Infinite Jest #2

Entry Two

Ughhhhhh why is this book like thisssss ughghhghghahksldahsdlaknc

I read another fifty-six pages (I'm now on p. 105) but I have also read 43 endnotes so in actuality I have read about one thousand pages or however many pages it takes to make a person sigh audibly and ask why exactly he needs to know the chemical composition of various hard drugs ('drines, tranquilizers, MDMA, et. al) or how deep down the Pump Room is on the engineering diagram of the Enfield Tennis Academy -- it's 20 meters down, this Pump Room, well below ground and as such now we must read a description re: the ventilation system used therein -- when reading a novel ostensibly about -- well, actually, I don't know what this book is about; things are happening, but they're all disparate events that haven't yet melded into an overarching narrative but still I have read one hundred and five pages.

Most sentences in Infinite Jest are, at least structurally, like that one. One endnote is a god damn filmography for a character just then-introduced. James Incandenza, aka Himself, is the father of Hal, Mario, and Orin. Hal is a student at the E.T.A., Mario's a bit older and somehow physically disabled, and Orin is the guy with the anxiety and a house full of roaches. I think Hal is probably the "main character" but I don't feel confident in that. ANYWAY, Dr. James Incandenza (a polymath primarily interested in optical physics and mathematics: Don't worry, there are endnotes explaining set theory for the uninitiated) made like a ton of movies and his filmography is listed in the back of the book. It is moderately funny. One of the movies he made is titled Infinite Jest; he tried to make it five times. All copies are "lost," but the fifth one (probably) exists as something known as The Entertainment. I think that's the crux of the book.

The Entertainment is a film that people cannot stop watching. If it's on in your presence, you watch it over and over again, to the neglect of everything else in your life. Eating, drinking, not pissing yourself, every other facility of your daily existence is tossed out the window in favor of watching this film. Eventually, you die. A medical attaché stumbles upon this movie and he -- and everyone else who enters the room before they cut the power, some 23 people, only a few related to the attaché, the rest being policemen and other various kinds -- dies of a slow starvation.

Gately, a drug addict, robs a home. Mid-burglary, the owner exits his room and startles Gately. The owner has a head cold (grippe, as Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents would say) and so when Gately gags him (so he can't shout) he actually winds up preventing the poor guy from breathing at all. Gately finishes robbing, leaves quickly, and the fella dies. Clears a nasal passage temporarily by violently exhaling -- ripping ligaments in his chest -- but then it clogs up again and he's in too much pain to clear the other nostril so he just dies. It's kind of gross but I read The World According To Garp a month ago and as such I am impervious to graphic literature.

Additionally

• Hal gets high in the Pump Room pretty regularly; DFW takes this opportunity to weigh the pros and cons of various marijuana inhalation devices, ruling that one-hitters are the most efficient because they do not waste any product. Pipes, for example, often have "party bowls" that burn off too much smoke.
• A woman tries to kill herself and ends up in a hospital; she describes her depression and anxiety in a detailed, harrowing way: Like a sick-to-your-stomach feeling over your whole body that won't go away and you're certain it will never go away and it's always been there. She begs for electro-shock therapy, something DFW opted for before eventually hanging himself. Jesus Christ.
• There's a scene in a rehabilitation center where a man turns the air conditioning up to 9 and stares at it all day in November.
• One of Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents -- a Quebecois separatist group, literally "Wheelchair Assassins" -- is operating as a quadruple-agent. He's in the AFR (single agent), giving (allegedly fraudulent) information to the Office of Unspecified Services, betraying the AFR (double) but the AFR knows about it and thinks he's pretending to betray them (triple) but guess what he's actually betraying them (quadruple). Mind, this character existed for roughly one page before all of this happened. It's explained over two endnotes.

I will not finish this book in a month, but I will buy my own copy -- in hardcover -- and put it on my shelf because I am going to finish this book.

Also I really do love it; I know I write angrily about it, but I feel as though it wouldn't be the same book if it didn't challenge and aggravate me. If nothing else, I look erudite reading it on the T.

