Comments on: Nick Maniatis: The Howling Fantods

By: Carolyn M

Carolyn M — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:51:25 +0000

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?

By: Matt Mc

Matt Mc — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:16:49 +0000

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.

By: Ally

Ally — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:39:34 +0000

“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.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:29:57 +0000

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…)

By: IJ Notes | Geoffrey Werner Challen

IJ Notes | Geoffrey Werner Challen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:10:25 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Leanna Gingras

Leanna Gingras — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:55:21 +0000

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.

By: Marie

Marie — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:10:45 +0000

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.

By: Meghan R.

Meghan R. — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:50:47 +0000

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

By: stephanie

stephanie — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:25:31 +0000

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.

By: Ben B

Ben B — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:12:59 +0000

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!