Infinite Summer

Author: matthewbaldwin

  • Roundup

    Infinite Summer was mentioned in Newsweek, both the online and print edition. Related: hello one zillion new visitors. More info about the event can be found here, and the forums are over yonder. And in case you are wondering: a dedicated reader could pick up Infinite Jest today and still finish by September 21st if they chose to do so, no sweat. (Well, maybe a little sweat. But Lyle can take care of that for you.)

    Infinite Summer also graced the pages of The New York Times Book Blog, Phawker, and The EphBlog.

    Gayla of Beautiful Screaming Lady views the many exhortations on this site to “trust the author” with skepticism:

    I have to admit–and this makes me feel like Ebenezer Scrooge on a deadline at a Christmas parade–I don’t find … these arguments particularly compelling. I agree that the first ten pages are great. There is a lot of great writing in this book. The problem is that there’s also a lot of–not bad writing, but problematic writing, and there are a lot of paragraphs where I feel that Wallace’s point is not so much to communicate with me as to show me what a virtuoso he is…

    And that’s why I don’t trust David Foster Wallace. I’m not going to stop reading the book, because its truly fabulous moments are worth slogging through Wardine and yrstruly. But I don’t believe he was in control of his talent.

    In an interview with The Aspen Times, the Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller says he’s about to jump in the fray. At this point we’re only a drummer shy of a house band.

    William.K.H and Jeffrey Paris argue that Infinite Jest is not “science-fiction”. Jim Brown and Robert Sharp wonder if the novel qualifies as a “new media object”

    On Infinite Detox, a blogger struggles to overcome a dependency on tramadol while reading Infinite Jest. He writes: “Six or so months ago I found the book’s treatment of addiction and recovery compelling enough to inspire me to quit cold turkey for several weeks over the Christmas holidays … With Wallace’s book, again, acting as something of a guide and mentor, I hope also to give my drug habit the boot.”

    Here are some other people who were talking about Infinite Summer this week:

    If you have recently written about Infinite Jest, please let us know in the comments or the forums.

  • Infinite Summery – Week 3

    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.

  • Letters of Acceptance

    Fifteen years ago I told an acquaintance of my aspiration to become a Peace Corps volunteer.

    “Good luck,” was her reply. “Did you know that only one out of every nine people who apply gets in?”

    As this was five years before the Internet-As-We-Know-It, and even more before the debut of Snopes, there was no obvious way to confirm or falsify such a claim.18 And so, as someone who has never been a “Top 11 Percentile” kind of guy, I marched through the application process with a grim sense of defeatism.

    And then, of course, when I was accepted, my ego ballooned like a nervous Tetraodontidae, as my status as one of the elite few who could weather the merciless vetting process was officially recognized.

    Sadly for my overinflated self-regard, I mentioned the “one of nine that apply get in” figure to a member of the Peace Corps staff while serving. “Oh yeah, I’ve heard that too,” he said. “Except, I wouldn’t state it like that. It’s more like: for every nine people that apply for the Peace Corps, only one winds up in-country.”

    “What’s the difference,” I asked.

    “The difference is that of those nine people, five or six voluntarily withdraw after sending in their ap, because they got a job or a house or girlfriend or whatever. And a couple more drop out after the interviews or in the middle of training, for one reason or another. You guys are what’s left.”

    Infinite Jest also has a “one in nine” reputation about it, a book that thwarts most attempts to conquer. But as we stand on the summit of page 168 and look back on the pages before, we see now that process by which the potential readership is whittled down is one of self-selection. It’s eminently readable, if you’re resolved to read it.

    Indeed, the first 150 pages are something an application process: will you apply yourself to this Brobdingnagian novel, or will you drop out for reason or another? If you’ve made it this far: congratulations. You’re what’s left.

    And at this point in the novel, Wallace rewards us for our perseverance. It’s as if he’d been holding a somewhat awkward get-together until the party-hoppers people left, then cranked the stereo and rolled out the keg. Here’s what we’ve been treated to since page 144:

    • The hilarious “Why Video-Phones Failed” essay, tangential to the plot but perfect encapsulating many of the themes. As with “Erdedy waits for Pot”, I would have been perfectly happy reading this as a self-contained short story.

