Nick Maniatis is the owner/maintainer of the David Foster Wallace web resource The Howling Fantods as well as a high school English and Media teacher. Once he finished Infinite Jest for the fourth time he stopped counting.
The Howling Fantods was inspired by Infinite Jest. I bought a discounted first edition of Infinite Jest in response to a review I had read in what I think was the Melbourne Age. My first Wallace reading experience was on public transport, on my way home one evening, in Canberra, Australia. The opening pages of that novel changed me.
It was 1996 and I was in my third year of university. An icon for the program NCSA Mosaic had appeared on the desktop of computers at the Australian National University and opened my eyes to the world wide web. In late ’96 or early ’97 I made a free personal “me” page using the geocities (ugh) hosting environment. I loved reading Wallace. I loved the idea of this web thing. I merged the two and the SCREAMING FANTODS was born. (I was emailed a correction a few days later)
Around this time I discovered wallace-l the Wallace mailing list back then appeared to be mostly academics and students. There were a number of amazing group reads of Infinite Jest co-ordinated through wallace-l. Another just finished up prior to Infinite Summer (IJIM – Infinite Jest, In Memorial). Right now the focus over at wallace-l is Oblivion.
I don’t think I’d ever been privy to such articulate, academic, and passionate discussion about a text. Ever. There were people there who were just as internet aware as me, if not more so. They were also much, much smarter. It was scary. It was fantastic. And all their discussions were searchable. They still are.
Infinite Jest was, I think, published at just the right time. The blossoming world wide web brought readers, academics and fans together using a common, digital, user-created medium that seemed designed to discuss this book.
I feel terribly lucky to have been part of that early online community. I’m glad they were there for me in September last year.
And now we have Infinite Summer. There’s not much more exciting than seeing your favourite author mentioned all over the web. And not only that, the focus is on his writing, not what happened in his life. There is no way I’d be ever able to find the time to organise something as mammoth as a large scale Infinite Jest group read, so it is wonderful to see the dedicated team here managing spectacularly.
The best bit, readers, is that you’ve all made it this far. You’re almost over the hump. Once you get through the first 250 or so pages the bigger payoffs start hitting in droves. I’m keeping an eye on the forums and blogs and quite clearly many of you out there are finding this much easier and more entertaining than you thought it would be. I’ll let you in on another secret:
It gets better.
I’ll be surprised if you can keep to as little as 75 pages a week after page 500. That will certainly be the biggest challenge.
Bits that I think are worth mentioning / revisiting from the first 210 pages:
p37 Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar: I’m sorry everyone, it’s the ice-cream. Confirmed by a trusted Wallace-l member who asked David Foster Wallace personally. Sorry. It was even harder for me to accept because when I was reading IJ on release I hadn’t ever seen Dove ice cream or chocolate in Australia. I thought soap was the only option.
p37-38 Clenette and p128-135 Yrstruly: I know a number of you skipped these two sections. You’re not the first. You won’t be the last. Honestly? I’d prefer you skip them if it means you don’t close the book and never open it again. I found them hard the first time too. I also had an inner urge to find them offensive. Was Wallace making fun of these people? How come the other sections don’t read like this? What is he trying to accomplish? Who is narrating? Wait a minute, who was narrating before?
My advice? When you read IJ again (or if you flick back for a second attempt) just go with the Clenette and Yrstruly sections. Don’t try to parse everything, they don’t work if you slow down and read carefully. Both sections work more effectively when you are already vaguely familiar with their content because then the voices and rhythms start to wash over you. When that happens so do the characters. And then you’re inside their heads and THAT is not comfortable. In fact it is very, very uncomfortable. I’m not going to try for a moment to argue that they are realistic voices or heads to be in. But these two sections do their jobs very well if you just let go and trust Wallace. Does this sound familiar?
It wasn’t until a few years ago did I get a flicker of how spot-on Wallace is with these sections. Post schoolyard fight, I had some students write reports of the incident they witnessed. In their rush to get everything out of their heads and onto the page they seemed to forget about formal English grammar, or formal anything, for that matter. It was stream of consciousness stuff. Emotion mixed with description mixed with dialogue mixed with internal monologue mixed with unusual, but workable, phonetic transpositions. These kids were not illiterate by any means. If anything the stress of the situation had messed with their ability to express themselves using the English expected of them. The reports reminded me instantly of Infinite Jest and made me appreciate it even more.
If you want to see if Wallace can make this work in greater length try ‘John Billy’ in Wallace’s short story collection ‘Girl With Curious Hair’. There’s also another example of this voice in another of his stories. But to tell you which one would actually mess with the impact of it. I know you’ll find it yourself.
p105-109 Marathe and Steeply on choice: Which character do you side with? Are you actively choosing? Or just going with your gut reaction? Is it impossible to choose? Double-bind maybe? When I first read IJ I didn’t find the Steeply and Marathe sections particularly compelling.
On the second read they were my focus. It is so easy to sweep the Steeply and Marathe conversations to the side when you want to know more about the entertainment. I think they’re some of the most underrated parts of the book. Read them.
p144-151 Videophony: I find it impossible to use Skype without thinking about this section. Particularly when I want to check my email or surf the web at the same time as the current video chat and feel I can’t without being rude. I’ve also become aware of how often I relax with my arms folded above my head while sitting upright, how often I scratch my nose, and how often I pick at my right ear.
p157-169: Every single line of this section is pure gold and leads perfectly to page 169’s time slowed down can’t look at the page (but can’t look away either) moment.
p196: HELP WANTED. I don’t think I need to explain this.
The very best thing about Infinite Summer so far, for someone who has read the book way more times than is healthy, is re-living my first read via all of your comments and posts. The Infinite Zombies and A Supposedly Fun Blog are doing a mighty fine job too.
Infinite Jest is my favourite book and I have not stopped reading it for any length of time since I opened it to the first page all those years ago. Be careful, or else this Infinite Summer thing might live up to just a little more than its name…
Nick,
Great post. Thanks for the insights. I’m on my second read (in thirteen years) and it makes more sense this time through (akthough it is very much still like a first time through as I have forgotten so much and, frankly, my interests have changed so somethings are more interesteding to me (like Marathe and Steeply). I like knowing that I could re- and re-re-read the book again. I wonder if I ever will.
You’re certainly inspiring though.
Also, I Googled Howling Fantods for my post and you came up first. I was instantly jealous that you had used this great term as your blog title. But I see you have certainly earned it!
Thanks for this post, it’s nice to hear from someone who’s got such a thick background with the book!
I’m surprised at the common IS-discontent with the yrstruly section: I was mesmerized. C is “not 2Bdenied” when they head to Hung Toys (ha ha!) where you can get “tea unquote.” Omg, brilliant. And C’s demise is tragic and powerful.
Ditto for Steeply/Marathe, especially (1) when I read the H. Steeply “only putative published article” (p. 142) in which an artificial heart is stolen, presumably by Poor Tony w/tattered feather boa, and (2) when I read ftnt 304 to get amazed at Marathe’s background (most people seem to think reading 304 is not a spoiler). The descriptions of the lengthening shadows, and the beautiful passage/paragraph on the top of p. 109 that everyone should re-read, are breathtaking.
http://infinitetasks.wordpress.com
Totally agree. Thanks for saying it so well!
First of all, I feel sooooooo vindicated to know that YTSDB refers to the snack treat. Soap had never even occured to me, so I feel much better knowing that my subconscious got it right.
And the discussion on this and the other blogs this summer has deepened my appreciation for IJ and DFW more than I would have thought possible, considering how much I loved his writing to begin with. I’ve already learned a couple of things that I hadn’t before thanks to IS et al and we haven’t even gotten to the Really Big Questions.
And the yrstruly section is so important, in that establishes connection between so many disparate characters.
Seeing that the YrsTruly section was going to be tough I decided to read the whole section aloud and that made it much easier – even enjoyable – to digest. There are some voices that are effortless to read and others that just need to be heard.
