Josh’s Comments (group member since May 16, 2018)

Josh’s comments from the Infinite Summer 2018 group.

Who all finished on time or early?

I wrapped up the last 20 pages on the 19th and have been poring over interesting blog posts and forum discussions for the past few days, mining for more insight than I had on my own.

I’m really glad to have done this this summer with you all, and hope you enjoyed yourselves. That said, I might need a few normal summers before I’m ready for another Infinite summer. 😉

“my generation has been steeped in irony since the get-go, and plunging into a novel that argued against such modes of thinking would have been the literary equivalent of Cold Turkey, the Bird, white-knuckling. Instead, what Infinite Jest provides is a 13 week irony detox program, designed to reduce the cynicism in your system at a slow enough rate that you don’t go all P.T.-Kraus-on-a-subway.”

http://infinitesummer.org/archives/1741

There's a theme that has been revealing itself to me throughout the book that I'm having trouble putting words to, but it seems important and surprising in how often it occurs. It spins off of a comment Alex made in another thread earlier this summer.

The broader theme, like Alex said, is about seeing, being seen, and being hidden. But also about being heard, or understood. I've started cataloging all of the ways that this theme reveals itself throughout the book:

- The passage early in the book about video phones, and then people buying masks to hide their true appearance when on video phone calls.

- Another early passage where James is in costume and presenting himself as a professional conversationalist/therapist trying to connect with Hal.

- Hal hiding underground whenever he smokes pot.

- Steeply presenting as a woman, unconvincingly to Marathe, but apparently pulling it off with most people.

- Several conversations between members of the Incandenza family where each participant seems to be holding their own conversation, unaware that the person they're talking to is either not hearing or not receiving their communication. This one is more subtle but it is almost always a conversation Hal is participating in. It bears more investigation, partly because it's easy to miss until you notice it, and then you see it constantly.

- Snippets of interviews performed by Steeply where the questions are substituted for just the letter "Q," and the reader has to deduce by the answer given what the question was. Sort of like Jeopardy.

- Joelle's veil, and the entire U.H.I.D.

- Marathe being a triple/quadruple/pentuple/whatever agent

- A more recent realization that James Incandenza, an extremely central character, has few, if any, words of actual spoken dialogue recorded in the book.

- Everyone at the Incandenza Thanksgiving table smiling, seemingly involuntarily, for the entire meal.

- An entire passage where Joelle remembers back on how Orin agonized over how detached and unfeeling James was, especially to him.

- The entire passage about Johnny Gentle foisting American territory onto Quebec, except all his lines are spoken from inside an oxygen chamber and then translated to the room by his assistant.

- Randy Lenz's secret fascination with killing animals.

- James wouldn't show Joelle most of the finished films he made that she was in.

I could go on and on.

The theme also spins off into some interesting things that can be read into, too, like the fact that two of the least-likely-to-be-hiding-something characters in the entire book, Mario and Don Gately, also have massive heads and are, physically, impossible to miss. Or the fact that James created a career of making films, ostensibly as a form of expression in order to be better understood.

I hesitate to say that this is the main theme of Infinite Jest, but once you see all the possible ways it plays out, it's impossible to miss.

I came across this book, Elegant Complexity, a companion reader to IJ. My first reaction is that I wished I'd discovered it before Infinite Summer started! But then I saw that it itself is 500 pages long, so I think I'm going to chase this Infinite Summer with an Elegant Complexity autumn.

I came across Elegant Complexity via this post by Jason Kottke about how to read IJ. He is a pretty prolific blogger from the early days of the internet, and apparently a huge DFW/IJ fan. He appears to have written about the book several times on his site, and even has some association with the original 2010 Infinite Summer folks!

Two great resources that I intend to dig more into as I have time.

My meticulous note taking comes through:

’One article out of fucking Moment of all sources talks about how this one Army convict at Leavenworth got allegedly injected with some massive unspecified dose of early DMZ as part of some Army experience...’

’Allegedly Moment says how the guy’s found later in his Army cell, in some impossible lotus position, singing show tunes in a scary deadly-accurate Ethel-Merman-impression voice.’

Axford says maybe Pemulis stumbled on a possible explanation for poor old Lyle and his lotus position down in the weight room...

p. 214

I've been thinking and making a lot of notes about Lyle. He's the only character revealed (so far, anyway) that has apparent supernatural qualities about him. This is far from a fantasy novel so it does make him stand out. I took him as a weird sort of comedic relief at first, but it's clear that Lyle and James were close friends, and strongly implied that Lyle was unusually absent at the same time James left town for a few days immediately prior to his death.

Also, I need to go back and look to see if it actually says so or was just implied, but it may be possible that Lyle was a test subject in one of those early DMZ drug trials that went awry.

That combination of facts makes me wonder if he's a significant character despite only showing up in the background every so often in the book.