    • The “sterile urine” section which, in addition to being funny and interesting in its own right, also provides us with some background information on Mario, the Incandenzas, and ETA in a remarkably straightforward manner, unencrypted by acronyms or allusions or endnotes.

    • A whole chapter set in the familiar B.S. era. This may not be one of the promised Hamlet parallels, but this is surely one of the most amazing monologues in literature.19 If I ever audition for a local production of Our Town, pages 157-169 are totally going to be my reading.

    It’s the literary equivalent of hearty pat on the back and “welcome to the club”. For good or ill, you’re in it for the long-haul now.

    Misc:

    Controversy: Over on infsum Twitter channel, the debate continues to rage: is a “trial-size Dove bar” ice cream or soap?

    Vexation: Despite seeing the word “map” used at least a score of times, and in a variety of different contexts, I still cannot figure out exactly what Wallace means by it. Head, face, brain, personality?

    Paradox: I love that Wallace–a man who wrote the initial, 1,700 page draft of Infinite Jest by hand–cannot be bothered to spell out words “with”, “without”, or “with respect to”.

  • Roundup

    Jacket Copy, the LA Times literary organ, interviewed Matthew Baldwin. The Story Behind Infinite Summer. The Valve, meanwhile, finds the project “a little morbid“.

    Unbeknownst to us, Infinite Summer was mentioned on television at some point.

    Mark Flannigan, the Contemporary Literature Guide of About.com, is on-board.

    Says Whitney of Feet on Polished Floor: “Reading David Foster Wallace is like punching yourself repeatedly in the face. But in a good way.”

    Danielle started late but is determined to finish by August 12th. Cynthia of Catching Days was also tardy, but has already caught up.

    Gerry Canavan, on the narrative shift that begins on page 140

    The multiple perspectives characteristic of Infinite Jest have now, suddenly, infected the text itself; the chapter headings that had previously presented themselves as objective and reliable third-person-omniscient narration are now uncovered as subjective and perspectival, opinionated, excitable, and frankly a little confused.

    Michael posted an “Infinite Summer playlist” at Trials & Tribulations. He also pointed out another playlist made by Señor Cisco.

    Many bloggers are providing regular updates of their reading. Among them:

    If you have recently written about Infinite Jest, please let us know in the comments or the forums.

  • Infinite Summery – Week 2

    Milestone Reached: Page 147 (14%)

    Chapters Read:

    Chapter Beginning Page Synopsis
    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 85 Tiny Ewell travels to the Enfield Marine VA Hospital Complex via cab.

    A list of people gathered in the living room of the medical attaché house watching the Entertainment.
    30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 87 Remy Marathe of the Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (wheelchair assassins) and M. Hugh Steeply of the Office of Unspecified Services (OUS) converse on a bluff outside Tucson, AZ.

    A herd of feral hamsters rampages in the Great Concavity (which used to be Vermont, and is now owned by Canada)
    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 95 Banter and exhaustion in the ETA lockeroom. Present: Hal Incandenza, John (N.R.) Wayne, Jim Troelsch, Michael Pemulis, Ted Schacht, Ortho Stice, Jim Struck, Keith Freer.

    Marathe and Steeply continue their conversation through sunset.
    3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U 109 Big Buddy meetings: first Hal (with Kent Blott, Idris Arslanian, Evan Ingersol), then Wayne, Troelsch, Struck, and Stice.
    MARIO INCANDENZA’S FIRST AND ONLY EVEN REMOTELY ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE, THUS FAR 121 Mario is seduced by USS Millicent Kent.
    30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 126 Marathe and Steeply discuss the Entertainment, and possibility of an antidote (the anti-Entertainment).
    30 April — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 127 “Lyle”, the sweat-licking guru who lives in the ETA weight room.

    yrstruly, Poor Tony, and C go on a crime spree, acquire heroin from Dr. Wo. The heroin is laced with Drano and C dies after shooting up.
    3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. 135 Orin speaks to Hal by phone.

    Background of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.

    Bricklayer story.

    Hal’s paper on active and passive heroes.

