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I am in a position of lamentation that, walking into the bookshop, instead of being drawn towards an emotional or intellectual need or want—to be satisfied by a newfound book—I was instead drawn to the controversy surrounding Infinite Jest. It's a poo poo controversy, vomit worthy. Mainly that it is the go-to book of a certain college student interested in disaffected intellectual masturbation, a work of genius, and very male in both its work and fans. There's been plenty of reviews, and complaints, along the lines of, "I Will Never Read Infinite Jest, Please Stop Talking to Me!" And it's that controversy that had me picking it out in the store. Fifty pages in, I can see why someone (although I'm unsure how they accurately came to the conclusion, not having read it, but kudos to them) would be infuriated by the disaffected masculinity on show. There's a few points in the first fifty pages where the book calls out its own flaws. One line, "She just got sad in her way instead of yours and mine." Highlighting that there is a sadness to this book, albeit one you have to go looking for, and not something I'm entirely sure people do go looking for (or they have found it and see it as "genius" rather than a failing.) The book begins with someone attending a meeting for a college scholarship, and there's some concern about "shenanigans" in his application and tests. Asked to speak for himself he has an "episode," one "barely mammalian" and is brought to a mental hospital. This hit me off right away about why someone might consider this book, "Genius." The idea of the intellectual (as the character is portrayed) being entirely alien to those looking at him (and so far it's always been a 'him.') Really, from what I've read so far, it's the underlying sadness to it that's capturing me. However it's a number of steps removed from the actual text, and a perfect example of the intellectualisation necessary to read the book in experiencing any feeling to it. It's not explicit or possible even extant in the text, and instead I have to do a many-leveled consideration to find it. Wallace pays a lot of attention to details of the world, well-described, and a lot of attention to the intellectual steps and thoughts in comprehending the world, and the characters' situations within it. However, rarely is this brought onto an emotional reaction, a felt reaction, either portrayed descriptively or implied as-a-method-through-reading (stream-of-consciousness/emotion style.) If it is a great Gen X work then it's this disaffected tone that makes it so. Felt understandings are rarely (if ever) countenanced, much less dwelt on. It's an even older view of masculinity, and one that the people refusing to read it have accurately surmised in their refusal to read it. However, knowing this, it presents a sad examination, maybe of the text, maybe of the author (and what we know about him) and how the need to get past the fear of such experiences is just beneath the writing. It's profoundly melancholy. "Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves."
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Jun 23, 2020 12:35
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 02:07 |
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I'm like 400 pages in and the prevailing theme of "everyone's sad and lonely" seems to be pretty constant
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Jun 23, 2020 14:06
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It's not so much that everyone is or isn't sad and lonely, but the refusal by everyone (in a scant fifty pages) to even engage with their sadness and loneliness. And, even further, the refusal of the author to embody their sadness and loneliness as an emotional phenomenon to be dealt with (and actually written.) So far there's a huge amount of time (in fairly word-dense pages) dedicated to describing the exterior people find themselves in, quite a bit given to interior thoughts, but absolutely no reckoning with the emotional weight of what's being experienced. It's like its been left for the reader to fathom it themselves, as an extra bit of homework. It must be very deliberate, an outright refusal to brook with it, because everything else is so very explicit. It's almost a neurotic fear of emotionality, that should it be engaged with, everything—the artifice of the book—would come crashing down, demanding to be resolved.
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Jun 23, 2020 14:44
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Up to page 78, and just after a scene where a woman in a psychiatric ward describes, in detail, her relationship with (both, immanently) weed and her intense feeling of depression, all the while being questioned by a doctor. It really hits at the idea A.) Woman are crazy/able to deal with/feel emotions (a view I'm taking entirely premised on the popular view of the novel) and B.) Emotions need psychiatric attention. One hypothesis I have for this novel's acclaim is that it forces typically unavailable, or misunderstood, (male) readers into the position of a (n emotionally available) third party, and so they see themselves within the novel, but are equally able to deal with themselves as a reader. It's a contrived dealing with that which afflicts us, emotionality, in a controlled environment.
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Jun 23, 2020 16:22
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There's a part later when the narrator describes Hal's depression in kind of a similar way. This isn't really a spoiler, but maybe you don't want to read it yet, so I'm tagging it:quote:Hal himself hasn't had a bona fide intensity-of-interior-life type emotion since he was tiny; he finds terms like joie and value to be like so many variables in rarified equations, and he can manipulate them well enough to satisfy everyone but himself that he's in there, inside his own hull, as a human being-- but in fact he's far more robotic than John Wayne. One of his troubles with his Moms is the fact that Avril Incandenza believes she knows him inside and out as a human being, and an internally worthy one at that, when in fact inside Hal there's pretty much nothing at all, he knows. His Moms Avril hears her own echoes inside him and thinks what she hears is him, and this makes Hal feel the one thing he feels to the limit, lately: he is lonely. (page 694 of the Abacus paperback, the one with the white cover with all the horizontal lines. Just after endnote #280, if that's more helpful) Cut me to the core when I read it, about ten years ago.
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Jun 25, 2020 03:36
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It's dawned on me that Wallace's prose is highly influenced by psychologist reports. Like, beyond namedropping various illnesses and drugs, the way patients are described by their doctors in text is how he's writing about his characters, down to the jargon-prone adjectives. This is maybe not a stunning revelation, but I was reading some articles recently that had excerpts from psych ward reports and the prose was almost identical to IJ's style.