The Trial-Size Dove Bar debate is a very basic example of how DFW used uncertainty to make the reader understand that “reality” is dependent upon our perspective. It is also an example of how creative work ceases to be the work of its creator once the creative process is finished.
Much of the majesty of IJ derives from the constant uncertainty about so many things. DFW was remarkably clever about providing “facts” from unreliable sources. He understood the variability of perspective and he used the differences in perspective to create uncertainty about “facts.” Many of the “A-ha!” moments later in the book leave open the possibility of a completely different explanation because our source for the information is in some way clouded or unreliable.
Can we rely upon the word of a faithful I-Wallace member to report that DFW said that he was thinking about ice cream when speaking of the Trial-Size Dove Bar? Possibly. Can we rely upon DFW to give an accurate, straightforward and honest answer to what to most of us without experiencing life through DFW’s brain would perceive as a fairly basic and straightforward inquiry? Perhaps not. Really, would DFW even expect us to?
Which raises the issue of who owns creative work once it has been completed. At one level, DFW was well within his rights as the author to try to resolve (or enhance) an ambiguity in his work by explaining his thought process when writing it. And some readers may accept that statement as gospel. Others will not. Even if DFW were thinking about ice cream when writing “Trial-Size Dove Bar,” that he used a term which could apply at least as well to soap or to candy — and does nothing in the work itself to show to which product he was referring — leaves open the possibility for interpretations other than those pronounced by the author Himself.
Many great creative works are open to multiple plausible interpretations. Maybe Beethoven’s Third Symphony is about Napoleon and maybe it didn’t; that he left conflicting accounts about his intentions only adds to the mystery. Maybe Hamlet was completely crackers or maybe he was pretending. Would it have made a better play if Shakespeare had told us what he thought in an interview with The Times? Maybe Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds was about LSD or maybe it was about John Lennon’s mom. Do later statements from Beatles live or dead really make it a better song? Any creative work is open to a different interpretation from that intended by its creator.
So is it soap, ice cream, or candy? Probably.
The whole idea perhaps is that in attempting to become the advertiser of the year, the “sponsor”, the Dove co. really screwed the pooch, because Dove Bar could be 2 things and the people ( we ) don’t even know which. Entirely ineffective advertising, no?
Not like the Whopper, which everyone knows.
DFW drops it in, without telling, to prove how inane and ineffective and random the whole marketing experience is.
The confusion is deeper because there are two companies named Dove. One makes chocolate and ice cream. The other makes soap.
Hrrmmph. Who ever heard of a trial-size ice cream? Not me, unless the “trial-size” is a pint. I never woulda believed it, but if DFW wanted it that way, ok. (As much as I like the indeterminacy thesis, a first-person report is enough on these small matters. One could make up various multiple interpretations on many issues, but sometimes they just come down to authorial intent. For instance, it comes down to a fact that, as Gerry Canavan pointed out at http://gerrycanavan.blogspot.com, the MIT Language Riots [pg. 987n24 & 996n60] come directly from Delillo’s Ratner’s Star, even if someone wants to think they don’t, or wants to imagine multiple references).
When I read it I immediately assumed they were trial-size chocolate bars, which are very popular in the U.S., most notably around Halloween. There was a lot of criticism about how they’re named “trial-size”, since, even though the name “trial-size” invokes a small amount of consumption, people end up eating like 10 of them in a row since they come in a large bag, which is probably more chocolate eaten than if they’d just purchased a “king-size” bar. So I thought DFW was pointing out the ridiculousness of the “trial-size” bars. I’d never heard of a trial-size ice cream bar, but I guess it’s no different than the chocolate bar, really.
I never thought of soap. The whole idea of IJ is how extremely tasty and addictive products, like television, drugs, or, in this case, trial-size bars, are pervading modern day society, and are ultimately unfulfilling. This is why one of the years is named after the Whopper, instead of, say, a salad.
Although upon further thought, a trial-size soap bar could work, in the same way that the adult-depends works.
I thought candy at first too, but aren’t miniature candy bars typically called “fun size” and toiletries way more often called “trial size”?
Granted I’m talking about the US, not the ONAN
Whopper the burger, or whopper the malted milk ball?
nice try, but the burger is near universally advertised as THE whopper and I’d be surprised if, basically, anybody refers to the malted milkballs using a definite article singular construction.
I know I’d reach for a box of whoppers LONG before I hit a BK.
Same goes for the Dove ice cream vs soap too.
Chocolate before cleanliness!
“Not like the Whopper, which everyone knows”
Burger King sandwich or Hershey’s malted milk ball?
Dear peeps;
I am that Wallace-l member who asked the question.
Actually, I was the SECOND one, but the first person, who asked in Boston, was spurred by the debate on Wallace-l started by (I think!) me.
Being a gym-goer, I was convinced it was soap. I was the recipient of trial-sized Dove soap bars on many occasions. Who needs trial-sized ice cream? No one needs to convince me to eat ice cream. And how would it be disseminated? It makes no sense!
When I asked Mr. Wallace at an engagement he did in NYC with George Saunders (2004?), he told me it was ice cream, and at the time the other possibilities (soap, candy) did not even occur to him.
I still contend it was soap. I think the author can be wrong :). And I have yet to see any trial-sized ice cream come my way.
Thanks for this, Nick! It’s always so encouraging to feel that I am not-so-totally-off-base in my reactions to pieces of the book. I have been completely disengaged with Steeply and Marathe, but I will give them a second (third? fourth?) chance per your advice.
I am reading IJ for the second time. I enjoyed it first time around but it’s making more sense this time. last time I skipped the Steeply and Marathe sections but they’re making more sense now. The comments here are helpful in that regard.
I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised that most people are apparently turned off by the Steeply-Marathe sections. As someone who speaks both English and French — though mostly English — and who knows people who French and English — though mostly French — I find the dialogue to be absolutely hilarious for being largely true-to-form, if only perhaps slightly exaggerated.
But more than that, I find the content of the discussions between these two characters to be extremely illuminating in terms of the novel’s deeper underlying themes. What do a bunch of depressives, drug abusers, petty criminals, high-fitness tennis athletes, and film-obsessed individuals have in common? I think the connection is far from obvious without the political context that is revealed in these sections. In fact, I’m so curious to know where exactly DFW is going with those commonalities, and so entertained (sic!) by the Steeply-Marathe exchanges, that I won’t put the book down at the end of a section if either of those characters are the subject of the next — even at 1am and with work early the next morning.
So true that the link between all of these disparate parties is exactly what Steeply and Marathe are discussing. Free will, utilitarianism, choice. All of these characters make choices, like the fabled kid eating candy all day, and the consequences are in many cases catastrophic, personally, socially, nationally. I am afraid of reading the choice that puts Hal in his catastrophic catatonia.
The Clenette part I could not bear to read. It was like some horrible torture. I read it, though.
I am curious to know whether other people are having problems with the mention of race. Why does every black character have to be always called ‘black’ so and so? Why are all the non-white characters one dimensional and are required to have some racial description attached to their names?
There are other aspects to this issue I have serious problems with but they occur later in the book. I don’t know if mentioning them would count as a spoiler because they are not at all important to the plot. But I won’t mention them.
I don’t think my reaction to this would be described as ‘offended.’ It’s like fingernails on a blackboard. I inwardly cringe. I am slightly sickened. They make me distrust the author. The suburbanite whiteness of the author starts to become glaringly apparent and casts a pall over the rest of the novel such that I am like ‘wow, this really is some kind of sheltered suburbanite college student’s novel’.
But because there is a lot within the novel that is good, I kind of go with the rest of it.
I cannot believe that any novelist is omniscient such that every cloddish thing in a novel can be explained away by his great genius. I am open to the argument that these are literary devices of some kind but I don’t see how they could be clever ones or revealing ones or impressive ones.
Can I really be the only person who is bugged by these moments? The issue isn’t political correctness but bad writing.
