/lit/ - Literature

first for Kate Gompert

Okay guys (and lurkers, I know there's fucktons of you out there), we need to have a discussion on Wallace's critique of postmodernism through the Marathe-Steeply conversation that ended on 321.

That was definitely one of the strongest arguments I've seen against postmodernity that doesn't revolve around some "muh tradition" standpoint. However, in my opinion the idea behind postmodernism is that we've all realized that the "loving father" Marathe mentioned (be it religion, the state, etc.) is a spook — a construct that stops us from doing what we want. Its nature isn't the source of absolute wisdom, because it is created by *us*. The only way to revert back to a state where we could sincerely follow our paternal guardian's orders is if we sincerely believed in his authority. But the collective consciousness has realized that authority was created by us and his nature was influenced by us.

I'm buttfuck tired right now so I apologize for any incoherence, but pls participate.

>>6772519
read A Supposedly Fun Things

sorry guys, i don't usually do this (talk on here about later parts of the book), but I just finished it and really have some "questions"

seriously, if you haven't read the book, don't mouse over this spoiler.

okay, so we know the wraith is JOI. what's his connection to Stice? why does he move the bed around? did he put DMZ on Hal's toothbrush? when? and the game where Stice almost beat hal, was it because he was "possessed" by JOI? and the seen with Gately and Hal (?) (and joelle?) digging up the corpse is so vague and quick, how in the hell are we supposed to get anything from that? let alone assume that Orin got there first and took the entertainment and mailed it to the medical attache, what the fuck?

Still slightly behind the schedule, but that part when Pemulis is describing the DMZ was interesting. Would any of you be willing to try it if it existed?

>>6773210

It actually exists.

>reference to the independence day weekend in todays reading

neat

>>6773615
There's a very small chance that anyone will be able to find it. I'd much rather do DMT anyway.

>>6773086
>okay, so we know the wraith is JOI
Yes
>what's his connection to Stice?
He is in the long process of possessing him to play a game of tennis with his son who he could never communicate with
>why does he move the bed around?
Likely JOI's spiritual presence fucking things up, I don't see anything intentional in it, though some of his other actions, like dropping the tripod in the woods for Mario seem wholly intentional
>did he put DMZ on Hal's toothbrush?
It is my opinion that he did not.
>when?
Never.
>and the game where Stice almost beat hal, was it because he was "possessed" by JOI?
No, that was Hal's marijuana withdrawal taking a toll on him.
>and the [scene] with Gately and Hal (?) (and joelle?) digging up the corpse is so vague and quick, how in the hell are we supposed to get anything from that?
You aren't supposed to get anything concrete, the underlying plot to Infinite Jest is ambiguous, and, in my opinion, largely unimportant. However, to clarify at least one understanding of the scene, they are digging up JOI's corpse to look for the Infinite Jest master tape, and it is then that Hal says they are too late.
>let alone assume that Orin got there first and took the entertainment and mailed it to the medical attache, what the fuck?
The copy of Infinite Jest the medical attache received was read-only, not the master tape, and sent by PYEU distribution, so while it comes from Arizona, it seems likely it was set up by James Incandenza to be discreetly sent by his private distribution company. I know some disagree with that, but it is my understanding that Orin has nothing to do with that copy. Later, when the AFR interrogate him, he seems to give up the location of the master tape (James' grave), which presumably prompts him to tell Hal and the gang to go get the tape first. The one gaping hole there aren't even theories to fill in, is how Hal, Gately, Wayne, and possibly Joelle assemble, and under what pretext.

>>6773615
>>6773709
Didn't know that, supposedly he was referring to a drug of a different name. Too scared to try DMT tbh. From what I've read of people's experiences, it's hard to distinguish what is real and what is pure imagination.

>>6774024
>The one gaping hole there aren't even theories to fill in, is how Hal, Gately, Wayne, and possibly Joelle assemble, and under what pretext.

