Infinite Summer

pg. 192 for the sheer beauty of it -

talking about the moon - this passage knocked the wind out of me:

"That is just stays there, hidden and disclosed by our round shadow's rhythms, but never revolving. That it never turns it's face away."

Description of love.

p 213:

"...removing from the yachting cap's lining every piece of contraband he's got and spreading it out on the bed, sort of the way older people will array all their valuables in quiet moments."

Damn. I'm going to have to make a list.

The section in Ennet House where Geoffrey Day is telling Kate Gompert about the time he was playing violin as a young boy and accidentally triggered inside himself the horrible, soul-destroying black sheet of depression that follows him for years was almost unbearably moving for me. Especially since Geoffrey is such an unpleasant character for whom you expect to feel no sympathy. It's also one of the most beautifully written passages in Infinite Jest. It's just phenomenally dark and disturbing and the best description of depression I have ever read.

"'From that day, whether I could articulate it satisfactorily or not,' Day says, holding the knee of the leg just crossed, 'I understood on an intuitive level why people killed themselves. If I had to go for any length of time with that feeling I'd surely kill myself.'
'Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing too big to see, rising'"

I don't have the book on me, but several passages where Mario trying to work out in his head what's going on with Hal and break through to him are devastating

Because there are no spoiler restrictions, I'll list the following two things that make me cry. (I don't recall how to do the "spoiler" thing, so just skip the rest of this post if you've not gotten near the end.)

When Joelle is tending to the seriously-injured Gately, and he figures out that she's Madame Psychosis, and she says "And, lo," it never fails to make me cry. (It makes my throat get tight just thinking about it.)

And when Marathe is sitting in Pat M.'s office and observes that she is happy, it breaks my heart.

I re-read the Don Gately section (starting pg 446) in bed the other night--the part where he starts to Get In Touch with his feelings, and is bombarded by memories of his mother. I find the whole memory (of his mother's drinking, getting beat up by the MP, his finishing her vodka, etc.) so so deeply sad. I have no childhood memory even remotely this horrifying, but still it seems so deeply honest & true, as painful childhood memories go, that I can barely stand reading it.

The story of Gately's birthday cake kills me every time. Slightly moreso than the heart ripping story of the anhedonic couple.

it didn't literally make me cry, but the passages (around 313-14) describing Mario's physical handicaps, punctuated as they are with descriptions of how each featured in Orin's abuse of Mario, I found to be heartbreaking.

also, the Matty Pemulis section is harrowing and chilling, beautifully written and all the sadder for it.