    Steeply’s article about the woman who had an artificial heart in her purse when it was snatched.

    List of Anti-O.N.A.N. groups.

    Why videography never took off.

    Characters:

    Characters in bold appear to be major.

    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 85)

    • Tiny Ewell: Diminutive recovering alcoholic, being driven to the Enfield Marine VA Hospital Complex.

    30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 87)

    • Remy Marathe: Member of the Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (AFR); is working as a quadruple agent–that is, his superior, M. Fortier, thinks that Marthe is working as a triple agent (pretending to work with the Office of Unspecified Services, while in reality reporting back to AFR), but Marthe is actually collaborating with OUS to secure medical services for his wife.
    • M. Hugh Steeply: Agent the Office of Unspecified Services. Current operating in disguise as a large woman; Marathe’s contact.

    • MARIO INCANDENZA’S FIRST AND ONLY EVEN REMOTELY ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE, THUS FAR (page 121)

    • U.S.S. Millicent Kent: Girls 16’s Singles player who attempts to seduce Mario Incandenza.

    3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U

    • “Lyle”: Guru who lives in ETA weight room and apparently subsists off other people’s sweat.
    • yrstruly: Narrator of the “dopesick” chapter. Addict, criminal.
    • C: yrstruly’s companion who dies after shooting up with heroin laced with Drano.
    • Dr. Wo: Provide Poor Tony with the the heroin, laced with Drano to punish him (Tony) for past grievance.
    • Poor Tony: yrstruly’s companion, possibly suspected that heroin was laced but said nothing as C. shot up.

    3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U. (page 135)

    Guy Who Didn’t Even Use His First Name: So into the “anonymous” scene that he remained completely so. Founded the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.

Sources consulted during the compilation of this summation: the Infinite Jest Character Profiles (author unknown), JS’s Infinite Jest synopses, Dr. Keith O’Neil’s Infinite Jest Reader’s Guide, and Steve Russillo’s Chapter Thumbnails.

  • Michael Pietsch: Editing Infinite Jest

    Michael Pietsch is Executive Vice President and Publisher of Little, Brown and Company, and was David Foster Wallace’s editor. He adapted the following from “Editing Wallace,” a Q&A with Rick Moody, published in Sonora Review 55, May 2009.

    In April 1992 I received on submission from David Wallace’s agent, Bonnie Nadell, around 150 pages of Infinite Jest, the opening section. They were wild, smart, funny, sad, and unlike any pages of manuscript I'd ever held in my hands. The range of voices and settings sent me reeling. The transvestite breakdown on the subway, the kid in the doctor's office. The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. The Lung. Young Hal with his little brass one-hitter. Gately, Troelsch, Schacht. The names! Erdedy, Wardine, Madame Psychosis. I’d read chapters from it published as short stories in magazines and here at last was the gigantic construct that linked those wildly disparate pieces. What I remember is that David knew his book was going to be very, very long, and he was looking for someone whose editorial suggestions he thought he might listen to. I was lucky enough to be working at Little, Brown, a company that was willing to support this kind of endeavor. We signed a contract and waited.

    When he was around two-thirds through the novel David sent me a giant stack of pages and asked for my thoughts. I protested that without the whole story it would be impossible to know what ultimately mattered. But I tried to give him an accounting of when I found it intolerably confusing or slow or just too hard to make sense of. I banged my head hardest against the Marathe/Steeply political colloquies and the Orin Incandenza football stories and David revised those strands considerably.

    We’d agreed early on that my role was to subject every section of the book to the brutal question: Can the book possibly live without this? Knowing how much time Infinite Jest would demand of readers, and how easy it would be to put it down or never pick it up simply because of its size, David agreed that many passages could come out, no matter how beautiful, funny, brilliant or fascinating they were of themselves, simply because the novel did not absolutely require them.

    Every decision was David's. I made suggestions and recommendations and tried to make the reasons for them as clear as possible. But every change was his. It is a common misconception that the writer turns the manuscript over to the editor, who then revises, shapes, and cuts at will. In fact the editor’s job is to earn the writer’s agreement that changes he or she suggests are worth making. David accepted many cuts—around 250 manuscript pages is what I recall. But he resisted others, for reasons that he usually explained.

