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.