Fifteen years ago I told an acquaintance of my aspiration to become a Peace Corps volunteer.
“Good luck,” was her reply. “Did you know that only one out of every nine people who apply gets in?”
As this was five years before the Internet-As-We-Know-It, and even more before the debut of Snopes, there was no obvious way to confirm or falsify such a claim.18 And so, as someone who has never been a “Top 11 Percentile” kind of guy, I marched through the application process with a grim sense of defeatism.
And then, of course, when I was accepted, my ego ballooned like a nervous Tetraodontidae, as my status as one of the elite few who could weather the merciless vetting process was officially recognized.
Sadly for my overinflated self-regard, I mentioned the “one of nine that apply get in” figure to a member of the Peace Corps staff while serving. “Oh yeah, I’ve heard that too,” he said. “Except, I wouldn’t state it like that. It’s more like: for every nine people that apply for the Peace Corps, only one winds up in-country.”
“What’s the difference,” I asked.
“The difference is that of those nine people, five or six voluntarily withdraw after sending in their ap, because they got a job or a house or girlfriend or whatever. And a couple more drop out after the interviews or in the middle of training, for one reason or another. You guys are what’s left.”
Infinite Jest also has a “one in nine” reputation about it, a book that thwarts most attempts to conquer. But as we stand on the summit of page 168 and look back on the pages before, we see now that process by which the potential readership is whittled down is one of self-selection. It’s eminently readable, if you’re resolved to read it.
Indeed, the first 150 pages are something an application process: will you apply yourself to this Brobdingnagian novel, or will you drop out for reason or another? If you’ve made it this far: congratulations. You’re what’s left.
And at this point in the novel, Wallace rewards us for our perseverance. It’s as if he’d been holding a somewhat awkward get-together until the party-hoppers people left, then cranked the stereo and rolled out the keg. Here’s what we’ve been treated to since page 144:
- The hilarious “Why Video-Phones Failed” essay, tangential to the plot but perfect encapsulating many of the themes. As with “Erdedy waits for Pot”, I would have been perfectly happy reading this as a self-contained short story.
- The “sterile urine” section which, in addition to being funny and interesting in its own right, also provides us with some background information on Mario, the Incandenzas, and ETA in a remarkably straightforward manner, unencrypted by acronyms or allusions or endnotes.
- A whole chapter set in the familiar B.S. era. This may not be one of the promised Hamlet parallels, but this is surely one of the most amazing monologues in literature.19 If I ever audition for a local production of Our Town, pages 157-169 are totally going to be my reading.
It’s the literary equivalent of hearty pat on the back and “welcome to the club”. For good or ill, you’re in it for the long-haul now.
Misc:
Controversy: Over on infsum Twitter channel, the debate continues to rage: is a “trial-size Dove bar” ice cream or soap?
Vexation: Despite seeing the word “map” used at least a score of times, and in a variety of different contexts, I still cannot figure out exactly what Wallace means by it. Head, face, brain, personality?
Paradox: I love that Wallace–a man who wrote the initial, 1,700 page draft of Infinite Jest by hand–cannot be bothered to spell out words “with”, “without”, or “with respect to”.
Yes! “Why Video-Phones Failed” essay and “Erdedy waits for Pot” are both perfect little nuggets as is. If you can get someone to read those out loud to you it’s heaven.
It always seemed really clear to me that “map” means “face”. Like, “erasing his map” means beating him until he’s unrecognizable.
I think at times it does refers to one’s face, but in the Eschaton section (mid-300s), the significance of Wallace’s use of “map” throughout the novel becomes much more intriguing.
You’ve got to go for “map” being “identity,” because, as I recall, a certain character uses the phrase “de-mapping” to mean various kinds of end-of-identity – death, suicide, obscurity – and so on.
Just remember– the map is not the territory!
Nice one, Miker. In that vein, it seems like “map” alludes to a character’s worldview, perspective, interpretive framework—his/her “lens” in other words…
Great Concavity (/Convexity) indeed!
To rip off your Wiki cross-reference entirely:
“With this apocryphal quotation of Josiah Royce, Borges describes a further conundrum of when the map is contained within the territory, you are led into infinite regress:
“‘The inventions of philosophy are no less fantastic than those of art: Josiah Royce, in the first volume of his work The World and the Individual (1899), has formulated the following: “Let us imagine that a portion of the soil of England has been levelled off perfectly and that on it a cartographer traces a map of England. The job is perfect; there is no detail of the soil of England, no matter how minute, that is not registered on the map; everything has there its correspondence. This map, in such a case, should contain a map of the map, which should contain a map of the map of the map, and so on to infinity.” Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions.'”
I vote soap for trial size Dove bar. If it were chocolate, it would be fun size!
OK, that’s just downright charming. I’m in your camp.
I was coming down in favor of soap, but just a little research leaves me favoring intentional ambiguity on the part of the author:
During a lot of the 80s, “trial size” cleaning products of all stripes showed up in our mailboxes. Dove, since its arrival in 1957 (thankyou wikipedia) has placed the product in opposition to soap, in part by referring to its cake form as a “beauty bar”.