They are kidnapped by the AFR. John Wayne is standing guard over them at the grave. On behalf of AFR. They are not seeking a master, they are seeking the antidote. It is inventoried in the casket in note 160. The Clipperton suicide film taken by Mario is the antidote. That's why it is "TOO LATE!" It is too late to find the antidote, to stop the imminent attack (Continental Emergency).

The abduction of Hal is all but described by the locker room "rumor" that the Quebec tennis team is some kind of special Olympic-ish group of adults in wheelchairs, which gets dismissed, and is the last we hear of it. Of course, as sharp readers, we know that Marathe and company have already described and actuated exactly that plan, because we are shown them hi-jacking the bus with the real tennis team on it, and are given the rubric for the decision to let them live or kill them all, which to the AFR, c'est la guerre. And we are given the motive for this plan of last resort to kidnap all the involved Incandenzas and anyone else involved at the tennis school.

The last remaining question is who got the antidote first, and since Disney Leith is the only one in the note 160 list free and able to navigate, his final narrative chronological whereabouts are the last tumbler in the lock.

>>6774024
lol this is all so wrong

guys the wraith doesnt "exist", its part of the joke that DFW is playing on you. The wraith is in all of us remember? JOI is in a sense, a stand in for the narrator, or even you "yourself/himself" as you read the book to yurself. Gett it?
The toothbrush thing is a metaphor for getting clean, hence why this is one of Hal's last scenes.
Remember Gately stickign the toothbrush up his butt in his first scene? Its a metaphor for teh trick DFW is playing on you (you will never truly be clean).
Then the DA at the ending forgiving him because o the rules of AA?
DFW is trying to get you to think about the relationship between substance abuse and entertainment as something you consume.
WHY DO YOU BRUSH YOUR TEETH?
think about it.
The bed being moved is a reference to death and life. You are born and die in beds (hospitals).
Ortho's whole character is kind of a reference to te monolith in 2001. Im tired of explaining this shit though you guys are fuckin retards.

>>6774246
>Talks to a character at length who has no idea he ever existed
>LOLHEDOESNTEXISTRETARD
Fucking dropped

>>6774258
jesus christ you fuckin retard
none of the characters exist yet somehow they talk right???
do you even understand meta at all?

>>6774267
Do you even know what you're saying at this point dude

>>6774271
at this point ive accepted your stupidity.

>>6774205
why would the AFR send them after the antidote and want to stop the continental emergency? if this is defection why would it be so long planned?

>>6774278
for all intents and purposes just forget abou the antitode, its a meta-concept that DFW is referring to, nothing to do with the actual story. If you pay attention to the context its mentioned in it becomes more clear.

>>6774272
>NONE OF THE CHARACTERS EXIST OMG DON'T YOU GET THAT THIS MEANS THE WRAITH DOESN'T EXIST EVEN HARDER
>Retard
>Retard
>Retard
>Retard

Lmfao. What a sad fucker you are. Are you so tremendously awful at communication due to having no friends?

>>6774286
fuck that, I want to hear this guy's theory

>>6774289
>not understanding this novel's self awareness.
This wraith concept is in a sense the last step in the hero's journey for you the reader, where he gets you to think about your own relationship with the wraith and the people around you
but hey this flew right over your head like DFW anticipated
so gj you failed
I just expect better of 4chan is all.
I understand most normies, like my friends, would never understand this shit

>>6774305
M8 no one cares about your autistic unprovable theory that makes no sense. Good luck being an angry self-important moron.

>>6774311
looooool

>>6774205
There must be a master already in the wild at the beginning of the timeline. The copies sent to Berkeley and the medical attache had to have come from a master not in JOI's grave. So either Orin had it, or Avril had it. The AZ postmark over-rides the Poor Yorick label - Orin could have done that given his access to all things JOI. Avril had no motive. The wraith could have done it, but that would put the master in his editing studios, which we never visit in the book. Orin is the only one with means motive and opportunity to make copies from the master and send them from AZ. When he is being tortured in the giant glass, it is obvious "Do it to her" refers to "the Swiss hand model" who is Luria P, who is standing right there watching, in his plain sight, and the point which she predicted about him saying that is that he still doesn't realize, due to his seducer's arrogance, that she was the one who gave him up. He thinks she is still really his lover. His torture gives the AFR their master. Which enables them to make copies that Rodney Tine can have replaced in copies of a Fully Functional Phil PSA, which he has trained the nation's children to trust above all other cartridges.

