/lit/ - Literature

>>4927544
Did he know it's potential? I remember him mailing it off mindlessly. Am I wrong?

My best guess? Plothole. There's no way he would have mailed them off mindlessly, as >>4927658 suggests, without knowing the tape's potential, but there's no way he could have seen the tape to understand its potential and still have survived

>>4927674
>There's no way he would have mailed them off mindlessly, as >>4927658 suggests, without knowing the tape's potential
what

>>4927658
You may be. Orin mailed it to people he had reasons to despise, however neurotic.

>>4927681
why would he have sent these tapes to his father's enemies without knowing they were lethal? was he simply thinking "hey, I'll send a home video to this random friend of my father's, just for old time's sake :-----DDDD" ?

>>4927690
but then he would have mailed them mindfully, not mindlessly

>>4927681
Did anyone fall victim to the tape beforehand?
>>4927694
>>4927683
I suppose I was wrong about the mindlessness, but what about innocence?

>>4927702
>>4927694
why would he have mailed the tapes if he didn't know they would have killed the recipient? what other reason could there have been? srs question.

>>4927714
none

>>4927714
>why would he have mailed the tapes if he didn't know they would have killed the recipient?
Some non-murderous purpose. Maybe he didn't want to keep memories of his dead father whom he hated. Maybe JOI's wraith willed it. Could Orin have known that the tape was deadly?

>>4927739
>Could Orin have known that the tape was deadly?
Most readers of the book would say he should know the tape was deadly if he mailed it, whether the case was he did know or not. Logically, he would have to, would it not? Else the book would have seen killed every character for no reason whatever. Blind luck (or unluck as the case may be) is just simply not a reasonable plot device, especially when it's every character's map is very much on the line.

>>4927750
he* its**

>>4927739
>could Orin have known that the tape was deadly?
I don't have an answer for that. The only explanation I have is that DFW left a plothole in his book, which I realize is not a satisfactory explanation.

>Maybe he didn't want to keep memories of his dead father whom he hated
By all appearances he sent out multiple copies of "The Entertainment." He would have had to make duplicates of the master tape to do so, and preserve the master tape. And why would he have chosen that tape in particular to send, when his father made dozens of movies (the endnotes of which were my favorite part of IJ, a book I didn't care for as a whole)?

Though while typing this I realized that "The Entertainment" may have been the only one of Himself's films which featured Joelle, IIRC, so that alone may have been motive enough for Orin to send the tapes out. Still it would take a persuasive argument to explain why Orin avoided watching the tape himself, and why he would send the tape to his father's enemies simply because it featured Joelle.

>>4927750
>Most readers of the book would say he should know the tape was deadly if he mailed it, whether the case was he did know or not.
How could he have? What event lead to him knowing that?
> Logically, he would have to, would it not?
I feel like we're approaching this from opposite directions. You're probably right, but I want evidence.
>Blind luck (or unluck as the case may be) is just simply not a reasonable plot device
I don't care about how well or poorly the book is written. I care about what's actually in there.

We ought to just reread it, and find out more definitively.

>>4927759
I think my last sentence >>4927771 sums it up. I think we're all arguing from memories. I'm going to bed, but if the thread is still up tomorrow, I'd be happy to dig up some skulls with you.

>>4927759
Joelle was heavily featured in many of JOI's films for a year

I think that letting the reader know Orin knew abt the IJ vid woulda given away what he was doing, but the onus should be on the author to explain it nonetheless. I suspect the story is so fragmented and pomo because of its inconsistencies and lack of satisfactory explanations more than anything.

>>4927544
>question for that ass:

Lurker here. Watching this development for a while:

>>/lit/thread/4602334#p4606016

Presume you are looking for him. I hope he comes back. So bump.

The juicy thing is if this internet fight goes far enough /lit/ will have decoded teh most important thing to say about IJ. No real world scholar will be able to use the wraith narrators thing in peer review. The main avenue to canonization will be cut off. There can't be a bunch of much-cited articles to gain any momentum if /lit/ steals the thunder. Its like you guys are committing a literary murder of IJ. I'm hypnotized in slow motion.

>>4929434
This was the original hand grenade. He seems to be thinking it up as he goes. At one point it was
>all the characters are the dead narrators
but somewhere else it was
>Wraith Himself is the only narrator
in another place it was
>Wraith Himself and maybe some of Lyle

Or there may be more than one guy. The threads always get divided over it. So maybe others are posting their own versions.

>>/lit/thread/S4680563#p4689862