Eschaton! Contrasts between children and adults, maps versus territories, real versus fake, tennis academy versus Boston AA.
I have to keep it brief this week, and but so, I’ll include one of my favorite tributed to Infinite Jest, the Decemberist’s video for The Calamity Song, an homage to Eschaton.
This week’s summer-y, taken verbatim from Infinite Summer, and not edited one jot or tittle even though I’m pretty sure I could make it better but I’m reading the e-version this week, which I don’t care for:
Page 321 — 8 NOVEMBER / YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT INTERDEPENDENCE DAY / GAUDEAMUS IGTUR: The E.T.A. students play Eschaton, The Atavistic Global-Nuclear-Conflict Gameâ„¢.
Page 343 — 8 NOVEMBER / YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT INTERDEPENDENCE DAY / GAUDEAMUS IGTUR: An exhaustive description of the Boston AA chapter and a meeting in which several speakers relate unthinkable horrors.
Chapters Read:
Page 343 — 8 NOVEMBER / YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT INTERDEPENDENCE DAY / GAUDEAMUS IGTUR: Mario’s semi-fictional film “The ONANTiad”, which documents (a) the rise of Johnny Gentle from Famous Crooner to head of the Clean U.S. Party and then President of the (then) United States; (b) the establishment of the Organization of North American Nations; (c) the creation and subsequent expatriation of the Great Con(cav|vex)ity; and (d) the origins of subsidized time.
Page 394: Lyle dispenses advice to students down in the weight room, including “don’t underestimate objects”.
Page 395: Descriptions of the James Incandeza films The Medusa vs. the Odalisque and THE JOKE.
***
The Incandenzas
James Orin Incandenza: Filmmaker, founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy, committed suicide by putting his head in a microwave over. Nicknames include Himself, The Mad Stork, and The Sad Stork.
Avril Incandenza (née Mondragon): Jame’s Widow, heavily involved in the running of E.T.A., affiliated with the Militant Grammarians. Nickname: The Moms.
Hal Incandenza: The youngest of the three Incandenza children. One of the novel’s protagonists.
Mario Incandenza: The middle child. Born with deformities; also a filmmaker (like his father).
Orin Incandenza: The elder Incandenza. A punter for the Arizona Cardinals, serial womanizer, and cockroach killer.
Charles Tavis: The head of E.T.A. since James Incandenza’s death. Avril’s half- or adoptive brother.
The Enfield Tennis Academy
Michael Pemulis: Hal’s best friend; prankster, drug dealer, undisputed Eschaton champion, and not destine for The Show.
John “No Relation” Wayne: The top-ranked player at ETA. John Wayne was discovered by James Incandenza during interviews of men named John Wayne for a film.
Other Prominent E.T.A. Students: Ortho “The Darkness” Stice, Jim Troelsch, Trevor (“The Axhandle”) Axford, Ann Kittenplan, Ted Schacht, LaMont Chu, U.S.S. Millicent Kent (tried to seduce Mario!).
Lyle: Sweat-licking guru who lives in the E.T.A. weight room and dispenses advice.
The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House
Don Gately: Former thief and Demerol addict, now counselor in residence at the Ennet House.
Joelle Van Dyne (a.k.a “Madame Psychosis and P.G.O.A.T, The Prettiest Girl of All Time”): Radio talkshow host; former lover to Orin, starred in many of James Incandenza films; wears a veil.
Kate Gompert: A cannabinoid addict who suffers from extreme unipolar depression.
Pat Montesian: The Ennet House manager.
Ken Erdedy: A cannabinoid addict.
Bruce Green: Ex-husband of Mildred Bonk-Green.
Tiny Ewell A lawyer with dwarfism who is obsessed with tattoos.
Other Prominent Ennet House residents: Randy Lenz, Geoffrey Day, Emil Minty.
Others
Hugh Steeply (a.k.a. Helen Steeply): Agent for the Office of Unspecified Services; currently in disguise as a female reporter profiling Orin.