Meanwhile, the “Dove Bar,” was introduced in 1984. While I fail to recall any instance of receiving “trial size” ice cream, the existence of such an object (prob dispensed free at various functions) is more than likely, especially for a relatively new product jostling for market share. But I’d lay money they never sent them through the mail.
I don’t remember seeing anything called “fun size” until the last 5 years or so…pretty much predating IJ. But I, too, vote soap.
Oh, “fun size” was very big when I was a kid in the 70s, esp. w/r/t candy like M&Ms and Snickers bars, etc. Especially at Easter and Hallowen.
I wasn’t getting the 1 in 9 thing. Is that: Only 1 in 9 would read the book? Would finish the book?
I kind of want to thwap that guy who said ‘Infinite Jest Light’ on the head. Even though I’ve never read House of Leaves. When is one book another book ‘light’? Does it really matter how many pages a book has? Is a book better for being dense? I’m all in a huff in my defense of House of Leaves, a book I have never read.
Please do not ease up on the footnotes. Everything written should have footnotes. Also, we should be allowed to skip the footnotes if we so choose if everything did have footnotes. But I am not skipping the footnotes on IJ.
I too loved ‘Erdeddy waits for pot.’ Yes, it would be a great short stories. There are all these good short stories buried within the book and this is what keeps me reading it.
Trial Size Dove Bar somehow it was working for me as candy but now that you mention it, it has to be soap. When do people get trial sizes of candy?
Although in theory the Dove Bar can refer to ice cream, chocolate or soap, the soap version really exists in trial size. Apparently $.99 at Walgreens this March.
Everyone one who finishes the book should photograph themselves in a location of their choice with Dove bar and book.
Ozma, I think it’s 1 in 9 would finish it. And, you know, from my anecdotal experience with friends and lovers, it’s about right.
The hilarious “Why Video-Phones Failed” essay which seems tangential to the plot but perfectly encapsulates many of themes that are present within the novel.
Parts like this remind me of DFW’s nonfiction writing — which I love and am more familiar with than his fiction — but instead it’s nonfiction reportage about the parallel universe/near future in which IJ is set.
I just finished another example last night, a segment that comes later in the book and that goes back and describes the shift in the world of media and advertising that led to the dominance of InterLace. (Trying not to spoil anything.
I’ve been assuming that “map” means “face”, though I’m not sure why I’ve arrived at that.
Why, the Trial-Size Dove Bar is soap, of course. Why would you need a trial-size ice cream? Who would want that?
With the number of times I’ve read that the first 150-200 pages of IJ are trying and might put us off, and that we should really stick through them because the rest of the book will make it worthwhile, my expectations for the last 4/5 of IJ are becoming implausible given how much I’ve loved the first 1/5.
I wouldn’t call 5 tweets about Dove bars in the past week a raging controversy. You’re trying too hard.
I totally thought the the Dove bar was chocolate. Hmm. Trial size soap does make more sense.
Sue, I find myself in the same mental state. Both times I read IJ before I simply assumed it was chocolate, and suddenly I am faced with the jarring realization that yes, soap would make more sense. And yet, it never even occurred to me.
Since it’s hardly spoiler-y, the IJ usage of “map” is related to physical, bodily existence, and not just the face (@John Armstrong). There are many ways to “erase one’s map” or “demap” someone, not just by fatally disfiguring their faces. Providing exact citations of this broader sense would probably constitute spoilers, so I’ll just have to tell you that based on accumulated evidence by the time you finish, “map” is a pretty general concept.
I heartily agree. In fact, I think the concept gets a fairly thorough vetting during the Eschaton section coming up.
I agree that the monologue on pages 157-169 is amazing. I found myself stopping many times to reread – it’s just so entertaining/heartbreaking.
Oh, my, we can’t forget the accident claim “additional info” letter.
I *love* your observation on w/r/t. That, with the use of Tetraodontidae and Brobdingnagian made this post worth several re-reads. Excellent milestone-marker post.
Sorry Matthew; you lost points when you used “whether” instead of –weather– (“the elite few who could whether the merciless vetting process….”). Speaking of milestone markers, this post reminds me of reading A Soldier of the Great War; one of my all-time favorites. My wife gave it up on it but I had told her that once you get past the first 150 pages it picks up speed rapidly. I thought IJ picked up speed right when Hal had his “seizure” in the first chapter.
N.B. that w/r/t is “with respect to.” It’s an abbreviation he gets from mathematics.
Somehow I hadn’t even processed the strange use of “map”. But what I really want to know… what is the punchline to “What do you call three Canadians copulating on a snowmobile?”
Yes – I’m waiting too.
Matthew….thank you for inviting me to this club. I’ve been following Defective Yeti for some time now, having found serendipitously through a gaming friend who followed you before I did, and you have not yet led me too far astray. Topping it off this time is the footnote reference to one of my all time favorite shows “Slings & Arrows”…thanks!
I fell way behind over the holiday, but I’m still here. I am loving the book, but the summer is beckoning me outdoors constantly, so my Infinite Summer may run into Autumn.
