Sarah’s Comments (group member since Apr 09, 2015)

Sarah’s comments from the Infinite Summer 2015 group.

August is done and so are we! The whole book is fair game for discussion in this thread, endnotes and all.

The penultimate Monday check-in. One week to go!

We're rounding the final stretch! Weigh in on week 11's reading here.

I know some of you are reading quickly and may want to discuss ahead of schedule. Have at it! (Spoiler alert, if you're sticking to the normal pace.)

We're in month three of three! Home stretch. What did you think of this week's reading?

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm behind. How are you all doing? Planning to do some catchup this weekend? (I know I am.)

Discuss!

I don't know about you, but my summer is flying by.

We're more than halfway! Thoughts on this week's reading?

Go to town.

We're over a third of the way there! How's everyone's reading going? New favorite lines / scenes / characters? Mysteries deepening or being revealed? Have at it!

Starting next week's thread early due to popular demand by some folks who are reading ahead. Proceed at your own tolerance for bespoilerage!

I'm still travel-hungover from last week's vacation, so I'll leave the kickoff to the group.

Call in a question for Madam Psychosis now!

It's week 2! Are you on schedule? How are you feeling?

Are you now terrified of having your external artificial heart purse-snatched in Boston by a transvestite prostitute? Can someone really live on the sweat of top-tier teenaged tennis players alone?

Have at it, friends!

Big high fives to Ashley, and nice to meet you Griffin!

Mekki wrote: "How will the end note discussion be handled? Can we discuss endnote pertaining to the week we're in?"

Yes, absolutely. Endnotes that are "children" of that week's section should be discussed in that week's section. Great question!

Welcome officially to week 1! Loving the discussion so far. Thank you for expressing your various points of view while keeping it civil and respectful.

Re: narration, I noticed a few fun tics and oddities too. I'll grab citations tomorrow, but aside from the Mario chapter already referenced, I noticed the narrator using an "I" statement in one of the chapters. Stood out, to be sure.

And re: the family dynamic, this is one of the most interesting themes / mysteries in the book, to me. What parts of the story do we get from Hal's perspective, what from Orin's, what from Mario's? And do they all match up? Is the chapter with the professional conversationalist actually a transcript of JOI's film on the same topic? (Fascinating theory and something I hadn't considered!) Or is it a real and really weird conversation between a disguised JOI — mask dripping down his face — and a young Hal? (Also note themes here of speaking and not being able to be heard, at least by the person you want to communicate with. This is all over the place in our first week's section: Hal's first chapter obviously, the whole conversationalist bit, and even the poor Québécois attaché [I believe he was] whose head cold makes him a tragic victim of Gately's too-effective gag technique. Barriers to understanding centering around language or the lack thereof.)

Okay, and this part is just hard and horribly sad: the whole Kate Gompert chapter and how DFW (through Kate) describes depression, given that we all know the author killed himself about ten years after this book came out, is just so heart-wrenching. I thought it was a really interesting way to frame the scene from the perspective of the young doctor, who is obviously empathetic but seemingly totally unaffected himself by any lack of mental fortitude or cheer. Simultaneously showing us a take on suicide from within a depressed person's experience and also from an outside, "rational" observer. It makes me appreciate Wallace so much.

Okay! I didn't intend to write that much all at once but here we are. Any favorite passages / jokes / turns of phrase so far? Questions or mysteries to pose to the group? My favorite word in IJ so far is "complexly". I think we've seen it at least twice already!

Good call, Gary!

I'm happy to hear more points of view, but I'm inclined to wait until the end of the summer to discuss the end of the book. I'd like everyone to feel like we're on the same page (even though I've read the book before, too). What do other folks think?

Welcome, everyone! Glad (ha) to meet you all.

It's June, and in seven days we'll be kicking off our official discussion of the first week's reading. If you haven't cracked the book open yet, now's the perfect time to start.

I thought it would be nice to learn a little more about each other, so please weigh in if you'd like to introduce yourself. I'll start:

My name is Sarah. I live in Seattle, work for a tech company (surprise!), and love movies, television, cloudy days, knitting, and, of course, reading. I have a husband and a cat and a baby on the way. Favorite non-DFW authors include Iain M. Banks, Nick Harkaway, Hugh Howey, Neal Stephenson, and Gregory Maguire. This is my second time through IJ.

So: hello and welcome, everyone! Can't wait to go on this journey together.

Let's move any discussion of a particular section to the relevant week's thread :)