I just wanted to encourage you all to hang in there and be assured that the seemingly weird, obtuse, out-of-place sections will all be justified by the end. You may find yourself (as I did) flipping back to those sections and muttering the occasional “Oohhh,” or the kind of surprised/shocked obscenity that slips out when epiphanies occur. But it will all be worth it. Regarding Madame Psychosis, that section informs the reader on character much more than plot, if that helps.

On a different note, when I saw “I can’t help but be jealous of Hal’s routine at Enfield Tennis Academy – there’s very little space there to mess up or miss a deadline,” I couldn’t help but scoff. Having just graduated from a New England “Elite” boarding school, I can guarantee that DFW has painted a very realistic portrait of these schools, from the patrician-attitude, “in loco parentis“, the unity-through-hatred-of-authority mentioned in pp 95-105, 109-121, “and c.” The nature of these schools is extremely repressive in order to mold students into model citizens, and DFW really shows how stressful that scheduled life is.

At my particular school in suburban Boston, my 6-day schedule involved 2 hours of free-time per day, the rest put towards classes, sports, and homework – and said free-time was often replaced by weekly chapel services and other mandatory ceremonies of that nature. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me 60% of my classmates smoked pot on a regular basis, and at least 20% used harder “Substances”, like alcohol, dip tobacco, X, coke, and as many hallucinogens you can think of. I think there has been no better time for me to read IJ, just because the E.T.A. chapters are so engrossing and so perfectly capture a society that 95% of American kids don’t experience.

Sorry for the digression, but I had to get that off of my back.

I’ve actually kind of liked the Madame Psychosis appearance, as far as the first impressions go. Maybe I was able relate to it because of some of my own experiences with, say, experimental, thematic and conceptual radio shows and alternative culture and underground media-aware figures in general and the GP-O’s Psychic TV line of thinking etc.

I have also found it vaguely entertaining that so many other readers have disliked that bit. It made me think of how differently must we perceive this book, or any reading material, of course, and how it is pretty much impossible to imagine how anything “reads” like to anyone else.

P.S.: What did you think of ‘Those Were the Legends That Formerly Were’?

Ok, that worked for me anyway! After thinking about it that way, I started to desperately wish I had a Madame Psychosis to listen to late at night.

This is my second reading of the novel and what I’m noticing this time is what an astonishingly talented prose writer Wallace was. This section (like honestly almost every single one in the book so far) was a masterpiece of prose construction.