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Jul 1, 2020 14:21
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I've stopped writing anything in here because, ya'know, the forums might be dead soon. But I definitely feel like DFW is interested in diagnosing the world, rather than looking at himself. The idea that a proper accounting of what exists beyond the personal will give you everything you need to know about yourself. It's possibly the point and greatest failing of the book.
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Jul 1, 2020 14:57
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I think the entire book is DFW looking at himself. The two main characters are him at different points of his life, watching one slowly disconnect from life and other understand himself better.
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Jul 1, 2020 15:42
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Mrenda posted:I've stopped writing anything in here because, ya'know, the forums might be dead soon. But I definitely feel like DFW is interested in diagnosing the world, rather than looking at himself. The idea that a proper accounting of what exists beyond the personal will give you everything you need to know about yourself. It's possibly the point and greatest failing of the book.  lifg posted:I think the entire book is DFW looking at himself. The two main characters are him at different points of his life, watching one slowly disconnect from life and other understand himself better. Yeah, this seems fair. Hal is the brain and Gately is the heart.
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Jul 1, 2020 18:50
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Never finished the book, may pick it back up. The book is much better if you know NOTHING about it going in. Don't even check the wikipedia page. Some of the reveals take a long time to come across, otherwise. Very rewarding
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Jul 6, 2020 20:39
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Mrenda posted:Up to page 78, and just after a scene where a woman in a psychiatric ward describes, in detail, her relationship with (both, immanently) weed and her intense feeling of depression, all the while being questioned by a doctor. It really hits at the idea A.) Woman are crazy/able to deal with/feel emotions (a view I'm taking entirely premised on the popular view of the novel) and B.) Emotions need psychiatric attention. The take away is she's completely right in her own self diagnosis, and the doctor just flat out dismisses her.
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Jul 6, 2020 20:40
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I love this fuckin book so much. It’s weird that it has this reputation of being gen x and disaffected when it’s one of the most genuinely earnest things I’ve ever read
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Jul 7, 2020 06:42
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So one thing no one warned me about going in is how aggressively Boston this novel is. Like, the namedrop the loving liquor store in Allston (that's still there!). An immense Eastern Mass energy I wasn't prepped for.
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Jul 11, 2020 15:55
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The second (?) chapter was the most accurate description of the day to day, low-key experience of drug addiction that I've ever read - the general sense of dread/tension/anticipation that coloured every day. I'm finding it a difficult book to read!
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Jul 26, 2020 22:35
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Ok so I'm about 80 pages from the end and like, not quite sure this is the work of overwhelming brilliance everyone made it out to be. Some notable selections, yeah, but uh...This has only a little bit left to turn things around and we're still circling the same drain we've been circling for the past 500 pages.
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Aug 3, 2020 21:29
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Mrenda posted:Up to page 78, and just after a scene where a woman in a psychiatric ward describes, in detail, her relationship with (both, immanently) weed and her intense feeling of depression, all the while being questioned by a doctor. It really hits at the idea A.) Woman are crazy/able to deal with/feel emotions (a view I'm taking entirely premised on the popular view of the novel) and B.) Emotions need psychiatric attention. Mrenda posted:I've stopped writing anything in here because, ya'know, the forums might be dead soon. But I definitely feel like DFW is interested in diagnosing the world, rather than looking at himself. The idea that a proper accounting of what exists beyond the personal will give you everything you need to know about yourself. It's possibly the point and greatest failing of the book. Himself's movies seem to agree with you, with Medusa's gaze turning people into stone/mirrors as weapons, the Netflix mask thing and on and on.
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Aug 3, 2020 22:58
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Does anyone else think that the remark about how Canadians fart by lifting/adjusting their legs is a blatant reference to Terrence and Phillip? I've wondered this for years but never seen it corroborated.
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Aug 3, 2020 23:44
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Dr.D-O posted:Does anyone else think that the remark about how Canadians fart by lifting/adjusting their legs is a blatant reference to Terrence and Phillip? IJ came out in 1996 and South Park didn’t debut until 1997 so unless the reference was the other way around?
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Aug 4, 2020 02:25
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Yeah, it’s the other way around.
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Aug 4, 2020 10:58
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The Entertainment? They should call it The Disappointment! Because I want the last two months of my life back!
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Aug 5, 2020 20:28
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I liked the guy at AA who talked about his first solid bowel movement.
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Aug 8, 2020 20:53
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The first 2/3rds are pretty good until you realize the story is literally going nowhere and also it somehow becomes increasingly racist.
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Aug 16, 2020 04:51
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TrixRabbi posted:The first 2/3rds are pretty good until you realize the story is literally going nowhere and also it somehow becomes increasingly racist. The "story" is pretty much one long description of the setting.
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Aug 18, 2020 15:05
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Perish the thought.
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Aug 18, 2020 15:21
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The story can’t go anywhere. Time is an illusion in Infinite Jest. The story simply exists.
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Aug 18, 2020 16:03
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I saw some dude on Reddit getting really defensive about any criticisms of the book and said "A piece of myself will always live in Allston, MA" and it's like...ya ever actually been to Allston?
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Aug 18, 2020 17:58
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A piece of myself will always live in the frantic need to move my car to the other side of the street so I don’t get towed for street cleaning.
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Aug 18, 2020 20:12
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 02:07 |
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An actual plot point in the novel!
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Aug 18, 2020 20:17
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