Infinite Summer

Correct on the O.N.A.N.C.A.A., but just adding...If anyone didn't catch it, look up "onan" in the dictionary. Wallace drops stuff like this all over the place.

A Question about End Note 21 page 985/60

Q.v. Note 211 sub.

I'm guessing this means I am to flip forward to Endnote 211?

I don't have my copy of IJ in front of me, but somewhere there's a list of the chronological order of the post-ONAN (and, of course, that's a joke, too) names for the years. The Hal section that begins the novel happens after everything else in the novel. If DFW wrote IJ in chronological order, this part would come last.

And, yes, it's something he ate.

i'm up to page 27 (rereading) and i am intrigued by everybody's observations!

one thing that i myself perceived is a similarity between hal and erdedy in that they both have a very manipulative streak. my reading of hal's "incident" on page 14 ff is that he lashed out on purpose in order to divert the discussion about his test scores. juxtapose this with erdedy lying about being a former meth addict (23) in order to gain sympathy/drugs. it seems to me that for both these characters, there is quite a thick wall between their inner selves and the world in which they live.

p61-63

Who is writing this? Typically anything first-person is Hal, but it's clear from the nature of the nightmare it isn't Hal. Hal has been at ETA for far too long a time to wake up to a nightmare about being out of place. "Your first nightmare away from home and folks, your first night at the Academy, it was there all along. . ."

I thought maybe he was recalling a MUCH earlier nightmare, but "your first nightmare away from home and folks" makes it seem as though that's not the case.

When I read that passage the first time, I thought that it might've been DFW himself - in retrospect, I think that's probably a stupid assumption, but yeah.

It doesn't seem like it'd be Hal's dream, but it's possible, I guess.

As far as I can recall, DFW only ever writes in the first person perspective for two characters - Hal is (obviously) one of them, and this monologue doesn't really fit the other, so yeah. My guess is Hal when he was younger, if only because I can't figure out who else it would be.