Remy Marathe: Member of the Wheelchair Assassins (separatists) and quadruple-agent who secretly talks to Hugh Steeply.
Poor Tony Krause (P.T. Krause): Almost killed by Drano-spiked heroin, accidentally steals a woman’s artificial heart, has a seizure while in withdrawal.
Aaaand, how about that 17-page footnote about what’s going on in Canada? Which was followed by a conversation between Marathe and Steeply to give more insight into the Canadian situation.
This week’s (which is already last week’s by the time I’m typing it, ostensibly because most readers were behind, and also because I was feeling the crazytown bananapants aspect of high summer.)
So, for pages 258-351, we are getting deeper into some of the people/things that have been broached, like Orin, Poor Tony, (poor Tony, indeed) and Canadian politics.
Keep in mind that the moon symbols are chapter divisions, so what’s in them is thematically connected. For example, contrast Orin’s life with poor Tony’s. Orin, whose helicopter Moms is so compelled to not interfere that she runs out of rooms, while poor Tony’s dad declares him dead to him because of his sex and gender preferences. Orin, whose life is changed, ostensibly for the better, by a random set of circumstances. Poor Tony, who may not even survive the subway ride.
The conversation between M & S reminds me of some of the themes Jonathan Franzen, a friend/rival of DFW’s in life, explored in his novel Freedom. Unlike Infinite Jest, I will not be re-reading Freedom. I wish I could scrub my mind of it, actually, and I know at least one of the #InfiniTC readers feels simliarly (hi, Heidi!)
We see many of the continuing themes of freedom, addiction, and waste.
What did you notice, and like, from this week?
Page 258: 6 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. ETA plays Port Washington in a tennis match.
Page 270: Don Gately, now on staff at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, councils the newest resident Geoffrey Day.
Page 281: Having defeated Port Washington, the ETA gang returns home on a bus.
Page 283: All about Orin: how he made the transition from tennis to football, and his relationship with the PGOAT, Joelle Van Dyne.
Page 299: 17 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. Poor Tony undergoes a week of withdrawal, first in a dumpster then in a library restroom, culminating in a seizure while riding the train.
Page 306: 7 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. An overview of the prorectors’ weekend courses (including “The Toothless Predator: Breast-Feeding as Sexual Assault”!), plus a description of some anti-O.N.A.N. activity by the separatists (mirrors across the road). This section includes the 14 112 17-page “endnote 110”³, a conversation between Hal and Orin regarding the true motives of the separatists.
Page 312: The birth and life of Mario Incandenza.
page 317 — 30 APRIL / 1 MAY / YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: Marathe and Steeply discuss the American concept of freedom (e.g., freedom from, not freedom to).
If you, too, want this program to end, or at least stop being delivered to your home, you can go to http://apps.startribune.com/tcv/feedback.php or better, call at 612-673-7305.
The letter I sent today to the Star Tribune, about their abominable Twin Cities Values Program:
I’m the block leader for my neighborhood, and I am disappointed and even disgusted by the Twin Cities Values program. I entreat you to discontinue it.
Yesterday, I went to houses on our block to invite my neighbors to our National Night Out gathering. More than half of the houses had two TCV bags on the front walk, many soggy from recent rains.
This says to me that people do not want this item. Since it is not requested, you are foisting it on them, which even if it conforms to the letter of the law regarding solicitation, it disregards the intent. Since many do not bother to even pick it up–that’s how much they disdain and disregard it–I see clear evidence that your program is not appreciated. Please discontinue this program.
For many of the neighbors who were home yesterday, I brought the bags up to their house. Today, I went and collected the ones that were still out, and I’ve included a picture of the soggy, ugly pile. This pile would have been at least doubled if I’d done it yesterday.
Every time this program has been tried over the years, I call and ask to have my address removed. But the program starts again, I get them again, I have to call again. I called last week and was assured that for this round, the delivery would stop. I received a TCV. I called again today.