    Here are a few of those responses and explanations. They give a sense of how engaged David was in this process and of how much fun it was to work with him.

    p. 52—This is one of my personal favorite Swiftian lines in the whole manuscript, which I will cut, you rotter.

    p. 82—I cut this and have now come back an hour later and put it back.

    p. 133—Poor old FN 33 about the grammar exam is cut. I’ll also erase it from the back-up disc so I can’t come back in an hour and put it back in (an enduring hazard, I’m finding.)

    pp. 327-330. Michael, have mercy. Pending an almost Horacianly persuasive rationale on your part, my canines are bared on this one.

    Ppp. 739-748. I’ve rewritten it—for about the 11th time—for clarity, but I bare teeth all the way back to the 2nd molar on cutting it.

    P. 785ff—I can give you 5000 words of theoretico-structural arguments for this, but let’s spare one another, shall we?

    I keep trying to imagine encountering David’s books separate from the tall, athletic, casual, brilliant, concerned, funny man I knew—the way we encounter most writing, bodies of work whose creators we never meet, complete years before we encounter them. It is one of the great miracles of life, our ability to apprehend a human spirit through the sequences of words they leave behind. And I have to say that the David we encounter through Infinite Jest is pretty amazingly like the David I knew. When for a moment I manage to imagine myself as a reader opening up a copy of Infinite Jest for the first time, the way I opened V or Soldier’s Pay or Suttree or A Handful of Dust or The Canterbury Tales, I think Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

  • Dead Sea Diving

    Fun fact I learned from the last book I read: the Dead Sea, with a salt concentration of 32%, is so saline that it practically precludes swimming. You can dive in (though heaven forbid you do so without hermetically-sealed goggles), but the density of the water will pop you back to the surface like a cork. Remaining underwater for any period of time requires a Herculean effort.

    That’s an apt analogy for the first 100 pages of Infinite Jest.14 I’ve found it easy, in the pre-coffee morning or the laying-in-bed night, to simply float upon the surface of the narrative, consuming paragraphs without much regard as to whether or where or when we’ve seen a character before, or what major and minor motifs are currently being explored, or how this eight page filmography fits into the whole.15

    At other times, when I am fully lucid and engaged (i.e., between the hours of Last Latte of the Day and First Beer of the Evening), I try to submerge myself in the text. But it is not without exertion, and I have to come up for air every 20-30 minutes. Indeed, it feels like exercise. Not “work” mind you, but an endorphin-producing, man-I-feel-better-about-myself-for-having-done-that workout.

    Each dip into the novel also feels like a completely separate excursion. When I take a break from a conventional novel it’s like pressing pause on a video, with the narrative flow frozen on the screen, awaiting my return. But in reading Infinite Jest I have tended to stop at the chapter divisions, and nearly every chapter of the first 100 pages starts in a new place, with new characters, and often in a new time. It’s akin to reading a collection of short stories, set in a shared universe but with little else in common. I can see why many people–including myself a decade ago–put this novel down and never pick it up again. There is so little connective tissue thus far that the end of each chapter feels like a natural place to stop reading, forever.

    And yet, 100 pages in, I sense engrossment on the horizon. With each additional chapter I find myself sinking into the salty tide. It’s probably only a matter of time before I disappear below the waves for good.

    Some other observations:

    Complaint: It totally sucks that pages 17-27 of Infinite Jest (Erdedy waits for pot) are 100 times better than any short story I will ever write, and yet are only 1/100th of the whole.

    Confession: Endnote 40 marks my first genuine irritation at Wallace’s “pretentiousness” (real or perceived). It (the endnote) begins with “In other words”, implying that it is going to help the reader understand Marathe’s true allegiance, and then provides an explanation even more opaque than that found in the body of the novel. Maybe it just caught me in a bad mood, but I was confused, I wanted clarity, and phrases such as “the even-numbered total of his final loyalties” failed to provide.

    Question: Has anyone yet deduced the meaning of the glyphs that sometimes precede chapter headings?

    I have a sneaking suspicion that these are the true chapter delimiters, and that the year headings are but chyrons.

