Milestone Reached: Page 221 (22%)
Chapters Read:
Page 151: Drug tests at E.T.A; Mike Pemulis sells sterile urine.
Page 157 – WINTER B.S. 1960 — TUCSON AZ: Himself’s father (Hal’s grandfather) prepares to teach Himself how to play tennis, tells of the incident that ended his own tennis career, and drinks heavily.
Page 169 – 4 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: Michael Pemulis acquires some “incredibly potent” DMZ.
Page 172 – TENNIS AND THE FERAL PRODIGY, NARRATED BY HAL INCANDENZA (etc.): Hal narrates a film made by Mario. The narration consists of a series of how-to instructions “Here is how to do individual drills …”)
Page 176 – SELECTED TRANSCRIPTS … WEDNESDAY, 4 NOVEMBER — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: A series of statements made by recovering addicts at Ennet House.
Page 181 – LATE OCTOBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: Madame Psychosis begins her show at 109-WYYY FM; Hal and Mario listen at the Headmaster’s House.
Page 193: A description of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and the other six buildings on the Enfield Marine Public Heath Hospital complex (down the hill from ETA).
Page 198 – 6 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT: ETA weight room; introduction to Lyle, the sweat-licking guru.
Page 200: An overview of the residents of Ennet House, including a long discursion on Tiny Ewell and his fascination with tattoos.
Page 211: Michael Pemulis hypes up the DMZ to the other members of ETA.
New Characters: Really just one: Madam Psychosis, the host of “Sixty Minutes More or Less with…” on M.I.T.’s student-run radio station 109-WYYY FM, a program to which Mario listens religiously.
First! The Peemster is hilarity.
Here’s my post for week three, on the MIT language riots, thought, Godel, metacognition, addiction, DFW, and suicide. This one’s pretty relevant for today’s spoiler line (242) as well, which I mention in the post I just put up today on footnote 76, Wes Anderson, and being supposedly gifted as a child.
I’m starting regular posts on my progress, from a purely subjective, emotional-response point of view, on my blog, The Book Life. New one up this morning!
Totally jazzed about this section. Although if you’re playing along at home, I ended at like page 227 rather than 221…
Click here for week 3:
22%, alright!>
Sorry, my html was bad, just click the name, eh?
Yeah, I’m writing about IJ on my blog 😉
Isn’t all urine sterile? He’s selling the drug-free sort.
I read Infinite Jest a couple of months ago. I finshed it a few weeks before I read about this forum on Ezra Klein’s blog. This book really changed my perspective in a way almost no book has — at least since I reached my post-post adolescent years. I only regret that I never got around to reading it while Wallace was alive.
AAARRRgggg!
I just finished reading IJ for the first time and today I found you guys…..
Crap.
My German professor recommended I read the book before launching into the miasma that is my dissertation.
Read it.
Cats and dogs ahead. More Hal. And footnotes up the wahzoo.
I decided to kick a porn addiction this summer by cancelling my internet and picking up a huge book (IJ), not knowing it was about rehab. Amazing. DFW is keeping me alive right now. Funnily enough, my therapist has never heard of it.
Anyway, two more laugh out loud moments for me this week: Hal’s recollecting his hungry utterance upon entering the house to find Himself dead, and the little throwaway line about the Headmaster’s bets following the Port Washington meets. Seriously, out loud.
Dave, I’m on p. 227, and I don’t remember the bit about Hal finding Himself dead. Where was that?
I want to talk about the Madam Psychosis section (which has been alluded to as being significant but, for many readers, dull), specifically all the references to the human body in DFW’s description of the building from which Mdme. P. broadcasts her show. I’m not talking about all the bizarre maladies and deformities either. The whole buliding is described in very corporeal terms. Here’s a roundup: vascular path, axoustic meatus, sephenoid sinus, epiglottal, corpus callosum, laryngeally fissured, tracheal air-filters, parietal breadth, laryngeal studio, pink wrinkled [..] gynecological walls, coaxial medulla, interneural stairways, rostral lamina, artery-red fire door, cerebrally domed, brainframe, vitreally inflated balloon-eyes, optic chiasmae, sulcus-fissures, skull-colored [..] resin, inferior frontal sulcus, parietooccipital sulcus, off-white of living skull, corporeal bone, venous-blue emergency ladder, superior temporal gyrus, Pons and abducent, basilar-stem artery, oblongata, intra-parietal sulcus, vascularly hued, bloody halo, nubbin of spine…etc.
Did anyone else notice this? Did everyone notice this but not mention it? I’m just wondering if this is significant to the plot/Mdme. P. or if its just a novel way of describing a space. Anyone?
Samantha — it’s a brain! I’m sure it’s a riff on MIT students being ridiculously cerebral. Whether it has some other meaning … well, I haven’t read that far yet.
I didn’t learn about Infinite Summer until a couple of weeks ago, and I’m sprinting to catch up!
I just read the part about the Madame P. radio show and the brain-shaped Union. Seems like it was the “summum opus” of an architect — the endowed memorial to the Very High Seat of High Tech. (This was not the first bit that reminded me of Chuck Palahniuk.) I am loving this book!