David Foster Wallace RIP

IdleRich said:

Yeah, the one she was reading was about language.

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Ah yep, that one's online... woops linked to it upthread. I really enjoyed that one - I majored in linguistics and the whole pre- vs. de-scriptivism thing is certainly of interest to me.

Maybe a key thing to remember if you do look at either of those collections of his essays is that they are things like book reviews (as in the case of that one) or commissioned event-coverage or talks. I really just read them for the laughs - although there's plenty of stuff that did provoke me to think things through further.

Mind you, his digressional, footnote-heavy writing style does seem more like how European deconstructionists are stereotyped, though, eh. When I'm in the wrong mood I just get fed up.

empty mirror said:

in the NY TIMES there is an essay about a commencement speech DFW made
here is the commencement speech (recently published as THIS IS WATER)

haven't read it as i've only now just discovered it
but hey...

s'it good?

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it looks like they have been taking down the commencement speech from the interwebs with the publication of the book This Is Water

but someone reupped it, kinda.

i was gonna say that is was the germ cell for infinite jest, but it is from a decade afterward-----> maybe it is a distillation of IJ

does suicide make everything the author wrote read like a suicide note?

Finally finished IJ the other day. Took me ages, but wow. I take back my earlier comment about it seeming like he wrote the thing with one eyebrow raised.

Is it inappropriate to ask some questions about the book that contain spoilers?

i think it would be fine to ask spoiler type questions so long as you put it in parenthesis

sidenote: i bought a couple copies of THIS IS WATER for this year's graduates in the family

nice! that's a great idea for a graduation gift

OK, so, WARNING WARNING SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T READ IT (INFINITE JEST) YET...

[spoilers]
1. Who was moving around Stice's furniture? I assume it was Himself, but why? That bit really confused me. Why did he choose to appear to Gately and Stice?
2. Was Hal really silent whenever he tried to speak to Himself, or could Himself just not hear him? Or is it kind of both, in the same way that Joelle could either be grossly deformed or insanely beautiful?
3. And just what the fuck happened to Hal? I have some ideas, and obviously it's deliberately ambiguous, but i'd be interested to know what you guys think.
4. Is Avril evil?
[/spoilers]

I have more questions but these are for starters.

first, i am psyched that you read this book.
second, my wife is just starting it and i can't wait til she gets through the first chapter. (she always juggles a handful of books at a time)
third, not sure anyone can answer any of those questions with authority.

the only question i dare to touch is number three. have you re-read the first chapter as i had suggested earlier in this thread? doing so is like stepping back and seeing an image emerge from a seemingly chaotic mosaic. we could talk more about this point, but i'd like to ease into it slowly, to prevent tearing.

I used to get involved with the IJ discussions over here:

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/

might well answer a few of your questions and provoke a whole bunch more

spoilsport

Yeah, I totally agree on the point that it's impossible to authoritatively answer those questions, so much of the book is deliberately ambiguous, but what's your take on it though? I did re-read the first part, with Hal in the Univeristy admissions office, but I couldn't go any further as I'd promised to lend the book to a friend who wanted to read it. But you're right, reading the beginning again is a real eye-opener.

I've read a few theories re: Hal, among them that Pemulis dosed him with DMZ, or that DMZ synthesised within him from the mould he ate as a child, or that he was abused as a kid by Himself, or weed-withdrawal tipped him over the edge, or the trauma of discovering his dad's suicide finally surfaced, etc etc. I think all these ideas have merit, but none of them are entirely satisfying to me. It could be any of these reasons, or a combination of them. Personally I think that Hal might have just sort of snapped because he couldn't finally reconcile himself with the unbearable hollowness he felt about the world he lived in -- almost as if that was the only really 'sane' reaction an intelligent person could have to it.

Also: Mario is CT's son, right? From an incestuous relationship with he Moms? Which is why he has all his physical deformities?

How comes there are so many ambiguities surrounding the Incandenzas, but Gately's story (and the majority of the AA set, Joelle aside) seems kind of straightforward?

yes, it is all about both entertaining and rejecting all these theories about the incandenzas, simultaneously. a candle (anything incandescent) brings things to light, but it also casts shadows!

for how much the novel seems to interconnect and hang together in a rather unexpectedly tight way, i just can't figure out the reason for the (i think) second chapter that is written in ebonics. she is an ennet house resident and employee at the academy but she seemed such a very very very minor character, i just didn't get it. it was also, in my opinion, the most difficult chapter to untangle. for all the chopping the book received, i am surprised that made the cut.

yeah I definitely agree, that was definitely the weakest part of the novel for me. I loved the way he always slipped in and out of the various characters' vernaculars, but that part just seemed a bit gimmicky to me.

But that whole sequence of scenes with Gately in the hospital, that was one of the best things i've ever read, I think.

i think the most gimmicky aspect of the novel is the parallelism to Hamlet
he warns us in the title but it is a little too much to ask that kind of suspension of disbelief

Would you say Hal is the Hamlet of the novel? I think so.

mos def.
he hung out with the gravedigger and contemplates yorick's skull.
here the mad stork does double duty as the ghost of the father and the entertainer/jester

Plus all of Hal's inaction... what was that bit about with him and Gately and John Wayne digging up Himself's grave? So easy to miss that the first time round. The novel is totally "anticonfluential", like Himself's films, it just occured to me. I was a bit slow there.

^ that's right out of hamlet, the scene that the novel takes its title from. hamlet hanging out with the gravediggers, hamlet contemplating the old court jester "of infinite jest", all that.


from memory (ahem.):

Hamlet, Act 5 , scene 1. Hamlet and Horatio are in a churchyard with two gravediggers. Hamlet holds a skull, that of Yorick, a king's jester, and says,
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell
me one thing."

(a patron recently asked my wife, a librarian, for an english translation of shakespeare... confusion ensued.)

You didn't actually just do that from memory, did you?

No I mean what actually happened in that scene (of IJ)? Does that really occur?

Sick Boy said:

You didn't actually just do that from memory, did you?

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ha! as far as you know...

BareBones said:

No I mean what actually happened in that scene (of IJ)? Does that really occur?

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i have no idea where i am getting this from but isn't it suggested that the master tape of IJ buried with the mad stork somewhere in (what we call) Canada

i can see that in some parallel universe, that trio traveling there to unearth that film----fits in with the yorick status, the ultimate entertainer

does gately die or what? i say yes

maybe they make that trip after they shuffle off their mortal coil(s)?