  • Roundup

    The National Post’s Afterword interviewed Matthew Baldwin about the genesis of Infinite Summer.

    At A Supposedly Fun Blog, several writers (including Erza Klein of the Washington Post) have assembled to blog their reading of Infinite Jest. They join Infinite Zombies, which has been doing so for the last two weeks.

    Sonja describes her reading methodology. William boasts that his weblog Human Complex is “Now Infinitely Summerier”. Christine has been posting an “IJ Quote of the Day” on Naptime Writing. Ray says he’ll be writing about Infinite Jest every Wednesday at Love, Your Copyeditor.

    Political blogger Atrios reveals that the title of his blog is taken from the novel.

    And speaking of political bloggers, Matthew Yglesias is reading Infinite Jest on the Kindle:

    I think I stumbled upon an inadvertent flaw in the Kindle. Namely, that when you read really long books—particularly as part of a quasi-group enterprise—you want to either brag about how many pages you’ve read or else whine about how many pages you’ve fallen behind. But the Kindle doesn’t have pages! Just, um, locations.

    So I read 1,100 locations worth of the book. But nobody knows what that means. Normal people won’t even know if that’s a lot or a little.

    In general, the Kindle strikes me as somewhat hobbled by an overly generous view of why people buy books. Not only is there this problematic lack of bragging, but with the kindle edition of the book I can’t have a handsome volume laying around the house as if to say to visitors, “why, yes, I may be a professional political pundit but I’m also a man of culture.” And I’ll have nothing on my shelf. Amazon should at least send you a sticker when you buy a book on Kindle so you can maintain some kind of display wall of all the impressive books you’ve read.

    According to this page, Skylight Books in LA will give you a 15% book club discount if you mention “Infinite Summer” when buying IJ. They also say their facilities are available for meet-ups.

    Here are some other people who were talking about Infinite Summer this week:

    If you have recently written about Infinite Jest, please let us know in the comments or the forums.

  • Infinite Summery – Week 1

    Milestone Reached: Page 73 (7%)

    Chapters Read:

    Chapter Beginning Page Synopsis
    YEAR OF GLAD 3 Hal interviews at the University of Arizona; in a flashback, Hal eats mold as a child.
    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 17 Erdedy awaits a delivery of pot.
    1 APRIL — YEAR OF THE TUCKS MEDICATED PAD 27 Hal speaks with a “professional conversationalist”.
    9 MAY — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 32 Hal, sharing a room with his older brother Mario, receives a call from the eldest brother Orin
    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 33 A medical attaché discovers that his wife is out, and so selects an unmarked entertainment cartridge to watch.
    YEAR OF THE TRIAL-SIZE DOVE BAR 37 Clenette describes Wardine, Wardine’s mother, and Roy Tony; Bruce Green falls in love with and eventually woos Mildred Bonk.
    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 39 Hal and Mario reminisce about their father (Himself) and his death; medical attaché continues to watch cartridge.
    OCTOBER — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 42 Orin kills roaches and wishes he could get rid of last night’s “Subject”.
    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 49 Hal smokes pot in the Pump Room.
    AUTUMN — YEAR OF DAIRY PRODUCTS FROM THE AMERICAN HEARTLAND 55 Don Gatley accidentally kills a man while robbing his home.
    3 NOVEMBER — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 60 Jim Troelsch–a student at the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA)–is sick; someone has a nightmare about a face in the floor (told in first-person).
    AS OF YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 63 The history of ETA and its founder James Orin Incandenza (father to Hal, Orin, and Mario).
    DENVER CO, 1 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 65 Orin glides into Mile High Stadium in a Cardinals costume; Michael Pemulis talks to his “Little Buddies” at ETA about drugs; Hal relates a dream that he used to have nightly.
    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 68 (continues to page 85) Kate Gompert is in the hospital, speaks about the depression her addition to pot engenders.

    New Characters:

    Characters in bold appear to be major.