Infinite Jest #1

Entry One

Guys. Fuck. I'm on page forty-nine, guys. I need to read over 30 pages per day if I want to return this to the library on time and this is my third day with the book and after I read it before bed tonight I'll probably be on page 60. I mean, yeah, I can extend it, but that's admitting defeat. One needs a strict schedule to read Infinite Jest and if I don't stick with the schedule I'll lapse and oh god when Erdedy is waiting for the woman to come with the weed and who the HELL is Erdedy who is this woman where is she she said she'd come.

I do not know who Roy Tony is but that shit with Reginald was unreadable. It actually exhausted me just taking in sentences like "Reginald he come round to my blacktop at my building where me and Delores Epps jump double dutch and he say, Clenette, Wardine be down at my crib cry say her momma aint treat her right, and I go on with Reginald to his building where he live at, and Wardine be sit deep far back in a closet in Reginald crib, and she be cry." I DON'T KNOW WHO ANY OF THOSE CHARACTERS ARE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT INTRODUCED THEM I NEED TO GO TO WORK IN THE MORNING PLEASE

Why, yes, I will get a second bookmark and leave it in the back for the endnotes.

Ugh the roaches. Why. There are roaches in Orin's place. I hate roaches. "Armored-vehicle-type bugs." This made me laugh really hard, though:

Roaches gave him the howling fantods. The parishes around N.O. had been having a spate or outbreak of a certain Latin-origin breed of sinister tropical flying roaches, that were small and timid but could fucking fly, and that kept being found swarming on New Orleans infants, at night, in their cribs, especially infants in like tenements or squalor, and that reportedly fed on the mucus in the babies' eyes, some special sort of optical-mucus -- the stuff of fucking nightmares, mobile flying roaches that wanted to get at your eyes, as an infant -- and were reportedly blinding them; . . . 

btw that last sentence has another one hundred and nine words in it. I counted them, just now. This is my hell.

I think it goes without saying that I love this book. It's really great. Hal is great. I really like his character a lot. That Moms is a prescriptivist grammar advocate makes me feel smart 'cause I know what that is after reading that essay in Consider The Lobster. Plenty of Boston locale shout-outs, too, including a Tufts student center.

Also, that last paragraph on page 42, with Orin's morning; that's what agoraphobic anxiety feels like. Nailed it, DFW.

Tell me: is The Year Of Glad before or after The Year Of The Depends Adult Undergarment? This story isn't being told chronologically and it upsets me. Is there going to be a timeline for this thing? Maybe an endnote has some sort of graph for when this is all happening.

Earlier, someone asked me what the book is about. I honestly have no idea. People seem to spend a lot of time having panic attacks, using drugs, and watching entertainment devices. Life, I guess.

Jay Z Is Like Van Exel

"Oh, god dammit," you say. "There weren't any new posts for a month and I was happy 'cause I figured maybe you'd given up on your pseudo-intellectual literary masturbation."

NOPE JUST MOVED TO A NEW PLACE AND DIDN'T HAVE INTERNET FOR A WHILE. I'M BACK^[1] AND BETTER THAN EVER.^[2]

Since moving out of my old (college) apartment and into my new (yuppie) apartment I've read the following things:

• The Sirens Of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Bobby Henderson^[3]
• Killing Yourself To Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman
• Galapagos, also by Kurt Vonnegut
• I have a copy of Vonnegut's Jailbird from the Cambridge Public Library^[4] but I won't read it. I only got it while I was waiting for the library to get . . .
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace^[5] and now that they have a copy for me I'm gonna go right for it.

I did not write posts about those books as I read them; I figured, "Hey, I don't have Internet, so I'll just keep reading. I'll write the posts later." I was lying. I'll probably do a post about The Sirens Of Titan later -- and Galapagos, too, 'cause it was good -- but I'll have to pass on writing a bunch about "Spaghetti."

