Rereading Infinite Jest: The Beginning

In my last Lescaret post way back in February, referring to Infinite Jest, I wrote:

"There is so much in this book, so much extraordinary writing, so many vivid descriptive phrases, that reading it only a single time seems inadequate."

Today I set out to remedy the inadequacy of having read it only once.

Two close accomplices, ND and LL, and I have agreed to take on this enigmatic and confounding masterpiece, reading it concurrently and sharing thoughts & comments via email. We're reading the paperback 20th anniversary edition from Back Bay Books (February 2016). All pagination references pertain to this edition and the novel itself will be referred to subsequently as IJ.

Neither ND and nor LL have read IJ before but both are familiar with DFW and have read some of the non-fiction.

I read IJ more than four years ago (see Infinite Vocab 101 and 1,079 Pages, in Paperback). Fascinated with the enormity of the novel, I wanted to know more about its author. Some would argue for the separation of art from artist, that great art stands alone, irrespective of its creator, and should be approached that way. Less ideologically committed, I always want to know the memoiristic details of my author heroes and mentors. I want to understand the Artist in relation to her Art; therefore, I want to know both - the art and the artist.

So for more on DFW, I read Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace (2010, David Lipsky) and Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (2012, D.T. Max). And dipped into The Legacy of David Foster Wallace (University of Iowa, 2012, edited by Samuel Cohen and Lee Konstantinou), and Conversations with David Foster Wallace (University of Mississippi, 2012, edited by Stephen J. Burn).

All are worth investigating, the first two in particular: The Lipsky book for its intimacy and its day-in-the-life-of qualities (in this case, week-in-the-life-of), and Max's biography for the DFW's years at Amherst College. As a note of personal connection once removed - the years DFW spent at Amherst (1980-1984) roughly coincided with my years at UMass-Amherst (1981-1985). It's not inconceivable that we passed each other more than once browsing the bookshelves of the then numerous independent bookshops in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Of course, whether you know the biographical details of David Foster Wallace or not when approaching Infinite Jest is irrelevant. In this instance, the art speaks for itself.

In the coming posts I'll visit our reading progress, list vocab words that sent me to the dictionary, cite sentences or passages of extraordinary composition, and offer general comments and insights that emerge from ND, LL, and myself as we go.

Infinite Winter

Infinite Jest turns twenty this year and, though the work emerged in the 1990s and though some of the 'advanced technology' of the time now seems old-fashioned, the novel remains relevant as well as fascinating, challenging, and ultimately rewarding to those who persevere and read the entire work.

Some folks are doing that right now. Infinitewinter.org just got underway with readers accepting the challenge of absorbing 75 pages a week (does that take into account end notes?) and sharing their thoughts and perceptions of the experience and the book.

There is so much in this book, so much extraordinary writing, so many vivid descriptive phrases that reading it only a single time seems inadequate. I underlined the following sentence in my copy when I read it, but how many sentences like it did I overlook?

"The river at dawn is a strip of foil's dull side." (pg 452 of the Little, Brown paperback).

Or this idea:

"The whole cubular building seems to Hal to hold the tensed menace of a living thing that's chosen to hold itself still." (pg 798, ibid).

The writing in Infinite Jest is the kind that dazzles, amazes, makes you laugh out loud. It's the kind of writing that doesn't need a plot.

Buildings with Integrity

Immersed in the visual. What makes one building more attractive than the one beside it? Why do cheaply made modern houses in the United States lack dignity? What makes someone like myself gravitate, visually, to the past? To the architectural imagination of two centuries ago?

Once upon a time buildings were constructed with integrity, with appreciation of the fact that they would inhabit the landscape for years, decades probably.

I am not poisoned by nostalgia.

Driving through Woo City on any given day, one is struck by the number of visually arresting structures, some fetching even in their ruinous state. The red brick. The slate roofs. The solid granite foundations. The ornamentation.

Kerouac understood this.

There is a correlation between coincidence and karma. We set out on random dérives and consider ourselves lucky to see what we've seen. At least I do. I keep close tabs on the karma factor.

