Infinite Jest #6

Entry Six

Good news! The Enfield Tennis Academy whooped Port Washington and they all got to have the Denny's Mega Breakfast at 00:30 when the three buses pulled in. I'm pretty sure Mike Pemulis spiked P.W's gatorade or something, though, 'cause one of their (Washington's) players started hallucinating pretty badly mid-match. The tennis balls were too pretty to hit, or something. He's very lewd towards his headmaster's wife. Standard ultra-acid fare.

I think these were the funniest 50 pages of the book I've read, maybe. It's definitely in a groove. I know I've said this before, but the trick with Infinite Jest is to get past the first 200 pages. The first chapter, with Hal's breakdown, is extremely good and accessible, but then it takes a huge dive into what-the-hell-is-this w/r/t its language and diction. I don't know if it's actually taken an upswing back into more mainstream readability or if I've just gotten used to it -- I remember typing this sentence before, nearly verbatim, but I do not care -- but either way it's very enjoyable now.

Anyway this section was hilarious. Of note:

1. Endnote 90, with Geoffrey Day's talk with Don Gately. Day is a newcomer to the Enfield House and I'm pretty sure he's DFW's way of inserting himself into the story a little bit. Day is a professor at a local college (Wallace taught at Emerson and then Illinois State before Infinite Jest) and he has a skeptical attitude towards AA's policies. Most telling, I think, is the way Day talks, though: He's constantly dropping clauses on clauses and using absolutely pretentious and, well, professorial language -- moreso than everyone else. There's an exchange where Day pins AA into a logical corner re: its policy that all who claim to not be dependent on a Substance are in Denial and thus in greater need of rehabilitation and Gately responds with another maxim, "Analysis Paralysis," which is basically a command to not think logically and just do. Day is not pleased.
2. The aforementioned Port Washington kid hallucinating and being escorted off.
3. Repeatedly referring to Joelle as the "Prettiest Girl Of All Time," or "P.G.O.A.T."
4. On one of Orin's punts: 'It went in the books at 40 yards, that baptismal competitive punt. It was really almost a 90-yard punt, and had the sort of hang-time the Special Teams Asst. said you could have tender and sensitive intercourse during.'
5. Poor Tony's heroin-and-codine withdrawal is very funny (and terrible, considering it ends in him seizing up on the Gray Line) but it has some choice lines, like:

'He spent the longest morbid time trying to fathom from whence all the shit came from when he was ingesting nothing at all but Codinex Plus.'

and

'In his coat and skallycap-over-scarf on Watertown Center's underground Gray Line platform, when the first hot loose load fell out into the baggy slacks and down his leg and out around his high heel -- he still had only his red high heels with the crossing straps, which the slacks were long enough to mostly hide -- Poor Tony closed his eyes against the ants fornicating up and down his arms' skinny length and screamed a soundless interior scream of utter and soul-scalded woe.'

Gettin' real dark, guys. Page 307.