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• We’re Together Everybody Knows And Here’s How The Story Goes

  So, the bricklayer story.

  On page 139, Wallace gives us a very funny memo sent from one State Farm employee to another. The memo quotes from an insurance claim. Because I know there are folks who aren’t quite caught up yet, and because this discussion is specifically about Wallace’s choices in telling it, here is the passage as it appears in the novel:

  Dear Sir:

  I am writing in response to your request for additional information. In block #3 of the accident reporting form, I put “trying to do the job alone”, as the cause of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully and I trust that the following details will be sufficient.

  I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, March 27, I was working alone on the roof of a new six story building. When I completed my work, I discovered that I had about 900 kg. of brick left over. Rather than laboriously carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which fortunately was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the brick into it. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 900 kg of bricks. You will note in block #11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh 75 kg.

  Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor I met the barrel coming down. This explains the fractured skull and the broken collar bone.

  Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulleys. Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind, and was able to hold tightly to the rope in spite of considerable pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel from the force of hitting the ground.

  Devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel now weighed approximately 30 kg. I refer you again to my weight of 75 kg in block #11. As you could imagine, still holding the rope, I began a rather rapid descent from the pulley down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles and the laceration of my legs and lower body.

  The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my impact with the brick-strewn ground below. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the bricks in considerable pain, unable to stand or move and watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my presence of mind and unfortunately let go of the rope, causing the barrel to begin a… endtranslNTCOM626

  Like a lot of folks I’m sure, I read that piece with an acute sense of deja vu. I not only knew the story, I knew specific phrases were coming even before I read them.

  My uncle was in the insurance business and he often sent me and my dad and my brothers funny things he encountered (this was in the actual mail, before the days of the casual email forward). I not only remembered getting this story, an alleged insurance claim from somewhere, but I remembered it being identical to Wallace’s text, almost word-for-word.

  My first inclination was that Wallace could not have possibly just cut-and-pasted this whole episode from somewhere else. I considered that maybe my memory was faulty–that Wallace had rewritten an old urban legend with such skill that his version had since become the definitive one. And that my Uncle Tom had sent this to me, not in the late 80s when I was in college, but in the late 90s after Infinite Jest had been released.

  Except.

  You can find this story in all corners of the Internet with just minor variations. The following appeared on a University of Vermont ListServ dated February of 1996, the same month Infinite Jest was published. The words in bold also appear in the IJ version:

  Dear Sir:

  I am writing in response to your request for additional information in Block #3 of the accident reporting form. I put “Poor Planning” as the cause of my accident. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.

  I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a new six-story building. When I completed my work, I found I had some bricks left over which when weighed later were found to weigh 240 lbs. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 240 lbs of bricks. You will note on the accident reporting form that my weight is 135 lbs.

  Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building.

  In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel which was now proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed. This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken collarbone, as listed in Section 3 of the accident reporting form.

  Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley which I mentioned in Paragraph 2 of this correspondence. Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of the excruciating pain I was now beginning to experience. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground, and the bottom fell out of the barrel.

  Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel weighed approximately 50 lbs. I refer you again to my weight. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and severe lacerations of my legs and lower body.

  Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks, in pain, unable to move and watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of the rope.

  This is a very old story, one apparently even better known in the British Isles, where it’s said that most comedians of the mid-century had some version of it in their repertoire.²⁰ The insurance claim conceit seems to be a more recent development. It appears in Mike Metcalfe’s 1996 textbook Reading Critically in a form almost identical to the one in Infinite Jest. This version also appeared in a 1982 Louisville Courier-Journal column by Byron Crawford. It’s not available on the internet, but except for a few minor details the text of that article is virtually identical to the text in Infinite Jest. ²¹

  All of that was to confirm what many of you already know–David Foster Wallace lifted the text of the entire episode from a pass-around joke. And I was surprised to realize that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It surprised me because if a writer had copied someone else’s words so blatantly and without acknowledgment into any other novel I would have been indignant. I wouldn’t have seen any grey area at all. I would have said it was wrong.

