This is the fourth of a five-part roundtable discussion with the Infinite Summer Guides.
Infinite Summer: Kevin, do you find Wallace’s style influencing your own? Will the title of your next novel (The Thousand) refer to the number of endnotes you went back and inserted?
Kevin Guilfoile: I’m pretty easily influenced by anything that I like, but usually within the parameters of my own style. For instance, it’s not unusual for me to write long, run-on sentences when I’m trying to change the pace of a passage (or when I’m deep inside someone’s train of thought) and I probably am doing more of that right now, just because Wallace is so effective with it. The novel I’m currently working on (the one after The Thousand) even has a character that’s rather Gately-like (big guy, ex-con, not an alcoholic but a teetotaler) although I created him before I read IJ. Looking specifically at the stuff I’ve written over the last month or so I can right away identify a lengthy passage in which a pickpocket is rhapsodizing at some length about cargo shorts that seems pretty obviously influenced by IJ.
Matthew Baldwin: I actually used the word “demap” as a synonym for “kill” in a casual conversation the other day. The person to whom I was speaking had no idea what I was saying.
Eden M. Kennedy: And I quoted Schtitt to my son on the tennis court. He was complaining how he wanted to switch sides because the sun was in his eyes, and I totally paraphrased that whole section about it always being too hot or too cold or too something on the court, you have to look inside, blah blah. And then I switched and took the sunny side.
Avery Edison: The only thing I’ve taken away from the book is a pretty heavy ‘drine dependency. That, and a fear of Canadians in wheelchairs.
And of course, as I typed that joke in I suddenly realize that I’m sitting at my computer in a bandanna. Curse you David Foster Wallace!
IS: Are you enjoying some sections better than others (E.T.A. vs. Ennet v. Steeply & Marathe)?
MB: They say that a world class director could film someone reading the phonebook and make it interesting. That’s how I feel about Wallace. In an interview, he talked about the challenge of “tak[ing] something almost narcotizingly banal … and try[ing] to reconfigure it in a way that reveals what a tense, strange, convoluted set of human interactions the final banal product is.” Given that Infinite Jest is a novel about a tennis academy, a bunch of AA meetings, and two guys chatting on a cliff, it’s clearly a challenge that Wallace both relished and consistently met.
So I don’t find any of the storylines to be more engrossing than others. In fact, I don’t find the narrative to be particularly engrossing at all. It’s Wallace’s style that I enjoy, and I am largely indifferent as to what subject matter he is writing about at any given moment.
AE: I’m a big fan of banter, so I look forward to any section (usually an endnote) featuring Hal and Orin on the phone to each other. A lot of information tends to get divulged during those pages, and there’s some nice verbal sparring in the mean time.
The Marathe and Steeply sections have also grown on me, probably for much the same reason. It’s also nice to see — in a novel that has almost avoided any discussion of its namesake – characters having honest-to-God conversations about The Entertainment.
EMK: Something shifts in Marathe and Steeply’s conversations as we get deeper into the book; I can’t put my finger on it but it’s definitely becoming easier to read and enjoy their passages.
AE: I think it’s that as we’re learning more about the world around them, the vague allusions to things such as the Concavity or subsidised time are clearer. I’m sure that the conversation Marathe and Steeply have regarding free will would’ve been impenetrable had we not learned more about the Entertainment’s effects on its viewers. I may go back to the earlier Marathe and Steeply sections and see if they make for easier reading now.
KG: It changes for me. I found the description of Mario’s puppet show movie to be a lot like being trapped on an airplane listening to someone taking two-and-a-half hours to describe the plot of a two hour movie, and so I wanted to got to Ennet House every minute of that section.
AE: I really enjoyed Mario’s movie, especially since it gave us a look into the wider community at ETA. Up until then I feel like we’d just been focused on a small group of students (Hal, Pemulis, Troeltsch, etc.) and it was nice to get everyone in that big hall and get little character moments with odd people. The tradition of gathering around for the viewing and the rule that students can eat whatever they want on Interdepence Day was a nice humanizing touch that made the ETA feel more like a school where actual humans would go. Before I saw it as more of a tennis-robot factory, now I’m seeing it as more of a family. Which would make C.T. proud, I’m sure.
KG: I love tennis and find the ETA stuff really enjoyable overall. On top of that there are set pieces, of course, that are just stunning but I don’t think they are tied to any particular place or character, at least not for me.
EMK: I love the ETA kids best when they’re giving each other shit, no doubt about it, but the AA stuff is still fascinating to me. Sometimes this book feels sort of sterile, in a Stanley Kubrick way, just very cerebral and cool, so I do tend to feel grateful for the warmer, more human stuff, I guess.
AE: An exception to that appreciation of the human stuff — at least for me — is anything dealing with Himself’s childhood. Right now if feels like we’re getting background on a character we know is dead, and whose legacy (the Entertainment) we already knew the motivations for. I understand that the scene featuring Himself and The Man From Glad culminated in the origin of Himself’s fascination annulation, but there were a lot of pages to get through for such a small detail. We couldn’t have learned that via. one of Hal and Orin’s earlier conversations, or done without the knowledge entirely?
MB:: Probably. But those two passages are among my favorite, no doubt because they showcase Wallace’s skill in teasing the interesting from the banal.
LOVED the mattress scene. I thought it was a really beautiful synthesis of all these images and themes that have been recurring throughout the book. The scene flew by and I would have happily read twice as many pages on this. Even though JOI is dead, it seems (so far) like he’s the locus of the novel.