But seriously, if they are in some way, give me the argument because I am genuinely curious. There could be something I am not seeing.
If this novel takes effort to read (and I agree with you, Nick, that it takes a lot more effort for me not to keep reading, and get way ahead of the IS thing) it is the effort to sort of overlook these extremely stupid parts.
I haven’t had the particular reaction to the sections with racial overtones that you have, so I can’t comment on my reaction to them per se. But DFW, no matter how much I love him, wasn’t perfect, and I think it’s reasonable to take a dim view of how he handled race. (He makes a couple of errors with regard to gay people, as well, which frustrate me when I come to them.)
We can admire him, and still concede that he wasn’t infallible.
Ozma, I am totally with you: I could not have expressed my feelings of feeling slightly sickened by DFW’s treatment of race in IJ any better than you have.
I had to take a leap to care about well-off smart kids in an elite tennis academy in the first place (why should we care? what are the stakes?), but when DFW throws in the yrstruly Ebonics nonsense, in addition to the use of race as a joke (see, e.g., comments about the Pakistani convenience store owner, etc.), I begin wanting to put the book down and join the masses of IJ readers who have concluded that DFW is a bad, self-indulgent, unsympathetic, narcissistic writer and that the emperor in fact has no clothes (i.e., IJ and DFW are driven by hype: people are desperate not to be seen as not “getting” DFW, so they imagine that what they don’t get (or don’t like) must be over their heads in some way, etc.).
It’s sometimes hard to pinpoint, but DFW, to me, just doesn’t seem to have any ability to portray nonwhite, non-middle class, nonsuburban characters (i.e., people who lived outside of DFW’s relatively sheltered world) with anything like authenticity or true sympathy. I hate to keep comparing him to Pynchon (though DFW himself seems to beg for the comparison), but Pynchon’s ability to create sympathetic characters of all backgrounds, and especially his sympathy for underdogs, enemies, and Others, suggests a writer with a bigger heart, and more expansive emotional imagination. DFW does seem to me to be more self-absorbed and narcissistic. The footnotes are a symptom of that, and the thinly-veiled autobiography in Hal.
I’m trying to continue to read IJ with an open mind, but DFW’s gratuitous racial commentary, which makes him sound like the rich kid who went to elite private schools and played tennis that he was, makes it hard for me to give him the benefit of the doubt.
It’s for all of these reasons that I doubt that people will be calling IJ a great American novel a century from now. It’s emotional imagination is simply too limited in scope.
I could be wrong about this, but I think that the character of yrstruly (clues to whose identity come later) is actually meant to be white.
And, of course, this is all subjective, but after having read as much Pynchon as I can stomach, I have yet to come across any character of his that I cared about nearly as much as I do about Joelle, Gately or any number of other characters in IJ.
Try MASON & DIXON (if you haven’t already)!
Very good read. I find Profane in V. to be sympathetic, and Slothrop as well in GR
I’m pretty sure yrstruly is supposed to be white, and his diction and grammar do not vaguely resemble what some refer to as ebonics or African American Vernacular English. The Clenette dialogue, however, is like some grotesque parody of ebonics, nothing like what you’d find in, say, Toni Morrison. As far as most of the racial remarks go, they seem to reflect the ignorance of the characters. Keep in mind that the book is largely set in Boston, a town that’s not exactly known for racial tolerance and interacial harmony.
It is true though that so far none of the non-white characters seems to have much depth.
I’d also like to add that I read elsewhere (can’t remember where to credit, sorry!) that this book is set slightly in the future and as such, there may be some deliberate linguistic shift.
While it’s certainly a real possibility that DFW doesn’t truly identify with characters of color, it seems like he does such a good job narrating the addict and AA sections that he may also step up to the racial plate later.
“The Clenette dialogue, however, is like some grotesque parody of ebonics, nothing like what you’d find in, say, Toni Morrison.”
But it is similar to the early tone/diction in The Color Purple. I don’t think we can say there is one standard form of Literary Ebonics.
I’m unlikely to change your mind, since you both seem to be firmly seated in the view that DFW was racist or limited, but as I’m closing in on the end of the novel, I don’t particularly understand your interpretation of the attitudes of characters within IJ reflecting Wallace’s own personal attitudes. It’s made fairly obvious that what racism is expressed in this novel from characters within the novel is an attribute of the characters themselves, with the exception (if you consider them racist) of the yrstruly and Wardine sections. I, too, don’t want to get into spoilers, but you seem to be confusing Wallace with his characters, and therefore accusing Wallace of the same perspective-based limitations that he is in fact exposing.
I’d like to add that Wallace’s narrative style can get a bit confusing, I’ve found. He tends to occupy a limited first-person narrative perspective, at times, under the guise of an omniscient third person narrator – or something (my narrative theory class from my freshman year of college was a long, long time ago, sorry). There are many times within the novel where it appears that we have our narrator describing the thoughts or circumstances of a given IJ character within the narrator’s own voice, but a word will be misspelled or a racial epithet will be used that is particular to that certain character’s limitations.
Actually, I think the things Ozma was pointing to were effects of the author himself, and not any character, as in the descriptions DFW deploys, and the level of depth DFW grants nonwhite characters. These are not effects produced in the dialogue of characters, or in their thoughts, but in the descriptive choices of the author. See, e.g.,
I wouldn’t call this limitation racist. Racialist is a better word to use because it doesn’t connote hostility but more just doing things that reflect or keep ideologies about race very fixed.
I am not firmly seated in my views. I’m just reading the book and this is what I keep thinking and feeling when I run across these things. And above, I was just trying to explain why I think it.
I don’t think what someone is as a writer necessarily means much about what they are as a person. I would not jump to what he was as a person. What I was saying above was just that the racial references force me into a kind of reaction to what kind of world view the book expresses–and it is disruptive. When a writer doesn’t do this–they don’t push you outside the book as a reader…they become sort of invisible to you–that is amazing and incredibly hard to do, I suspect. He’s not writing an autobiographical novel, obviously. But there sometimes a point of view appears that seems limited in a glaring way.
I would rather enjoy the book than think: This is a really good book for a certain kind of white person.
I have already commented on this on the forums and in a comment as well, and I find myself sharing the concerns of Ozma and Octopus Grigori.
I’ve noted the uses of the n word, by DFW, as well, in various forms, and all considering, so far it appears to me that DFW describes the world from a “whiteness”-as-default perspective. Someone might note that that’s how the world “is”, but this world is lived from many points of view, not just one, and I’d like an innovative novel to give me an access to new ones or new ways of looking at old ones.
I already live in Italy and am surrounded by the racist and xenophobic people, politicians and media all the time, that define everyone in terms of their origin and skin color.
Any categorization of yrstruly doesn’t change much. Besides, its also possible that the Otherness in general could be a problem here (the question of gender has come up too, for instance in Avery’s post “Not the Best Student” and its comments [link]). But I have yet to think about this, since the situation regarding gender in DFW is might be more complex.
I have so far tried to attribute this DFW’s stereotypical treatment of the Other to his limited life experience and immaturity – he was raised in an academic environment that might have left him with a feeling of understanding the world and its complexity much better then he actually did, and the literary success and related expectations didn’t help in this respect, either, I guess.
As I have said, I’m keeping an eye on this aspect. I’m glad to be reading IJ and DFW’s work in general, but I don’t think I have to find it perfect, and am slightly annoyed by the commentators who appear to be on a mission to explain and justify every single thing about DFW and his work, and even make it all appear as something intentional and often brilliant as well.
I’m so glad that someone said this! There is such a distinction between DFW as a man/fiction writer and his characters, yet not everyone seems to acknowledge this separation.
Errata: “It’s emotional imagination…” should be “Its emotional imagination ….”
What about gately, who is one of the most sympathetic and human characters wallace ever created? He is white, true, but he is definitely not suburban or upper-middle-class or very educated. And since when did portraying characters of all classes and races equally well become a prerequisite for great american novel status? There are plenty of well-respected authors who write only about their own social class and ethnic group.