    YEAR OF GLAD (page 3)

    • Harold (Hal) James Incandenza: Protagonist. Student at the Enfield Tennis Academy; son of James Orin Incandenza and Avril Incandenza; younger brother to Orin Incandenza and Mario Incandenza.
    • Dr. Charles Tavis: Hal’s mother’s “adoptive brother”; accompanies Hal to University of Arizona interview.
    • Avril Mondragon Tavis Incandenza (“The Moms”): Wife to James Orin Incandenza, Mother to Orin, Mario, and Hal. Dean of Academic Affairs at ETA; grammarian supreme.
    • Aubrey F. deLint: ETA prorector.
    • Kirk White: University of Arizona Varsity Coach.
    • Mr. Sawyer: University of Arizona Dean of Academics.
    • Bill: University of Arizona Dean of Athletics.
    • Unnamed: Dean of Admissions, Dean of Composition.

    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 17)

    • Erdedy – Pot addict, who swears that each pot binge will be his last.
    • Unnamed: Female who promised to deliver pot to Eldedy.

    1 APRIL — YEAR OF THE TUCKS MEDICATED PAD (page 27)

    • “Conversational Professional”: Possibly Himself in disguise.

    9 MAY — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 32)

    • Mario Incandenza: Older brother to Hal; has some sort of deformity.

    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 33)

    • Unnamed: Medical attaché (first to watch the mysterious, unnamed cartridge), Medical attaché’s wife.

    YEAR OF THE TRIAL-SIZE DOVE BAR (page 37)

    • Clenette Henderson: Relates the story of Wardine.
    • Wardine: Clenette’s half-sister and friend who is beaten by Roy Tony.
    • Reginald: Wardine’s boyfriend.
    • Roy Tony: Dealer; Wardine’s mother’s “man”.
    • Delores Epps – Clenette’s friend.
    • Columbus Epps – Delores’ brother, killed by Roy Tony four years ago (over Clenette’s mother).
    • Unnamed: Wardine’s mother.
    • Bruce Green: Husband to Mildred L. Bonk; father to Harriet Bonk-Green.
    • Mildred L. Bonk: Wife to Bruce Green; mother to Harriet Bonk-Green.
    • Tommy Doocey: Harelipped pot-dealer (possibly the source of Erdedy’s pot).
    • Harriet Bonk-Green: Mildred and Bruce’s daughter

    OCTOBER — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 42)

    • Orin Incandenza: Eldest Incandenza brother. Plays football, sleeps with “subjects”, hates roaches.

    AUTUMN — YEAR OF DAIRY PRODUCTS FROM THE AMERICAN HEARTLAND (page 55)

    • Donald “Don” W. Gately: Enormous guy (over 6 ft., close to 300 lbs), thief, murderer (albeit by accident), and “active drug addict”.
    • Guillaume DuPlessis: Homeowner killed by Gately.
    • Trent ‘Quo Vadis’ Kite: Gately’s “associate”.

    3 NOVEMBER — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 60)

    • Jim Troelsch: Ill member of the 18s B squad at ETA.

    AS OF YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 63)

    • Dr. James Orin Incandenza (“Himself”): Husband of Avril, father to Orin, Mario, and Hal. Founder of ETA, filmmaker, inventor. Died in The Year of the Trial-Sized Dove Bar.

    DENVER CO, 1 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 65)

    • Michael Pemulis: Member of the 18s B squad at ETA; friend to Hal and Mario.

    YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (page 68)

    • Kathrine “Kate” Ann Gompert: Pot addict, depressive. First seen in hospital.
    • Unnamed: Kate’s doctor.
    • Gerhardt Schtitt: Head Coach and Athletic Director at E.T.A. Old; borderline fascist; friends with Mario.

    Vocabulary: We we originally planning to have a weekly “vocab dump” as part of the summaries, but that now strikes us as unnecessary. For one thing, most readers appear to have have taken to heart the suggestion that IJ be read with the OED at hand. For another, the Infinite Jest Wiki lists most 37¢-words and definitions by page number, and the Infinite Jest Vocabulary Glossary is also available for perusal.

    Sources consulted during the compilation of this summation: the Infinite Jest Character Profiles (author unknown), Ben’s Infinite Spreadsheet, Dr. Keith O’Neil’s Infinite Jest Reader’s Guide, and Steve Russillo’s Chapter Thumbnails.

