(See page 513.)
Begin: Wherever you are now
End: Page 549 (“The possibility of Canadian involvement in the lethally compelling Entertainment’s dissemination is what had brought to metro Boston Rodney Tine, his retinue, and his ruler.”)
Start Date: 12/24/10
Finish Date: 12/30/10
Note Profile: Up through note 229. No problem.
This week before New Year’s ought to provide plenty of time for you remaining stragglers to catch up at this very moderate pace. If not, what will it take to keep you on board? A motivational speech? A small bribe…maybe, say, a Toblerone? Should I come to your house and read aloud to you? I don’t feel like we can afford to lose anyone at this late date, so let’s make a deal.
I’m still here and plan to *really* catch up this week. 5 grandchildren and large numbers of adult children and spouses are still here, but they will be drastically reducing their numbers as the days go by. In the meantime, I’m trying to keep the peace by like reading portions of IJ aloud to the 7 year old who’s like very interested in tennis, and would aspire to like go to the ETA someday.
Still on the trail and trying mightily to catch up. We’ll see how far I get before the year runs out on me.
“He and Hal exchanged the very slight sorts of nods people use when they like each other past all need for politeness.”
“I am so beautiful I am deformed.”
“Plus a special telescoping travelling model of the ruler he travels with, for on-the-road-A.M. penis measurement.”
This book is forever so enlightening. I also never realized the many uses for trashbags until now.
Wow, another new favorite character: Avril – The Black Hole of Human Attention, who pulls out a 100-mm rodney (I knew it wasn’t a Toblerone, since they had thoughts of lighting it); and wears “painfully white Reebok cross trainers” – I know someone who has those, only they’re New Balance. Am I the only one who has never heard of a cigarette called a “rodney”?
Sorry for my prolonged abscence – this being my 2nd reading I’ve had to temporarily put the book down because life has just been too busy. I just wanted to say that I’m still here, reading your comments!
“I am so beautiful I am deformed.”
Bill, it looks like you hit that one on the head way back. I’m puzzled by the acid throwing reference now.
Also, Bill, you mentioned that note 234 was previously read. Do you happen to know how you got to that because I’ve been trying to read the notes (and the book in general) thoroughly and don’t recall hitting that one. I went back and tried to find a path to it but was unable to. I’m so fascinated with this book that I hate to be missing out on anything through careless reading.
Use of “tattlemount” on page 547 again suggests to me that there is some unrevealed narrator(s) at work here. I’m guessing that is not a simple typo by DFW and that the misuse of “tantamount” is intentional. This is going to bug me until an explanation is put forth so if anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them!
Final thought: Lentz is one sick dude.
Matt: Note 234 was referenced earlier in the book (don’t have it with me, but will check the page number) as an additional reference to the regular note on said page. Will check that earlier page and repost this.
I was caught up a few days ago but I am just getting around to my post. First idea: since the entertainment must be seen to have its devastating effect. It might be that after the entertainment infests the country, on the visually challenged will still be viable. So the new kid at the tennis academy will end up champion!
DFW seems to give so much information about the stars as well as the Date and Place (even giving the Latitude) that I felt he was almost asking to be checked on. So I put all of this in my Star simulator program (I used 2010 but these things change very slowly – on the order of centuries). It turns out that the stars he describes are not quite correct. Although Perseus rises just before the sun, Castor and Pollux should be below the horizon at that time. No big deal – this is just fiction. But it is curious that so many details are given about this.