When I started writing my second novel,54 I imagined it would be structured like a teraktys, an ancient Pythagorean symbol that plays a role in the story. Specifically, the second section would be twice as long as the first, the third three times as long as the first, and the final section four times as long as the first. Fiction has a way of defying mathematical precepts, however, and the final version doesn’t really resemble a tetraktys at all, except that the fourth part is still at least somewhat longer than the first one.
I think most writers start out with a Platonic ideal in their head of what their novel might look like when it’s done. For some it might be a mathematical model. For others it might be a quote from some future, hypothetical critic, wrapping the relevant themes in praise. For others it might be the physical thing itself. I think writers do a lot of visualizing in general.55 The craft of writing is forming and massaging words into a whole that hopefully approaches, but never actually becomes, something like the thing you had imagined.
Anyway, I was struck by this Bookworm discussion with Wallace (different, BTW, from the last Bookworm interview I quoted). Michael Silverblatt started the interview by saying that reading Infinite Jest he was reminded of fractals. Wallace responded by saying:
I’ve heard you were an acute reader. That’s one of the things, structurally, that’s going on. It’s actually structured like something called a Sierpinski Gasket, which is a very primitive kind of pyramidical fractal, although what was structured as a Sierpinski Gasket was the first- was the draft that I delivered to Michael in ’94, and it went through some I think ‘mercy cuts’, so it’s probably kind of a lopsided Sierpinski Gasket now. But it’s interesting, that’s one of the structural ways that it’s supposed to kind of come together.
It’s illustrative of the gap between our intellects that my ideal novel looked like this and Wallace’s looked like this. Still I understood what he meant. The concept of the Sierpinski Gasket was this organizing metaphor, the avatar of the novel in his head he was trying to make real. And despite DFW’s suggestion that he never expected any reader to notice this, or that the final version of the book doesn’t much resemble a Sierpinski Gasket, there are plenty of surface similarities (and this is what Silverblatt was referring to) in that the main themes and storylines reoccur and replicate in non-linear ways large and small throughout the novel.
Novelists often talk about seducing the reader into following the story all the way to the end. Structure is one of the tools of that seduction. At its most basic level, structure is the way the author reveals and withholds information–much like the way you reveal and withhold information about yourself on a date in order to create some level of personal intrigue.
One of the things that makes other writers go nuts up with envy when they read Infinite Jest is that the structure of it is aggressively anti-seductive. I know there are people who are going to say that Wallace had them at I am in here but obviously this novel is very intriguing at the outset and then kind of veers off into insanity 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 there are many many sections in that period that are brilliant and funny and sexy, but if you think of Infinite Jest as a first date, there are ample opportunities during the appetizers for the reader to excuse herself, head for the Ladies but then veer toward the exit, never to return.
And certainly a lot of readers over the years have done just that.
Wallace uses the structure of this novel to a very different purpose. It isn’t designed to lead you, with one hand in your ass pocket, from the beginning to the end. He structured the novel specifically to control the experience of reading it. To disrupt you. To disorient you. To rudely interrupt you. Wallace didn’t want this book to just be about these themes of miscommunication and the impermanence of pleasure, he wanted the book itself to a simulacrum of the characters’ experience. Read this section from the most recent week’s pages and think of it simultaneously as a description of AA speakers and their audience, as a metaphor for writers and readers, and also a humble apologia for the kind of hoops Wallace has so far put the reader through:
Speakers who are accustomed to figuring out what an audience wants to hear and then supplying it find out quickly that this particular audience does not want to be supplied with what someone else thinks it wants….Close to two hundred people all punishing somebody by getting embarrassed for him, killing him by empathetically dying right there with him, for him, up there at the podium. The applause when this guy’s done has the relieved feel of a fist unclenching, and their cries of ‘Keep Coming!’ are so sincere it’s almost painful.
