Mark André ’s Reviews > Infinite Jest > Status Update
Mark André
is on page 106 of 1088
I am seated here appalled at the naïveté of history of your nation. Paris and Helen were the excuse of the war. All the Greek states in addition to the Sparta of Menelaus attacked Troy because Troy controlled the Dardanelles and charged the ruinous tolls for passage through, which the Greeks, who would like very dearly the easy sea passage for trade with the Oriental East, resented with fury. It was for commerce, ...
— Aug 10, 2026 12:27PM
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Mark’s Previous Updates
Mark André
is on page 91 of 1088
Marathe could simultaneously speak in English and think in French.
— Aug 10, 2026 09:50AM
Mark André
is on page 83 of 1088
A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness:
— Aug 09, 2026 11:17AM
Mark André
is on page 81 of 1088
... that he, Schtitt, knew real tennis was really about not the blend of statistical order and expansive potential that the game’s technicians revered, but in fact the opposite — not-order, limit, the places where things broke down, fragmented into beauty. That real tennis was no more reducible to delimited factors or probability curves than chess or boxing, the two games of which it’s a hybrid.
— Aug 09, 2026 11:04AM
Mark André
is on page 79 of 1088
... even though Schtitt still does favor those high and shiny black boots, and yes the epaulets, still, and now a weatherman’s telescoping pointer that’s a clear stand-in for the now-forbidden old riding crop, he has, Schtitt, at near what must be seventy, mellowed to the sort of elder-statesman point where he’s become mostly a dispenser of abstractions rather than discipline, a philosopher instead of a king.
— Aug 08, 2026 03:41PM
Mark André
is on page 62 of 1088
Your first nightmare away from home and folks, your first night at the Academy, it was there all along: The dream is that you awaken from a deep sleep, wake up suddenly damp and panicked and are overwhelmed with the sudden feeling that there is distillation of total evil in the dark strange subdorm room with you, that evil’s essence and center is right here, in this room, right now.
— Aug 08, 2026 05:49AM
Mark André
is on page 49 of 1088
A one-hitter can be wastelessly employed, then allowed to cool, wrapped in two baggies and then further wrapped and sealed in a Ziploc and then enclosed in two sport-socks in a gear bag along with a lighter and eyedrops and mint-pellets and the little film-case of dope itself, and it’s highly portable and odor-free and basically totally covert.
— Aug 06, 2026 12:21PM
Mark André
is on page 43 of 1088
The note from last night’s Subject is on violet bond once folded and with a circle of darker violet dead-center where the subject’s perfume-spritzer had hit it. The only interesting thing about the script, but also depressing, is that every single circle — o’s, d’s, p’s, the #s 6 and 8 — is darkened in, while the i’s are dotted not with circles but with tiny little Valentine hearts, which are not darkened in.
— Aug 06, 2026 10:15AM
Mark André
is on page 28 of 1088
Does this mean they think I’m gifted?’
SPFFFT. ‘Here you are. Drink up.’
‘Thanks. SHULGSHULGSPAHHH . . . Whew. Ah.’
‘You were thirsty.’
‘So then if I sit down you’ll fill me in.’
— Aug 04, 2026 09:06PM
SPFFFT. ‘Here you are. Drink up.’
‘Thanks. SHULGSHULGSPAHHH . . . Whew. Ah.’
‘You were thirsty.’
‘So then if I sit down you’ll fill me in.’
Mark André
is on page 19 of 1088
The insect on the shelf was back. It didn’t seem to do anything. It just came out of the hole in the girder onto the edge of the steel shelf and sat there. After a while it would disappear back into the hole in the girder, and he was pretty sure it didn’t do anything in there either. He felt similar to the insect inside the girder his shelf was connected to, but was not sure just how he was similar.
— Aug 03, 2026 12:16PM
Mark André
is on page 15 of 1088
‘The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.’
— Aug 03, 2026 11:23AM
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Thank you, Beth!I can’t think of anything to add. I guess that’s why we read books: to be surprise. Rather foresighted of the author; sadly ironic for the rest of us.
Thank you, Jon.I sort of flipped when I came across this. Very clever author, especially with the movie out now too.
Thank you, Jonathan. “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” — Karl Marx
Thank you, Otto.What a strange world. We never change.
Thank you, mirah!A very unconventional author. This sort of proves it. What a world.
Thank you, Rosemary! Nice to hear from you.It was just to sadly funny to not post. Some foresight by the author though, published 30 years ago.
Thank you, Vanitha!“commerce” We never change. What a dirty word.
The remark seems surprisingly modern. Ha. Things never change.😁