The woman I spoke to today said she was not able to give me information on who runs this program. I am disappointed in your utter lack of accountability for this literally trashy program.
I will be contacting the Better Business Bureau as well as the city, 311, and complaining to my councilperson, Kevin Reich, since you already have ignored my request this time, and haven’t carried it over from past times.
I will be posting this ugly photo on Facebook and Twitter, asking my friends and neighbors to also call to end delivery. I will also send this to the paper’s editor.
This program is a blight on Twin Cities. I think I’ve made it clear how much I despise and revile it. This does not reflect well on the Star Tribune, an institution I admire. Please, end Twin Cities Values.
Oh, I am so nerdishly excited to pick this week’s image for our section of Infinite Jest, pages 181-258, chapters 16 to 18. (I am so glad I repaginated this readalong–the one from Infinite Summer is really wack. Or is it whack?) Speaking of w(h?)ack:
Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa
[Joelle] always sees, after inhaling, right at the apex, at the graph’s spike’s tip, Bernini’s ‘Ecstasy of St. Teresa,’ behind glass, at the Vittoria, for some reason, the saint recumbent, half-supine, her flowing stone robe lifted by the angel in whose other hand a bare arrow is raised for that best descent, the saint’s legs frozen in opening, the angel’s expression not charity but the perfect vice of barb-headed love. (IJ 235)
I love Bernini, and I got to see this sculpture in person the third time I went to Rome. The first time I didn’t know to look for it. The second time it was being restored. The third time I was able to see it in all its creepy, ecstatic, lovely weirdness. And isn’t that also a good phrase to describe Infinite Jest?
We spend a lot of time with Joelle is this section, even before we know who she is, which is an interesting, slow reveal, which actually started before this section, of the kind that is easy to spoil in summaries.
But let me back up for a moment, and ask, have you ever darned socks? It’s like weaving, where the threads are initially far apart, and then they cross, then they get pulled tight into a whole. Wait a minute, maybe weaving itself is a better metaphor. Nope, I’m going with darning, because I’ve done it before, though hey, Penelope and the weaving! Anyway, darning, which is basically just weaving in a small specific area, looks like this:
That’s how I’m picturing Infinite Jest, on this, my second reading. DFW sets out a bunch of horizontal lines, then starts putting in some vertical ones that cross, then starts moving them closer together. According to Greg Carlisle’s Elegant Complexity (p20), DFW compared the book to a Sierpinski triangle, which is reinforced by that things mention on page 213 of IJ where Michael Pemulis has an “enormous hand-drawn Sierpinski gasket.” But to me, it feels like we’ve gotten all these threads that first seemed far apart, but then started to cross, and are now coming closer, and the design is becoming more evident, as in the section on tattoos in Ennet House when we learn we’ve met some of the residents before.
Madame Psychosis (a homophonic callback to the Ulysses mentions of ‘metempsychosis’) was one of the actors in the filmography of James O. Incandenza, detailed in the long and difficult note #24. MP started appearing in films during Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad.
In this section, late October of Year of the Depend Undergarment, first we heard the last part of the radio show that comes on before Madame Psychosis’. It’s an enactment of a memory of a son recounting his father’s story about seeing a memorable punt, likely by Orin, described later on page 223 as punter extraordinaire. MP is not seen by her sound engineer. She reads things over background music for an hour, and has five minutes of dead air both before and after. Her topics tend to include football, film, and physical deformities. The building they’re in is structures like a brain, compared to the heart design of Enfield Tennis Academy. Her show is intercut with scenes of Mario and Hall at Headmaster’s house listening to her show and having dinner with Avril and Tavis.
Another connection is that “Madame Psychosis” is another name for DMZ, the weird and powerful hallucinogen that Pemulis procured from some Canadians.
On 7 November YDAU (219), we meet a woman named Joelle at a party, “at the end of her rope and preparing to hang from it.” [FYI, Wallace died in 2008 after hanging himself.] We gradually learn bits about Joelle: she is from Kentucky, wears a veil, is connected to Orin and Jim and YYY, collected things in her purse on the way to the party, gave money to a guy in a wheelchair, and has an addiction with behaviors similar to Erdedy’s on page 17.
