Milestone Reached: Page 147 (14%)
Chapters Read:
| Chapter | Beginning Page | Synopsis |
|---|---|---|
| YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT | 85 | Tiny Ewell travels to the Enfield Marine VA Hospital Complex via cab.
A list of people gathered in the living room of the medical attaché house watching the Entertainment. |
| 30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT | 87 | Remy Marathe of the Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (wheelchair assassins) and M. Hugh Steeply of the Office of Unspecified Services (OUS) converse on a bluff outside Tucson, AZ.
A herd of feral hamsters rampages in the Great Concavity (which used to be Vermont, and is now owned by Canada) |
| YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT | 95 | Banter and exhaustion in the ETA lockeroom. Present: Hal Incandenza, John (N.R.) Wayne, Jim Troelsch, Michael Pemulis, Ted Schacht, Ortho Stice, Jim Struck, Keith Freer.
Marathe and Steeply continue their conversation through sunset. |
| 3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U | 109 | Big Buddy meetings: first Hal (with Kent Blott, Idris Arslanian, Evan Ingersol), then Wayne, Troelsch, Struck, and Stice. |
| MARIO INCANDENZA’S FIRST AND ONLY EVEN REMOTELY ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE, THUS FAR | 121 | Mario is seduced by USS Millicent Kent. |
| 30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT | 126 | Marathe and Steeply discuss the Entertainment, and possibility of an antidote (the anti-Entertainment). |
| 30 April — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT | 127 | “Lyle”, the sweat-licking guru who lives in the ETA weight room.
yrstruly, Poor Tony, and C go on a crime spree, acquire heroin from Dr. Wo. The heroin is laced with Drano and C dies after shooting up. |
| 3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. | 135 | Orin speaks to Hal by phone.
Background of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House. Bricklayer story. Hal’s paper on active and passive heroes. Steeply’s article about the woman who had an artificial heart in her purse when it was snatched. List of Anti-O.N.A.N. groups. Why videography never took off. |
Characters:
Characters in bold appear to be major.
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 85)
- Tiny Ewell: Diminutive recovering alcoholic, being driven to the Enfield Marine VA Hospital Complex.
30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 87)
- Remy Marathe: Member of the Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (AFR); is working as a quadruple agent–that is, his superior, M. Fortier, thinks that Marthe is working as a triple agent (pretending to work with the Office of Unspecified Services, while in reality reporting back to AFR), but Marthe is actually collaborating with OUS to secure medical services for his wife.
- M. Hugh Steeply: Agent the Office of Unspecified Services. Current operating in disguise as a large woman; Marathe’s contact.
MARIO INCANDENZA’S FIRST AND ONLY EVEN REMOTELY ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE, THUS FAR (page 121)
- U.S.S. Millicent Kent: Girls 16′s Singles player who attempts to seduce Mario Incandenza.
3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U
- “Lyle”: Guru who lives in ETA weight room and apparently subsists off other people’s sweat.
- yrstruly: Narrator of the “dopesick” chapter. Addict, criminal.
- C: yrstruly’s companion who dies after shooting up with heroin laced with Drano.
- Dr. Wo: Provide Poor Tony with the the heroin, laced with Drano to punish him (Tony) for past grievance.
- Poor Tony: yrstruly’s companion, possibly suspected that heroin was laced but said nothing as C. shot up.
3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. (page 135)
Guy Who Didn’t Even Use His First Name: So into the “anonymous” scene that he remained completely so. Founded the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.
Sources consulted during the compilation of this summation: the Infinite Jest Character Profiles (author unknown), JS’s Infinite Jest synopses, Dr. Keith O’Neil’s Infinite Jest Reader’s Guide, and Steve Russillo’s Chapter Thumbnails.
What are the criteria for marking a character major? I won’t provide spoilers, but Poor Tony definitely shows up again.
I have a question – at this point are we supposed to be totally confused about how Quebec relates to Canada as a whole? As in like the Pan-Canadian Resistance – who DuPlessis is in charge of right? – are they pretty much on the same side as the AFR? Or is this like a keep-reading-and-you’ll-figure-it-out thing?
The question of how the Separatist groups related to Canada/ONAN as a whole is addressed later.
It’s funny, I’ve read that bricklaying story on joke sites and remembered it being hilarious. So now I know where that actually comes from. Kind of like reading about the guy who commits suicide by jumping off a building but is shot halfway down, that whole story, and finding out it’s from Magnolia. People are just thieves, man.
