I am coming to believe that there is not one normal character in this book.77 We see characters with physical deformities (the wheelchair assassins, Mario); mental problems (Himself, Kate Gompert, others); substance addictions (the Ennet house gang, a vast number of students at E.T.A); sociopathic tendencies (Lenz, Lenz, Lenz); obsessive compulsions (Avril Incandenza, Lateral Alice Moore); and gender dysphoria (Hugh Steeply, Poor Tony). But no one ‘normal’.
This has been distracting to me in the past. The world of Infinite Jest already requires such a suspension of disbelief — what with the concavity, and the subsidization, and the idea that people are scared by a group of assassins that could be thwarted by a set of stairs78 that adding in a cast of characters all so uniquely deviant stretches that disbelief just a mite too far. Of course, this can be a problem with fiction in general, and is preferable to a set of perfect players. After all, “perfect characters are boring, and sometimes even annoying … character flaws = sources of conflict.”
But these flaws are such an integral part of IJ that I’m beginning to think that David Foster Wallace is trying to achieve some goal other than making sure no character is too idealized to be interesting. Because it’s one thing to make a character too arrogant to achieve their own goals, or blinded by greed, or any other of a number of common tropes. But Infinite Jest takes things to extremes, with Orin engaging in ritualistic seductions to fulfill some Oedipal desire, with Joelle feeling the need to cover her face due to severe deformity79 and with Lenz killing small animals at night.
These are all extremely negative deviancies. That’s what I keep getting caught up on. No one seems to be particularly happy with how different they are, except Mario. And we really can’t trust his opinion on such matters, because he has “a neurological deficit whereby he can’t feel physical pain very well” (p. 589). Mario’s experiences with feeling — at a very base level — are so wildly different to every other human that he cannot be counted on for a reliable comparison of relative happiness.
I feel like this theme of difference is meant to be a lesson — stray too far from the norm, and you will be deeply, deeply unhappy. Do drugs, and you will be unhappy (like the majority of the Ennet House residents). Be too much of a winner, and you will be unhappy (as demonstrated by Clipperton). Be too smart, and you might well erase your own map (perhaps with Himself’s microwave method).
This unhappiness will be permanent, too. No one in the book so far has managed to deviate from a societal norm and come back from the other side unscathed. The addicts are eternal addicts, doomed to become the old men of Boston AA — forever believing that they must Keep Coming Back, lest they fall back into addiction. And even doing that may not be able to save them from true, visceral hideousness; Lenz is hitting meetings like a champ, but they’re not stopping him from killing small creatures on the way home.
The tennis players are incessantly protected from hype, lest they come to see themselves as exceptional — as beyond the average, the normal — and lose their on-court edge. The novel’s many geniuses fall victim to punishments for their difference, too. If we’re not watching Himself kill himself, we’re seeing the hyper-smart and closed-off Avril having sex with under-age boys (p. 553 if you don’t believe me), or listening to Hal assure us the he is “in there”, as the world around him sees nothing but a seizing, “sub-animalistic” boy.
Which brings me to my real concern in all this: Hal. I’ve mentioned before that I’m curious as to how Hal comes by the disability that serves as this book’s very first ‘shocker’. I’ve been hoping that it will be something temporary — perhaps a drug dose that I can hope he one day recovers from, or a stray tennis ball to the head that may cause brain damage that science or time may one day fix. But you see, Hal is committing a number of ‘crimes of difference’ throughout this novel. He’s exceptionally smart. He’s a superb athlete. And he’s using drugs.
Going by the established pattern, that’s a trifecta of deviancy that Infinite Jest can only punish. And I’m worrying that — like Himself’s death, Marathe’s disability, and Don Gately’s addiction — it will be a very permanent punishment indeed.
But when have “normal” people ever been the subject of great literature? When has happiness ever been entertaining? The film Infinite Jest is lethally entertaining, an obvious mis-equation of happiness and entertainment.
I dig this a lot, Avery. The notion of IJ as a book that punishes deviancy is an interesting one and I’m going to keep an eye out for occurrences of this.
Couple points:
1. (Echoing what Matt said) This made me think of Tolstoy’s famous first line to Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Maybe this extends to people too, and it’s that unhappiness, or deviance, that makes them interesting and worthy of fictional treatment.
