveté is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it’s natural that Himself’s dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly consistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naїveté are mutually exclusive. Hal, who’s empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naїve and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he’s lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.

Infinite Jest - Half Way review

I'm about half way through Infinite Jest and considering what a behemoth the thing is I figure I should review the first half, because by the time I finish this thing I may well have forgotten a lot of the first half. In fact, the fact that I haven't forgotten the stuff I started reading a month+ ago (i.e. the beginning of the book) is a testimony to the solid plotting and structure of the narrative. Despite the dense and complex prose the narrative builds well. And takes us into a near-future world quite like our own, but slightly different.



I was worried that, being such a notoriously difficult piece to get through, specifically the narrative would be just as dense and complex as the language that's used to deliver it, but it really isn't. Given the avant-garde reputation of the novel, again, I was worried that disparate story pieces might remain separate, but again, so far they haven't. Each narrative piece that is introduced does seem to be, initially, completely isolated from each other piece. We have the story of a tennis player named Hal, who is also a language-savant, applying for admission to a university; the story of his family (the Incandenzas) who own and run a Tennis academy; the story of a heroin fiend on the streets of Boston; the story of a Muslim man watching a mysterious video cartridge (which is really more about the cartridge than about the man) and dying; the story of a wheelchair-bound Quebecois separatist (to the North American union that has been formed between Canada-USA-Mexico), and the cross-dressing spy undercover 'reporter'; the story of Madame Psychosis; and, introduced pretty late in the first 50%, AA member Don Gately. Just to name a few of the major ones. And as each storyline is introduced you kind of feel like you're starting all over, fresh, without any back story because they seem so unrelated at first. If you stick with it you will be rewarded. Every story I've mentioned has intersected with every other one in various important, interesting ways, though it did take a while before the inter-relatedness took full shape. And when they do there is clarification as to the purpose of the story thread in the first place. Now, I'm only half way through the book, so just because the stories intertwine and cross each other doesn't necessarily mean there will be a traditional pay off or resolution of these various story elements. All I'm saying is that it's not so abstract and arty that the story lines don't even relate at all, or that they relate in some obtuse, uninteresting way. The narrative, thus far, has a structure that is not unfamiliar.

All that being said the composition of the sentences and paragraphs themselves is almost wholly alien. Wallace has a style all to himself. He floods you with massive amounts of information, details, history, technical jargon (some real, some fictional), foreign acronyms, made-up words, fictional colloquiallisms and slang, real slang etc. and delivers them in run-on sentences with really unconventional structure and phrasing. Often before you even have a basis for understanding much of any of it. Not to mention the POV from which the story gets told often switches from one person to another, and thus the style changes with it.

Another unconventional technique he uses are footnotes. Of course nonfiction employs the use of footnotes all the time, but Wallace uses it not only as a fictional use of a nonfiction device, but also embeds lengthy narrative elements, often deserving of chapters unto themselves, into the footnotes. This adds to the disconnected, nonlinear nature of the story. Reading this book on my Kindle makes the footnotes easier to deal with though, as whenever you come to one you just click it and it whips you to the spot in the 'back' of the book, and brings you right back when you're done.

I have been finding the book exceedingly interesting because many of the details, and subplots relate to interests of mine. It deals with, among many other things, applied game-theory mathematics to geopolitical situations (in a hilarious way), philosophy, economics, politics in general, film theory, language etc.

The last thing I will mention is that the style the story is written in, though at times maddening, does serve a purpose. When you read it you can almost feel your brain tingling. And in order to get through the book at all you have to have certain obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and the way the book is written and structured brings these tendencies out. And since the book is mostly about human nature specifically as it relates to things such as addiction and compulsion, then if you get through the book, you get an idea of what exactly the book is talking about. Obsessive-compulsive content, written in an obsessive-compulsive manner, by an obsessive-compulsive mind requiring obsessive-compulsive tendencies to read and relate.

An extra word about the first chapter. In reading it the first time I was pretty blown away. It's a really awesome chapter even though the first time you're reading it you're not exactly sure what's going on. It features a brilliant switch-over moment that is one of the best I've ever encountered in fiction. And the moment is intense and awesome even the first time through. But looking back on the chapter in retrospect you see it in different light as the story progresses (as you do of most of the material that is presented early on), and when you realize what was going on there, that is awesome also.