Then, like a gift from the narrator, comes a full listing of the subsidized years, and we learn what all the years stand for.
Usage nerds: What do you think the (sic) refers to in “Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade for Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems for Home, Office, or Mobile” Too many hyphens or possibly not parallel in Home, Office, or Mobile if mobile is adjective not noun?
Sweet baby Jay, I hope to never have to type that year out again.
The unfolding of Joelle’s background–e.g., it’s only on page 225 that it’s confirmed “Joelle Van Dyne, a.k.a. Madame P.”–is perhaps like the adage of a person who’s about to die seeing their life pass before her eyes.
The party is interrupted by the fake CV of Helen Steeply, then we are back to the party, and into the bathroom with Joelle, who has picked a ridiculous place to attempt suicide–the one bathroom at a party.
Why the weird interruptions?
The section ends with a conversation between Orin and Hal. We know both from what Hal has noted (he lies to Orin 60% of the time p. 136) and the section on the decline of videophony that all people are dishonest on the phone. So is he lying to Orin about any of the stuff about his father, since he admits he was lying about clipping the toenails of the second foot. Note how he dodges and feints Orin’s questions, getting in little jabs (with his talons?) about not calling or coming to the funeral. We get an explanation of how someone could commit suicide by putting their head in a microwave, and also that it might have exploded the body but left the head intact so it can be dug up in Year of Glad by Hal and Gately and John ‘No Relation’ Wayne on pages 16-17. (We learned what Wayne’s N.R. stood for this section, too.
The gradual accretion of details is strongly reminiscent of Ulysses, as was the use of words like ‘parallax’, ‘ineluct-’, ‘micturation’, and ‘telemachry’.
What did you notice, what stuck out for you? Is it becoming harder, or easier to read? Have you yet made it past whatever page (and what page was it?) when you gave up on previous reads? Did you find yourself happy to put it down, or want to keep going when you got to 258? And hey, is this entry too long?
Earlier this week I finished David Lipsky’s Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, the book, or perhaps more accurately transcript, of Lipsky’s days-long interview of DFW at the end of the Infinite Jest author tour (last stop was…Minneapolis for Hungry Mind reading and MPR interview!), and the basis for the soon-to-be-released (7/31) film The End of the Tour. It’s fascinating stuff, with lots that’s relevant to reading IJ but I can’t go into that now because I’ve got to go be a soccer mom.
Remember, comment here or tweet with the hashtag #InfiniTC. Don’t stop! Keep going!
The rest of the schedule:
Tu 7-21 discuss and tweet to 321. Stop at: 8 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. INTERDEPENDENCE DAY GAUDEAMUS IGITUR
Tu 7-28 discuss and tweet to 398. Stop at: “FREAK STATUE OF LIBERTY ACCIDENT”
Tu 8-04 discuss and tweet to 489. Stop at: PRE-DAWN. 1 MAY Y.D.A.U. OUTCROPPING
Tu 8-11 discuss and tweet to 538. Stop at: “It is starting to get quietly around Ennet”
Tu 8-18 discuss and tweet to 619. Stop at: “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Interlace TelEntertainment, 932/1864”
Tu 8-25 discuss and tweet to 686. Stop at: 11 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. “First thing after supper”
Tu 9-1 discuss and tweet to 755. Stop at: 11 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. “Part of Mario’s footage”
Tu 9-8 discuss and tweet to 808. Stop at: “The ceiling was breathing”
Tu 9-15 discuss and tweet to 896. Stop at: “I was going to go back up”
Tu 9-22 discuss and tweet to 981. THE END!
And back to the Infinite Jest summer readalong, covering pages 181-258, chapters 16-18, with the chapters marked by those moon thingies. This summary based on those from the first Infinite Summer back in 2009, but tidied up for accuracy.
