A few weeks ago I was speaking to a journalist and struggling to explain how a novel so revered by people who have read it could also be so off-putting for those wading through it for the first time. I mentioned the length of course, and the endnotes, and the 84¢-words, and the sentences that go on for so long that they begin make you feel anxious, as if you are watching someone who has been underwater for longer than you reckon they can hold their breath. I mentioned all that, and then there was some dead air on the line (this was a phone interview), and I just blurted out something to fill the silence. “The thing is,” I said, “Wallace doesn’t teach you a little bit about tennis and then start talking about tennis. He just sort of starts talking about tennis.”
Not my most articulate moment, I’ll be the first to admit. But thinking back on this statement later, it struck me as perhaps the most insightful thing I said during the interview (a low bar, to be sure). Most authors will ease you into a subject, provide some background and context before going in-depth. Television serials preface episodes with a “Previously on” primers. Hell, even videos games begin with a tutorial these days. But when Wallace “introduces” a topic, it’s like you’ve walked into a lecture having missed the first hour.
He is, to be honest, something of a bully. Not in a beat-you-up-take-your-lunch-money kind of way, but in the same sense that the President of the United States is said to occupy the “bully pulpit”. The term, coined by Theodore Roosevelt, refers to the fact that the President can talk about the issues he cares about, and the rest of the country has no choice but to listen. If a President wants to start a national conversation on health care (say), we converse about health care.
In Infinite Jest, Wallace wants to talk about tennis and football and addiction and depression and mathematics and the many ways in which one may murder a cockroach, and your options, as a reader, are (a) like it or (b) lump it. It’s like being cornered at a party by someone droning on and on about his hobbies, someone who follows you around and thwarts you evasive maneuvers, until you only options are to give up and listen or leave the party altogether.
Any many people do. Leave the party, that is. By which I mean they close the book on page 77 and go back to being interested in the things they are interested in. That’s what did a decade or so ago.
But here’s the amazing thing, at least in my experience of the last month. If you let Wallace bully you for a few hundred pages, if you let him just ramble on amicably about the things he’s passionate about, you finally know so much about the subject matter that you start to care about it, even if against your will. Last week, realizing that I had never in my entire life seen an entire tennis match, I actually watched a torrent of the Roger Federer Vs Andy Roddick Wimbledon 2009 Mens Final. Last night when an alcoholic character in a TV show said she wouldn’t attend AA because “it ain’t nothing but a cult,” I felt personally offended. Wallace is like the Lloyd Dobler of authors: he doesn’t woo you with flowers and chocolates, he stands outside your window with a boombox over his head until you relent.
Except the boombox is so 20th century; it’s really more like an preloaded iPod. Which may be why, on the #infsum Twitter channel, catchingdays called Infinite Jest “the first shuffle novel“. That’s a great analogy. The book as like a compilation of Wallace’s favorites, semi-randomized to keep you on your toes.
And do you know why shuffle mode is so popular? Because every once in a while, wholly by chance and when you least expect it, you hear something that you’ve loved all your life. For me it was Eschaton, falling, as it does, squarely on the intersection of two lifelong interests: Cold War politics47 and games48. As the addiction material did for infinitedetox, and the tennis did for Andrew, and the radio did for Michael, this was a portion of the novel that truly resonated with me.
And now, of course, I’ve become so versed in the author’s various obsessions that all the themes in the novel resonate–and will continue to do so in future novels I read. Thanks a lot David Foster Wallace, ya big ol’ bully you.
I can’t respond articulately. You just compared Dave Wallace to Lloyd Dobbler and I think I need to sit down for a minute.
Talk about having my intellectual iPod on shuffle and recalling two things I’ve loved all my life…
I think the hour late into a lecture metaphor is apt. I agree that a reader’s preference for stage setting and background info is defiantly unnerved by Infinite Jest. And in this read I’ve found that for every Eschaton or advertising-theory scene that gets me flying my geek flag, there’s a Poor Tony seizure or [insert spoiler scene we can all talk about later] that haunts my worst nightmares.
But I’m still all giddy from the Peter Gabriel track playing in my head so I’ll stop typing now.
Just a quick note on your note 47 since i too grew up in the 80s. I am not nostalgic about annihilation because it is still ever present, despite there not being anymore drills where they have the kids huddle under desks. This country still has enough nukes to kill every person on the planet many times over.
Just wanted to point out the eschaton scenario is still a very real possibility, not just a humorous tale from the past.
I can’t speak for Mr. Baldwin, but for me, as someone who grew up in the 80s, the nostalgia for Cold War era geopolitics is not for the thrill of a now absent terror or from the now distance of annihilation. The nostalgia stems from the fact that every childhood memory is colored, some how, by Soviet and nuclear references. Eschaton was our every day in the 80s. So I am not missing the threat of nuclear death, for the threat is still there. I am missing a childhood in general, a glaring backdrop of which is nuclear games and movies borne of the near-omnipresent pop cultural threat of such destruction. So reading the Eschaton scenes makes me feel like a kid again not because nuclear war is funny, but because I played and watched and lived nuclear games as a child, much more than the generations following me ever did or will again.