And also–perhaps because wallace is a white writer or perhaps because white people are a majority– we will automatically picture a character as white unless it is otherwise mentioned. Maybe this says something ugly about us, but it’s a fact that
has to be dealt with when communcating to an audience. And yes, the race of the characters does matter and does warrant mention. Otherwise why do we write and read about different cultures at all? Whether Wallace does this well is a different question. I happen to think he does but clearly I’m in a minority.
As for Pynchon, I agree with Wallace’s assessment: I love Pynchon about 25% of the time. There are huge sections of everything I’ve read of his where he loses track of his characters completely and wanders off into a realm of pure linguistic pyrotechnics.
I think Poor Tony is supposed to be a black man, right? after reading his story ( might be a spoiler, can’t remember where it is and I am in the 500s now) I don’t think anyone could posit that DFW can’t explain or empathize with non-white characters. the crushing tale is told with much emotion and generates just as much from the reader. Perhaps all judgements about where DFW stands re race should be shelved until the novel is resolved? CAn’t judge a book by its cover, or its first 200 pages?
I’m on page 650 or so. It’s all through the book, in many different forms.
Poor Tony is white. (I think it’s actually indicated somewhere that he’s Jewish.)
Poor Tony’s father is Jewish, which more than likely does mean he’s white. SPOILER ALERT, as the below reference comes on page 303. His father performs “Kriah,” a ritualistic rending of clothes performed at Jewish funerals, claiming he has no son i.e. his son is effectively dead to him (possibly because PT is a homosexual).
However,I don’t find Poor Tony very empathetic or well developed. He’s a rat, a doublecrosser who uses people (and allows himself to be used) to get what he wants/needs. The circumstances/details of his death are tragic and gruesome, but he never seems to get beyond that addicts “next fix” level of awareness.
This is where I thought he did Gately a disservice by making him an out and out racist. So far, every working class person in the book (by page 650) is a complete and total racist and uses the most derogatory racist terms for black people, in their interior monologues and perceptions. But this is the future. And he wrote in 1993. And with AA, and Gately, he really is talking about someone who clearly interacts with a cross section of society and seems like a self-reflective person. When it comes to race, Gately is a narrow, blind and one-dimensional person. It almost feels like it doesn’t fit the rest of his character. And simply because he is working class and from Boston does not, to me, mean that he would not ever question, no matter what his experiences, this social aspect.
But to be honest, it feels like he’s trying to do something with all this race stuff but it fails. And I have no idea what he’s trying to do.
I was thinking about Gately today b/c he calls someone “oriental” and “spic” in the section I was reading, and Yes is it sad that his experiences haven’t led him to more enlightenment, but this is someone who was basically neglected as a child, never educated, and never had eaten broccoli.(!) From where was his enlightenment that different races are equal supposed to have come? Isn’t this something we are taught as children and learn to internalize as we grow and experience the world?And if he wasn’t taught, and then spent time in prison and lived among criminals… I think it is hard to judge a character or person for being racist/judgmental when they clearly haven’t been exposed to the tools to overcome such arrested development. And Gately is always presented as a flawed character- in every way. He’s doing good deeds, and trying to improve HIMSELF, but can’t be expected, I think, to have come to the place where all people are equal, or the differences between people/cultures aren’t so glaringly judged. I don’t think his is the voice of the book; I think it is one of many that don’t reinforce racism, just present it. ?
dude,
Dave was not rich (Jim & Sally are professors at public institutions, of philosophy – yeah, there’s big research bucks in Kant — and community college composition, respectively),
was not suburban (Champaign-Urbana’s in the middle of some the richest farm country in the world),
went to an elite school (on scholarships for his intellectual skills and his parents’ frugal savings, working the switchboard in the dorm nights and reading while the truly rich partied upstairs) and was horrified by such presumptions of privilege,
and though tennis playing was in his past, (as a teen in rural Illinois, with his mother dutifully driving him to matches downstate, dude, and losing more than not at the end — yeah, there’s the sure a lot of aristocratic sin in that) we heard not word one of this “career” in Tucson back in the day
but the lad could catch the perfect rhythms and specific vocabulary of almost any speaker or writer by ear and eye
first time,
then spin m anywhichway he chose like a webmaster of many colors, or a street magician, making use of the props of the place and the rhyme.
Mind y’all this was the late 80s dear Dave was serving from, n the court’s changed a bit before the ball could come down among all you ready to volley it back — planetary rotation, tornados, things like that — so much so anti-toi, the server, has been swept away, like the world around Well’s Machine.
Dave grew before me into a man of deep honor, humility and respect for others who sought to understand the vapid and depressing path this commercial success (how time tells) of an “American” culture we faced in those times, of mass indoctrination to simplistic consumerism and cool colors, of snide irony and dismissal of the interests of others, the confessions of “McPoems” and the pathetic “insight” of voyeuristic “trailer fiction” written by just the sort you, dude, seem to condemn, too, sought by East coast literary rags (excuse me, mags).
Consider the project of the novelist and teacher John Gardner’s “On Moral Fiction” —
this was Dave’s in relation to both art and the profound fracturing of postmodernism —
to give it just purpose.
Please don’t discard this opportunity to enjoy this great piece of moral art because you’ve made up some false narrative of the author based on skewed specifics gleaned from ungnowing bios, or on snide attitudes or rude caricatures of class and race that you may think you hear in individual voices in the text. They’re f/x.
As the pedantic penner would intone, “Autobiography has no place in fiction!”
“The author is dead,” sayeth Barth, long live the author in the reader’s head :
all bunk really
let it ride.
Sorry to intrude w all this gnowledge, dude, but y got t gnow y got the backstory all wrong, a lot of you do, tho Boswell seemed on track in Tucson —
Dave conceived this “long thing” there, spring of ’87 at Mary’s place before he fled, he said when we met in IL summer of ’88, n it grew much after that, but the arcs were drawn, already, like mortar battery fire walking towards its target in unison:
it was only a matter of time.
dude, don’t let your head make the voices into Dave, they’re Dave’s writing, nor let the story you have of DFW make you hate Dave —
“Borges and I” was something he was well aware of, same with the foil of Shakespear —
what does the text say
to you, dude?
don’t ask where the wave came from
just surf it, n
read on
semper fi
(nick, cool post)
Need a Facebook “like” button here. Thanks, marine.
I want to stay on topic, but I wonder why there is not more mention of the recurrent Hamlet themes in IJ.
Re the Trial-sized Dove Bar debate and resolution: SO WHAT? This is how I feel about a lot of IJ and its footnotes and digressions. Even if you make an effort to “get to the bottom” of something in IJ, there’s nothing there for you. Well, there is of course the handy all-purpose “Your expectations to find some kind of meaning or deeper themes are exactly what I seek to explode! See, it’s META!”
Which is all to say, do any of you really care whether YTSDB refers to soap or ice cream (besides your own personal stake in being right)? What or how does that matter in reading this book?
I don’t care about the Dove bar particularly. There are deeper themes, but they are pretty well buried, in part by all the diversions you speak of. As for meaning, I don’t think that DFW presents different possible meanings just to be clever; I suspect he is actually deeply ambivalent about some of the topics he wrestles with.
I had an English teacher in high school, Jim Murphy, who instilled in me a deep appreciation for those who can live with ambiguity. As a scientist, this attitude has served me well. He used to always quote Vonnegut:
“Tiger gotta hunt
Bird gotta fly
Man gotta wonder
Why, why, why…
Tiger gotta sleep,
Bird gotta land,
Man gotta tell himself
He understand.”
Um, I don’t actually “care” if it’s soap or ice cream or chocolate. It’s kind of fun to be “right” about it, but not from any serious perspective.