Page 181 — LATE OCTOBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: The radio show right before Madame Psychosis begins her show at 109-WYYY FM; Hal and Mario listen at the Headmaster’s House.
Page 193: A description of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and the other six buildings on the Enfield Marine Public Heath Hospital complex (down the hill from ETA).
Page 198 — 6 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: ETA weight room; more of Lyle, the sweat-licking guru from p 127.
Page 200: A second person narration of things you would learn after spending time in a halfway house, finishing with a long discursion on Tiny Ewell and his fascination with tattoos.
Page 211: Pemulis talking with Hal and Axford about DMZ, the incredibly potent hallucinogen he acquired on pages 169-171 and they discuss how and when they’ll test it before offering it for sale.
Page 219: Joelle Van Dyne attends a film-student party at Molly Notkins and plans to kill herself in the bathroom. Joelle is veiled for some reason we don’t know yet. She is from Western Kentucky. The section mentions connections to Orin and Jim, then backtracks to earlier in the day, when she gave money to a man in a wheelchair.
Page 223: CHRONOLOGY OF ORGANIZATION OF NORTH AMERICAN NATIONS’ REVENUE-ENHANCING SUBSIDIZED TIME, BY YEAR:
Year of the Whopper
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar
Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken
Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster
Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office, Or Mobile (sic)
Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland
Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
Year of Glad
We return to Joelle’s memories, of Orin, “dodger of flung acid extraordinaire”, an ad she sees in the street of a man in a wheelchair holding a blank disk case in his palm, lineless like the earlier man she gave money to. Details of Joelle’s work with Jim, including an apology movie, see also p. 993’s note. Joelle got cocaine to freebase from Lady Delphina (whose stuff was described by yrstruly on p. 131 as “from bunk..all Monitol and kwai9 you might as well fucking cop XLax or Schweppes”) and talks to a man who asks about her veil of the U.H.I.D., the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed.
Page 227: PUTATIVE CURRICULUM VITAE OF HELEN P. STEEPLY, 36, 1.93 M., 104 KG, A.B., M.J.A.
Back to Joelle on the way to the party at Molly’s where she used to live with Orin and act in Jim’s films. She wonders about the logistics of Jim’s suicide, watches people dance and listens to fragments of film conversation, some about a mythic “cartridge-as-ecstatic-death” rumor. We learn Joelle is Madame Psychosis, she goes into the bathroom to commit suicide and ends up vomiting instead, perhaps due to the low-grade Lady Delphina stuff.
Page 240: A description of Enfield.
Page 242: 5 NOVEMBER–YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT Hal and Orin speak on the phone. Hal describes the bizarre mechanics by which their father committed suicide, his horror upon discovering the body. Hal details how he was sent to a grief counselor and then finally deemed fit to play again. Hal is upset with Orin for not calling for 2 years, and skipping the memorial. He dodges many of Orin’s questions.
***
New Characters: Madame Psychosis, the host of “Sixty Minutes More or Less with…” on M.I.T.’s student-run radio station 109-WYYY FM, a program to which Mario listens religiously.
This moderating thing is way more time consuming than one might think. Oy.
Welcome to week 3’s post on the Infinite Jest readalong.
The thing I notice most, especially on this, my second read of IJ, are the increasingly frequent connections to previous posts.
Lyle gives out wisdom like don’t lift more than your body weight, which is a metaphor for addiction.
The yrstruly section recalls the street slang of the Wardine section on p37 and finishes by saying yrstruly is going to detox. Some call this section racist and troubling. Question: is yrstruly black? Did you assume s/he was, or that yrstruly is a he? I did, first time through. Instead, I think DFW is emphasizing how addicts are desperate yet clever, hardworking, even, and the difference between them is both vast in language, privilege and circumstance contrasted with Hal and the Peemster, and yet nothing at all in that they’re all lonely and desperate and addicted, attached to a weight that is pulling them, not vice versa.
Hal talks to Orin and thinks about how much they might be lying to one another.
