Request

[Michael Bailey]

On 3/16/06, Keith McMullen <schwitterz11 at netscape.net> wrote:
> Would someone please read IJ and post summaries of each >section read as
>they go, with footnotes at the bottom of the post please.

maybe on the DFW list?  but this week looks pretty full for me and we
do have a perfectly good MD3PAD going on this list already...

(sorry to have veered so far off topic, but I incurred the duty of
reading IJ in the course of proselytizing for GR...posted about it
fishing for kudos, and clues)

..............................................................although.........................
given a world with more leisure, it would be kinda fun to do a
"discern kinships, trace divergent themes" between IJ and GR,
--- overt fictitious filmic references in IJ vis a vis the homages to
actual great films in GR; and vice versa, come to think of it (if I
knew anything at all about films)
----the delving into the mindsets of people affected by World War II
compared and contrasted to that of those influenced by the pursuit of
a) competitive sport/academic/artistic excellence, b) drugs, and c)
freedom from drugs

---whether this would be worth the time is moot
but, maybe you weren't kidding...
and I am off work tonight...

just in case...

Ultra-low granularity read of IJ

section 1 (page 1-310)
we open up with the kid bombing out of a
college-scholarship-interview, I mean really bombing out
safe to say, nobody has ever bombed out of one quite so bad (1)
or if you have, please post a description to the list - we promise not
to laugh, or to laugh, whatever works...

--then, the nod to magical realism as in "strch" (stuff that really
couldn't happen) where several states in the Northeast US are
converted to a toxic waste dump and catapults fling Boston waste 5km
high to arc thereward; and the government sells naming rights to the
years (2) - but this has already happened and is taken for pretty much
granted in the narrative, like known facts that can be referred to,
though as you read on there's a backhanded exposition of them anyway

--the kid's name is Hal, and his Dad, a polymath like Buckaroo Banzai
(but tormented, alcoholic and ultimately suicidal), after a tennis
scholarship and a brilliant scientific career, simultaneously founds a
tennis academy (which Hal attends) and directs a corpus of films (3)
apparently culminating in an unreleased film entitled "Infinite Jest"
which we are led to suspect can put people (for instance, a
French-Canadian Arabian doctor and a growing number of people who walk
in and inadvertently see the video he's watching) into a rather
lengthy, highly altered state

--ok, the kid and his buddies, (notably Pemulis, who owns scales and
loupes and his own Bunsen burner) are kind of dopers - perhaps trying
to escape the pressure of the Tennis Academy -
and gradually it becomes clear that they are going to arrange to take
a (I think invented by DFW for the purpose of this narrative) new
drug, DMZ ("envision acid that has itself dropped acid" (4)) in their
free time after the upcoming Whataburger Invitational

---there's a duality, maybe, of characters IN the academy and those
NOT in the academy,
or maybe the duality is between the academy and the 1/2 way house, or
maybe there's the academy, the 1/2way house and the street...anyway,
the language changes when we focus on some of the non-Academy
characters

---there's a guy who has a real problem with high-grade marijuana and
is always pretending he's going to quit, and it does seem to mess up
his life, but he sits home alone and smokes ungodly amounts of it so
what does he expect (pp 17-27)

---there's a girl who does the identical always-quitting routine with
the same substance and it depresses her so she tries to kill herself
(pp 68-78)

---there's a dialectual passage of some young Negroes with terrible
family problems (37-38)

---and some junkies having a very tough time on the street (I felt
very sorry for poor Tony the gender-dysphoric(5))

By which time (6) the 1/2 way house is starting to look pretty good.
Don Gately, resident-turned-aide, is starting to chalk up some good
numbers of sober time, as he watches the various residents responding
differently to the chance the place offers them

But I must admit that I am fondest of the scenes in the Enfield Tennis
Academy (is what the name of it is) where although there is griping
and complaining and real pain, there is also a lot of growth and
learning going on.

It would not be fair to close this description without mentioning that
it looks like what the book names "the P.G.O.A.T" - ie "prettiest girl
of all time", Joelle, former lover of Hal's older brother (Orin the
NFL place-kicker), and one of the stars in their father Jim's
(Incandenza's the surname) movies, has a freebase problem and is
suicidal; and that Hal's other brother (Mario) has birth defects but a
sweet soul, and may be a sort of quiet witness or Greek chorus to the
drama.  Mario carries on making his own smaller films after father
Jim's demise.

Nor can one omit Coach Schtitt, whose ideas of discipline form a
counterpoint to the individualism of the young sportspersons (this
emerges in a conversation he has with Mario over ice cream cones)
though his age and the rigorous nature of his beliefs render him a
lightly regarded eccentric emeritus to most of his charges.

And I ought to mention Mrs Incandenza ("the Moms") whose
French-Canadian background is but one indication of a big Quebecois
subplot that is bubbling away somewhere in the mix (for instance, the
Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (Wheelchair Assassins, but I'm
thinking Porpentine during the mountaintop meeting), and the death of
the poor (Quebecan) fellow in his kitchen chair - not as all-out
horrid as poor Tony's seizure, but the tip of my tongue has been in
sympathy off and on for a couple days now)

Ideas planted in the rocky soil of my mind so far: abusing drugs is
fraught with unhappiness (I am not finding a lot of pro-drug attitude
in this book); it's fun to be an achiever but it takes a lot of work
and a supportive environment;

so by page 310 you just know those guys are going to take the DMZ; I
really hope the PGOAT is rescued but it looks (p 299) like her
self-destruction is well (badly, that is) underway though we're not
sure
because we (vicariously thru the PGOAT) flash back to Orin's one
botched punt (which she of course filmed: like many actors she really
wanted to direct) and then cut away altogether to different subplots
(poor Tony and then some explication of Canadian history with Hal in
class at the Academy)

very gentle nod toward possible symbolism: DMZ also stands for
de-militarized zone.....and maybe the sort of peace and
reward-fulfillment-without-the-work that the drugs and the Infinite
Jest video in the story represent are anathema to the cultivation of
achievement which we see trying to happen at the Academy

1) "The medics lift gently and are handy with straps," (p.16) is not a
sentence found in a description of a successful interview
2) a list of years named is on page 223
3) note 24 on page 985 is a scholarly filmography
4) p 214
5) p 299-306 are not for the squeamish, nor 128-135 though that
passage is filtered through a less sensitive persona
6) definitely by page 200