Incidentally, Hal et. al. discuss this line on p. 95 of IJ. Someone questions whether the unhappy people ever realize they’re unhappy, and Hal pretty much shuts down this line of questioning by insisting to focus on the syntax of the sentence, rather than the meaning.
2. Maybe Wallace is saying that nobody is normal and that we’re all deviant and messed-up, and that the great challenge of life is to accept your own deviancy and live through it (like Mario), rather than letting it live through you?
Excellent points. I’ve been thinking along the lines of what you articulate so well in point #2. I’m interested to see how this will continue to unfold in the rest of the book.
Point #2 relates to the White Flaggers too – surrendering your will is an important step to recovery. It’s like the serenity prayer, which is part of AA as well – “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Once you make stop struggling for control, it becomes much easier to become healthy.
For me, as a filmmaker embedded in the narrow strictures of the studio system, I know that even the most light weight comedy rises or falls on the errant and erratic complications of not just plot but of wayward, flawed, conflicted characters. How many of us would even want to have dinner with the myopic people who populate the very same comedies that we laugh at in the dark.
I thin that infinitedetox’s observations are spot on. Who the hell is normal? Look into the eyes of Bergman and Antonioni if you want to see troubled souls in cinema. Yet who would question that these recently deceased masters did not dig deeply into the zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s? Is Avery opining that the 90s are inherently a sunnier time and that DFW is somehow out of step with his time because ALL his characters are flawed. I respect the integrity of Avery’s postings and am delighted she is so open with us. But it seems to me she really is struggling all the way. Well, if the tables have been rocking for her, boy are they going to be overturned soon.
I have to disagree with the premise that IJ is populated by not-normal people. Sure, perhaps they’re abnormal in physical ways such as having deformities or suffering from substance abuse. But one of the reasons I like this book so much is that the characters seem so plausible and real and motivated by the same things that motivate “normal” people. I generally tend to much prefer older novels, because many more modern novels turn me off with their casts of characters that I can’t relate to. They often act in ways that are incomprehensible to me. Whereas with IJ, I feel like these are real people who are acting in ways I can understand (which is not to say agree with or approve of).
I don’t remember where, but there was one part of IJ that talks about how un-cool having a non-ironic take on life is. What I love about this book is that it is written earnestly and with obvious compassion towards all the characters. I love that DFW seems to be not just making a bunch of random characters up to impress us, but rather really speaking to how people really would act and feel in an authentic way (albeit in some outlandish situations).
I think this is part of DFW’s genius- most of these characters are very much not normal, but you can empathize with most of them (maybe not Lenz, for me). It seems to be part of the challenge of the book, too. It’s easy to find ways to Take People’s Inventory, and to list all your differences with them. It’s harder, but very worthwhile, to see if you can find some small piece of commonality you can Identify with in their struggles to accept their own deviancy.
1) No normal people in this book? What on earth do you mean? I find all but the most cartoonish (Marathe, Steeply, etc.) exceedingly plausible and very much like the conflicted, neurotic, emotionally shell-shocked people found, as far as I can tell, everywhere. A notable difference between the experience of reading Infinite Jest and the experience of going about our daily businesses is that through Wallace we see into all of the deepest, darkest, saddest, most damaged places in the minds and histories of the people presented, whereas in our actual interactions with other people, these things rarely come up (for obvious reasons).
2)This is not a novel written in the realist style, and as such should not be parsed for plausibility. Of course the AFR are absurd. That’s a good part of the point. I’ve noticed that Wallace often goes for a symbol that’s ridiculously obvious (like the brain-shaped building at M.I.T.) which contains all sorts of stealth symbolism (in the case of the brain-building, this is one of many examples of Wallace honing the theme of mind/body interrelation or mind/body split).
3) As regards Mario and pain, his impaired ability to feel pain is yet another potential albatross around his neck. How would this would alter his essential humanity as regards happiness, emotional pain, spiritual well-being?
4) If there’s a theme, it’s certainly not that deviance from the norm leads to unhappiness (just what is this norm, again?). Who are the happiest characters in the book? I propose Mario, Lyle, perhaps Don Gately (even Marathe gets his ray of sunshine via his wife). Mario and Lyle are about the strangest characters to be found in IJ, and Don Gately would stand out in a crowd, assuredly. If there’s a theme to be had here, it’s probably something along the lines of … a)people are strange … and … b)people are frail but valuable and wonderful things.