On the other hand, I would question and argue certain other aspects of the book, and wonder aloud what DFW meant or what may or may not have happened to certain characters because I care about them. I love these characters because they seem real and human and vulnerable and beautiful in a way that I have found fleetingly rare in fiction. You clearly perceive DFW’s voice to be one of privilege, and thusly limited. Fine. I don’t really have a stake in convincing you otherwise. But my experience of his writing could not be more different, no matter the flaws it may contain.
thanks for this post. very insightful. i appreciate looking at parts of the book in new ways even after several reads!
Is it only me or do I read a lot of howling fantod here? I bought this book in 1996 when it first came out and it sat on my shelf so long I sold it to Powell’s and ended up having to buy another copy for this extravaganza. I have neither been disappointed in deciding to read this now, nor have I regretted not having read it earlier. For the very reason that I believe this is one of those novels where you can put as much effort or not as you wish into reading. I have chosen to put more effort than I would normally because of the amazing number of “I know that, but what is it I know?” For the readers offended by some of what DFW has to say or who want to skirt that topic altogether, I would urge you to consider it as another voice, another opinion and continue on. So much seems to come back on itself for a reason in this novel, we just don’t know what all these loose ends are just yet, but I have faith we will know just because of the amazing stuff that I’ve already read.
precisely.
Thank you! I’m a first time reader and am loving this book! I wasn’t a lit major and am not particularly well-read, but when I read of DFW’s death in our local paper(Claremont,CA) and in RS, I felt immediately compelled to read IJ. I read the first 300 pages last fall and had to force myself to put it aside to focus on my Master’s degree. Now that I have more time, I’m thrilled to be starting in again with the IS community. I know there are plenty of literary references that will be lost on me, but it certainly hasn’t kept me from thoroughly enjoying this amazing cast of characters, the brilliant humor, and the universal themes that are readily available to anyone who’s open to them. (And I can’t wait to read next week’s comments. Thanks to you all!)
I’m smiling now. The calibre of responses and discussion for this Infinite Summer project are just amazing.
The reason I mentioned the Dove bar thing in the first place (knowing it was going to result in even more discussion) was because it is the only thing DFW has ‘cleared up’ where there are ambiguous interpretations involved. As for the reliability of the wallace-l member? Absolutely 100%. I’d have mentioned names but permission did not come through in time.
There are many ambiguities and double binds in this book, and I’d never in a million years ask Wallace to resolve them for me. I enjoy not knowing. I think the deal with the Dove bar ambiguity is that it one has been cleared up by the author. Wallace was not a person to throw things into conversation with his readers/interviewers/fans etc just to throw them off. Every single account of people meeting with him refutes this.
I think the reason why the Dove bar has some caused grief with readers is because a) All the other ambiguities have textual clues to their ambiguity and b) I think it makes more sense for soap to be trial sized…
Reed, well put. I agree completely. Spoilers are holding me off from commenting further.
My wife just had a baby, our first, and so my parents wanted us to get a webcam so we could Skype. I did, but with great hesitation, and I forced them to read the videophony section first. It’s so spot-on! I always find myself watching myself more than who I’m talking to. Kind of disturbing to admit.
I’ve read IJ 4+ times, too. It is no accident that we continually reread it. It is by Design. Therein lies the Jest. It’s not like he doesn’t warn you…
I definitely found the Marathe/Steeply sections to be slow, especially the first time around. But they’re spinach; read ’em– it’s good for you.
I would like to comment on the discomfort that is being felt by some readers surrounding the clennete and yrstruly passages in regard to racial insensitivity. Not to sound like too much of a DFW maven but it seems ridiculous to think that a writer could spend the better part of two years hand writing a 1700 page first draft while leaving such a glaringly obvious issue like racism up to speculation or chance. It seems equally ridiculous to think that anyone could get through four years at a fancy liberal arts college on the east coast without getting an ass full of progressive liberal racial theory, political correctness, standard white middle class guilt, over-sensitivity to terms and classifications etc. If anything DFW came out of Amherst with more racial sensitivity and awareness than probably he knew what to do with. And I don’t mean to sound cynical when I postulate that the people who seem the most vocal about potential undercurrents of racism probably attended some fancy east coast liberal arts college or university. I know, I’m one of them. Hence the acute sensitivity: a feeling almost of guilt at not doing our jobs as human beings if we don’t speak up. I’d bet my left testicle that DFW was more than aware how these sections of the book would be received by his peers. And given his expressed hatred of “academic” writing and his tendency to be reader hostile I’m guessing all of this was very premeditated. But beyond just being cheeky I think that the race relations throughout the novel are sadly prescient. The population of america is more diverse than it has ever been in its history. yet we seem to be drifting further and further apart. These trends are obvious in big cities where the diversity is richest. It’s almost like when people first started to come from asia, the middle east, africa everybody had to interact, there was no avoiding it. But go into any city now and the ethnic areas are now neatly divided into “towns” and “littles”. Koreatown, Chinatown, Little Lisbon, Little Odessa, Ethiopiatown, etc. The populations in these areas are now growing to the point where if you don’t want to interact with someone who doesn’t speak the same language you never have to. Brown-black relations in the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) are starting to resemble trends seen in most maximum security prisons. I feel like DFW was not only aware of all of this, but could sense that as we moved into the future these trends would get worse before they got better. It is after all a novel that takes place in the near future. Just one man’s opinion though.
My reactions are no doubt partly due to teaching the students of the fancy ass liberal arts colleges on the east coast as you put it– and noticing they have the world view that is precisely the world view that keeps breaking through in this book. It’s not like they don’t want to understand people from other backgrounds but they are very limited in their ability to do so. And very uncomfortable with that limitation but only to the point where they want to know some set of ideas that they can grasp so they can actually forget about all the uncomfortable reality. The reality of racial injustice doesn’t quite penetrate to their hearts–it’s just an abstract idea. I rarely see them go entirely past this limitation. I don’t know if it is the sheltered upbringing or the social privilege or a lack of effort or what.
White middle class guilt is basically bullshit when it comes to race. It may be that perspective that is the most grating, in fact.
Actually, I know this is a problem of my own when I read the book. It’s like I am so familiar with these fancy ass liberal arts college students and IJ occasionally feels much a novel one of them would write that I get a little stuck on certain issues that the narrow perspective of the narration at certain moments keeps reminding me of this world view.
I totally agree with the person above who said that all writers make mistakes. I take the best of the writer and the best of the book–I do not discount this book because it has some bad parts. In fact, I kind of admire it more, in a weird way. That it can be such an impressive novel with some truly horrendous parts.
I would like to speak specifically to comments made about the Clenette (p37-39), partly because I haven’t read the rest of the book in like 10 years but also because I want to try to parse some of the reactions I’ve read here and offer my impressions.
Clenette’s section is a first-person narrative that uses African American Vernacular English (AAVE). We (and DFW) would be accepting a stereotype if we assumed that this is the way all black people talk. Conversely, we would be oblivious if we said that all black people speak Standard English all of the time–it’s the language equivalent of trying to sidestep race issues by saying, “I don’t see color, I just see people.” I’d like to point out that DFW’s upper-class, educated, white characters don’t speak grammatical English all the time either–Hal uses the word, “like” the way most people from the West coast do, as sort of an “um”-type filler word. I think it’s easier for this kind of dialect stuff to slip past us because it isn’t stigmatized like some features of AAVE. I’m outting myself as a product of a fancy-ass liberal arts institution by recognizing this as a shameful inequality. But it is an inequality that exists, and, I think, is portrayed accurately (in this section anyway). Perhaps it is a sense of this stigma that is making readers uncomfortable, not the language itself?
