It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very easy for one to feel as if they are in over their head when reading this book.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure how far each of you has read in Infinite Jest<\/em>, though I suspect those of you who are trying this for the first time scanned over these words with trepidation. David Foster Wallace doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make this easy for us, though in hindsight, the logical method in which the opening conversation unfolds is actually deceptively simple.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting ahead of myself. Until Friday, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d not had a bit of exposure to the words of David Foster Wallace. It was impossible not to hear his name, especially since I started college as an English major. I recall a few of my online friends doing Infinite Summer, but at the time, the thought of reading 1,100 pages over the course of a single summer just seemed to be a burden, which is saying a lot for someone who can plow through a mid-length novel in a weekend.<\/p>\n Turns out that Infinite Jest<\/em> is not actually the first bit of writing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve experienced that belongs to Wallace, so I suppose that means I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m cheating, if just a little bit. I read his piece in Gourmet<\/em> last week, titled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Consider The Lobster.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> (Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my obligatory, gushing sentiment vocalized: read this now, or at least when this review is over.) Beyond being fascinating, engrossing, enlightening, intelligent, how many more superlative adjectives can I use, it gave me a stark introduction to what I was getting into: a writer who uses detail to an extreme in order to build from it, and one who is deeply, intrinsically in touch with the morals (or lack of them) that drive even the most banal of minutia. In short: he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s verbose and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intriguing at the exact same time. (It was also a practice in reading real-time endnotes. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a workout.)<\/p>\n Infinite Jest<\/em> takes just a few sentences to lapse into a similar style, though \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Consider The Lobster\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is thematically different. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re introduced to a whole slew of characters, dropped into the middle of a scene, and the dialogue starts flying. After the first couple pages of introduction of our narrator, Hal Incandenza, a purportedly genius tennis player attempting to join the Enfield Tennis Academy, located outside of Boston, there was one person I was reminded of while reading this: Richard Price. As I said earlier, the dialogue here is deceptively simple. What I mean by that is that it appears to be difficult to follow, especially without the constant \u00e2\u20ac\u0153he said\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153she says\u00e2\u20ac\u009d interjected after alternating sentences. However, once you recognize the style, it could not be any more natural to how conversation takes place. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re used to, especially how words and sentences run on to each other in person. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rare that works of fiction capture this reality; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s generally one person speaking after another. (Interrupting doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t count because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still<\/em> existing in precisely the same order.)<\/p>\n I brought up Richard Price because, like many of his fans and readers, I have always felt that there are few people on the planet who can write dialogue as naturally as Richard Price. Go find The Wanderers<\/em>, Clockers<\/em>, and especially Lush Life<\/em> as quickly as you can and consume them. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not hard. But many authors (and screenwriters, too) don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t utilize dialogue to build worlds. Here, in David Foster Wallace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re given only<\/em> that.<\/p>\n It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that hard for me to figure out this scenario of three Deans confronting Hal and his family members about Hal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s odd performance in school because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so reminiscent of the absurdity of college bureaucracy. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sort of familiar to me; I went to college without the backing of my parents. As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mentioned in reviews before, I ran away from home when I was sixteen, so being on my own at that point didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make things easy for me in college. Standing in lines, talking to counselors who seemed unable to conquer basic communication, lost transcripts, meetings with the Dean, the endless cycle of it all\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all very familiar to me.<\/p>\n What Wallace does is begin to piece together tiny parts of this story. I get the sense that Hal is a genius of some sort academically. (It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been established he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tennis genius already.) I laughed when the Dean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cycled through the papers Hal submitted instead of the traditional college entrance essay:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThen there is before us the matter of not the required two but nine<\/em> separate application essays, some of which of nearly monograph-length, each without exception being\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc different sheet\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe adjective various evaluators used was quote \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stellar\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc<\/p>\n Dir. Of Comp.: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI made in my assessment deliberate use of lapidary<\/em> and effete.<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut in areas and with titles, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure you recall quite well. Hal: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Neoclassical Assumptions in Contemporary Prescriptive Grammar,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Implications of Post-Fourier Transformations for a Holographically Mimetic Cinema,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Emergence of Heroic Stasis in Broadcast Entertainment\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Montague Grammar and the Semantics of Physical Modality\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Man Who Began To Suspect He Was Made of Glass\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tertiary Symbolism in Justinian Erotica\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I get the sense that Wallace finds irony, above all else, to be the most amusing to him. Or, at least the most fascinating. Did Hal submit these essays as an ironic joke to the school? Or was he entirely serious?