5) Infinite Jest strikes a very pro-AA stance, and as such advances the notion that an addict is an addict is an addict. This ties in to the central themes of human frailty and worth.
6) Lenz’s recovery is not so legit, as evidenced by the fact that he’s STILL USING coke while attending meetings and staying at the house. Thus, his “hitting meetings like a champ” is meaningless.
7) I don’t think we’re meant to believe that Himself redefined his cartography as a result of his unbearable smartness. In fact, did he even kill himself (see: Hamlet)?
I very much agree with this assessment. And to add to it – re: AA – being defined as an addict does not mean that you cannot recover and lead a happy and meaningful life.
Not be annoying, but isn’t the thing in AA that “once an addict, always an addict”–that you can’t really recover? Not that you can’t lead a meaningful life, but recovery? Not so sure. There’s a reason it’s one day at a time, right?
I guess what I meant was be in recovery. Not recover from the addiction but like, reclaim your life and stay sober.
Thank you! These people are all normal- they deal with normal problems. They’re just exposed. They have the problems jocks and junkies have in real life, the problems we all at some point or to some degree have in real life. The characters are mostly archetypes for those problems, or super- jocks and super- junkies. Because if anything gets the attention of the reader it’s the superlative or the exaggerated. But very real and very normal.
Mario is the difference, though, because he is clinically abnormal. And yet many of us have commented here that he is the most representative of emotionally normal; he sees the emotion in Hal, he senses and intuits what pgoat isup to on the radio. He’s relatively steady, emotionally. He’s the odd character, right?
I’m not trying to be combative, though I know it may come across that way, but I nearly feel as though we are reading two different books. I’m confused by the way you use the term “normal.” Can you define what you mean by that? Who – or what kind of character – would be an example of someone “normal”? If you get to know a person, doesn’t he or she invariably have an inner complexity and hidden struggles, regardless of who they are?
I also don’t think IJ is a stretch of the imagination, particularly Orin’s sexual encounters. There are plenty of men (and woman) who treat seduction as a game and objectify their partners. On another note, I don’t think you intended it this way, but the phrase “mental problems” comes across as a little harsh.
I don’t in any way see DFW saying that you should not stray from the norm, or that the norm brings happiness. I feel like he’s saying the opposite – that if you become passive and wrapped up in pop culture and entertainment (arguably the “norm” in America), you’ll be missing out on actually being alive.
Plus I see no evidence that Don Gately has not fought valiantly against his addiction, to the point of near redemption. He still has a long way to go, but his story to me, so far, is a success story. It’s a struggle, but he’s doing damn good. And I don’t think JOI killed himself because he was too smart. First of all, how is that even a deviation that he like, controlled? Secondly, I think his refusal to stay sober and attend AA had a lot more to do with it, and if you want to trace those issues back, it points to his father’s treatment of him and his gifts, not his gifts themselves.
And I don’t think the ETA students are protected from hype – they have obessions with being in “the Show” and have been pushed by parents and instructors to the point where they routinely vomit from the physical stress and cryal from the emotional stress.
I am just really confused on how this is your understanding of the book. I’m totally open to interpretation and I don’t think there’s like, one right way to look at it and everything else is wrong, or anything to that extent. Some of the differing opinions have made me change my mind about a character or a situation that I was previously fixed about. So I’m not trying to be judgmental or negative. I guess I’m just approaching the book very differently. I think if you were to re-read it again after some time, your attitude toward it might change.
Cry. Not cryal. I don’t even know what cryal means.
apparantly it is a word for a heron. so a cryal crying would be a bit like a sad stork..hmmm.
Probably a key thing to add to the “everybody’s deformed” discussion are all the images of lenses and reflection and self-reflection, up to and including, of course, “Analysis Paralysis” and the awful pun that is “Randy Lenz”: With most of the “deformities,” the issue of what lens the character views themselves through is as important as the deformity. In recent pages, for example, we’ve seen Hal, long before his Year of Glad problems, starting to doubt if his face is expressing what he thinks it is. And I am with Avery in preferring to think of Joelle’s deformity as being as much her interpretation of herself as anything else (and wasn’t that scene marvelous with her and Don G. matching wits about who was deflecting who by masking themselves with veils or status as House Staff (531-38)).