  But in this particular context, Wallace’s use of this old story is awfully effective. It’s just one of a series of references to urban legends throughout the book, including one to a famous story about toothbrush mischief that Wallace appropriates with more originality. I suppose he’s trying to point out the unreliable nature of any narrative, that our faith in them is something of an illusion. There is also a recurring theme about control that is explicitly described in an earlier scene,²² which takes place in the ETA weight room. It’s one of my favorite lines in the book so far: “Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down.”

  I dig all of that.

  Still I’m not entirely convinced the ends justify the means. Borrowing and sampling might be done casually by other artists, but words are still sacred to writers. There were a lot ways Wallace might have rewritten this story to make it his own. Whatever your aim, you simply don’t swipe another writer’s words and phrases without acknowledging you’re doing it. ²³

  Of course Wallace knew all that, and so we have to conclude that he didn’t do it to deceive and had some other purpose in mind. I suppose he was hoping that readers who knew the story would recognize it, but readers who didn’t know it (which was probably most of them in the nascent days of the Internet when this novel was published) would just assume it was original. We’re back now to the discussion of what the reader brings to the novel. The reader who is familiar with that story will probably react to its appearance differently than one who thinks it’s the product of Wallace’s original wit. I suspect Wallace would have anticipated that, too.

  Arrgh.

  So I’m curious what all y’all think. Those who are reading IJ for the third time and those who are reading it for the first. Those who recognized the bricklayer story when they read it and those who didn’t. Where do you come down on this? Is this appropriation of another (unknown) person’s material valid? Or not? Is it okay because it’s a piece of narrative flotsam, the cultural equivalent of abandoned property? If we could attribute authorship to someone, would claiming it be less acceptable? ²⁴ Is it because Infinite Jest seems to be so singular an accomplishment that it frustrates our desire to apply these kinds of standards to it? ²⁵

  Maybe no one cares about this stuff except me, in which case you can just enjoy a recreation of the accident on Mythbusters.

  July 8, 2009

• The Trick is Keeping the Truth Up-Front

  Thanks for all your comments last week — despite the fact that my question (“how the fuck are you people finding time to read?”) was fundamentally rhetorical, your descriptions of how you’re fitting Infinite Jest into your lives were fascinating. I am still behind, but thanks to a weekend spent back and forth from LAX to DEN combined with a few late nights using IJ to stave off the dread before my mother’s funeral, I got well past page 100, as well as my despair at ever catching up.

  Funerals are funny things. I’ve found getting through them, or any difficult emotional event, without losing your shit requires a shift in attention. If I stayed in my head and let memories of my mother and all her kindnesses take over my thoughts, the result was miserable weeping. If instead I stayed in the present — fussy baby being soothed by his grandmother, vaguely sexy tortured Christ over the altar, my brother saying things about my mother that were absolutely untrue — I found that (a) I wasn’t horrified to be in church, and (b) I could fully participate in the moment.

  Here’s a small portion of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005.

  Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: “Learning how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.

  He goes on the describe a trip to the grocery store after a long day at work — the sort of adult experience most college graduates don’t include in their glossy visions of the future — as an exercise in choices. You can stand in line, tired, starving, and frustrated as shit, and wonder why all these ridiculous, bovine jerks are standing between you and a hot meal at home, or you can remember that everyone has their own heroic battles to fight, and cut them some slack.

  The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship . . .

  Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

  The more I read of this guy, the more I like him, and the sorrier I am that he’s dead.

  July 7, 2009

• 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”.

  July 6, 2009

• 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:

  • Paul of I Just Read About That … , who provides character profiles, synopsies of plot developments, and more.
  • The Feminist Texan.
  • Charles & Leah of Ashcan Rantings.
  • Ward at Brain Health Hacks.
  • Sarah of Sarah’s Books
  • Chris of Pandemonium of the Sun.
  • Jennifer of Piano & Scene.
  • Erica is using her MySpace page to track her progress through the novel.

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

  July 5, 2009

• 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.