Agreed. And I feel like the parts that most stand out to me are the ones that deal with JOI’s – and really anyone in the book’s – family backstory. I like learning their stories.
that, and there was something really cute about the back-to-back squeak scenes straddling either side of the novel’s midpoint.
“The Awakening of My Interest in Annular Systems” was actually published in Harper’s in 1993 (prior to the publication of IJ). I remember reading it years ago and absolutely loving it for the bizarre narrative voice, and the way the narrator’s actions just barely hint at the kind of emotional discomfort he must be feeling at watching his father huff and puff and then vomit and pass out on the floor of his bedroom. As I started IJ, I realized that that passage was almost certainly going to turn up, and when I read early on that Himself’s father was the Man from Glad, I was pretty much on the edge of my seat waiting for it. I’ll chalk up Avery’s disparagement of this passage to a bad day. Presumably, having gotten this far, she isn’t reading each vignette in IJ for “small details” to flesh out the larger plot. Because, in my opinion, most of the pleasure of IJ is to be found in digressions that don’t advance the plot.
I love the scenes from JOI’s youth too. I think when I first read the book, I didn’t really grok them, but every time I read them now, I’m just dazzled, especially by the first, in which JOI’s dad is talking about objects and planning to go play tennis.
When I started blogging this summer I was 100% certain that Wallace’s writerly voice was going to insinuate itself into my own. I decided early on that this was just one more thing I was going to have to Raise the White Flag and surrender to.
I definitely prefer the ETA sections as opposed to the Marathe/Steeply or AA sections. I’d say that the latter two are growing on me, but I’ve enjoyed the Estachon, Puppet Show, and waiting in the Dean’s Office sections much more than I’ve enjoyed hearing about Don Gately’s day-to-day. I think this might be because the Gately sections don’t have much in the way of dialogue or action; they more set up what it’s like to be a resident in Ennett house.
There aren’t any sections I prefer. I have marked all the Marathe/Steeply sections so I can read them again once I’ve finished the book. The Eschaton section and a section about Lenz’s walks(around pg 610) are my favorite sections so far.
i read the book twice, last month., now why do you need to blog about it? its not that much of an acomplishment…
Hahaha, slow clap for the all-star.
Obvious Troll should at least aim for proper grammar and spelling before claiming they read this book twice in one month. It might make it a little more believable.
“So I don’t find any of the storylines to be more engrossing than others. In fact, I don’t find the narrative to be particularly engrossing at all. It’s Wallace’s style that I enjoy, and I am largely indifferent as to what subject matter he is writing about at any given moment.”
I agree with this, though I do think the narrative/plot is engrossing. But yes, largely, I think I like the book because I like the way DFW writes, not because I specifically like what he writes about. Though there’s an exception to that too – I’m starting to care about things I didn’t care about before (like tennis).
I’m drawn to IJ also because it deals with questions of consciousness, self, depression, identity, human interactions, empathy, community, and overall, life. That’s not the narrative/plot of IJ but it’s certainly right there below the surface and really important thematically. I don’t know literary terms – is there a word for that? Not the plot, but the themes the plot deals with?
I definitely have started using w/r/t, and I’d really like to start calling my mom The Moms, although Himself seems so unique the name can’t be placed on anyone else.
I’m trying to refer to any sort of career success as The Show, but mostly it’s just awesome (even if no one understands you) to talk about eliminating someone’s map.
The Hal/Orin conversations are such an incredible back and forth that they’re hard to move on from, definitely a favorite to savor. My favorite: Orin discussing the subject and Hal dryly observing that they seem to be much more the opposite. Classic.
Growing up, my brother and I would refer typically to “the ‘Rents,” and more occasionally to “the Moms” and “the Dads.” Not sure where this came from (grew up in 1970s-’80s mid-Westchester Cnty, NNY). But when Hal and O. referred to “the Moms,” I didn’t even double-take, it seemed so natural. W/r/t “Himself,” on the other hand, there is a different, and as you say non-transferable, weight.
My mother-in-law calls my son Himself, and now I wonder if it’s because she’s spent a lot of time in Canada.
I kind of felt like the mattress scene wasn’t actually so much about the origin of Himself’s fascination with annulation, but really more about the disconnect between what was happening in J.O.I.’s life (his father dying in front of his eyes) and what was happening in J.O.I.’s mind (Eureka, annulation!). We learn about the relationship between him and his parents, between his mom and dad, and we see how the disconnect between them might be a factor in J.O.I.’s own disconnect from the world, and later in his own parenting style. In this case I think a lot was going on that wouldn’t have easily been replaced by an endnote.
Perhaps I missed something important, but what struck me about the mattress scene was its absolute lack of any connection, other than temporal proximity, to the annulation incident at its conclusion. What should it be telling me about JOI’s mind that he would relate the story that way? Should I consider that Himself saw the mattress scene as not just a lead-in, but as a logical part of the origin of his interest in annular systems?
I totally saw a recently ran-over pidgeon the other day and said aloud, ‘There’s a bird that had it’s map eliminated all over the parking lot.’ Of course I was met with confusion.
I also giggle like a little girl when someone says ‘unit.’
Totally digging this roundtable format, fearless guides. Nice work this week, as usual.
I’ve started using “fantods,” maybe a little too often. While I was reading IJ, I was teaching and had to re-read Huck Finn, and laughed hard when I saw Huck using it (as “fan-tod”). That validated my desire to use it.
I enjoy saying “boner-fried”.
[...] During the roundtable I confessed that, while I enjoy the novel and love reading Wallace’s writing, “I don’t find [...]