That’s also part of why I don’t really buy “punishing deviency” as a goal fo DFW’s. If you focus on the deformity without noting the lens/reflection/self-reflection forces, you risk missing the point: Clipperton isn’t presented as an image of a winner, but of someone playing such a weird self-destructive game with himself and others that winning or losing against him isn’t even at issue in the tennis rankings. Lamont Chu isn’t in danger of losing his game because of lack of skill but because he is in danger of entering an infinite loop of obsessive reflection about being seen/admired by others. And “Gender Dysphoria” as an easy “deformity” category for Steeply and Poor Tony is pretty useless in understanding them. For Steeply, his cross-dressing is driven by his undercover role, and the pleasure he takes in it seems to come not from a personal desire to cross-dress or otherwise change his gender identity, but from his obsessive discipline in assuming the roles the O.U.S. dictates to him (we are told that he once pulled out all his teeth to match a previous cover disguise) — his obsession is in manipulating the lens through which (he is told to have) others see him. And Poor Tony? He seems more “traditional” in his reasons for cross-dressing, but DFW doesn’t seem to have any interest in punishing him for this “deformity” — his downfall is the result of substance withdrawl combined with/leading to an inability to continue to present himself as a woman, so, if anything, it is the loss of the ability to cross dress rather than the initial choice to do so that messes with his literal sense of his “self-reflection.” And, of course, while Himself just might be the “smartest” person in the book, he is also the one most literally concerned with lens, reflection, and annular cycles of all types. And it is these, not simply his intelligence, which seem (along with the booze) to be the tools he uses to walk the path to self-destruction.
Short version: DFW seems largely interested in how these character rise or fall not based on their real or imagined deformities, but on how well they manage to avoid falling into weird self-reflexive traps about how they are seen by others and themselves, a danger that is made literal in the book by all the descriptions of lenses, reflecting surfaces, and the like. (So, of course, it is Mario — who inherits and uses all the weird lenses — who turns out to be oddly adept both at not worrying about how he is seen and at not seeing others through the unflattering lenses they choose to look at themselves through).
Oh, and meant to give props to john bailey for describing the film characters as “myopic” — of course I think that accords with my thesis that the lens is as important as the deformity, and I’d be curious what he, as a filmmaker, makes of the sort of films this book describes in relation to this myopia.
Wow, really a lot of insight here, particularly concerning mirrors and lenses (the import of which had totally passed me by, and I kept wondering why W was haranguing so heavily on the Antitoi’s mirrors).
I hadn’t read this when I posted my comment below. You make many fine points.
“DFW seems largely interested in how these characters rise or fall not based on their real or imagined deformities, but on how well they manage to avoid falling into weird self-reflexive traps about how they are seen by others and themselves, a danger that is made literal in the book by all the descriptions of lenses, reflecting surfaces, and the like.”
An annulus is a ring, but to annul is to cancel, to reduce to nothing, to obliterate. Annular cycles = “self-reflexive trap”? vicious cycle?
re: annulus/annular vs. annul — that one never dawned on me. It’s great!
This is wonderful, Doubtful Geste! I love when I’ve overlooked something that is just sitting there – Lenz, of course! – and someone points it out to me. Click. The self-reflexive trap of IJ. Click. Annularity. Click. Mario’s insensitivity to pain and self-reflexive judgment. Click click click.
Another mirror-note: The A.F.R. famously used mirrors to confuse and kill motorists with images of themselves.
Or was it the F.L.Q? Anyways, doesn’t matter much which.
Wow. Great stuff here. My limited lens, indeed.
And yes that is one of my favorite scenes (531-38).
Agreed. Thanks for this.
Brava! (Bravo?). Love the curved, confusing, misleading Antitoi mirrors… and all that self-reflexive lens jazz. Identify. Thanks so much.
Great comment. I love when someone can articulate all the thoughts buzzing around in my mind that never fully take form.
Doubtful Geste!
Thank you for the short version. I’m like ‘headsmack!’ to what you just wrote about the lenses. Wow. Thanks!
Ps. I just yesterday misread the word ‘creativity’ as ‘concavity’….
This post seems to be getting a lot of lengthy rebuttal so I will try to keep my comments short. Avery, I too have had difficulty at times with the strangeness of the characters in this book. Aerodynamics made it clear to me that my problem here is that this book is barely even attempting realism in a traditional or recognizable sense. This bothers me, it seems contrived and obvious that each character is obviously malformed or defaced in some way. I find myself wishing that he would move to a more intimate portrayal of a few of the characters and spare me the nonsense of Lateral Alice or Sweat-eating Lyle.