But then in equally paradoxical contrast have a look at the next Advanced Basics speaker–this tall baggy sack of a man, also painfully new, but this poor bastard here completely and openly nerve-racked, wobbling his way up to the front, his face shiny with sweat and his talk full of blank cunctations and disassociated leaps….(and) the White Flaggers all fell about, they were totally pleased and amused, the Crocodiles removed their cigars and roared and wheezed and stomped both feet on the floor and showed scary teeth, everyone roaring with Identification and pleasure.56
Most people come to this novel sincerely wanting to have read it. And the journey itself is extremely rewarding. But Wallace makes it very easy to quit this book. In fact, by abdicating the traditional authorial role as seducer, he allows the idea of quitting to become seductive instead.
Wallace clearly wanted the reader not just to understand, but to feel some simulacrum of the emotions felt by the characters sitting in those AA meetings.57 In just the first half of the novel, the characters enjoin each other (and the reader) to “Keep Coming,” or to “Keep Coming Back” 17 times.
I am truly enjoying this novel. I am finding it completely immersive, entertaining, and eye-opening. It’s a marvel to read. But if it weren’t for this project, I’m not sure I would have gotten this far. The stack of other, unread books in my pile is so high and appealing that I might have just decided, Murtaugh-style, that I’m too old for this shit. And I was thinking this morning how grateful I am that this is happening because I want to read this book, and I want to have read it but I don’t think I would have finished it on my own.
Obviously Matthew wasn’t thinking about any of this when he organized Infinite Summer. How could he when he didn’t know much what the book was about? And no author could imagine that his book would be read exactly this way58 Strictly by accident Matthew kind of stumbled on a method of approaching this novel–a structure for reading it–that actually magnifies and complements the very experience Wallace tried to manipulate within his structure for the novel. For me at least, as it does for Gately, the pressure of the group on the individual (not to mention that one-day-at-a-time schedule of responsibilities) serves as a counter to the seductiveness of Out There, where all those shorter unread books are waiting for me.
Keep Coming Back because It Works.
Crazy.
I have felt and sensed what you’ve articulated so very well. Between Eden’s post yesterday and this one, I feel like one of the White Flag audience members laughing and howling and stomping. I especially like what you said about this very structure (i.e., IS) being the perfect forum for reading /IJ/. I think you nailed it on the head.
Amazing and yes.
The tense seems to be telling. Many people want to have read it, more so than to read it. I wonder what makes the difference, or if the act of reading it makes one want to read it, instead of merely to have read it.
The difference here, I think, John, is that Kevin’s making the point that a lot of people do start the book, they do read it, but they don’t finish it (i.e. they want to get to the end, but despite this want, they still hit a roadblock wherever and don’t continue).
Or at least that’s what I thought he meant.
Yeah, I was trying to establish a parallel (and maybe I forced it) between the goals of characters in the book (who want to overcome addiction or become pro tennis players) and the goal of readers who want to finish the book. The things they have to do to reach those goals are difficult.
That is, the experience of reading the book is something parallel to the experience (in the novel) of going to AA meetings. But Gately’s goal is getting sober, not going to meetings just as the reader’s goal is to finish the book, not just to read some of it.
(And obviously I’m not suggesting that reading this book is actually like overcoming addiction. Just that the structure of the book is meant to represent it in a way.)
The parallel didn’t seem forced at all. The structure is one of the most striking aspects of the novel as is the contrast between Ennet House and E.T.A. both of which are more apparant to me as I reread Infinite Jest for the first time. Fortunately, before the first read our daughter had cautioned me that the first 200 pages or so would take some work but they were much easier to read this time around.
After 200 pages you aren’t sure what he is talking about…With 30 pages to go I figured out the point of the novel was different to what I first imagined. It is like an AA meeting, coming back day after day. When i read it I read 25-30 pages a day EVERY day but then read the last 300 pages in 5 days. You do become a junkie for the language.
Outstanding.
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[...] comments In light of what I wrote yesterday about finishing books, Kevin Guilfoile pretty much nails how I feel about reading Infinite Jest this summer: I am truly enjoying this [...]
