Two unrelated topics

[jporter]

John and George confer:


>On Sat, 10 Aug 1996, George Haberberger wrote:
>
>> >I hope that this has not come up yet,if it has, well my apologies for the
>> >redundancy.  In any event, as I recall didn't the Mad Stork in "Infinite
>> >Jest" believe that Death was a female when he cast Madame Psychosis in the
>> >film of the same name?
>> >
>>
>> Are you meaning his theory that every mother murdered their children in a
>> previous life, and are making amends by giving birth to them?
>>
>> George
>>
>Yeah, that is the one.  I didn't get it entirely right.  But, what's more
>feminine than motherhood, right?
>
>John


I think I recall that both the victim (the dying) and the murderer/mother
to be, are not left with conscious memories of the process, and that only
the residues of need and guilt remain to provide the a basis for the
mother-child bonding (addiction?) to come.

Also, It doesn't seem that the murderer/mother represents death but is
merely the feminine agent of death. Death itself not really being
characterized in the novel.

Gately, in his layered delirium, seems to have communicated with the
Otherside, and the future as well, or at least, that which was before the
opening of the book, and that which is gathering to become The Year of Glad
by the end of the book- perhaps the topic of a sequel, eh?

A flip (and probably limp!) connection between IJ and V. keeps annoying my
brain to be verbalized: J.O.Incandenza somehow managed to capture the image
of V. and was able to reproduce it/her on the cartridge "Infinite Jest,"
for all to see and see and see, ad infinitum. And not to be overly
onomastic, but the name Joelle van Dyne echoes not just V., or Henry Adams,
or the Van for which we might all (including the impatient Emily Dickenson)
be waiting, but also the alien parents of Superman!

There is also a sense in IJ, running counterpoint to its title, that within
the boundary conditions of a finite space/time (tennis court, cartridge,
dilaudid high, delirium, etc.) there is an infinity of possibilties,
negating the philosophical cul de sac of The Eternal Return.

Jody Porter