Dominica in the Wake of Erika

It was only a tropical storm, not even a hurricane. But the disaster that Tropical Storm Erika visited upon Dominica is profound. The exact statistic escapes me but something like 15 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. The land could not hold it, and so fell away in muddy slides of doom.

Jungle Bay, destroyed.

Rivers, of which Dominica has hundreds, swollen beyond capacity, their surging waters washing away crucial bridges that stitch the roads together.

Petite Savanne in the southeast evacuated by sea & helicopter, the saturated slopes towering above the village unstable, potential waves of mud death.

Thirty dead, more missing.

They say that Victoria Falls has fallen.

Approaching Victoria Falls, January 2011

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit surely doesn't exaggerate when he says that the country has been set back decades by this catastrophe. I remember reading in the Caribbean Handbook from the 1990s, Dominica was considered undeveloped, a throwback island, the land where time more or less forgot.

In the late '90s and the early aughts, the travel party line was that "the Nature Isle" was up and coming, a destination. Visit now, everyone said, because it's going to change quickly.

But no one anticipated this.

Donations can be made here. Or visit this Dominica-online site for information and updates.

Update 3 from the government website. This is ongoing, and soon this update link will be out of date. Time marches on. The island will recover. Families will mourn their losses, and go on. As we all do. But that does not lessen the tragedy of Now.

Please give. Money helps sometimes. This is one of those times.

Marking Harry Crosby Death Day

The Hotel des Artistes is gone, no longer a presence at 1 West 67th St in New York City. You cannot go there looking for a trace of Harry Crosby and Josephine Rotch Bigelow, though perhaps their impetuous spirits still lurk somewhere in the vicinity. But that's doubtful. They are as gone as gone can be.

Eighty-five years ago today they set out for parts unknown. For Harry, there was the sun. For Josephine? There was Harry. For them both, today, in the 21st century, there is a general unimportant absence. There is the myth.

Myth and literary obscurity.

The longer ago the 1920s become, the more compelling that era grows. The Great War. Paris. The Jazz Age. Shakespeare and Company. The Black Sun Press. Ocean liners.

Perhaps it is the banality and cultural emptiness of the present that makes Harry Crosby such a fascinating and extraordinary artist. As Caresse Crosby described him, Harry was "electric with rebellion." Despite his madness, his violence, his ridiculous demise, he LIVED.  Briefly, yes, but with intensity, with enthusiasm, with certainty.

Harry Crosby

Searching for Ancestors in Old Calabria

Monday, October 20, 2014

ND and I traveled to Lamezia Terme in the company of Miriam and Domenico, a young Italian couple in their mid twenties with whom we'd arranged a day of exploration in Nicastro and Decolattura, the towns of ND's ancestors on her father's side. We were on a quest to discover what we could of ND's great grandfather Vincenzo DiCello, her great grandmother Rosa Perri, and her great great grandfather, Salvatore DiCello.

Miriam, bright-eyed, speaks quite good English from having worked several years for Lufthansa Airlines in Milan. She lives in the small village of San Floro where she helps raise silkworms. Domenico, a photographer, looks like a young Cat Stevens. He doesn't speak much English though understands a fair amount; he has Miriam explain that he uses film and prints his images in a darkroom he created himself. Fairly aloof, almost bored-seeming, he's the opposite of Miriam's outgoing, smiling presence yet he drives the car all day without complaint, no small endeavor given Italian city traffic and the steep & narrow mountain roads we eventually traverse.

Nicastro was once its own village but has since been absorbed into the greater sprawl of Lamezia Terme, though "old Nicastro" still exists higher up the foothills of the southern Sila Mountains. We go first to the City Hall where Miriam has already arranged for us to view Vincenzo's 1886 birth certificate.

Approaching City Hall, Lamezia Terme, Calabria

In a nondescript office on the second floor, a helpful records keeper brings out a huge old ledger book and lays it on the counter for us to examine. The birth certificate is written in beautiful flowing script of a style no longer seen and reveals that Salvatore was a farmer and that young Vincenzo was born at home on a street in old Nicastro. The functionary makes a photocopy for us but privacy rules prevent us from photographing the entry and ledger.

