Infinite Summer

Ok, I spent a lot of time on planes in the past month or so, so I have to admit that I've finished IJ again, for the second time. I also had very sporadic internet access during that time, so I couldn't really keep up with the infinitesummer project, and I'm pretty upset. But, that being said, I've been doing some retrospective thinking about most of what's going on (as a reader is wont to do after IJ, and I keep spiraling back to my main man, Mario Incandenza.

I can't decide if Mario is the brightest light of hope in the novel, if he is merely a plot device used for Hal and other characters to echo off of (not to mention a well of opportunity for DFW to show off his medical terminology), or if he is in fact an inherently depressing character, a deformed bastardization that shows how our perceptions force our eyes to slide past and fail to truly interface.

I really, truly, want to be inspired by Mario. The particular passages about his asking April about someone being sad, and his homodontically-grinning acceptance of the trainer's "Please, touch me" showed me a subtlety and joie de vivre, but Hal's tennis metaphor (all from Hal's perspective) about Mario being incapable of detecting lies makes him seem that much more inhuman. But my conflict is summed up perfectly in his interaction with Lamont Chu - his enthusiasm is infecting, but is it also depressing in that it evidences Mario's inability to feel true emotion? Do we ever see him sad?

Sorry for rambling. Also, I feel like Mario is superficially the hopeful, joyful character that I want him to be. I just want to know if that analysis carries deeper.

So I've been doing this strange compare&contrast b/w Infinite Jest and The Brothers Karamazov, and it's been working very well. I can give you an answer in terms of what I've found, if you'd like.

Mario's supposed to be the Alyosha Karamazov, the only brother of the three who the narrator of BK calls the 'hero' of the story. Over and over. It's clear that Alyosha, who's character is nearly identical to Mario, is the giant hope of the novel. He's the youngest brother, the most devout, and pretty much always knows what he's doing.

Mario's identical in the devout/knows what he's doing aspect. + he's about the only person who doesn't take the G-word for granted. Same thing happens in BK. But the big difference is that Mario is crippled. He's completely incapable of participating in normal life. If this were Camus' The Plague Mario would be someone outside of Oran looking in. He's an outsider, he's different. That's not to say he's exempt from the same suffering everybody else deals with, but Wallace makes it perfectly clear that his perspective is radically different.

Spoiler warning here.

That's the major point here. It depends on what you want. That's the point Wallace is driving towards throughout IJ. You will believe only if you want to believe.

If you want to know my personal opinion, Mario's not the hero here. He's too damned crippled. Now, why?

Why does Wallace make the one person who is completely naive (completely honest) a cripple? My way of looking at it is that you can't be a normal, functioning person and be completely honest, is what Wallace is saying. Things get in the way.

For examples of what gets in the way look at Jim, Jim Sr., Hal, Orin, Avril, JvD, etc, etc.

The hero of IJ, if not everyone (because in the end everybody starts to improve - the A.D.A, Hal, Mikey, Marathe, etc - well not everybody but there's a general trend of improvement (except for Orin, which is extremely sad, to me)), the hero of IJ is Hal. This is the intelligent, enlightened atheist, Ivan Karamazov.

Ivan/Hal is like a firestorm inside, especially near the end of both books. Both characters, at first sarcastic and with an answer for everything, by the end become creatures of pure doubt. They don't know which way is up.

Incidentally here, in Zen there is this thing called Satori - it's a moment of enlightenment, a moment of clarity which comes suddenly, when a person achieves this state of absolute doubt.

So apply the same thing here. Wallace has us leave Hal when he is in utter disharmony, and not the worst of it either - that comes around the time of the SATs, I'm guessing. But what he doesn't show us is the aftermath - Hal recovered, Hal enlightened. Or rather he does - the first chapter - but of course this is where a whole other thing called solipsism comes in.

Anyway, Wallace knows what Camus knows - that you cannot offer any kind of answer unless you have experienced, and learned from, suffering. Mario is incapable of learning what Hal might. It's up to Hal to overcome his personal doubt and become, well, something like Gately.

That's what I think. Sorry if this is inarticulate, I'm in a hurry and typing too fast to check. I might rewrite this, if you need me to. Anyway what makes IJ such a profoundly sad book is that even after all this inner turmoil stuff -might- be resolved, there is still that inability to communicate. We remain divided.

I don't believe there's a hero in IJ, per se, though the 2 main protagonists are Gately and Hal. I think it's pretty clear that DFW wanted, in this book, to not only outline the conditions of what makes our culture and society sick (so to speak), but also to offer up glimmers of hope and possible paths to finding a cure. In this particular mission, I think Mario is the most telling example (Gately being second) and a vastly important character. Mario rejects pessimism and irony, which are two hand in hand diseases that DFW seems to feel pervade the culture, and instead yearns to embrace true feeling, empathy, emotion. Refer to his thoughts on why he likes madame P's radio show so much, the part in the book where he recalls Pemulis' "Athiest Prayer hotline" joke, or the part where he's the only one who will shake the disguised athletic trainers' hand. It seems to me Mario's grave physical deformities serve 2 purposes: One is to mirror the sickened state of society, and two is to illustrate that people can overcome anything and learn to reach out, break through, feel, be more human/humane. It's quite an irony, because looking from the long lens, anyone would say of the 3 brothers, Orin and Hal (until his collapse) are the ones who are doing best by society's standards, but they are both generally either miserable or unfeeling, obsessed with pursuing things that take them further from being an in touch human. So what does that say about society? Mario is definitely a big, big key to the perscriptive aspect of IJ in my mind, and my favorite character.

Mario makes me think of this: for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

I don't think he's a hero, I think he's a helper. I don't know if hero works for anyone in the book, except maybe Don Gately. But Mario also only does his ignoring what you're saying thing when he doesn't have an answer for you.

I am almost finished and i am starting to feel Don Gately is the true hero of this book...

I don't think it's sad that Mario is physically demolished from birth, and thus cannot be a hero, I think it's sad that Mario is the bona fide hero of the book, its heart and soul, AND he has to fundamentally live a life so separated from nearly every form of human life (sex, walking, manual dexterity, etc). The Loach story, both times I've read the book, leaves me completely in tears. Not in a "Oh Poor Mario" kind of way, but just that such unfettered, pure humane decency even exists.

Such a staggeringly beautiful moment.