Girl Detective

I have been meaning to write this post for weeks, and now that I finally sat down and did, I’ve ended up deleting most of it. Argh! Quit? I don’t think so. Here’s my post-summer reading.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin. For one of my book groups about a man living in a future dystopia who can “fix” things by dreaming. LeGuin gives good dystopia.

Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do About It by Kate Harding. I sought this book out after I read Jon Krakauer’s Missoula. Harding’s book is smart and provoking about how we can fix seriously broken systems and attitudes.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I re-read this for one of my books groups. I thought it would be interesting to re-visit, as I’d read it when it came out and my memories amounted to little more than: cool secret, too long, cream cheese and marmalade sandwiches. After a second reading of this big book crammed into a small package with small font, margins, and spacing, I remember a lot more detail, but the summary is the same. Great idea, great writing, way too long for what it is, and I prefer Tana French’s homage, The Likeness, to Tartt’s original.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. For one of my book groups as a Halloween read. I enjoyed reading this novella again because it is different from what everyone thinks they know about the book.

No Mercy graphic novel by Alex de Campi illustrated by Carla Speed McNeil. I’m a huge fan of McNeil’s and her Finder is one of the longest running comic series there is, and one of my favorites. Here she’s doing the art for someone else, but the result is still terrific in this story of a group of mostly pampered smart kids who go on a trip to South America and things go horribly wrong.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, for one of my book groups. A re-read, and one I mostly read aloud to my kids though we did get the audio book from the library and listen to Neil himself read it, which I highly recommend. There is also a bigger production but I think the author reading was quite perfect. Graveyard Book is a boy-who-lived story, reminiscent of many others, but Gaiman’s spooky spin on details makes it fresh and engaging.

And, as anyone who has visited the blog lately knows, I’ve been leading a small brave group of readers through Infinite Jest while reading a commentary, Elegant Complexity, for help in parsing its IJs many mysteries. I highly recommend the group read for Infinite Jest. We started with the 70ish pages a week schedule done by Infinite Summer groups, but slowed down to about 40, which was so much more manageable. This was my second time through IJ, and I found it rich, challenging, and enjoyable.

So, that’s it for the last few months–a mixed bag indeed: sci fi, sociology, modern literature, Victorian lit, a graphic novel, a children’s book, Infinite Jest and a commentary. Whew!

What have you read/enjoyed this fall?

Don’t you feel now that you’ve finished Infinite Jest that dropping the book, like dropping the mic, is appropriate, and makes a satisfying meaty thunking sound?

Oh few, happy few, we band of readers, we made it!

First, brief summeries:

pp 941-958 Hal in room while Mario and Coyle who is young watch a disturbing JOI film accomplice, in which we learn why Stokely McNair was nicknamed Darkstar, for his KS mark. We find why Troeltsch was coming out of Axford’s single–he switched rooms, I’m guessing because he ate cheese about Pemulis. Coyle is Stice’s roommate, and noticed that the furniture is indeed acting weird. Is it JOI as the wraith who claimed he couldn’t affect physical objects, but which the Coke can proved otherwise?

Hal notes that Otis P Lord had the monitor removed, presumably from the bed next to Don Gately which was getting the weird metal braces put on in pages 918-920. Hal remembers JOI’s advice to Orin about adult films, which is both touching about JOI and yet another log on my furiously flaming bonfire of hate for Orin, who next to Randy Lenz might be THE WORST. (Discuss).

Hal also knew, as he knew of the powdered milk, that CT and Wayne had both slept with Avril.

p 958 Joelle back to Ennet House and in future tense says hopes for quarantine, and will tell Pat about wheelchairs, presumably making connection with Marathe’s appearance and chat previously. Sees Middlesex County police, who probably are there for Don’s old suspended license infraction (463).

p 958-960 narrated by someone in a veil but maybe not Joelle? Someone named Mikey with a temper who talks about acting badly then going back to apologize

pp 960-964 ADA that Don fears meets with Pat, and talks about how he’s trying to make amends to Don and we learn how complicated things are for him, too. Unlike Mikey of the previous section, he can’t bring himself to apologize. Yet.

pp 964-971 Back to ETA but it’s anonymous first person, not Hal and we get the backstory of Barry Loach, and could we love Mario more?

Poutrincourt is missing–could that be her covered in snow in the stands? If not, who? WHO?

Reference to Brothers K who are perhaps analogs to the Incandenza Bros: Mario is like Alyosha, Hal the rationalist Ivan, and Orin the shitheel to women Dmitri.

pp 971-972 Orin’s uppance has come.

pp 972-981 Don at present is in fever and his tube is finally removed (it might have caused fever based on smug doc’s comment on p 921. He then regresses in time to finish the story about Gene Fackelmann, which was horrific, but was not even Don’s “bottom: that led to sobriety, which would taken even longer. Don is at a low point, but we know he rises from what went previously. The book finishes on the to-me Gatsby-ish:

it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out. (981)

Heidi has already commented that she thinking poor dead DFW threw poor dead Linda McCartney under the bus in this section, but since it was the music chosed by soon to be poor dead but pretty non-likeable Bobby C, I don’t think it was an endorsement.

The book’s non-ending urges you to go back to the beginning and read again looking for details, looking for how to explain why a year later Hal and Gately along with John Wayne will be digging up JOI’s head, which is on both p 17 but also part of Gately’s fever dream about a sad kid on p. 934.

In describing JOI’s artistic intention on p 839:

His most serious was was: to entertain.”

In the commentary I’ve been reading, the excellent Elegant Complexity by Greg Carlisle, GC asks,

What could be more entertaining than a novel that espouses conversation and interchange about interesting questions that are difficult to answer definitively, thereby promoting the ongoing connection of the participants in those conversational interchanges? (479-480)

And but so: Congratulations. What did you think, and what questions linger?

It’s the penultimate post for the Infinite Jest readalong, #InfiniTC, which was supposed to end in September but had to be stretched out so people could fit this honkin’ book into life.

We remain mostly with Gately in bed, intubated, in the hospital.

pp 902-906 Don Gately had a promising football experience in high school but got kicked out for low grades, then started doing drugs regularly, and then poof, no more football.

pp 906-911. Hal again, thinking about one of his dad’s films with a droning professor. Pemulis comes in and tries to talk to Hal but it interrupted by other kids. Why the section-ending sentence, “Then this to began to seem familiar.”?

pp 911-916. Gately after HS became an enforcer for Whitey Sorkin.Though he did little enforcing once he started he couldn’t stop.

p 916. Pemulis goes to his stash but the ceiling tiles are down, the stash is gone.

pp 916-934. Don recalls how his friend Fax got caught in a scam and how he was killed. He had to drag the story out of this then girlfriend Pamela Hoffman-Jeep (echoed in the character name Shanna Mallwae-Tweep on Parks & Rec?, who are fans of the show, hence the lawyer’s office name on one of the episodes.) And Lyle appears as a wraith–can he do this if not dead?

p 934 Joelle is taken by Steeply.

pp 934-938 a horribly detailed description of what a Dilaudid binge looked like. *shudder* Ending with Don having a dream in which a sad kid (Hal) digs up something and mouths, “Too late”. (Jim’s head?)

pp 938-941 We have Steeply in the Charlie Brown narrator Qs, with Joelle’s answers, that she was in only two scenes of IJ and that any master would have been buried with Jim, who is buried in one of the overgrown parts of the Convexity.

I very deliberately did not binge and read till the end so I could try and limit my talk to just this week’s pages. Meet us back in a week and we can talk about the whole damn thing. You have questions? I have answers! Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

Next week, 11/10/15: The End!