Infinite Summer

For me pages 128-135 were one of those leap of faith sections that you had to plow through as a reader. I have faith in DFW and that it'll pay off down the road but it probably ranks for me as the least enjoyable section of the book so far. I actually thought yrstruly was interesting and he reminded me a little of Bups from The Wire even still I found myself constantly checking how many pages I had left in that section. Anybody feel the same way or have I openned myself to an onslaught of yrstruly and poor tony fans?

This is a difficult portion of the novel, but what I think DFW is trying to accomplish here makes it an important piece. These people are obviously addicts that cannot remove themselves from the world they've fallen into. They have warped minds. Not in the horribly evil sociopath way that warped seems to always mean. More like the geometry of their brains has changed radically from what most people operate on. For the sake of an analogy we can all grab on to and either extend or refute (I do love opening opportunities for constructive disagreement), these people are non-Euclidian while the rest of us are hanging out in the big E's world (or vice versa). So of course we struggle to grasp their language and the events recounted in this passage. Part of the point is to tear us away from our comfortable perspectives and make us shove our feet into uncomfortable shoes (Poor Tony's heels), walk a few miles, and then think about what just happened. Yrstrly and Poor Tony come back (as does everything in this book). Be painfully aware of how much easier it becomes to be in their minds later on. Especially Tony.

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"It is easy to put on a show & be cocky. . . Or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself. . . now that, my friend, is very hard to do." --Bruce Lee

I feel like this section, considering the use of a heavily dialectal voice and made-up slang ("eating cheese," "crewing") to describe scenes of violence and theft, is definitely inspired by A Clockwork Orange. It's not surprising that DFW would take a cue from the book, either, considering its emphasis on language and IJ's own emphasis on language. And there have been some more direct references to A Clockwork Orange: if I recall correctly, I think I've seen both "horror-show" and "droogie" used previously.

With that said, this was pretty annoying to plow through. Still, there's something to be said for DFW's ability to create a voice and language here that he manages to keep completely consistent, so much so that any of the slang that I had trouble identifying the meaning of at the beginning eventually made sense to me by the end.

Has anybody read Chuck Pahlniuk's latest book "Pygmy"? Seems to me to be a total rip off of this technique of DFW's.

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Forget your troubles, c'mon, get happy...
-Leland Palmer

He captures the feeling of alternately seedy and festive Chinatown still humming on Christmas when every other section of Boston is closed down and totally emptied out. And the feeling of people who have no place to go and be in the warmth and glow of the holiday and what most people who are not addicts are experiencing. The addicts' isolation from all that, and -- having been to Boston's Chinatown on Christmas--that sort of it's-nothing-special feeling, grittily quotidian, that, when you've grown up to be conditioned that the day is supposed to be extraordinary somehow, feels very lonely. He nailed that.

And the atmospheric quality of his description of the addicts sitting on the grating with the hot air blowing up one way and the snow swirling around in the Dickensian scene of getting ready to shoot up really sticks with me.


"Maps" for mouths and "slopes" for Asians--I wonder if these terms originated with DFW or are real street talk.