Infinite Summer

Fascinating stuff here. I wonder if the same concept might apply to the objects that start moving around at ETA - i.e., the theory that all matter is constantly vibrating, but inanimate objects are vibrating at a much slower rate. Could someone/something be making those objects vibrate more rapidly?

Ok, ok, I know a lot of people have jumped off the DMZ bandwagon as a possible cause of whatever happened to Hal, but these last few posts brought me back to p. 170 and the description of DMZ's effects, as researched by the Peemster:

"...DMZ resembling chemically some miscegenation of a lysergic with a muscimoloid, but significantly different from LSD-25 in that its effects are less visual and spatially-cerebral and more like temporally-cerebral and almost ontological, with some sort of manipulated-phenylkylamine-like speediness whereby the ingester perceives his relation to the ordinary flow of time as radically (and euphorically, is where the muscimole-affective resemblance shows its head) altered."

Ontological = having to do with being or existence, as in "I am in here"?

And now from p. 996, endnote 57:

"...quote from an Italian lithographer who'd ingested DMZ once and made a lithograph comparing himself on DMZ to a piece of like Futurist sculpture, plowing at high knottage through time itself, kinetic even in stasis, plowing temporally ahead, with time coming off him like water in sprays and wakes."

Could all be a red herring, but considering what we've been discussing, I thought I'd bring it up.

_________________
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." DFW

I just finished today and after skimming this thread, then going back and skimming the Year of Glad at the beginning, my thoughts are:

-I like the DMZ angle on Hal, that it started with the fungus eating at the old house, and maybe didn't kick in until after he gave up Bob -- the Bob and internal-DMZ combo gave him a perfectly balanced chemical makeup. But once he quit the Bob, the DMZ took over, and his mind just moves too fast for everyone else.

-I think there is some sort of conflict happening between Canada (or maybe just Quebec), see page 16 near the top "ultra-mach fighter...slices the sky from south to north". I do not recall any other reference to military equipment or activity, so this stood out. This conflict may have something to do with Tine's affair with Luria, AFR and the Entertainment, the end of subsidized time, and Wayne not being in the Whataburger.

-I think Gately, Wayne, and Hal were digging up Himself's grave up in Quebec (where Avril's family was buried, right?) more likely to get the antidote to the samizdat. But for no good reason, I don't think the entertainment was ever fully unleashed on the American/ONAN public, but still getting it was important. Maybe Wayne is wearing a mask to hide his participation from other Canadians. Maybe he is wearing a veil. I think maybe Himself put his head in the microwave after viewing the anti-samizdat, which had the opposite effect, making him so sad that he needed to "jump out of the building".

-I think Joelle is not chemically disfigured, but is so beautiful as to be deformed. No good reason.

-I think Lyle is a wraith.

I know I will never get answers to any of this, but I really don't care. I loved this book, the underlying questions of "why do we treat each other and ourselves so poorly? why is it so hard to be earnest and compassionate?" and the psuedo reality he created was the gift that kept on giving throughout the story.

If anyone wants to start an Eschaton league, I'm in.

It seems to me that Himself didn't kill himself at all, but was, in fact, murdered by Tavis. I'm drawing this from the Hamlet parallels and the fact that Wild Turkey was apparently planted on the scene as a red herring (I'm taking Himself and Joelle's words for it when the swear that he hadn't touched a drop in weeks). Has anyone else pursued this line of thinking?

I agree that Wraith No. 2 (the forehead-licking wraith) is Lyle, for obvious reasons.

J. v. D. is disfigured and H.I.D. (OMG, I just got that acronym: U.H.I.D. = "you, hid"). As we know, she received a maternally-flung facefull of paternal acid.

I keep catching on the image of Hal, Don, and J.N.R. Wayne at the grave-site pulling out himself's head. Something's not adding up here, for me. Does the unbalanced ecosystem of the concavity/convexity cause Hal's dormant intestinal DMZ factory to go into overdrive? Why is Wayne wearing a mask, apart from Wallace's theme of masks and non-representative facial expressions? I mean, I can see Stice wearing a mask, after the window thing. I don't think it's that Wayne is simply hiding from A.F.R./Canadians-in-general, because that seems symbolically empty somehow.

Also, I don't think that Hal's facial/self-presentation problems were directly triggered by his THC-withdrawal. I'm basing this supposition on the whole, "my son, the mute" thing that Himself keeps going on about. I think they're connected.

I agree with the above poster. IJ would have been an amazing book without all of this, the details and puzzles here being icing on one hell of a cake.

A few things:

a) I thought JNRW was wearing a mask simply because they were so close to the Convexity and it was mad toxic there.
b) What's with the PGOAT's last scene. Is the cop car the ADA's ride?
c) Who's the final AA's "Mikey"?