Ennet House is a detox. Might it be where yrstruly ends up?
An insurance form is filed for a bricklayer who tried to lift more than his bodyweight.
In this section, the section headings are long and complex, similar to those in Aeolus section of Ulysses.
In an essay, one of the ones referred to in Hal’s college interview, Hal wonders what the next generation hero of non-action will be.
Helen Steeply’s article, in which we learn that JOI committed suicide by putting his head in a microwave (how does that even work?) about someone whose external heart it stolen by a street person with a feather boa (Poor Tony from the yrstruly section.)
Why videotelephony failed–because it shattered the illusion that we were paying attention to one another, in other words, we weren’t being honest, just as Hal wondered about Orin.
Lots about Pemulis scamming, and compare it to the drug trafficking of yrstruly and Don Gately. “Manages to avoid losing my just one dento-dermal layer” (155)
The section on JOI and his father, JOI Senior, was long and disturbing, and furthers the emphasis on fathers and sons, as in Ulysses, Hamlet, and more.
Pemulis goes to get DMZ, again, note how classy he makes drug procurement, which is described as mold on mold, rather like what Hal ate in the memory from p10-11, and the reaction to it sounds like something Kate Gompert describe in her section, and what Hal seems like in the first. Hal is reading Hamlet to help Mario.
Mario’s film, narrated in second person.
The different addicts complaining to Patricia Montesian. Gately, Clenette, and that drug dealer with snakes are all mentioned.
I will likely embiggen this later, but this is a decent start. What did everyone else think?
Welcome back, fellow Jesters. Here’s the recap for this week’s pages OF INFINITE JEST 127-181:
p127 A sweat-licking guru lives in the ETA weight room and dispenses advice for sweat.
p128 yrstruly, Poor Tony, and C go on a crime spree, acquire heroin from Dr. Wo. The heroin is laced with Drano and C dies after shooting up. yrstruly is going to Detox.
p135 3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. Orin speaks to Hal by phone.
p137 Background of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.
p138 Bricklayer story (DFW incorporates urban legend)
p140 Hal’s paper on active and passive heroes.
p142 Steeply’s article about the woman who had an artificial heart in her purse when it was snatched by a person with a feather boa.
p144 List of Anti-O.N.A.N. groups.
p144 Why videophony never took off.
p151: Drug tests at E.T.A; Mike Pemulis sells sterile urine.
p157 WINTER B.S. 1960 – TUCSON AZ: Himself’s father (Hal’s grandfather) prepares to teach Himself how to play tennis, tells of the incident that ended his own tennis career, and drinks heavily.
p169 — 4 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: Michael Pemulis acquires some “incredibly potent” DMZ.
p172 — TENNIS AND THE FERAL PRODIGY, NARRATED BY HAL INCANDENZA (etc.): Hal narrates a film made by Mario. The narration consists of a series of how-to instructions “Here is how to do individual drills …”
p176 — SELECTED TRANSCRIPTS … WEDNESDAY, 4 NOVEMBER – YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: A series of statements made by recovering addicts at Ennet House.
***
CHARACTERS
Lyle: Guru who lives in ETA weight room and apparently subsists off other people’s sweat.
yrstruly: Narrator of the “dopesick” chapter. Addict, criminal.
C: yrstruly’s companion who dies after shooting up with heroin laced with Drano.
Dr. Wo: Sells heroin to C and yrstruly but it’s laced with Drano to punish their crew-mate Poor Tony (waiting outside) for a past grievance.
Poor Tony: yrstruly’s companion, possibly suspected that heroin was laced but said nothing as C. shot up.
Guy Who Didn’t Even Use His First Name: So into the “anonymous” scene that he remained completely so. Founded the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.
Notice, that some are still abbreviated, as Greg Carlisle in Elegant Complexity (helpfully) doesn’t spoil what we don’t know yet by page 127. These are details mostly from end note #24, JOI’s filmography. (and perhaps the main reason for that long endnote.)