Clenette uses language features that linguists have seen in AAVE for years; here are some examples just from the opening, on page 37: verb regularization (“say” instead of second-person present “says;” “live” instead of second-person present “lives”) copula deletion (“out the closet” instead of “out of the closet;” “Wardine back all beat up…” instead of “Wardine’s back is all beat up”) and habitual “be, ” i.e. using “be” + another verb to imply something that happens habitually, rather than just in this one instance right now (“she be cry,” “Wardine be down at my crib,” etc. for which there is no real Standard English equivalent). Some of DFW’s uses of “be” for habitual be suggest that maybe he didn’t completely understand the mechanics of this dialect, but his version is a reasonable depiction of how someone from this environment might talk. And I think if he took the time and care to recreate a dialect (which I think we can safely say he never used himself) as accurately as possible, doesn‘t this show a level of respect for the community he‘s representing? In that he wants to depict it as accurately as possible? One of the important concepts in linguistics is that language plays a major role in how we form and display our personal identities–ever notice how someone from the south sounds more southern when they come back from visiting family in Georgia?
I cannot speak to comments made about single-dimension nonwhite characters in this book outside of this section, because I don’t really remember the sections to which commenters are referring. But in the Clenette chapter (p37-39) I feel like DFW is doing the exact opposite of creating a one-dimensional character or parodizing a community. I hope that anyone who’s discounted DFW because of this section will go back for a closer read.
If DFW was trying to say something about the world we live in in the terms of group identity and divisions, in the way that is described by secretasianman, it would have been a good idea, especially in a book themed around communication difficulties, but so far, from what I have read, I don’t think he has.
Same thing can be said for the use of linguistic styles, DFW could have used different varieties of the English language in interesting ways but he hasn’t. In my opinion.
Can someone suggest any academic papers for me to read on this, maybe by someone expert in linguistics?
I mean, think about it. The complexity of the Incandenza universe compared to all the other characters? The mix of sympathy and criticism, high and low, rational and irrational, and so on in Incandenzas, and then the others. I definitely sense something off and immature here.
For my money, yrstrly talks like a lower class white bostonian.
And when you say that the dialect is off-key, be careful of who is the cloistered white person. DFW spent a substantial amount of time in Boston, and I think we should grant him the benefit of the doubt that he encountered people who spoke a la the “Clenette” section, and that he made quite certain he was portraying their dialect carefully. Assuming that all black dialects are the same is as racist and outlandish as assuming that all people who speak in a non-standard dialect are non-white.
It’s not the dialogue. It is the voyeurism and the abasement of the characters. I could say more but I think I’m being annoying at this point.
I don’t think you are annoying at all, Ozma. On the contrary. I’d like to thank you for having articulated these thoughts and helped me sort out some of my own doubts, and for having made this discussion more interesting.
I agree, it’s not about the precision of the dialects, but the use and role of them. I would certainly gladly read any further thoughts by you on the subject, since it’s not easy to figure out what exactly goes “wrong” here.
I definitely feel that some characters are seen more from the outside and some are seen more from the inside, and that the book so far has expressed a certain very specific world view/ point of view, but have trouble explaining which and why do I find it to be so.
If you’re refering to my comment, I never meant to imply that there is one form of African American Vernacular English. It’s an umbrella term that encapsulates a number of regional dialects and the ideolects of millions of speakers (Just as there really isn’t one standard English, and you don’t even need to leave the country to discover that). All the same, I stick by my position that the Clenette section is overdone and inauthentic. I’m not some cloistered Amherst grad. I lived in the inner city, I teach in the inner city, I’ve watched neighbors get high, even freebase in the kitchen, as their preschoolers played on the floor. I’ve seen how absolutely-too-fucking-vivid life can be, and while the story rings true, the dialect does not. Admittedly, I live in the American South and am not familiar with the dialects common to African American communities in New England, but I still cannot believe that this is a truly acurate portrayal.
At the same time it’s true that DFW must have been hyper-aware of race and the issues surrounding it, so it makes me wonder why he would use such an exagerated dialect. Perhaps there’s a purpose behind it, though I’m not quite sure what it would be.
Thank you making me reread pages 157-169.
I started IJ last summer/fall, and stopped at page 198. I didn’t consciously decide to put it down; I just never picked it up again.
I’m diving back in again, in hopes that the community here will help motivate me.
So far, so good. You’re entirely right: every sentence of these pages is GOLD.
His characters treat dysfunctional race relations and their epithets with the weary expertise that children today treat movie violence. Because of its ubiquity. In a sense it loses its significance and impact. An excellent example being Gran Turino.
It only loses its significance and impact if you are not being subjected to it constantly. If you are–if you are not white, in other words–different story. There is weariness but plenty of significance and impact.
Well, since I came back to this post I have to concur that Marathe Steeply gets better and better. There are some great exchanges. So yes, I would also say if the first M-S chapter did not strike your fancy, read the other chapters because they turn out to be very interesting.
And I am also a huge fan of 157-169.
Some people have complained about Marathe’s use of English, I think on the forums. What do you think about that?
One aspect of the Clenette and yrstruly sections that I’m surprised that no one has yet mentioned is that Infinite Jest is set in the future, and science-fiction (whether or not you wish to pigeonhole I.J. as such) has a long tradition of using modified vernacular (especially that used by those in urban areas) as a shorthand way of indicating that “stuff has changed since the present”. Clockwork Orange is the textbook example of this.
Observations that the language used in these sections is “inauthentic” only bolster this interpretation. Wallace is not authentic to how people actually spoke in 1992 (when the novel was released) because the people speaking aren’t living in 1992, but rather in The Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.
Matthew, thank-you for sharing your interpretation. However, I see one main interpretive flaw with it: we aren’t talking about a point in time that’s, say, one or two centuries from the time of writing (which spanned roughly 1993-95, and was released in 1996 not 1992). In that case I would be more inclined to agree with you. But all evidence so far suggests that the novel is set in a point of time that’s maybe 16 years from the time when DFW began writing, and language simply doesn’t change that fast.
Although IJ is set in the “near” future chronologically, I think we’ll all concede that it posits a lot of changes–technologically, geographically, and culturally–in a very short time frame.
But you’re right that it was released in 1996 rather than 1992. Oops.
I would argue that the technological advances that the novel posits don’t go far enough: as a number of people have suggested, the notion of “cartridges” seems to us a bit outdated. The idea of ONAN, as well, doesn’t strike me as all that far-fetched, although perhaps some of the particulars do. (But then again, maybe my Canadian-ness is too much of a bias in this regard?)
However, I’m with you on some of the cultural changes being probably too soon for their time, i.e. Subsidized Time. On the other hand, good arguments can be advanced explaining this gap away; but unfortunately the current spoiler line prevents me from delving into them.
Well, I might point out that Wallace never claimed to be a futurist, and much of his vision of the “future” (closer to our present, but, again, this was 1996) has more of a literary/narrative purpose.
That being said, I, too, found the whole cartridge idea to be a bit out-dated, but then I reminded myself that I’m living in 2009, with Blu-Rays and Fiber Optic Internet, so cartridges seem outdated to my 2009 sensibilities. However, in 1996, in terms of the cartridge issue VS., say, readable discs or flash memory, he wouldn’t be considered all that odd for suggesting cartridges would prevail as a medium. I say this based on the anecdotal evidence of the Video Game Consoles of the time, where there were some people continuing to claim cartridge-based media as viable, even in the face of disc storage (I’m looking at you, Nintendo 64). In other words, maybe (totally speculative here – I think it’s more likely that DFW just took a shot in the dark) DFW agreed with that mid-90’s body of opinion?
“A Clockwork Orange” is one of the books I’d like to read next, so I can’t comment that well yet, but I don’t think the two can be compared. The linguistic experimentation in the Burgess’ book has a whole different meaning and reveals certain aspects of human behavior in a very innovative way.
I can’t say any such thing for IJ, so far.
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, too, on different language indicating that things have changed in the future. Great book.