Spot on Kevin! Keep Coming Back.
DFW seems to live by the maxim, to paraphrase Endnote #292, that “Writers don’t have relationships, they take hostages(sic).”
I’d like to add my heart felt thanks to Matt and all the contributors for bringing the INSF dimension to my reading of this book. Bitter coffee and stale donuts aside, you’ve all been a great support and inspiration for me. Mahalo nui loa!
I didn’t mean to say it was forced or confusing, just calling attention to it.
A parallel: a friend of mine went to the U.S. Naval Academy, where it was evidently common to say that it was “a great place to have been from.”
I actually meant to say that I agreed with you–that the person who wants to have read it more than he wants to read seems like a good candidate for dropping out. But I hadn’t showered or eaten yet.
That USNA line is great. And it is an old joke among writers that many of them want to have written a lot more than they want to write.
Kevin, your posts here make me want to read one of your novels when I’m done with this round of IJ.
Thanks so much for your in-depth commentary on structure. And with visuals, no less! As I read this, I was bitterly reminded of a terrible class I took as an undergrad where I mused aloud how great I thought it was that Woolf’s To the Lighthouse was structurally similar to the frequency of light beams sent forth from lighthouses: one long sweep, one short, another long. You could hear crickets in the room after that, and it was in the middle of the afternoon.
I had no idea about Wallace’s intentions with such a specific structure as the Sierpinski Gasket, and now I’m determined to try to figure out who or what belongs in which negative space. But perhaps I should save that for my fifth read.
Thanks, Ray Gunn!
regarding the ‘tense’ discussion, there’s a relevant quote to be mentioned here, attributed to Mark Twain: “A classic is a book everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read.”
so we’re on the right track…
I think those quotes about “wanting to have read” imply too much pretension for what we (most of us) are feeling about the book. I for one enjoying reading the book as an act itself. Like several people tweeting at #infsum, I’ll miss these characters when they’re “gone”, it’s like a bereavement. Perhaps i’m just an old crocodile who likes going to meetings.
That’s fair, Robert. I only used the phrase because it was important for my point to make a distinction: That all of us have a goal of finishing the book (having read it) and that DFW deliberately made the means to that goal (the reading) more difficult than it had to be. I didn’t mean to imply that the reading wasn’t often pleasurable by itself.
I could have just said “finishing.” I suppose I just liked the parallel construction.
My mind was pretty well blown looking at that diagram of the gasket-whatever.
I am head over heels in love with this book. It was a little slow going at first, and sometimes I look longingly at the books I could be reading instead, but I would never in a million years be able to put this down. I don’t care if there’s no big plot-driven pay off at the end or even if I never know what happens to Hal. I’m just happy to spend time in his world everyday.
(I also agree with the AA-ness of the keep coming back every day, just do it, aspect that leads to further appreciation of the work.)
I too instantaneously adored Wallace’s writing, beginning with the first paragraph. And with every page, I am delighted over and over again. It’s wonderful to know there are others who are in love also. The delight on each page drives me as if each page is a p-terminal and I don’t ever want to stop thrilling from Wallace’s genius.
Great post! I love the thought of the seductive lure of other books, TV, etc. as being Out There. Telling myself, don’t worry, I can skip tonight and get caught up later is just the sort of thing Gately might warn me about. Very well done.
Yes! Thank you for articulating what I’ve felt about this book for years. And I wonder what DFW would have felt about this way of reading the book, that we’re all in this together without actually being together — that it’s a virtual community. That, unlike the AA group, we never see each other, yet we’re all in this together.
[...] was also the week when I read that DFW structured this novel in the likeness of the fractally characterised Sierpinski Gasket. I can only stand back and say “whoa!” Did I notice the fractal nature of the novel? [...]
[...] deliberately tempting as Wallace makes it to quit reading this book, you have to figure, in the long run, that everyone [...]
[...] Paradoxes: As Kevin and others have noted, Wallace said he structure the novel “like something called a [...]