This is the third of a four-part roundtable discussion with the Infinite Summer Guides.
Infinite Summer: Looking back, do parts of the novel that seemed superfluous at the time now make sense?
Eden M Kennedy: Yes and no. The joke about “never try to pull more than your own weight” came back a few times in different contexts, which were all appropriate, but I agree with Kevin’s ambivalence toward it, and I’m not sure I get why it’s in there, given the story’s history. Also, looking back on all the early Marathe/Steeply conversations, when I really had trouble giving a shit about what they were talking about, I think their conversations would probably reveal a lot more to me on a second reading. So no, they don’t make sense yet, but I have faith that they do make sense.
Avery Edison: I’m starting to understand that even if one section doesn’t give us any new information or make sense as a part of the story, it’s still important because it builds IJ‘s tone. Infinite Jest seems to be less about a series of events that show what happened to a bunch of people, and more about a collection of vignettes that paint a picture of an entire world. Everything is necessary because even the tiniest details inform this portrait of an entire alternate universe.
Kevin Guilfoile: If we were talking about a conventional novel, there’s clearly much here that could be trimmed to make it “better.” But Wallace is aiming at something other than just storytelling, and the experience of the novel wouldn’t be nearly as moving if he didn’t structure it the way he did. There are a lot of scenes, frankly, that could have gone (given the ultimate context I probably would give DFW a pass for borrowing the bricklayer story, except for the fact, as Eden points out, it’s almost entirely gratuitous), but I also give Wallace a great benefit of the doubt given what he’s accomplished with this novel. To go scene by scene would be nitpicking as far as I’m concerned.
Matthew Baldwin: Exactly. It would be akin to saying, “but does the Mona Lisa really need to have those mountains in the background”? And the short answer is, “Yes. Because it’s the Mona Lisa.”
IS: Were the hours (days, weeks…) spent reading the book well spent? Do you regret reading the book at all?
MB: Totally worth it, no regrets. That said, there were times during the reading (especially around page 700) when I wished I could take a break, just set the book aside for a week or two. But at the same time I knew a break would turn into a hiatus would turn into a fuck I can’t believe I failed to finish this book again.
I felt like the protagonist in that Jack London story To Build a Fire, forcing myself to keep moving, desperately wanting to rest “for a moment” but aware that doing so would be end.
AE: A month ago, I would have said that I’d made a terrible decision in committing to reading the book, but now that it’s over with I’m immensely glad I did it. Putting aside the sense of pride I get from the fact that I actually managed to read a 1,000 page book, I really did have fun, pretty much from the eschaton game onwards. There are themes in the book that I’m sure are going to percolate in my brain for a while, and I feel like a (slightly) emotionally deeper human being having read so much truly smart stuff on depression and addiction.
EMK: I do not regret having read Infinite Jest one bit, even though at times it was very, very difficult to motivate myself to stay with it, to find something remotely relevant to post about it, and to make my family understand why I had to go hide in the bedroom all weekend to get caught up. (They’re REALLY glad I’m done.)
KG: I don’t think I would have ever read Infinite Jest–I surely don’t think I would have finished it–without Infinite Summer. And so I’m really grateful Matthew asked me to be a part of this. And not just for the book, but for the community around it. The posts by the other guides and the commenters and the folks in the forums (I really didn’t have much time to dive in there, though I will now) and the readers following along on Twitter. The collective encouragement and wisdom of this group made it one of the most pleasurable reading experiences I’ve ever had. I’m grateful to all of you, actually.
I’ve already read the next two books in the IS queue (Dracula and 2666) and so I won’t be reading along, but I will be stopping by here regularly for the excitement of watching smart minds wrestle with big ideas.
Apparently The Pale King has been delayed until the fall of 2010. Disappointed?
AE: I’m looking forward to reading it, certainly (especially after hearing a reading from it on this episode of To The Best Of Our Knowledge), but I’m not desperate to read it, and the year between now and then gives me more than enough time to tackle IJ again.
KG: I will definitely read The Pale King but I doubt I would have gotten to it before next year, anyway. I just spent a summer reading one book. My book stack needs some serious thinning.
EMK: No, I’ve got all this other Wallace to catch up on. I didn’t think I’d want to read any more Wallace at all after IJ, frankly, but his essay about going to a porn convention sucked me right back in. And now that I’ve read more about his life and how all his personal head-work had led him up to writing The Pale King, I’m really more sorry than ever that he couldn’t stick around to finish it. But I’m looking forward to reading it very much, whatever shape it’s in.