Um, I’m not sure if I’m being whooshed here, but both of those stories were existing urban legends before both Magnolia or Infinite Jest were even conceived. In IJ’s case, it is an example of DFW and how he borrows from existing popular culture / urban legends when creating his work.
I think HF is right – there’s even a fairly popular Irish folk-like song about the whole incident that I heard performed way before 1996.
HF is totally right. There’s scene coming up that depicts something I first encountered in a very famous movie from the 80s that I won’t name, in order to avoid somehow spoiling someone’s fun. But let’s just say the scene involves a loyal dog and a tearful state trooper.
The Irish Folk song mentioned is usually called the Sick Note. Performed by the Dubliners and others.
Lyrics can be found here:
http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/d/dubliners6611/thesicknote249332.html
Thanks for the link – I’ve been trying to find the name of that song for 12+ years.
The bricklaying story is an English comedy routine. I’ve heard an audio of it on WFMT (Chicago) a couple of times & my sense of it is that it predates WWII.
Um, shouldn’t we be on page 168 by now?
Summaries are pegged to Saturdays. This is the summary up to 06/04 (but it was posted late due to the holiday).
Wow. Count me as a Pynchon fan who is now decidedly a DFW fan. There are a few overt parallels that Wallace must have consciously included – Walpurgisnacht, Sub-rosa, the parabolic rainbow arcs of the waste disposal trebuchets packages into the Zone. And there are definite shades of Moldwoerpe and Porpentine (?) From V in the spy stuff. I am finding that IJ starts out all over the place but gains focus as strands converge, whereas Pynchon’s work tends to do the oposite. Thanks for encouraging me to dive in.
OK — I didn’t know Walpurgis Nacht was a Pynchon thing. I came to it by way of Nabokov (his /The Enchanter/ mentions Walpurgisnacht, and his /Pale Fire/ mentions the Brockengespent phenomenon, none of which references Pynchon would have known about; although Pynchon did take a writing class at Cornell from Nabokov, and also supposedly based his /V/ on Nabokov’s /Real Life of Sebastian Knight/, whose protagonist is a gentleman known only as “V”).
At any rate, what significance does Pynchon give Walpurgis Nacht? Is it mainly an atmospheric thing, or is there more? I know that the whole Brockengespenst thing is actually pretty rare and (as I understand it) it doesn’t involve someone’s shadow spreading giant-like over a valley but is instead just basically a man-shaped shadow horizontally off in the ether. (Following a tangent, I did once, during a recent early p.m. flight to San Diego, see my plane’s shadow flying along Brockengestpent-like on the valley floor below, for what it’s worth.)
I think there were some scenes in Gravity’s Rainbow that were on walpurgisnacht. Been a while. And Nabokov’s on my read someday soon list – sort of like not discovering how great The Kinks were until the 90′s.
How about not discovering how great the Kinks were until the early 00s? Or the Pixies (2003)? Or Depeche Mode (2008)? Or Jane’s Addiction (2007)? I could go on. My wife got me to read /Lolita/ back in 2003 and I haven’t stopped reading his books since. Thanks for pointing out Pynchon, though. I’ve wanted to read /V/ for a while.
Not to denigrate IJ one bit (or I wouldn’t be reading it so avidly), and with a group, no less!), but Gravity’s Rainbow was far more dense. It took me 10 years to finish the thing, despite having the greatest opening sentence in the history of modern English (“A screaming comes across the sky”).
I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to get through Gravity’s Rainbow and keep giving up (and usually not getting very far), that was one of the reasons for taking on IJ – I was hoping it would give me the endurance to go back to GR.
note the Pynchon reference to Yoyodyne coming up…
You’re missing both Pemulis’s and Schacht’s Big Buddy meetings (they go between Wayne and Troelsch)
Thank goodness for these recaps.
I totally forgot about Tiny!
Information overload!
/dies
I think when you say “Why videography never took off” you mean, ‘why videophony never took off.” Clearly videography is alive and well, at least for Mario Incandenza.
That part, just as an aside, is perhaps one of my favorite parts to read; I’ve laughed out loud several times during that explanation every time I’ve read this book.
Does anyone have any ideas on who the narrator is with the penchant for using “like” like, exactly how my like daughter does? That’s a character, right? But we know it’s not Pemulis, Hal, Mario or a number of others who are described in those narratives.