However, I think it is a mistake to think that he is doing this to show that deviancy is punished and normalcy rewarded. I think it is much simpler than that actually; I think there are no normal characters in the book because when you really look at it, there are no normal people in life. Everyone is twisted and broken, and I mean really broken, or they wouldn’t be people and couldn’t experience striving and joy and forgiveness and regret. If anything I think that DFW is trying to show that the cage is our wish or attempt to be something other than what we are by either presenting an image of normalcy or by willing ourselves to become normal or acceptable in a general sense.
Nicely said about broken people. Though my wife hates when I talk like that, so I won’t tell her I said it (you said it first, anyway).
I like LAM, she has “character.” As Schtitt says, “transversion is character”; LAM transverses; Ergo, LAM has character. QED.
I don’t know yet about Lyle. I sure hope I see more of him before the end of the book (and I think I will), but I can’t see anything as nonsense – no sense, ab/sense – since I’m always finding more puzzle pieces in IJ, often with the help of others. See, e.g., my praise for Doubtful Geste above, that helps me see Lenz – who gives me the squivers – in a whole new light.
I’d agree with Stephanie. It seems like Avery is looking at the “non-normalcy” of the characters as a flaw, as a bad thing, a reason to look down on them. Everyone has their weaknesses, and DFW has a habit of concentrating on those. A good story isn’t without its conflict.
Also, the Wheelchair Assassins are established as a force to be reckoned with, as seen in the passage in which they infiltrate Antitois Entertainment. This actually brings up a good counterargument to the idea that everyone in the story has a fatal flaw. We write up paraplegics as being infirm and less capable than us. But from seeing the wheelchair-bound Canadians in action, it’s apparent that the Wheelchair Assassins are actually more capable than us: they’re crafty, they’re strong, they’re truly Dangerous.
Mario’s another example of this. I don’t think that the fact that he doesn’t feel physical pain relates to his lack of self-consciousness. On the outside, he is the most ugly character in the book. Despite that, he is truly the most sincere, thoughtful, and creative character I’ve come across in this novel so far.
It’s something to think about: the two “least normal” sets of characters in this book also happen to act inversely to what would be expected of them.
And don’t forget that the most attractive and tall characters in the book (Avril) is probably one of the biggest head cases when it comes to sexuality.
I think a more valuable way to approach the idea of IJ’s character flaws is to replace “normal” with “Well adjusted” because, you know, what does “normal” really mean? It’s such a loaded term.
Wallace talks about being well adjusted in the Kenyon College address, saying:
“This is not a matter of virtue — it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being ‘well adjusted,’ which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.”
From this idea of being “well adjusted,” we can evaluate how the characters choose to see themselves through their personal lenses.
I think This is Water (the Kenyon speech) should be read in conjunction with IJ – someone pointed out that it’s basically IJ boiled down to a few core points.
I suspect that you may be right about that but I really hope its not true. If the point of IJ can be said in 2 pages instead of 1000+ then I’m going to feel kind of duped.
Well, I wouldn’t say that. I’m getting way more out of IJ than This is Water. Plus I love the characters. I guess it’s more like a companion piece as opposed to a replacement, and it does make the same essential points, but IJ expands upon them and makes them more powerful – and then there are other points in IJ that don’t appear in Water.
Hi Stephanie,
yes: I was jumping w/ excitement when the line about the fish swimming in the water (and how the old fish says ‘how’s the water, boys?’ and the young fish are like ‘what’s water?’) came up. –I read the Kenyon speech *before* IJ. It was great to see that come up again.
Can I just point out that Steeply is NOT a transvestite, NOT gender dysphoric– he’s undercover. He’s in disguise. His disguise was chosen by his superiors at OUS/BSS.
Regarding Joelle and footnote #79: Don’t you see a strong parallel between being deformed with beauty and the concavity being to lush and perfect to sustain life (paraphrasing on that one)?
Oooh, nice catch. The acid rain treatment, but improbably fecund. Deformed substance. Hmmm.
I really have to believe that somehow Hal is going to be OK; his lucid narration at the beginning despite everyone else’s perceptions somehow gives me hope. Maybe it’s overly optimistic, but the alternative would kill me.