Your description of Wallace’s “just start talking” approach immediately reminded me of my recent interest in sailing. On my first trip with a few friends, I asked if there was anything I could help with. No sooner had I said this, the owner of the boat began to speak to me in entirely sailing jargon as if I had sailed all my life. He taught me anything that I didn’t know but never took it easy or dumbed it down. Now I can’t get enough of learning to sail. You’ve made me realize this is one of the things I love with DFW’s writing.
Definitely get that feeling of having missed a lecture somehow. It’s the same with anything by Pynchon; this assumption the author seems to have that you know what (s)he’s talking/writing about. Or this expectation that if you don’t, you’ll run and look it up.
But I’m not sure about the “bully” metaphor. Isn’t it the case with all fiction that the author picks the topics and themes and you have to like it or lump it? It’s not like as a reader you get to talk back to the writer very often.
It’s more complicated than like-it-or-lump-it too, I think. There are probably more like three choices when it comes to reading any fiction: you can choose to read attentively and repeatedly, you can choose to skim-read (which would be the equivalent I guess of finding yourself cornered at a party and just nodding and saying yes until the droning party bore has nothing left to say) or, as you said, you can “leave the party” and close the book altogether. I think these are the very choices that DFW is trying to explore, both through the characters in Infinite Jest, and through the structure of the novel and it’s constant shuffle. It’s what Steeply and Marathe are arguing about, it’s what Don Gately is constantly struggling with, day-in-day-out, and although we could only ever speculate about this looking at his essays and other fiction, I’d say it’s probably not too much of a conjecture to suggest that this was something DFW himself was struggling with, which makes it all the more difficult for me to understand why he “left the party” himself.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post – and for the brief games reviews. I’ve got an interest in Cold War politics and games myself (even been trying to write a book on it) so it was nice just to see those topics acknowledged!
Well done. Whenever I talk about IJ, I say, if you get to page 300 and decide you don’t like it, then put it down, read something else. Of course, this is just encouragement to them to read to page 300, at which point it is unlikely they will put the novel down until done. But it also discourages people who don’t want to have to read so much for a book to get going.
But the thing is that the book is already going when you pick it up, you just have to catch up to it.
Maybe it is just me, but getting to page 200 seemed a lot easier than getting to 300. The Eschaton part and note 110 were serious “lumps” for me. I agree that there have been a bunch of moments that I truly enjoyed. But there has also been pages of confusion and wanting to stop reading. I go from feeling that this book is speaking to me and I can totally relate to wtf was that?
If DFW were teaching you how to ride a bike you can bet there wouldn’t be a training wheel anywhere in a 5 mile radius.
It’s not for everyone, but I personally love that the novel is demanding so much of me as a reader – not only that I invest so much time and energy, but that I have faith in my ability as a reader to pull all these strands together. It’s a tough-love approach.
Umm.. As Roosevelt used it, “bully” meant “great”. That is, “because I can talk about whatever I want and you all have to listen, the presidency is a great place to talk about whatever I want.”
For the record: I was aware of this (thanks to C-span) and was going to insert an endnote to clarify Roosevelt’s intended meaning of “bully”, but such an endnote would have fallen before endnotes 47 and 48 (which I had already written) and that would have entailed renumbering the latter two, and …. long story short, yes I really am that lazy.
I’ve been thinking about the experience of reading IJ as a big puzzle; not as though I’m trying to pick it apart, but that I have to put it together, remember these characters, determine their orbit, and be ready to receive flashes of insight on how two pieces might fit together. The constant flipping, rereading of sections, and looking up words is a significant part of the experience, in that it slows me down enough to absorb more of those flashes of insight. I love it. I can’t stop reading it.
The synopsis of Mario’s puppet movie may be my favorite part so far.
Wanted to post something very similar to what Mark said…a lot of things…especially kinda scary things…are easier to learn if the teacher, while astute enough to measure your real skills against real dangers, also fully believes you will succeed and goes from there, whether swing dancing or snowboarding or science class. Bully or not, DFW doesn’t baby us — he assumes we are capable of rising to the challenge and goes for it. As John Armstrong says above, Teddy R. meant “bully” as in “Bully for you!,” which meant, essentially “good for you!” or “awesome!”. So I think I’ll choose to picture starting to enjoy the tennis scenes or suchlike and having DFW over my shoulder saying “Bully for you!”
(as noted above, bully just meant “cool” in TR’s day.)
I just wanted to say that the inverse is true for me regarding interests and IJ:
I am a born-and-raised Quebecer who loves tennis and football and is currently being treated for porn addiction, with requisite Anomymous meetings of which I am deeply suspicious. I had no idea IJ was about any of this when I picked it up – and what a great summertime companion it’s been as I try to stay sober.
There is an element of trust ever time we turn to the first page. By the fact that it has a first page we trust it will have third. By our love an author’s shorter works we trust (maybe with some reservations) that we will love his longer works.