One thing that doesn’t come up in these summaries is the way threads keep reappearing throughout different storylines. For instance, the harelip guy who deals pot out of a trailer where he lives with his snakes–he gets mentioned by Kate Gompert and Erdedy. Kate mentions a dealer who makes you ask him to commit a crime, and this turns out to be Pemulis. And finally, the thief of the external-artificial-heart (what a concept!) has to be Poor Tony, right? It’s all so intricately interwoven!
I have to register a complaint. I have, so far, been utterly unimpressed by DFW’s writing. At every turn, he uses a more pretentious word when a simpler one would do (e.g., “unfenestrated” for “windowless”). He has an unfortunate habit of repeating words he is impressed with himself for using (e.g., “reticulate”). And his relentless reliance on drug formulations he’s copied out of pharmaceutical textbooks does not strike me as great writing.
Anyhow, I was fine with all of that. But then I got to the yrstruly section. I can’t decide if DFW’s attempt to do “street” or “gangsta” was more pathetic or offensive. Does anyone find the use of misspellings such as “I should elemonade him” funny or clever? If ever DFW’s roots as a rich, private-school, junior-tennis guy who spent his life living in some of the whitest places in America show, it’s in this section. What is the point of it, and what was he thinking? And the section is followed by DFW’s thinly-disguised alter ego, Hal, having an erudite phone conversation – in perfectly constructed English sentences. The juxtaposition was so maddening and sickening that I wanted to tear my copy of IJ in half (a difficult thing to do).
Anyhow, needed to vent. Wonder how everyone else felt about it. I am going to finish this book, but I’m not necessarily going to have to like it.
Also, re the Brockengespenst in GRAVITY’S RAINBOW. It takes place on page 330 of the old Penguin edition. Slothrop is dancing with Geli on a mountain outside Gottingen.
I agree that DFW loses his voice when he tries Ebonics. In this and the previous Al Jolson section, I’m thinking more about stilted writing style than about story. A pity, because both sections could have been compelling without being distracting. P.S.: thanks for reminding me about Slothrop and Geli. The only time I ever stopped to think about Pynchon’s writing style was when I was underlining some magnificent prose.
I was feeling disappointed too until page about 168 — I was blown away by Himself’s father’s narration. Really — I wrote a text message “Jesus. This book just got really good.” I’m interested in your and others reaction to the “ebonics” section, because I fully expected to be offended there, and really wasn’t. I mean, following yrstruly with Hal — Hal is well off and educated and not a heroin addict. yrstruly is not. I thought the flow of the language in the yrstruly section is actually pretty beautiful. There are points in the story that I found offensive (“thru a fucked up set of circumstances yrstruly and C almost end of raping an older type nurse…”) but I feel like the voice worked not as realism but as a voice in the context of a novel. It’s not like Hal’s language isn’t it’s own type of stilted.
What are you talking about? The yrstruly and Wardine sections have been among the very best so far (along with the Hal’s-Something-I-Ate opening and Erdedy’s Unpatient Waiting). Wish there was more of this and less Steeply and Marathe.
On the topic of references to other authors, has anyone noticed any John Barth references I’ve been missing? Madame Psychosis is very heavily influenced by a character from Chimera (very heavily), but I’m sure there’s got to be more than that, as I believe DFW is more Barth than Pyncheon influenced.
Well, that and I’m a much bigger Barth fan than Pyncheon fan. Not much of one for disjointed surreal incidents with flat, largely emotionless characters.
Colin: The name is Thomas Pynchon.
I caught that too late; for some reason I always really want to add an ‘e’ to his name. Anyway my primary reason in posting that was looking for further Barth references. There’s gotta be something else: when you write an entire short story as a response to an author’s novel and then create a create a character as similar in general situation as Madame Psychosis is, there just *have* to be further references.
Any thoughts about who’s narrating? The two page section about Lyle, in particular, is throwing me for a loop.
I loved the yrstruly section. Reminded me of Ulysses.
Question…
endnote 45 says “see note 304 sub.”
are we supposed to read note 304? I just wanted to double check to make sure I don’t get ahead of myself.
It’s fair game. It’s a true footnote–it won’t spoil anything in the main text, only give more depth to some of what you might hear later about the Les Enfants Rolleuts (or however that’s spelled).
Agreed – but I recommend reading it, at least just for the gist of why the AFR are in wheelchairs. I didn’t catch on to what those “Note 304 sub” (the “sub” part threw me for a loop – any idea what that means?) footnotes meant until I’d passed a couple, but now I wish I’d read it earlier.
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