I liked "The Gospel," don't get me wrong, but it was really short and I can summarize it by saying this:

Intelligent Design is not based on evidence, and we should not be teaching anyone anything in science class that isn't evidence-based. It's not about God or religion, it's about the quality of the education we're giving children. Believing it is fine; teaching it as though it has as much scientific weight as evolution is just wrong, and teaching one evidence-less "alternative theory" (ID) opens the door for others (Pastafarianism, The Invisible Pink Unicorn, etc.).

You guys may notice that I'm sort of abandoning the list of recommended books you gave me a few months ago. You're right. I have it bookmarked, though, and I'll get back to it eventually.^[6] I'm sticking with Vonnegut for a while 'cause he's awesome, and Infinite Jest will actually take me a month to finish.^[7]

I have read Killing Yourself To Live four times now.^[8] I used to think that Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs was better than Killing Yourself To Live. I was wrong. They're not even close, actually, but I think it's pretty weird how I've just now come to this realization. I don't know why my opinion changed, but I do know why "KYTL" is better:^[9]

Why Killing Yourself To Live Is Much Better Than Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs Or Why Ian Was A Big Dummy

1. "KYTL" has all of the things I like about Chuck Klosterman's writing (the culture references, the digressions, the laugh-out-loud humor) without the sort of shitty parts (I can't get through an essay about Subject X because I don't care about Subject X; all of his novels' characters talk exactly like him). It is a perfect primer for what he's about and what he does that's appealing. Dude names his rental car The Tauntaun. C'mon.
2. It's not an essay collection. This is kind of an extension of the first point, but to be more explicit: There's an essay in "Sex/Drugs" entirely about the Real World and what it represents. If you don't like the Real World, you will not enjoy that essay. There are also essays about Billy Joel's ethos^[10] and Saved By The Bell. I like those things (analyzing the hell out of pop music, shitty 90s television) but the essays are superfluous.
3. Killing Yourself to Live's plot is very, very good. Chuck goes on a cross-country road trip to visit places where rock stars have died, but it's mostly a memoir about the experience rather than a list of "Well, here's where Kurt Cobain swallowed a shotgun shell; here's where Buddy Holly's plane went down. What do those events mean?" In the beginning of the book he pulls an Eggers and explains the central theme -- his interactions with three women, with two of whom he's involved in ultimatums -- and I finally got it this time. It was cool.
4. There's a section of the book (maybe a few paragraphs) where he explains his infatuation with Beyonce's (then-new) "Crazy In Love." I had forgotten this part existed. High School Ian did not care about Beyonce, really. Yuppie Ian often wants to write about why her (now sort of-new) "Countdown" is the epitome of pop music, so reading this section with fresh eyes made me feel cool.^[11]

This was a long one, huh? I'm gonna pick up Infinite Jest tomorrow. I am excited.

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[1] This is true.↩

[2] This is not true; though I don't remember fourth grade, I assume that I was a King.↩

[3] My Mom bought this for me for my birthday. Did I say that in a previous post? I think I did. Eh.↩

[4] Socialism!↩

[5] Specifically the version with the Dave Eggers foreword so I may reach the ultimate in pretension.↩

[6] Don't hold me to this. I read the books I wanna read! I'm a big kid now! It's my party and I'll cry if I want to!↩

[7] It's almost 1,100 pages long and -- frankly -- I have shit to do.^[*]↩

[8] Sophomore year of high school; the summer before entering college; the following summer;^[+] a week ago.↩

[9] I recommend both of these books, by the way. In the past I would have said to start with "Sex/Drugs" but that's just bad advice. READ ON, AUDIENCE.↩

[10] Chuck uses the word "ethos" all of the time. (He says "all of the time" a lot, too, but -- like -- I'm my own man, dammit.)↩

[11] "Cool" insofar as I have the same thoughts about pop music as a "hipster" rock critic who ends almost all of his chapters with some variation of the sentence, "I am alone."↩

[*] That Mitchell And Webb Look is on Netflix in its entirety.↩

[+] On Long Beach Island, I think.↩