Comments on: Greg Carlisle: Reading Infinite Jest Changed My Life (and Now It Will Change Yours)

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:40:32 +0000

dave10:
Thank you for looking!

By: OneBigParty

OneBigParty — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:18:07 +0000

Now that I’ve “came back to” (p. 981): The ending makes a interesting–and good–impression on me. I’m with it all the way. At first I thought of the very beginnings of us as land animals crawling out of the ocean–so a representing a beginning. We’re ready to remake the world now that this other world has ended and another begins. The border aspect–Gately on the border between land and sea– figures strongly here. The end of the story as well as the imagery in it’s last sentence is a jumping off place–into a being-without-the-book, if you will, being-outside-the-book into our being alone with ourselves again into well, just being. Yet, “in my end is my beginning”-style there are the footnotes, a running commentary on the being, the content of the book just as when we are alone with our being our thoughts should, in the sense of the observing ego, be a running commentary on our being/actions–thereby keeping us from the dreaded “default setting”.

I think it’s brilliant that it’s cold and raining because as the book and it’s world leaves me, it does feel like warmth and life are now withdrawing in the opposite direction and I have no choice but to plunge forward over that border into being and start swimming.

Great contribution to belles-lettres, Prof. Carlisle. I wish I could be in your classes.

By: The End « Infinite Zombies

The End « Infinite Zombies — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:04:24 +0000

[...] know that the ending has made a huge impression on some. Take Greg Carlisle’s explanation from last week: I find the depth of the last sentence to be unparalleled in literature. Only the [...]

By: dioramaorama

dioramaorama — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:36:14 +0000

I’ve got one too. It’s a little shiny here.

http://twitpic.com/frnla/full

I want to see this DFW sleeve described below.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:48:21 +0000

Thanks Greg. EC was my companion to IJ, section by section, and as much as the text affected me I never would have gotten as much out of it as I did with your astute analysis bouncing around in my skull too.

By: unreliable narrator

unreliable narrator — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:59:47 +0000

(Which I suppose was all an unnecessarily fancy way of saying, I Identified.)

By: unreliable narrator

unreliable narrator — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:54:19 +0000

“After Gately got shot, I would only put the book down to go to work or to the bathroom or to sleep. With two days to go, if you are still sticking to a pages-per-day schedule, I just don’t see how you’re doing that.”

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I became like a rat pressing the pleasure-lever. It was impossible to move or speak. People around me seemed ghostly, spoke in hushed voices. The confines of the physical book ate me whole. My eyes grew so big it was like they were trying to swallow the page of print, even blurred through tears. The unparalleled reading experience which I suspect some of us have sought and re-sought since we were very small children and discovered what the Entertainment had to offer.

And I think, too, of that person who always confused “further” and “farther” until, in the margins of one of his papers, DFW wrote, simply, “I hate you.” And now I do not confuse them.

Thank you, Greg.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:15:50 +0000

Well, I just finished IJ on my Kindle, and while I was not inspired to get a DFW quote tattoo, I was galvanized to get a paperback copy of the book so I could immediately start reading it again, this time more slowly, this time with lots of annotations in red ink and bookmarks and post-it notes aflutter. I believe I will be reading this amazing book for a very long time.

By: David Wegehaupt

David Wegehaupt — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:34:30 +0000

I know what you mean about the difficulty of photographing tattoos! That’s why I haven’t posted any pics of my IJ tattoo… But I’ll try to fix that soon.

It’s the grave-digging scene sort of as described in Gately’s dream/hallucination, with Joelle asking “did you know him” as a pantiless angel, Hal holding Himself’s head yelling too late… Instead of eating food, I have Gately digging and being unresponsive to Hal. I took a few liberty’s with color and description of character’s…. Also have a fish with the word’s “This is water” on the wrist….

The start of a full DFW sleeve! Hopefully I will get good photos soon and I can post them somewhere!

I do often wonder what Tiny Ewell would say about my tattoo, ha!

By: good old neon

good old neon — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:13:33 +0000

er – “how difficult photographing a tattoo can be” is how it should read.