'...out the big doors whose tympanum overhead is carved with a sword and a ploughshare and a syringe and a soup-ladle and the motto 'CONTRARIA SUNT COMPLEMENTA,' the heaviness of which makes Hal cringe so severely it's Boone who has to supply the translation Kent Blott asks for.'
Begin: Page 751 (“The whole family was lousy with secrets, she’d decided…”)
End: Page 795 (“…first one arm and then, kind of miraculously if you think about it, the other arm.”)
Start Date: 1/29/11
Finish Date: 2/4/11
Note Profile: Either 18 or 19, depending on whether you interpret #332 as part of this week’s reading or next week’s. Some of them are quite lengthy, adding up to about 10 pages of notes, not including 332, which is itself substantial. But take heart: After that, no more notes of any real size.
This thing is starting to feel really real to me; like, we may actually finish the book, in just a few more weeks. I’m enjoying it enough at this point that I’m in no great hurry for it to be over, although the unread non-IJ books are piling up in a corner.
Question for the remaining Marchers: How many people are/want to be on the Skype? It’s been suggested to me that we might want to do some kind of web conference thing sometime between now and the end of the book, so let me know (via comment or email) if that’s an idea that interests you.
Had some walking pneumonia this week, so almost got caught up in the doctor’s office waiting room. Had a few laugh-out-loud fantods while reading the Blood Sister segment. And, reading this stuff while on codeine cough medicine has given me a whole ‘nother perspective. I’m now only 20 pages off target, so I’m sure I’ll be completely with it by next week.
Regarding the non-IJ book pileup, I’ve noticed that although these highly recommended and desirable books are staring me in the face, I seem to have lost all desire to read anything other than People Magazine while reading IJ, and even that’s a stretch. Why? I’m used to reading several books at one time, but during this march, I’m unable to do so.
And re Skype: I’d be up for it. A weekend would be best…
computilo, are you my Doppelganger? I’m in the exact same boat minus the sickness. 20 pages behind, unable to read anything else but IJ, and ready to finish the book for that reason.
I’d be very interested in the Skype round table as I’d love to do some more in depth discussion. Any time will work for me.
Happy to say I am finished with this week’s reading, and some major questions have been answered. Or at least addressed. I don’t 100% trust anyone in this book, which is probably not a bad policy when reading fiction.
Yes, things are coming together.
My favorite: “Nasty Pootem Wooky Bam-Bams”
Perhaps Wallace is Kate Gompert in the book…the clinically depressed and unable to explain what it is like to anybody – everything is part of the problem – there is no solution. It is hell. The agony is unendurable like a person trapped in a fire.
I’ve been assuming that DFW is Hal, more or less, though there are probably aspects of him in many of the characters. And been wondering how much the Incandenzas resemble Wallace’s own family, if his father was brilliant and accomplished but damaged and emotionally distant, if his mother was hypernurturing in an overbearing and vaguely inhuman way, and/or unusually tall, and/or highly promiscuous.
Also been thinking that Infinite Jest is the novelistic equivalent of the movie Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson (another three-namer)–both sprawling, technically virtuosic, trying desperately to find some hope in a very dark world. In both cases there’s nothing resembling a positive father figure: the spectrum ranges from remote and uncaring to actively abusive. In one we get a kid crying in the locker room saying that nothing is true, in the other a 10-year-old game show whiz kid telling his dad “You need to be nicer to me.” Not to get overly psychological or anything…I’m just saying.
I have Skype and that might be fun to get together. I am very close to finishing this week’s pages, thanks to a blizzard here and a snow day. We are getting a lot of insight into the main characters this week. I loved the catalog of different types of liars, like the one that squeezes his lie in amid distracting details like a small bug through a window screen. Or the one that tells a lie, confesses, then tells the lie he wanted to get away with all along. I am excited to see what happens with Marathe trying to get himself admitted to Ennet House. Could be interesting.
What’s the deal with footnotes 324 and 332? Putting two complete sections as footnotes… Especially when the prologue to those sections subject-wise has been part of the book’s regular flow. Is DFW emulating Himself and being actively hostile to the audience? The small type in the print version sure feels like it.
Wham. I’m behind again.