Comments on: Summer’s End Roundtable, Part I

By: Tommy C

Tommy C — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:45:39 +0000

“A Day in the Life” fits the work so well – but I was thinking more (everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.)

Try giving “Eclipse” a listen while you read over the last passage.

By: Joel Bass

Joel Bass — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:42:38 +0000

Well said, Matt. There are definitely a few doses of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, “Helter Skelter”, and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” before we get to “Her Majesty,” though.

By: Doubtful Geste

Doubtful Geste — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:52:16 +0000

Another way to think about it: All the things Gately suddenly remembers give us, among other things, a very parallel tale to Hal’s, including an odd childhood, a suicide of a sorta-parent figure during that childhood, a promising athletic career brought to a standstill by the combination of life circumstances and a serious drug habit at age 17. In most books, two parallel characters like this would probably end up “ending” their stories in “real time” together, which tends to make it really hard to avoid sorta casting them as dark/light good/evil right-choosing/ wrong-choosing dualities. Here, we still do that a bit (hey, we’re human!), but we are also encouraged to see these two people as being (not to mention a large number of others such as Joelle, Pemulis, the Ennet House crew, etc) in different stages of struggles that are similar but unique, such that any of them might be on the verge of making choices that ultimately turn them towards a myriad of good or bad possible futures. You can feel for Hal (or Kate or Green or etc) without having to cast them purely as a polar doppelgangers to the sort of hopeful chance at goodness, even nobility, that Gately seems to have stumbled into.

By: Randy

Randy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:09:27 +0000

Yeah, bad choice of words: “stunt.” I can see how that would offend a literary genius like Wallace. I’m a mathematician–not a man of words.

Call it what you want, but DFW has every one of us on a quest to figure out what’s going on at the “end” of the book.

What would you call that?

By: Joel Bass

Joel Bass — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:27:11 +0000

Yes, a bit. But if I knew this was the beginning of a story, I’d know anything could happen, and I’d expect to get a whole story.

In this case I feel like I got 3/4 of a really incredible novel, plus a bonus haiku. Now I have the choice to either decide that DFW did this on purpose in order to teach me something, or blow my mind, or whatever — or I can decide that it’s just not that great of an ending. I have to admit feeling a bit ripped off.

By: webslog

webslog — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:02:40 +0000

” think Hal is finally being authentic in the opening scene with the deans, ” actually, I think that’s more what I meant. His responses are genuine despite his knowing that a different set of answers, glibly delivered, would have smoothed the entire thing over and achieved the desired (by some in the room) end. It ended up feeling to me like his Ego was finally planting a flag on the outside … “I am in here.”

By: stephanie

stephanie — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:12:47 +0000

“You’re forgetting that Hal purposely injures himself to avoid taking part in the tennis tournament with the (unknown to him) AFR.”

Do you have a page number for this? I had assumed that he doesn’t take part in the tournament because he really does need to be in the hospital (whether he ate the DMZ or his condition just worsened, I’m not sure.) What makes you think he purposely injured himself? I might have just missed this.

By: stephanie

stephanie — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:10:58 +0000

Do you feel the same way if you think of the bleak little beach painting as the beginning of the story, not the end?

By: stephanie

stephanie — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:09:14 +0000

Same here. It moved me on a level that few other pieces of art have. The only thing that comes to mind, in terms of something having a similar impact, is Six Feet Under.

By: Joel Bass

Joel Bass — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:58:15 +0000

I think he’s succeeded brilliantly as a writer, but I’m not so sure that ending felt brilliant to me. I loved the book, though it was hard… I learned, as Gately did, to “Keep Coming Back.”

And then, one night, when I came back, there was a lock on the door, with a photocopy of a Martin Johnson Heade painting taped to it. What? That’s it? I mean, it’s a beautiful painting and all, but after all that about coming back, about getting out of your head and making real connections with the sad and beautiful human beings around you, this is what I’m left with? This bleak little beach painting?