Outside the office of birth and death certificates

From City Hall we go to something like a cultural library where we look through archived copies of an Italian journal from the 1970s that published articles and photographs about the Lamezia/Nicastro area. We don't find any references to the DiCellos but we do see photographs of Nicastro from the early 20th century and get a visual idea of what the town was like in the years just after Vincenzo left for America in 1898.

Before embarking for old Nicastro and the search for Vincenzo's neighborhood and birth street, Via Casalnuevo, we pause for an apertivo of Campari and prosecco at a local cafe, the Bar Mexican.

Fortifying ourselves before the venture into Old Nicastro

Neither Miriam nor Domenico know exactly where to go in our quest to find the street so we start asking people, beginning with two Italian policemen. Belying the image of gruff and perfunctory street cops the world over, these two guys are happy to offer directions and engage in chit chat. It turns out that one of them actually has a DiCello in his family.

Getting closer to the old neighborhood, we ask a pedestrian for clarification on how to find Via Casalnuevo. With authority, he offers concrete directions. Great, we think, we're getting close. Then we ask another person who, also with the voice of authority, directs us in a completely different direction. This happens several times and we realize that everyone knows exactly where everything is, even when they don't. Eventually, we abandon the car and set out on foot.

Downhill proves to be the wrong direction

The consensus is to go up

After more animated discussions with various locals we come to realize that, though we're asking about a particular street, "Casalnuevo" these days actually refers to an area rather than a specific Via. It's not uncommon, Miriam tells us, that over the course of a century not only do neighborhoods change physically but so do identifying names and references. Nevertheless, Casalnuevo, street or locale, lies uphill so up up uphill we go.

It seems like we're getting close

The neighborhood is an Escher-like labyrinth of two and three hundred year old houses of stone, tile, crumbling mortar, little windows and weathered wooden doors. The aura of Medieval time suffuses everything. I imagine myself wrapped in a sackcloth parading through the byways swinging a smoking censor, intoning plainsong.

Eventually, we pinpoint a few houses on what is now Via Niola and conclude that this is Vincenzo's block. The birth certificate had referenced # 3 but as we stand there deliberating which house is which, an old woman emerges from # 9 and Miriam starts talking with her. Then a man appears from around the corner and a lively conversation ensues. Though neither can say for certain if this street was indeed Via Casalnuevo, in our hearts we accept that it is.

In Vincenzo's neighborhood

Vincenzo's stoop?

Far above, crowning the neighborhood hillside, are the ruins of a Norman castle (circa 1500) that exists in the same state of decay as when Vincenzo lived here. We marvel at the thought that these 116 years later our eyes take in essentially the same sight as Vincenzo's eyes ("nothing changes here," Miriam declares). Could such images and perceived phenomena be somehow passed down through DNA or through some heretofore scientifically unknown means? Could ND in some way possess the "knowledge" of this place by having descended from the blood and sinew of her great grandfather? We gaze around with hungry imagination trying to absorb this place that in ways we don't really understand must be part of ND, and she part of it.

The Norman castle seen from the road leading out of Nicastro
and into the Sila Mountains

Then it's on to Decollatura, a commune (as such places are known in Italy), sort of an amalgam of little hamlets high in the Sila Mountains. Decollatura is the birthplace of Rosa Perri, ND's great grandmother, an ancestor about whom ND knows almost nothing. Winding winding winding up up up into wild forest, chestnut trees in abundance, crazy switchbacks, steep! Behind us the valley falls away, a wide swath of the Lamezia Terme urban expanse and, far in the hazy distance, the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. After an hour or so of pretty much steady climbing, we level out and then descend a short distance into a valley in which sits Decollotura.

Before meandering the town in search of the old streets where Rosa Perri resided, we go to the Hotel Caligiuri which has a restaurant offering a "menu tipico a base di funghi." We are in the heartland of porcini mushrooms. The restaurant includes mushrooms in every dish. We eat porcini carpaccio, porcini risotto, tortellini in a porcini mushroom cream sauce, a thick bean soup with chunks of mushrooms.

The porcini altar

For dessert, we peel apart roasted chestnuts, warm and mealy, another regional specialty that, Miriam tells us, are just coming into season now. A rich dark café (i.e., an espresso) and a chilled glass of Amaro saves me from the soporific daze of overeating and, after photographing the mushroom shrine at one end of the now empty restaurant, we convey our deep satisfaction to the jovial host and step outside.

