Infinite Jest: Pages 17-49: Erdedy, the Howling Fantods, and the Infinite Jest Entertainment Cartridge

A lot happening. Very little overt connection. Erdedy. Wardine. The Medical Attache. Mario. Orin. The professional conversationalist. The Appropriation Artist. Oh my.

The Erdedy chapter is priceless. Erdedy is someone completely alone with his anxieties. We can all (most of us anyway) relate, if not to the anxious waiting to score weed then to the very condition however it arises of being extraordinarily anxious about something.

It wasn't that he was afraid of the dope, it was that smoking it made him afraid of everything else. (p22)

I have a new acronym to write in the margins when I encounter some phrase or passage that blows me away: HFS. It stands for Holy Fucking Shit!

The bottom half of page 22 earned an HFS, as did the sentence: The last woman had been sexy but not pretty, as the woman he now didn't want to see but was waiting anxiously for was pretty in a faded withered Cambridge way that made her seem pretty but not sexy. (p23)  HFS.

Endnote #3 earned a loud HFS.

At Random

Is Hal mute? Is the scene with the professional conversationalist (who turns out to be his own father) actually dialog that goes on in Hal's mind but that he doesn't actually say? Remember, the opening scenes of Hal's meltdown occurs when the administrators insist that Hal speak for himself - and he can't. Or doesn't. And freaks out.

What's with Wardine and the Black vernacular? (p37)

Hal, Orin, and Mario are brothers. Orin is an NFL punter. Hal a tennis prodigy. Mario the youngest, apparently disfigured or handicapped with an over-sized head.

The Medical Attache is succumbing to the Infinite Jest entertainment cartridge.

fantod (by Edward Gorey)

The howling fantods first referenced on page 45. Roaches gave him the howling fantods.

Hobbesian Sewers (p45)

Who starts a sentence like this?! And so but since the old CBC documentary's thesis ... "And so but since..." that is really ballsy. (p47)

Infinite Vocab

phylacteryish - a phylactery is a small leather box that contains Hebrew texts and that is worn by Jewish men at prayer as a reminder to keep the law. (p47)

Infinite Jest: Pages 3-17: Hal's Meltdown

Infinite Jest: Notes from Pages 3-17 

Hal's meltdown. Told in Hal's first person narrative.

Note that page 3 in the 20th anniversary paperback is actually the first page of the novel. The first phrase that grabbed my attention occurs on the first page.

"... the impermanent quality of something stamped into uncooperative material ..." (p3)

I love the idea of "uncooperative material," as if "material" had a will, as if inanimate objects have preferences or manifest purposeful resistance. And then there are these gems:

The familiar panic at feeling misrepresented ... (p8)

Jet contrail

... the defecatory posture of all athletes at rest ... (p9)

The blue sky is glassy and fat with heat ... (p15)

The jet's movement and trail seem incisionish, as if white meat behind the blue were being exposed and widening in the wake of the blade. (p16)

Infinite Vocab

IJ is a vast trove of quirky words and curious references. Keeping a dictionary handy helps the reading experience.

Kekulean Knot (p6) - a sideways reference to Friedrich August Kekule.

Brewster's Angle (p10)

presybyopic (p11) - a vision condition that develops around the age of 40 when people experience blurred near vision when reading, sewing, using the computer, etc.

creatus (p12)

enfilade (p13) - a volley of gunfire directed a long a line from one end to the other; or, architecturally, a suite of rooms with doorways in line with each other.

hypophalangial (p16) - missing one or more phalanges from fingers or toes

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