Glad you mentioned Clockwork Orange. The ystruly section reads very much like a Boston (Southie?) version of CO. There are sufficient common elements (partial e.g. first person narration, extensive slang/argot usage, violence, drugs) to make the case that this is an intentional device, though to what end I am not sure(as I am only on page 176 of my first reading of IJ). Currently it seems parodic and maybe a pomo lit in-joke, like the allusion to the MIT linguistic riots that Gerry Canavan tracked down in Don DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star (See her web site’s blog entry for 10 July 2009), which conceals common thematic concerns between IJ and the work being alluded to. (Please pardon the dangler, but it’s late…)
Thought I’d contribute something instead of replies to replies:
Re: p. 196 – This is, in my opinion, one of the funniest descriptions in the whole novel, so I’m glad you brought it up. However, the thing that really got to me, is that I was explaining the passage and the woman who screamed “Help!” all the time to my father, who is a clinical psychologist. He immediately began emphatically nodding his head when I described the Alzheimer’s-stricken nurse repeatedly screaming “Help!” – he said that one of the most common clinical presentations, in his experience, of late-onset Alzheimer’s patients with advanced disease is that they will repeatedly yell “Help!” in a perseverative fashion. Anyway, hearing him say that really made me muse on how thorough DFW could be.
I can’t help but point out the irony of your beginning your post proper with “Re”, thus identifying your own post as a reply to Nick’s, which is itself a reply to DFW.
You know, I actually did NOT do that on purpose… and now, my brain hurts.
There’s an echo of this, later on in the book; I can’t quite remember where exactly but I’m 70% sure it’s at the ETA morning drills part. When I hit that echo it was like a trigger, kept me laughing for minutes. Wallace is brilliant in his organization.
Dave’s interest in technology, small as it was, was stirred by a paper about Tracy Kidder’s “Ghost in the Machine” in perhaps the fall of ’86 along with a discussion he had about the early internet (OCLC searches, etc.).
This preoccupation with the actual moment the details of IJ are built on is unfortunately misinformed by our instant cultural production of today. Interlace is a fiction whose technology is almost 60s, if not 30s (tv), spliced with some other old nonsense, like the techno-babel of Star Trek.
and sadly, the book’s publication release date has nothing to do with the temporal relativistic content of any given phrase, page or idea. For a book begun in ’88 and not submitted till when? Then there’s the publication pyramid of a big house, which takes time with everything, so it’s quite a while later you all get to crack n eye on it. Dave’s bright, but they wouldn’t let him rewrite it all in galleys, like some mailer.
oh, a trial size Dove bar existed, a small chocolate covered vanilla ice cream patty on a stick that was distributed in supermarkets by nice barely employed ladies standing next to the frozen treats freezers.
fact, jack
i should split, before i spoil someone’s good spew, cuz this is all gnew to yu
tho not i
bye
semper fi
[…] 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment Some controversy is ensuing (mostly here) about the lack of sophistication in DFW’s portrayal of race and non-white characters, […]
The discussion of racism, yrstruly, etc., led me to write a lengthy post on why the use of Black vernacular doesn’t limit the sophistication of the subject, in this case yrstruly.
Oh, and I also argue, along with Dan Summers above, that yrstruly and Poor Tony are white, though I’m within spoiler limits on both my reading and analysis, so perhaps there’s an easy answer that comes later in the book.
Finally, I argue that, if there is a “racial problem” here, it comes in the Tiny Ewell section on tattoos. I’ll post that part in the daily forum.
http://infinitetasks.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/race-and-tattoos/
Funny…I was kind of wondering if Poor Tony was white when reading the Clenette thing but what was all that about the AA meeting then and the hugging? Or was that someone else?
Doesn’t solve the problem. The writing problem, not the problem of who Wallace was as a person. Which is just not the issue, for me. I’m keeping the book and the guy in my mind, to the extent I can.
I meant to say: keeping the book and the guy who wrote it separate.
Thinking about biographical details usually detracts from my ability to take the book on its own merits.
post post modern purpose n the conspicuously young
originally written in reply to a somewhat misinformed post replying to Nick’s nice post. ( the name chosen here is a fact, and the role chosen one of pleasure with the wondrous attention gracing Dave’s work now. Just one heads up — no mask is singular in its effect; all have two sides, if not more. )
dude,
Dave was not rich (Jim & Sally are professors at public institutions, of philosophy – yeah, there’s big research bucks in Kant — and community college composition, respectively),
was not suburban (Champaign-Urbana’s in the middle of some the richest farm country in the world),
went to an elite school (on scholarships for his intellectual skills and his parents’ frugal savings, working the switchboard in the dorm nights and reading while the truly rich partied upstairs) and was horrified by such presumptions of privilege,
and though tennis playing was in his past, (as a teen in rural Illinois, with his mother dutifully driving him to matches downstate, dude, and losing more than not at the end — yeah, there’s the sure a lot of aristocratic sin in that) we heard not word one of this “career” in Tucson back in the day
but the lad could catch the perfect rhythms and specific vocabulary of almost any speaker or writer by ear and eye
first time,
then spin m anywhichway he chose like a webmaster of many colors, or a street magician, making use of the props of the place and the rhyme.
Mind y’all this was the late 80s dear Dave was serving from, n the court’s changed a bit before the ball could come down among all you ready to volley it back — planetary rotation, tornados, things like that — so much so anti-toi, the server, has been swept away, like the world around Well’s Machine.
Dave grew before me into a man of deep honor, humility and respect for others who sought to understand the vapid and depressing path this commercial success (how time tells) of an “American” culture we faced in those times, of mass indoctrination to simplistic consumerism and cool colors, of snide irony and dismissal of the interests of others, the confessions of “McPoems” and the pathetic “insight” of voyeuristic “trailer fiction” written by just the sort you, dude, seem to condemn, too, sought by East coast literary rags (excuse me, mags).
Consider the project of the novelist and teacher John Gardner’s “On Moral Fiction” –
this was Dave’s in relation to both art and the profound fracturing of postmodernism –
to give it just purpose.
Please don’t discard this opportunity to enjoy this great piece of moral art because you’ve made up some false narrative of the author based on skewed specifics gleaned from ungnowing bios, or on snide attitudes or rude caricatures of class and race that you may think you hear in individual voices in the text. They’re f/x.
As the pedantic penner would intone, “Autobiography has no place in fiction!”
“The author is dead,” sayeth Barth, long live the author in the reader’s head :
all bunk really
let it ride.
Sorry to intrude w all this gnowledge, dude, but y got t gnow y got the backstory all wrong, a lot of you do, tho Boswell seemed on track in Tucson –
Dave conceived this “long thing” there, spring of ‘87 at Mary’s place before he fled, he said when we met in IL summer of ‘88, n it grew much after that, but the arcs were drawn, already, like mortar battery fire walking towards its target in unison:
it was only a matter of time.
dude, don’t let your head make the voices into Dave, they’re Dave’s writing, nor let the story you have of DFW make you hate Dave –
“Borges and I” was something he was well aware of, same with the foil of Shakespear –
what does the text say
to you, dude?
don’t ask where the wave came from
just surf it, n
read on
semper fi
(nick, cool post)
THIS reply right here – THIS reply.
Just kidding, definitely some good points made.
A++ in my book, Marine. Thanks for the beautiful reminders, given with poise and love.
I want to ask about the reverse: I want to read the book and really think about it as a book. My thinking about the book will be extremely, severely limited by who I am as a person and my very limited knowledge and attention span and all the rest.
Also, it will be shaped by all that and informed by all that.
For example, I have lived for many years in several of the main locations of the book. I’ve walked those streets and seen those exact sunsets. I have a truly intimate knowledge of Arizona cockroaches and up close experience of Cambridge homeless people. It’s kind of odd, in some ways. It’s like someone wrote a book about the places I’ve lived before. So of course, that affects how I read.
Still, I would rather read the book and talk about the book without being limited by emotions and attitudes about the author. Or really by much thinking about the author. He was a person. A person is of infinite value. A book is just a book. Books matter, of course. But if I can’t disentangle the book from the person who died tragically, then there would be no point in reading the book. For me, anyway. I have so much else to do. I could think good thoughts about the man and be done with it. Instead, I am reading a 1700 page novel.