<\/p>\n The initial conflict introduced, however, is the revelation that the E.T.A. staff is worried that, due to anomalous scores and grades, that the school might be accused of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153using\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hal to better its tennis team. Hal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s uncle, Charles, has been speaking for him the entire time; the narrator has kept to himself, providing us with an internal monologue the entire time, until the Dean of Academic Affairs insists it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Hal to defend his academic career and prove why<\/em> the ETA can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t possibly using him. (That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really strange, right? Why would they force someone else to prove THEY weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to do something?<\/p>\n I cannot make myself understood. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI am not just a jock,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I say slowly. Distinctly. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMy transcript for the last year might have been dickied a bit, maybe, but that was to get me over a rough spot. The grades prior to that are de moi<\/em>.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 My eyes are closed; the room is silent. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI cannot make myself understood, now.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I am speaking slowly and distinctly. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcCall it something I ate.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting the methodical way that Hal speaks. He narrates in a similar manner, moving to a flashback of a moment in his childhood to explain why he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcCall it something I ate.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a story about being unable to be understood and I probably would have laughed more at it had the idea of eating a patch of mold been so revolting to me.<\/p>\n All Hal was able to say back then was, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI ate this.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true. He did. He is expressing this fact as both an explanation and a cry for help, but he cannot make himself understood.<\/p>\n I am at a loss for what happens next. Hal flashes out of the memory and we jump back to him talking to the Deans, insisting he is not merely a good tennis player.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d let me, talk and talk. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about anything. I belive the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I say. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not just a creatus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for function.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fascinated with the idea that Hal responds to the ETA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s requests to validate their choice in accepting him by discussing the very nature of his humanity, to insist that he is not some \u00e2\u20ac\u0153machine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to be bred and used and reproduced and exploited. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious if this means something more than what it is.<\/p>\n What I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand is the horror the Deans react with towards Hal. Perhaps this is evidence of Hal being an unreliable narrator in a sense, because as the Deans to insist that Hal has done something terrifying and wrong, Hal never narrates that it happened. One of the Deans asks Hal what the sounds he is making are, but we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t experience them happening.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBut the sounds<\/em> he made.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcUndescribable.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLike an animal.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSub<\/em>animalistic noises and sounds.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcNor let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not forget the gestures<\/em>.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHave you ever gotten help <\/em>for this boy Dr. Tavis?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLike some sort of animal with something in its mouth.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This back-and-forth bout of panicked dialogue continues as I continue to feel completely lost. WHAT JUST HAPPENED. <\/em>Is there something wrong with Hal? Did he actually do this? Are the Deans collectively hallucinating? Am I even asking the right questions?<\/p>\n As Hal is removed from the school on a stretcher and taken to some sort of hospital, Wallace moves to one of the longest paragraphs I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard there are longer, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to prepare myself.) Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the strange thing: It works<\/em>. Completely. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a poetic sense of reality to the stream-of-conscious-style narration of Hal, as he jumps from one thing to another, all of which seem to be within his field of vision. He describes the medics, makes note that this is a special<\/em> ambulance because it has a psychiatric M.D. on board, which takes him to thoughts of waiting rooms, with orange molded chairs, which takes him to a woman sitting in one of those chairs, and then bathrooms and therapists and people he knew in his past, to his upcoming tournament to someone named Dymnphna.<\/p>\n Such begins Infinite Jest<\/em>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m lost, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ok. I feel like I was thrown into the middle of the forest without a map and, to be entirely honest, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of exhilarating.<\/p>\n Note: For those who are reading along, which I hope is all of you who are reading this, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the ISBN number for my specific version, since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not doing set chapters:<\/p>\n ISBN: 978-0-316-06652-5<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very easy for one to feel as if they are in over their head when reading this book. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure how far each of you has read in Infinite Jest, though I suspect those of you who are … Continue reading