MB: Had you asked me this yesterday, my answer would have been: not really. I felt like Wallace poured all of himself into Jest, and I’m frankly a little skeptical that there could be more of him to read, especially in another huge, sprawling novel.
But then, last night, I walked into a Barnes and Noble to pick up The New Annotated Dracula, and inexplicably walked out with Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. I stood for a moment in the parking lot, looking down at it and thinking, “how the hell did that happen?” So apparently my thirst for Wallace remains unslaked.
An anecdote about “building the tone”/”mountains behind the Mona Lisa”: In the first part of the book, you get a wealth of character sketches of characters (Erdedy, Kate Gompert, Dooney, Pemulis selling urine, etc) in forms ranging from omniscient narration to email forward (or, rather, appropriated/found cultural object from the “real world”?), all of which, I remember, sort of put me on alert to see why they were there in the book, empathetically linked with them in a way I usually would not be to relatively minor characters (or even figurants!). The result was that even characters who turn out to be really truly in the background of the main story (Erdedy) or ultimately serve a limited plot purpose (Clenette transporting the cartridges from ETA to Ennet) remain impressively clear to me and worthy of (as A.A. would put it) Identifying with.
Having read the book, it is hard to remember that Gately is initially introduced as just one of these character sketches (Even though I had been to a reading, right about when (I think actally before) the novel came out where DFW read the Gately burglary scene, I did not, on my first read, realize that he was going to be so central to the novel my first time through.) Because of that first chapter and its first person narration, you sure as heck expect Hal to be central* The way the book encourages you to remain connected to the quasi-figurants of Ennet, one of whom comes to dominate the emotional experience of the book (um, I mean Gately, not Lenz) is amazing to me not only as a practical narrative device but as a very affecting “This is Water” attempt not to let us forget that Gately and Hal are only two of a huge number of people working their way through their own challenges.** Imagine the experience of the climactic fight and its aftermath if you lacked the early character sketches of many of the ETA residents, or had known from page 3 (or even page 203) that Gately was such a central character.***
*And, through ETA, you even have a bit of a structure to assume that his relation to other students there will matter (For example, the main introduction/”character sketch” scene of his peers is the Big Buddy section that inter-relates Pemulis, Troeltsch, etc to each other. Even when we finally get the equivalent at Ennet House, through the gripe sessions to Gately or the “Gately on the couch” scene, things remain largely anonymous or difficult to make connections between.)
**Which commenters on the forum have pointed out probably explains why DFW insists on giving us interludes with “Mikey” or Barry Loach even in the very latest parts of the Novel, giving tangible, “Identifiable” form to the wraith’s monologic theories about letting the figurants speak .
***Yes, I know Gately is mentioned in Hal’s first chapter, but it seems pretty clear from the responses I’ve seen to that chapter that this doesn’t single him out too obviously for most readers in the early going of the novel.
Kevin, I’m right there with you w/r/t how much the Infinite Summer project enriched my reading of IJ (and I was already a fan who had read it a few times before).
Eden, my wife sometimes referred to herself this summer as an #infsum widow. She’s glad this thing is over too.
Ha! Daryl.
“Let the figurants speak.” Right, thank you. It reminds you that everyone has a story. Mikey, my God — I wish there was a book just about the Pemulis family.
“Avery Edison: I’m starting to understand that even if one section doesn’t give us any new information or make sense as a part of the story, it’s still important because it builds IJ’s tone. Infinite Jest seems to be less about a series of events that show what happened to a bunch of people, and more about a collection of vignettes that paint a picture of an entire world. Everything is necessary because even the tiniest details inform this portrait of an entire alternate universe.”
Yes. Yesyesyesyesyesyes. That’s it. Exactly.
Avery’s “paint a picture of an entire world” is perfect. When I got to the end, I just wanted more and couldn’t stop thinking about various scenes, characters, even footnotes — for example, last night I reread the Hal/Orin phone conversations. Once “inside” (maybe past the Clenette section, p. 37), nothing seems superfluous or beside the point.
This is also what made Pynchon’s “Against the Day” work for me a couple of years ago, and although most critics wished it had been pruned way back (one wrote that, had the novel concentrated on its out-West revenge plot, it would have been “the book of the year”), Pynchon had so much great stuff going on at so many levels that less would just have been less. That said, I think IJ is even better — and I’m looking forward to 2666, which looks at first glance like the same kind of book.
i bought Against the Day in an airport, knowing nothing about Pynchon, on the strength of the blurb on the back cover – but haven’t tackled it. Maybe that one’s next for me!
Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to put together a recap of this summer’s experiene for ‘the French reading public.’ The only thing I can hope for is that this hugely successful, and totally uncontrollable (impossible to synthesize) experience help the people over here to go on with their translations.
A word about TIME. Not only does IJ require quite some time before starting to click, so too did IS require time before beginning to register in terms of value and uniqueness. Everyone who has participated in this ‘event’ cannot help but appreciate the roundtable effect that began well before the end of the experience, not only here but in the satellite area where a whole lotta of serious and funny reading took place.
The most important item for me is something that may appear naive for you all: the fact that this will all remain for future use and abuse. I’m sure (i.e., I would bet on it) that the ‘archives’ of IS are as infinite as IJ itself. So many thanks to those who had the wild conceit of such an undertaking, for the moment totally unheard of in France, where such undertakings would have necessarily taken on the heavy and despairingly exclusive guise of university research. (No criticism intended of university research here) I feel like saying, singing even: “Only in America, land of opportunity” … but I’ll sign off before that!
Thanks ever so much for this golden opportunity. As soon as my ‘paper’ for the French press is ready, I’ll send it along, along with a bad translation.
I learned my lesson about trying to talk to someone about “Infinite Jest” on the el in Chicago this morning. I looked up from my seat to see a guy I’ve noticed most of the summer reading the book with two bookmarks. One of the best tips from this site so thank you! I kind of poked him on my way out of the train and said “you’re almost done” and I am hoping he could not hear me with his headphones on and then I continued, with my foot in my mouth, to point at the book and say “it’s really good isn’t it?”. He just stared. Yikes – I feel like a fool. But I really enjoyed the book and I could not have done it without encouragement from this project. So thank you! And if the reader from the Brown Line sees this I’m sorry to have bothered you this morning. I guess I’m now an overzealous IJ fan.
I, too, wouldn’t have read it without this group, and the site and its offshoots and links enriched my reading experience immeasurably.
As for the “don’t pull more than your weight” I think it’s not just a running reference, but an underlying theme–what is addiction and desire but the grasping for moremoremore?
I, too, wouldn’t have read it without this group, and the site and its offshoots and links enriched my reading experience immeasurably.
As for the “don’t pull more than your weight” I think it’s not just a running reference, but an underlying theme–what is addiction and desire but the grasping for moremoremore?
I’m finished! I’d started last summer with all of you and stopped around pg. 300 – had a friend who died of a drug overdose and couldn’t bear to read through anything about addiction or drugs or even tennis players taking drugs. Cut to a year later and I’ve dusted off the book and decided to finish. I have to say it’s a lot more grotesque at parts than I can handle. When Hal describes walking in to find Himself (can we ever use microwaves again?), when Stice’s forehead is stuck to the glass and he gets demapped (I did not find this funny, I found it horrifying) and obviously the last flashback of Gately’s. Does anyone know if Chuch Palahniuk (Fight Club, etc) has read DFW? It sure seems like they influence each other re: grotesque-nightmare-factor. I’m not sure I see how Orin could have been smart enough to know the affect of the Entertainment and dug it up from JOI’s grave but not been smart enough to know who the AFR guys were or to know the Steeply profile was a scam…
I love the little things…like realizing the Yushityu = “You shit you” . I love the phrase “the howling fantods”. I love Pemulis.
I was completely frustrated that two major events – Eschaton and Gately getting shot – happen and then we’re slogging through 200+ pages before we get to know the punishment/outcome of Eschaton and whether or not Gately is even alive.
It makes me extremely sad to read any of the addiction/suicidal/anhedonia parts and think about the author.
I was amazed at all the tech stuff he mentioned that was not to my knowledge around in 1996. For instance Netflix-instant-watch type stuff. Everyone in the tech world owes him royalties. However, it’s also funny that the most tech stuff w/r/t music is the Walkman. Maybe he wasn’t a big fan of music, or it just didn’t relate to the story enough to develop new tech for it?
Next up: well, I’m gonna have to read all his other novels and essays. What a genius.
I just realized that Mario reminds me a bit of Owen Meany! Anyone ever read that book? Ten times better than the movie, mind you.