  • Marcus Sakey: Decoding Infinite Jest; or, Don’t

    Marcus Sakey is the award-winning author of Good People, The Blade Itself: A Novel, and At the City’s Edge, all of which are in development as feature films. His new novel, The Amateurs, comes out August 6th. His website features excerpts, contests, and tips for writers.

    I picked up IJ the same way I imagine a lot of you did—while browsing, I was caught by the cover, the hyperbolic quote, and the heft of the thing. This was 1997, an era when I was more likely to be willing to invest in a doorstop novel. But even then, 1079 pages was going to take some persuading, so I opened to the reviews: “Uproarious,” “Exhilarating,” “Truly remarkable,” “Spectacularly good.”

    Okay. You win.

    My first read of the novel was by and large a pleasure. I’ll admit that there were moments when I wondered if I could trust Wallace to deliver the goods. And at that time, I thought that the book could have benefited from a sterner editor (although the submitted manuscript was apparently significantly longer.)

    Still, I labored through the rough spots, and found more than enough to tickle me and keep me going. But while I don’t want to reveal too much, I will say that when I got to the end, my initial reaction was, “Huh.”

    Not in a bad way. There had been moments of such startling brilliance along the way, episodes so hilariously sad and tragically funny, that I knew even at the time that it was something special. But still, at the very end, there was a “Huh” factor.

    Fast-forward two months and ten books, and here’s the thing—I was still thinking about Infinite Jest. In fact, I found myself seeing it more clearly, getting more seduced by it, than when I was actually reading the thing.

    With distance what at first seemed sprawling begins to come into a more cohesive, if still massive, picture. Wallace is a writer who does not spare you the full force of his brain; in fact, he demands your effort like a brilliant professor who expects that you show up every week, well-rested, on time, and with the reading done.

    However, novels aren’t read that way. They’re read in sips and gulps, sometimes a sleepy page before bed, sometimes a hundred with a pot of coffee. Not only that, but because Wallace believes in complexity, he doesn’t always reveal the structure of things all at once; doesn’t make obvious the nature of the world he’s building.

    But finish the book, let it stew, and it will all come together, I promise. And it’s more than worth the effort. So much so in fact, that about a year later I decided to read it again.

    And brothers and sisters, I’m here to tell you, on a second read, there wasn’t a word I would cut. Once you’ve got a sense of the greater whole, and once you trust Wallace, the thing is fucking genius. I write a very different style of book, but even so, it makes me want to pack it in and go home. He’s that good.

    But I made a mistake the second time. I thought that because I had puzzled out certain aspects, the rest of the book was a riddle, a code I needed to crack. So I went at it that way. I took notes on characters and relationships. I annotated. I formulated guesses about what “The Entertainment” was, and where it showed up, and how what happened at the end played into what happened at the beginning. I visited message boards and forums and the Wallace discussion list. I spent as much time taking notes on the novel as I did reading the damn thing.

    And here’s what I learned: There is no secret.

    Fundamentally, IJ is a novel about two things: the pursuit of happiness, and the impossibilities of communication. Wallace explores those themes and their intersections in a hundred different ways. And because he was a genius who didn’t believe there were answers to these questions, he also contradicts himself over and over and over. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that there are no assertions of importance in the text that aren’t contradicted somewhere else.

    I realize that sounds annoying. But that’s why I’m writing this piece. It’s only annoying if you look at the novel as a code to crack, if you see everything as a clue.

    After a second read, there were many things I understood more clearly. And damn, how I loved it. But could I tell you, unequivocally, “what happened”?

    Nope.

    It’s not about that. There aren’t easy answers in life, and so Wallace didn’t want them in his work. There aren’t single perspectives in life, and so Wallace didn’t want them in his work. The world can’t be summed up in a sentence, and so Wallace not only didn’t try—he demonstrated some of the reasons why the world is the way it is.

    Last year, David Foster Wallace hung himself. I’d never met the man, but it threw me into a funk. After a week of moping about, I picked up Infinite Jest again as a sort of personal tribute, and read it for the third time. Read it trusting him, read it feeling the sorrow and the joy and the sheer intellectual pleasure.

    And finally, I read it right.