Comments on: infinitedetox: Waving the White Flag: Reading as Rehabilitation

By: Progress(not)Perfection

Progress(not)Perfection — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:13:40 +0000

I am in recovery and I stumbled upon this book after reading the Rolling Stone article on Wallace and then reading his Harpers-Cruise-Ship thing which I thought was hilarious. My mom sent it for my birthday and I never started reading it until a month ago. Its totally cool I just found this site although I am about 200 pages behind I am going to Jack it up and get to the middle of the pack.

Wallace nails AA perfectly, as he also does the descriptions of getting high. It makes me glad I am where I am now (6 months clean tomorrow – halfway to the cake) and it only strengthens my resolve.

Dave, you will be missed, but damn you outdid yourself with this book. Awesome.

Look for more posts, and if you think you have a problem, get to a meeting. I wish I did about 20 years ago before the disease almost removed my map.

By: That Was the Week That Formerly Was : Journeyman

That Was the Week That Formerly Was : Journeyman — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:21:39 +0000

[...] came infinitedetox’s courageous post, which is one of the most powerful blog posts I’ve ever read. Just as a lurker at Infinite [...]

By: lmc

lmc — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:52:20 +0000

thank you for this. very thoughtful – i wish you well.

By: Repat

Repat — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:36:53 +0000

“…beyond all the linguistic games, postmodern razzle dazzle, dark humor, big words, poetry, Big Ideas, and footnotes, is this half-buried idea that DFW wrote this book with the idea that maybe it would help others who suffer from addiction and/or mental illness.”

I’ve been thinking about this, too, and a lot since re-reading the passages/description of THE JOKE, the film by Himself that was essentially a camera turned back on the audience. And how the film critics kept scribbling away, trying to deconstruct the film/to find the deeper meaning.

Well, it seems to me that the thrust of IJ is the way the camera is turned back on the reader, nearly all the time. So you may find yourself gaging how possibly addicted you are, how mentally ill you are, how much a passive consumer of American culture you allow yourself to be (and what choices you actually make)–are you bottomless or are you Don Gately? Are you Orin (unexamined) or Hal?

It’s pretty amazing. This (infinite) Joke.

By: Hunter Felt

Hunter Felt — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:54:58 +0000

I’ve been on the wallace-l list for years and years, me and my friends absorbed IJ and loved it and used it as part of our common language, and I’ve sought out as much commentary on this book as I could find, but this is probably the first time that I’ve read an essay that exactly reflects my feelings toward this book: beyond all the linguistic games, postmodern razzle dazzle, dark humor, big words, poetry, Big Ideas, and footnotes, is this half-buried idea that DFW wrote this book with the idea that maybe it would help others who suffer from addiction and/or mental illness. I think its helped me and it sounds like it helped you. Good luck. As IJ makes it very clear, it doesn’t get easier from here, but maybe it will be a little less lonesome…

By: Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » P.S Allston Rules

Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » P.S Allston Rules — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:36:45 +0000

[...] was really affected by infinitedetox’s post about his own dependencies and how he was viewing his recovery through the lens of IJ. The section [...]

By: Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » The Bully Pulpit

Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » The Bully Pulpit — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:22:30 +0000

[...] of two lifelong interests: Cold War politics47 and games48. As the addiction material did for infinitedetox, and the tennis did for Andrew, and the radio show did for Michael, this was a portion of the novel [...]

By: ariel

ariel — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:23:56 +0000

truly great to hear you.

By: OneBigParty

OneBigParty — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:08:27 +0000

Thank you infinitedetox for your courageous post. Your recently-initiated blog is brilliant. What a great way to be taking care of yourself. And what a mind–good to see you are not taking it for granted. I especially needed your Eschaton bullet points and related commentary.

I’m personally a bit disappointed that DFW has no female Crocodiles. Hope there are in real life.

Glad your restful true sleep is coming back. That’s a big dent in things. Best of luck to you.

By: Prolixian

Prolixian — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:37:47 +0000

First, thanks to the infinitedetox for sharing this story, and congratulations to you for taking the steps. Continued good wishes.

Second, I freely confess that I usually don’t like to read stories dealing with addiction, relapse, destructive behavior, and the like, because I find someone else’s downward spiral to be an incredibly frustrating thing to observe, and that frustration is not the kind of book (or film) “pleasure” I really want to spend my time on.

This book has been an exception to that. I approached the AA discussions with trepidation, for the reasons outlined above, but the frustration didn’t come. Perhaps it’s because the the AA passages are in the redemptive phase? I don’t know. What I DO know is that the themes regarding free will and personal choices in the AA sections of the book are one more aspect, one more facet reflecting the Choosing theme that seems to underly just about everything is this book (and that is the focal point of DFW’s Kenyon College address). I’m finding these sections to be a quite moving and powerful presentation of the idea that it is an individual human responsibility to choose how we react to and act in the world around us.

I am inspired by the AA passages and by the book as a whole (so far) in a way that I have never been by traditional presentation of religious ideas. This has taken me quite by surprise.