The cool mountain air instantly refreshes us and we set out on foot in search of old Decollatura. Walking is wonderful though the main road is narrow and lacks a sidewalk. I'm mindful of cars and keep to the farthest edge but Miriam and Domenico walk side by side in the way I've noticed Italians do, as if pedestrian rights come first and passing cars must mind them instead of the other way around.

Though tree-lined the street isn't particularly picturesque - there's a small bread maker, a gas station, a car parts store. Domenico stoops to retrieve several very large nuts, acorns from an imposing old oak tree. He shows them to us and Miriam tells us that it's normal for people to gather acorns in abundance to feed the family pig. Most Calabrian families, at least in the countryside, keep a pig that ends up as homemade prosciutto, soppressata, salami, etc. Most families also grow grapes and make their own wine, and keep gardens with many vegetables - broccoli, chard, onions, potatoes. Fruit trees abound too, figs and lemons, pears and apricots. When you eat with a Calabrese family, "local" means a few steps outside the kitchen.

Local style

We come to Piazza Perri which marks the beginning of old Decollatura. Venturing into the streets just off the square is like stepping back in time - the 19th century, the 18th century, perhaps the Middle Ages. Only the electric lines and the occasional restored facade recall the present. Narrow cobbled streets, deeply weathered stone houses two and three stories high form ancient alleyways. It's late afternoon, the lowering sun casts rich light on the stonework and on the green garden plots that edge the hillside just beyond the neighborhood lanes. It is quiet in the way that predates Modernity. A dog barks in the far distance, a church bell chimes, a rusty door hinge creaks; no motors rev, no television noise leaks from behind the house walls.

From one of the side streets steps an old wrinkled Italian woman who could have emerged from one of the old B&W photographs that we saw earlier in the day, except she's in color; a blue and white cotton dress, a gray sweater, worn black shoes. Her silvery white hair frames a weathered face with deep set, cautiously suspicious eyes.

Because we're seeking any scrap of information about the Perri family, Miriam engages her in conversation. This sets off a spirited exchange in Italian and quickly involves another elderly signora making her way up the street with the aid of a cane, and then still another woman who peers out from a house twenty or so yards up the street wondering what the commotion is. Soon the women are shouting to each other in earnest discourse, an enthusiastic musical banter like course old cellos played with worn bows.

Sharing old knowledge

We move around the corner and another wizened matriarch appears and happily offers her old wisdom to the dialog. She's dressed all in black with a green apron tied around her stout waist and her eyes twinkle with mischief.

Eliciting old wisdom

Apparently we're standing on the very block in whose houses the Perri families lived ("Perri Lane" I think). A voice shouts down from a wrought iron balcony three stories above us; a very rotund woman seemingly missing a few teeth proffers her opinion on the colloquy taking place below.

The Perri Colloquy in old Decollatura

Eventually, a middle-aged man, studious in glasses, appears and joins the conversation. His voice is soft and intelligent and though much of what he says goes untranslated by Miriam we do learn that all of the Perris are gone now, either passed away or long since departed during the three great waves of emigration that took so many Calabrians away to America and Australia. The man had studied this, it seemed; the first dispersal came at the end of the 19th century with tens of thousands heading to the United States (ND's great grandfather had been part of this one); a second one took place soon after, in the first ten years of the 20th century; and a third great departure, with many going to Australia, took place in the 1930s.

This last fact, about emigration to Australia, explains why the first two women we spoke with kept thinking that ND and I were from Australia even though Miriam explained that actually we were from the United States. To these two ancient and venerable Calabrese matriarchs, the distinction didn't matter; Australia or America, there was really no difference, both were a world away from Perri Lane.

Old Decollatura

Peter Matthiessen and I, Part One

Peter Matthiessen died on April 5, 2014 exactly seventeen years to the day after Allen Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997. Both men played significant roles in my life, one more closely and intimately than the other, but both equally impacting.