Read on the beach, in a park… I’ve been doing that all along!
First of all, I loved “… my ego ballooned like a nervous Tetraodontidae ….” That is, I loved it after I looked up what it meant. Very funny. In a similar vein, I’ve found similar efforts/rewards with most of /IJ/’s so-called hard work: the rewards (in terms of knowledge or humor) are far and away worth the minimal effort involved in looking up a reference or word.
I, too, loved your reference to “Slings and Arrows,” all episodes of which my wife and I watched and loved last year. And I still haven’t read /Hamlet./ (And I’ll do it when I wanna.)
Lastly, here’s some speculation anent your closing paradox: Wallace, as SOP, wrote his first two drafts longhand, and so he probably did use a kind of shorthand to deal with common words and phrases. He was also a two-finger typist, if you can believe that. So, again, I imagine he filled in shorthand where he could. Anyway, there’s my two cents for you to spend on whatever ice cream suits your fancy.
I totally forgot to mention that my vote for favorite section in this round is “MARIO INC.’S FIRST AND ONLY EVEN REMOTELY ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE, THUS FAR” from pp 121 – 126.
My bias: Mario is probably one of my top favorite characters, maybe of all time. He is at once a poignant, tragi-comic (whatever I think that means), sweet, sensitive character. Some of his scenes with Himself are utterly heartbreaking.
But you’ve got to admit, this is a pretty funny (and accurate) depiction of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an unwanted advance: “What Mario perceived as a sudden radical drop in the prevailing temperature was in fact the U.S.S. Millicent Kent’s sexual stimulation sucking tremendous quantities of ambient energy out of the air surrounding them (125).”
I think ‘map’ is brain. It makes sense for it to be the brain. The brain is a map of sorts.
If you Google ‘Trial size Dove Bar’ aside from the references to IJ they return page upon page of soap offers.
When I read the book the first time the Dove ice cream bar was introduced and I thought they were a very healthy portion. I could easily see then a salesperson giving out Trial sized, possibly a dozen licks tops, bars
The videophone section was pure brilliance. Such a perfect reflection of the useless idiocy of consumer culture and the way that culture moves along bizarre psychological lines. Wallace’s logical flow is strange but dead on accurate and with a kind of ‘look, I’m yr closest friend, if I can’t tell you this, then who can’ kind of feel.
I interpret “map” as either literally, “face” or as synechtoche (part for a whole) representing one’s whole being. So to eliminate (or, for yrstruly, elemonade) a person’s map is to kill them but there are many ways to use the word to refer to a person’s body or existence.
“Top 11 Percent,” you mean. Percentile refers to the percentage of people below you, so you could say you’re not an “88th Percentile” kinda guy. (There’s no 100th percentile.)
At least you’re not Detroit.
I thought the videophone essay was the first false note in the book. I just didnt buy it — & it reminded me why I always disliked sci-fi. Poetic imagination gives way to prosy predictions, which quickly turn out to be wrong.
I actually liked the essay (mostly because it was a respite from the pointless jumping back and forth in time, space, and character that preceded it), but I agree with you that it’s a bit jarring. It seems to me symptomatic of Wallace’s approach: just spill out onto the page any old idea that crosses your mind and run with it until you don’t feel like it anymore and then move on. Rinse. Repeat.
Reading IJ doesn’t so much feel like reading a book, but more like reading a bound collection of college-town coffee-shop napkins DFW scrawled all over.
Agreed. I thought the insight about people wanting less interaction in their communication was clever, but found the passages about the lengths people would go to to avoid having to be seen when answering their video phones to be a bit hackneyed.
The grandfatherks monolog was absolutely one of the best things I’ve ever read though.
Well, you *could* be in the 100th percentile but only one person in the world could, so that inclusion in that category would really be impossible to determine.
And though this is about an earlier footnote:
House of Leaves really isn’t IJ lite; really The Broom of the System is. It’s like the lighthearted, more straightforward but sometimes childish and less meaningful and touching and sincere-feeling kid brother of IJ. House of Leaves is some fun text shape tricks and a decent plot that’s burdened down with secret coded yet ultimately meaningless messages and the Johnny Truant sections that range from boring to having sentences so laughably terrible I skipped them outright. I enjoyed the main plot, but the book was just too shallow and narcissistic to compare to IJ at all.
Perhaps we should simply establish the events of the Y.T.S.D.B and determine if “beauty/cleansing” or “sweetness/decadence/coldness” are the themes. 😉
Also I can’t help but imagine biting into an ice cream bar to find soap inside. A metaphor for the diminishing returns of drug use?
In a burst of either cosmic symmetry or the simple ability to see what’s right in front of me, I have noticed today that my office [I’m a pediatrician] is littered with Trial-Sized Dove Bars for patients to take home.
I adored the bit about the external artificial heart: “She stole my heart!” Literally laughed out loud at that one!
I really liked that part too, especially since it tied in to the much sadder and rougher story of yrstruly, Poor Tony and C. That combination of heartbreak and zany comedy seems to be a recurring theme…
I’ve decided that map is consciousness. But maybe that doesn’t work. I’ll have to check.