A person can be a genius of insight and empathy and write an atrocious book. Or someone can be a complete bastard to actual people (as Tolstoy supposedly was, in certain respect…and Chekhov apparently) and write phenomenal stories filled with the deepest understanding and empathy for particular characters, bringing them to life in the most awe-inspiring ways.
What I think about the book is not important either. But this is a fun thing I haven’t done–talked with strangers on the internet about a book whose reading spans a significant period of time. So what do they think? And because I haven’t been reading literature lately or thinking about it, it’s already been an incredible learning experience.
And what I think about the book is absolutely irrelevant to anything about the person who wrote the book. And when I think about the point of view that the book expresses, and am not thrilled with this point of view, I am not attacking the author as a person but the point of view that the book seems to arise out of. I’m only talking about the book.
If I had my way, I would erase absolutely every biographical fact about David Foster Wallace from my head. I do know some of these because I read the magazines that wrote homages to him. But I try to forget them when I’m reading the book. They just do not help.
It’s important not to confuse privilege with luck. I’ll just throw that out there,
“…everybody lives in some relation to the luckless, whether they call it that or something else, or whether they manage to live near it or far away. And what mattered most was that you *knew* the relation moment to moment…the particular danger, so that your life turned out to be a matter of what you did to make that bearable, since you couldn’t get so far away from it as to make it not exist.”
–Richard Ford
(Some people think about this a *lot*. But who’s to say who does and does
not?)
If you are going to see Wallace in the text, why not in his favor–like Joelle van Dyne giving twenty dollars to a homeless person, for instance?
And further:
People who are familiar with homeless people in Cambridge or wherever else (and that influences how you read the book, and you have questions about the author’s character based on picking out things from the book that you think are not in his favor), have you ever given any of them 20 dollars?
See its an obnoxious question.
I liked your post Nick
I am the person who said I was familiar with the locations and the people in them. But I also said I was trying NOT to see Wallace in the text.
This is one way to read the book. Is anyone else reading the book this way? Eventually, if I was going to be some kind of literary critic on the book, I might want to investigate the author. I guess. But I’ll never do that so I want to read the book without focusing on the author.
I was sort of curious about the reason why giving $20 comes up. Is that in the book somewhere?
I did give a homeless person $20. In Cambridge. So weird that you would ask that. No, I think I gave her $30–which was all the money I had. She had special circumstances. They seemed real and her story indicated a real need for as much money as I had. But that’s not relevant–also, she wasn’t a ‘typical’ homeless person, if there is such a thing.
I don’t want to see Wallace in the text. I am doing everything I can to AVOID seeing Wallace in the text. I talk about the point of view the novel expresses–one of the most interesting things about fiction is that I think stuff comes out of writers that isn’t really their point of view. They imaginatively occupy all kinds of points of view. But writers are a bit limited by their own experience. No one now can probably write like Dostoevsky. I don’t want to assume that the point of view a writer can occupy was exactly his point of view.
I just wanted to make clear: Having problems with parts of the book is not at all the same as having problems with the person who wrote the book. To me, anyway. And the facts about the person doesn’t always clear up the questions about the book.
poor tony is the white transvestite. roy tony was the guy hugging ken erdedy at the na meeting. also roy tony was the man that wardine’s (the infamous clennette section) mother was seeing and why she beat wardine with a hanger.
oh yeah, roy tony is also the heroin dealer that yrstruly, c and poor tony go to in the brighton projects. i’m pretty sure the name similarity is purposeful i just haven’t figured out what that purpose is yet.
In AA the major character flaw worked on is instincts gone awry. By following the instinct to the max, an addict is following that thing they choose to worship/love/attach and it takes them to death unless they quit.
The Marathe/Steeply conversation also makes me think of passion vs. analysis. Both are necessary, but in balance. There’s the word: balance.
But, of course, no one is perfect – so at times we sway towards passion and other times towards analysis.
People are different. People lean towards one or the other due to nature and nurture. Can the U.S.A. children be taught how to choose their temple? Yes – but who is to say that the teachers should be teaching. Who is to say what we should worship? There is the political aspect to this. And also the spiritual. And the sexual.
DFW hits it all and does not give the answer. There is no answer. There is only life and what we want out of it. Perhaps the thing we can’t live without is, in fact, life itself. This seems obvious, but, it is not really. What is the experience that we want to have? At each state of our development we are given more information with which to choose.
Another part of IJ talks about the fact that the “game” is about managing fear. Managing your own fear, and possibly, in politics, the political leaders managing our fear to their advantage and not ours.
Again, I get the sense that DFW is telling us to think for ourselves. I keep getting this from him. That we cannot be led by others, no matter what leadership role they have been given in our lives; political, emotional, sexual, or spiritual.
Not to tout AA as the answer, but they have dealt with this question by stating that their program is meant to be suggestive only and that they know there are other paths. Use what you need and discard the rest. There are no leaders and no one in charge. However there are some universal truths. Are these really universally agreed to? I would say in theory, but the real question is, do we each choose to actually act on them? To do them rather than just say them. DFW talks about this somewhere in the book. That it is easy to say and not so easy to do … the thing.
POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!!!?
I think a lot of the arguments going on about race and privilege are only applicable to the early stages of the book. It’s hard to back this up without giving away later portions of the text, but there’s a reason the summary on the back cover says “split between a tennis academey and an addicts halfway house.”
[…] to be the Wardine and yrstruly sections, but on Friday that particular discussion broke out like a brawl in a soccer bar, and now it’s spilled over to yesterday’s Roundup thread, and frankly I am now kind of […]
[…] of which, I actually enjoyed (to the degree you can enjoy something so dark) the much-maligned (1, 23, 3) “yrstruly” sections, particularly the “2bdenied” compaction which I […]
W/r/t the Clenette-ebonics discussion, and the treatment of race throughout the book:
First, I am from the deep south, and Clenette’s voice is pretty much dead-on, maybe only slightly exaggerated, which I think the exaggeration can be justified by the fact that the character is not mentally healthy. [SPOILER] She turns up later in the book as an Ennett House resident.
Second, if you consider all of the socio-racial-economic disparities between all of the characters in the book, and how DFW uses their respective backgrounds to give them depth, he can’t help but deal with race and ethnicity bluntly. A large piece in the puzzle that is Infinite Jest’s plot is the many cultural differences b/t Canadians and Americans.
Finally, I think it is unfair to require or expect a writer to deal with race in such a way that he basically doesn’t deal with it. I’m not sure how that would work. The second you introduce a character’s race into the narrative (which, you can’t argue with such introductions because if these were real people their race/ethnicity would be apparent upon meeting them), you deal with the readers’ many various and complex ideas about the character’s race. The only way to manage the readers’ personal perceptions/preferences/biases at all is to deal bluntly and overtly with the issues that go along with a character’s race.
All that to say that acknowledging someone’s race, and the behaviors that accompany race/ethnicity/culture is necessary in understanding them, and ignoring these things ends up being just as ignorant as hating someone for them.
Nick, thanks for guiding me to pay closer attention to the “underrated” Marathe/Steeply sections, which at first I also found not so compelling. Now I’m totally hooked, and see an interesting connection to Himself . . . “Marathe” — not a true French surname — would, in French, be pronounced “Marat” (without phoneme “th”). As in J.O. Incandenza’s “The Film Adaptation of Peter Weiss’s ‘The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.” (fn 24) So I’m reading Marathe as an avatar of Marat (who said, “Five or six hundred heads would have guaranteed your freedom and happiness but a false humanity has restrained your arms and stopped your blows. If you don’t strike now . . . your enemies will triumph and your blood will flood the streets . . . And their bloody hands will rip out your children’s entrails to erase your love of liberty forever.”) (Wikipedia) And Steeply as an avatar of de Sade, (Marat’s contemporary and eulogist), the “proponent of extreme freedom . . . unrestrained by morality, religion or law”? (Wikepedia again). How cool is it that Marathe/Steeply’s conversations echo Peter Weiss, Peter Brook, and Marat/Sade’s dialogues on the ideas and ideals of the French Revolution?