My favorite book is the only book I DON’T recommend to friends. I want my friends to become well aquainted( and in Love) with DFW’s writing before they consider IJ. Yes the first 200 pages gave me some difficulties but the trust between author and reader was well established. I would hate for someone to pick up IJ with out any familarity with DFW put it down by page 77 and never touch DFW book again.
As a tennis player myself I love the tennis stuff, but have wondered how non tennis folk would feel about it; it does kind of assume some knowledge on the part of the reader, a la S.J. Gould and baseball. I would kind of have to disagree with the analogy to an annoying pestering party guest following one around, in that he’s (DFW) the one throwing the party, and if one doesn’t like the party, leave. Stop reading the book. (BTW, don’t read IJ just so you can brag that you read it, that’s so lame.) I’m reading for the 2nd time, on pg 730, and I think that this book might be the most re-readable book I know of; I’m already planning a 3rd time, eventually.
As a long-time reader of defective-yeti (and I will keep reading it until you stop paying your hosting fees, no matter how sparse the updates), I have been waiting to see the Matthew Baldwin take on Eschaton.
This essay was not what I was expecting, but it makes a great point. Because it’s the passion with which Wallace writes that drags me along. I devoured Infinite Jest the first time through. I read the whole thing in little more than two weeks. At first I kept reading, waiting patiently for a plot to appear, and then I was hooked in by his passion for all his sundry subjects.
Oddly, It was your passion for board games, the same constant sharing of knowledge though I didn’t know that I cared at the time, that got me interested in board gaming. And everything converges on Infinite Jest again!
Reading the Eschaton chapter: It taught me that you cannot even part-skim ever. Once I was attentive it became one of my favorite chapters too. My trust of the author for all it faltered initially is now stronger than before. That was my turning point–now I know I can stick with it, though it’s, for me personally, a huge undertaking because of having a medical problem that affects my cognitive abilities. There’s a lot of dicky neurons that I have to bitch-slap before I can become properly immersed.
One thing that continually hovers over the project for me, would we had all done this while DFW was alive. It would most likely have pleased him immensely and maybe given him that much more happiness and perhaps a thicker armor in a life that somehow didn’t have enough of this to offset the “Bad Thing”.
Thanks for pointing out the forum on my blog, Matthew. I’m coming around a little to the multiplex model of Infinite Summer.
I really loved the Eschaton section too, for similar reasons. What I especially enjoyed was the way DFW brought us the gleeful, let’s-play-with-our-military-toys element of the real Cold War to life…and then had it turn sour, to remind us of just how dangerous those ideas can be.
Also, Eschaton made me think of a great essay by Peter Galison called The Ontology of the Enemy. It’s about how cybernetics and game theory led us to start imagining our enemies almost as artificial intelligences, infinitely rational and ruthless. Just like the players of Eschaton are supposed to be, except that no human really works that way. A copy of the essay’s posted <a href="http://jerome-segal.de/Galison94.pdf" title="here"here.
Oops. Here’s that link again: here.
Ed Finn thank you for the link. That essay is killer. It’s opened up so much. I’m looking at all of the annular and feedback loop sorts of references; the pervasive vibe of the circular, mechanistic or non-mechanistic, with a new twist, a Weinereque twist, so everyone should read it; and that’s only a small bit of why the essay’s so great. (It’s interesting that the new way of looking at an enemy was thought to be by one theorist much _less_ racist than in the past. In theory this should be the case but it doesn’t seem to apply in our current war.) If anything, people should go to the link to at least see the uncanny drawing of a cyborg (computery-looking thing with hands and eyes in military dress) on the cover of Time magazine.
[...] for awhile, with constant interruptions and tangents. For a good portion of the first 200 pages, you’re really not sure what the hell he’s talking about, and frankly you’re getting kind of exhausted and frustrated, maybe even offended. Certainly [...]
Nothing puts me off like writers that ostensibly *explain* things to the reader, and DFW sure was as far as can be from this kind (it was probably only around Mario’s movie section that I finally grasped what the Concavity and the Convexity really are, i.e. the same thing).
Science fiction is where this issue is most problematic, as there are generally a lot of things the reader needs to have explained, and William Gibson’s short story Hinterlands is still my favorite example of how to manage this. And it’s interesting that in that story, too, we find human beings irresistibly attracted to something they know it’s fatal…
“If you let Wallace bully you for a few hundred pages, if you let him just ramble on amicably about the things he’s passionate about, you finally know so much about the subject matter that you start to care about it, even if against your will.”
I couldn’t agree more. I started off slightly confused/bored but willing to give it a shot. Now I am loving every single word and wouldn’t have it any other way.
I first read this in my last years of college. I had never understood the game of tennis and merely thought it to be a game of back and forth, perhaps one of simply wearing the other out. It wasn’t until reading this book and, esp, the description of Eschaton (who else could combine the accuracy training of a tennis academy with Cold War politics?), that I fully understood the game. Now married to a competitive tennis player, I am still amazed that my love of the game all began after reading this novel.
[...] Matthew Baldwin recently posted this on the Infinite Summer blog: [...]