As an avid reader in the 5th or 6th grade I acquired, and read, a copy of Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark (1971). I was enthralled. That initiated a period of serious interest in the oceans, in sea creatures, in sharks. My classmate, Clarence West, and I spent hours drawing sharks and undersea divers and reefs and strange ocean life like the mola mola and the manta ray. And that interest in the ocean expanded into an interest in all wild things. Later came the yen to travel and traveling brought me to Peter Matthiessen's wonderful travel narrative, The Tree Where Man Was Born. I read that and fell in love with the idea of traveling overland through Africa (something that, 40 years later, I realize that I will never do).

Though I'm born and raised in New England, my family had relatives in the west and during many summers we would travel to Minnesota and Montana to visit relatives. Not only that but my mother was a lifetime student of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (formerly known as "Custer's Last Stand") so a sense of western-ness and American Indians and the Great Plains was in my being from early on.

I came of age politically in the early 1980s. Nicaragua and anti-nuclear power were my issues of choice. And then there was In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983) and the subsequent libel suits against Matthiessen and Viking Press and the book's suppression. I read the book and became obsessed with the case of Leonard Peltier. That is a saga of injustice that continues to this day and I'm sad thinking about Leonard Peltier in his jail cell in Leavenworth, KS thinking about Peter Matthiessen dying, PM his great advocate and defender, now gone.

I met Allen Ginsberg in the early 80s and we became lovers briefly, and good friends before and after, and stayed that way until he died. We traveled together to the Ruben Dario Poetry Festival in Managua, Nicaragua, 1986 (an experience about which I've compiled/written a book, Nicaragua Beat: Allen Ginsberg and the Sandinista Revolution, that remains unpublished). In October of 1986, Peter Matthiessen, and his lawyer, Martin Garbus, gave a talk at the PEN Club in New York about the libel cases brought against Crazy Horse. Allen Ginsberg and I went together, and I recorded the conversation. I still have the transcript of that event, it's never been published.

In the months preceding that event I attempted to meet with Peter Matthiessen and we exchanged letters. Actually, I sent letters and he replied hastily on post cards. I told him I was a journalist who wanted to write about the Crazy Horse case and Leonard Peltier and that I was a friend of Allen Ginsberg's and that I didn't want much of his time, just an hour or two or three.

In the end, we were never able to arrange a time for the two of us to sit down and talk. We did speak face to face after the PEN Club talk on October 8, 1986, and we did exchange subsequent postal communication, but that was the extent of our contact.

Though I typed up the transcript of the PEN talk, I never placed it anywhere and never wrote the long piece I'd intended to. Still, I'm grateful for having met Peter Matthiessen and corresponded with him, albeit briefly. Everything about him struck me as genuine, compassionate, straight forward, empathetic, generous. I've read many of his books since first devouring Blue Meridian. The Snow Leopard, I can honestly say, helped form my world view and my understanding of psychedelics and eastern spirituality in dramatic and everlasting ways. The Snow Leopard opened up for me the idea that a travel book could also be a deeply personal narrative, a journey inward as well as outward, a confession, a marauding questioning of reality, a pure-spirited observation of Now.

So when a close friend emailed me and told me that Peter Matthiessen had died, memories of my brief interaction with him came to mind, and I dug into my archives in search of documents or correspondence related to my attempt to write about him. Below are two postcards from him, replies to letters I sent asking about Leonard Peltier and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and wondering if or when we could meet. To his credit, he treated me with respect and cordiality and replied personally to my missives despite being exceedingly busy with more important matters than my youthful self.

First postcard from Peter Matthiessen to me, 23 May, 1986

Text of May 23, 1986 card

Text transcribed:

Dear Patrick Warner

Thank you for your
kind letter. I'm afraid
I'm too far behind
schedule to answer these
questions properly in a
letter, but perhaps we
could meet in the fall.
I'll be teaching at Yale,
but still be in NYC
once in a while
         Sincerely
         Peter Matthiessen

Second Postcard from Peter Matthiessen,
September 26, 1986

Text of card from Peter Matthiessen, Sept 26, 1986

Text Transcribed:

Dear Patrick - I'm afraid I
arrive at Yale Tues noon and
depart Wed afternoon, with 2
long seminars, ..?.. papers, +
student interviews - I have
very little time, as you suspected.
Might be better to arrange a date
in Dec in NYC, sorry - Best
Peter M