I have to disagree with this. The reason why all of the characters in IJ are unhappy isn’t because they’ve deviated from the social norm but because they’ve deviated from what they are themselves. Rampant consumerism and mass materialism have led people to strive for goals that lie outside of who and what they are, that force them to become alienated from themselves and others in order to achieve those goals. Think of Orin. Think of JOI’s father. Think of The Show.
This leads us to the case of our ambiguous protagonist, Hal:
I can understand why readers on their first pass might think of Hal’s behaviour in the opening pages as symptomatic of a disability. But the deeper we get into the novel, and the more we see Hal running from his inner life — the drug use, for example, or the well-researched act he puts on for the grief counsellor — the more his opening line, “I am in here” begins to suggest the exact opposite. Recall that his statements about his own thoughts and feelings to the UA officials are described as shocking animalistic noises: but these descriptions are only ever employed from the perspective of the officials. I’m beginning to think that Hal is in fact the only “real” person in that room — and for that reason appears, relatively speaking, as bizarre, abnormal, and “disabled”. In fact those descriptions may best be applied to everyone else except Hal, which is a brilliant use of irony. The real mystery that needs to be solved here, then, is not how Hal becomes a monstrosity, but how he manages to come back from it.
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here, because I’m pretty sure the reason for Hal’s condition in the opening of the book is hinted at fairly early on.
It seems like he is still under the influence of the DMZ that Pemulis scores from the Antitoi brothers and which Pemulis, Hal, and Axford all decide to ingest before the Whataburger Invitational, in which Hal is competing in the opening of the book.
But, then again, I could be completely wrong.
yes, but they’re planning to DMZ themselves in the late November YDAU; the book opens in November during the Year of Glad. So, a long strange trip.
There are other things going on with Hal, but you have to kind of link them as you read – his toothache, his toddler mold ingestion, read page 33 which introduces the medical attache and his particular specialty.
I keep returning to the depicted roles of parents and how almost all of them are fucking up their kids. With the exception of JOI and Mario, there are no positive child-parent relationships.
It seemed like JOI was kind of abusive to Mario. He made him haul his equipment everywhere and sleep on the floor.
I need to go back and look at the description of that because I had forgotten the sleeping on the floor bit, but it struck me as less “child as indentured servant” and more like “child is interested in the parent’s work and is given apprentice role”.
JOI accepts Mario (even with the knowledge that he may not be his son) and seems to spend more time with him than his other sons. He even passes his lenses, cameras etc on to him. I think there is a genuine connection between them that doesn’t seem to abuse or distort the parent/child relationship (mostly because with Mario you can’t).
Contrast that with the way C.T. thinks of Mario – referring to him as It or the “thing it’s not entirely impossible he may have fathered asleep up next to the sound system with its claws on its chest…” or “not eager to wake it and have to interface with it and have it look up at him with a terrible calm and accepting knowledge it’s quite possible is nothing but Tavis’s imagination (451).” I think DFW even writes that C.T. has a hard time even being in the same room as Mario.
w/r/t nuclear (ha) family
We’ve discussed Orin & Hal in relation to Avril @ http://infinitetasks.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/orins-fall/. and also @ http://infinitetasks.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/holy-schtitt/. I recommend IT’s essays & comments on this subject.
http://repatblues.blogspot.com/search/label/infinite%20jest has an essay I can’t recommend too much: More Maternal Fantods; Or the Dangers of Reading-While-Female. Is Avril eating her kids alive, or is this good-enough mothering?
And the comment (above thread) about ANNUL snapped my head around. I missed the annul in annulation completely!
The psychologically wrenching scene aka chapter 16 of “The Awakening of My Interest In Annular Systems” arises with JOI in his parent’s hillside house, in a sky-blue & white room which picture-window overlooks: nothing but bright sky. After wrangling various parental neuroses, dependencies, enablings, and one massive bed, JOI retreats upstairs, to rise above his family ritual drama. It is there, annulling the parental pressure (as it were), that he intellectualizes his way into a fascination with annular systems. aka, How I became a successful headcase, part one. Stay tuned kids, for “How JOI becomes the headcase Master”– in the next exciting episode.
Yes, the generations are inhabited by ghosts of the past. IJ main characters’ stories reflect back into the past, a trick with mirrors; the past lives through them, distortions and all.
Does anyone have the Hollywood connections necessary to find out if Dutch’s killing of a cat a few years back on The Shield was any sort of nod to Lenz in IJ ?