DFW has an interesting way of injecting these little mentions into his writing that are either tiny red herring distractions or little nuggets of insight, and when you come across one you never know which it is until much later. Lyle is definitely one of those. The mint-green Ford sedan idling nearby the Eschaton fight is another notable one that I was just reading this week.

There are page goals for every day listed over on InfiniteSummer.org. :)

We also have a mailing list you can sign up for that sends weekly reminders on Thursdays. (June 21 was a Thursday, hence the seemingly random day of the week.) I promise I won't spam you, just page reminders.

http://infinitesummer.org/index

When I got my reminder email this week I realized I was falling behind, with nearly 100 pages to read this week in order to stay up to date. It’s amazing how I easy it is to get behind when life happens for a couple days! The density and footnotes also make a thorough read surprisingly slow work.

It’s my second read but I clearly still carried some blind confidence into this commitment with me. 😄 I am committed to catching back up as soon as possible!

I’m doing something similar: a slim post-it note for whenever the date changes. But I also convert the exact or approximate date on the post-it to normal calendar years and write it on the tab. He left just enough context clues to do such a conversion if you pay attention. :)

Also, knowing the exact day (or approximate, eg “late October”) seems like it may be helpful. Some of the time shifts are small but surprisingly out of order, bouncing back and forth by a span of mere weeks or days.

Sometimes those exact days are mentioned in the header, or sometimes the header will only give a year. When that happens, he quite often mentions the exact day or month in that section of text, at which point I go back and add it to that tab.

It feels a little tedious, but I hope it pays off because DFW seems to be very intentionally making it tricky to track the exact order of events.

If my effort can help anyone else, just ask and I can look up dates for you. I could probably write a guide on how to read IJ in chronological order by the end of this. :)

I think this is all about how each individual approaches the book, either as a motivation stemming from the self or the ego. I've talked with Alex and Matt B. privately about this exact subject, and it seems to me that, yes, a lot of readers (especially what we'll call litboys) do approach Infinite Jest with a lot of ego.

I cannot speak for anyone but myself, so I will just say: I am reading this book for myself, not for my ego or any sense of what others might think of me. If anything, the fact that this reputation with IJ readers exists makes me more self-conscious about it and wishing I were talking about it even less.

I found the first reading so fascinating and complex that it was like putting together a massive jigsaw puzzle in my head to make sense of it all. This is fun to me. It's a challenge. It's equal parts humbling and zen. A literary Mt. Everest. Reading it "because it's there," because it's a larger challenge than most everyday reading.

Because of this, a second read was important to me. To read it again, but knowing how to read it from page 1.

I also felt that seeing the perspectives of other readers was going to help. And I wanted to be here for those who themselves are on their first read. Just like someone climbing Mt. Everest would be silly to brave it alone. Hence this group.

Anyway, that's me. If you're only reading IJ for how others will see you, or so that you can mark it off your bucket list rather than enjoy the journey, it might be worth questioning if it's worth it. I appreciate your honesty, Cale, because you've clearly questioned and found your own answer to be a resounding "no."

p. 73:

When people call it that I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state… Everything gets horrible. Everything you see gets ugly. Lurid is the word. Doctor Garton said lurid, one time. That's the right word for it. And everything sounds harsh, spiny and harsh-sounding, like every sound you hear all of a sudden has teeth.

this one resonated powerfully with me. the idea of "every sound you hear all of a sudden has teeth" perfectly describes how I felt at moments in my life when I was acutely struggling with depression.

I know it's early on so there isn't much in the way of spoilers yet. Some also like to argue that the book is unspoilable.

Regardless, I thought it might be nice to have a thread for each week where spoilers up through the end of that week's reading is allowed.

Go forth and spoil!

I think that's a smart strategy.

Like Matt said, it does become clear that the book may be self-referential, in that after you finish the first time, you may feel strongly compelled to go right back for a second read. So much stuff that reveals itself slowly.

I think just being a mindful and attentive reader rather than trying to blow through it is what will make your first read pay off.

whewwwww. that footnote alone took me a good 20 minutes to digest on its own.

I skimmed it the first time I read IJ, and I'm glad I slowed down to take it all in this time. I took a lot of notes, not all of which I'm sure yet are relevant, but all are at least interesting.

that's kind of a thing thus far: if you're reading carefully enough, you're probably seeing a lot of things that seem interesting but it's hard to discern yet if they're important. I'd suggest taking note of these things regardless. there are so many threads to follow here, some of which seem to be purely for DFW's own delight, which I find is definitely a big part of enjoying IJ: it might look complex on the surface, but every detail is delightful.

it's not cheating if the only rules are being nice to each other and also not posting spoilers if you get ahead of schedule. ;)

just covering my ass in case we attract any EU-located Wallace fans

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