Which makes the need for an antidote much more urgent for the parties involved than a master. AFR needs to have it to guarantee the attack cannot be undone. OUS needs it to inoculate against the damage. In any event, by the time of the exhumation of JOI, AFR already has a master.

If Orin had exhumed JOI much earlier, like before the timeline begins, then he would have both a master and the antidote. There is nothing to suggest that he could not have held back the possession of the antidote during his torture, or that he told AFR that the antidote was in the grave in order to send them on a wild goose chase, possibly in the false belief he could get away, but he also had no reason to believe they wouldn't hold him captive until they returned, at which point they would know he lied, and presumably not be too happy about that.

So the more conformant plot line is that Disney Leith dug up the antidote on instructions from Avril.

>>6774311
look up the definition of meta.
Try to open your mind to the fact that other minds exist beside your own stupid one.
You really are pretty dumb dude.

>>6774278
>
>>6774330

>>6774324
>shit out incoherent nonsense about characters who interact not existing
>back it up with more incoherent nonsense about none of the characters existing
>perpetually mad over nothing, as you were last night
L septuple-o L indeed

>>6774330
>The copies sent to Berkeley and the medical attache had to have come from a master not in JOI's grave.
Why must they have? The copy was sent the day JOI died. He clearly had it arranged to be sent through PYEU himself, so he just made the copy of his own master and then killed himself and had the master buried with him afterward. The attache is described as Avril's affair that bothered him the most. This was his last act before death, preparing the Attache's murder.

>>6774340
they all exist inside of the narrator (DFW's head) tardo.
The book is deeply meta. Hes aware that the DENSITY of the book will fool you into thinking this is some traditional story but its not.
THIS IS THE JOKE.

>>6774348
so you're basically pulling "what if ash is in a coma" out of your gaping asshole and vomiting the word meta over and over until I stop replying. Topkek.

this thread went to shit

>>6774352
i give up.
Theres a diference between childrens programming and a book like this.
but you wouldnt know lol

>>6774358
This faggot doesn't even realize Harry Potter is hallucinating due to abuse and neglect. So tired of explaining this to retards tbh.

>>6774362
>childrens book
youre not ready for this bubba

>>6774362
you're being baited hard retard.

>>6774362
read Gravitys Rainbow, Lot 49 and White Noise
then get back to me like you know shit about post modern literature.

>>6774362
Seriously though dude, "none of the characters exist because its in DFWs head and this means the wraith doesn't exist in the context of the narrative because reasons BTW meta" is not coherent. You can't explain this without getting super pissed because you're grasping at straws and have nothing.

>>6774377
The book isnt supposed to make sense in the end, its supposed to make you "think"
Sorry thats so hard for you

>>6774383
>The book isnt supposed to make sense in the end
Well hey thanks for admitting defeat. By the way the author being literally in the narratibe dead fits with this little attempt to save face. Glad we hammered this out.
>>6774372
Go back and read his original list of theories. He clearly just cares far too much with no/little supporting evidence.

>>6774389
it was part of his intention.
Read the wiki page maybe? He even admitted this to Franzen.

The other theories are just made-up theories dude. Obviously he would have written a real ending if he wanted you to know what happened. He wants you to fill in te blanks.

>>6774396
No I know it's not supposed to be totally coherent but saying this when being pressed for a explanation of what you're trying to spin is a ridiculous cop out.

>>6774405
well, thats teh joke.
congrats maybe youll get it this time

>>6774405
i think youre deeply under-estimating how much smarter and well-read DFW was compared to you

Smart people understand this book, trust me

>>6774343
But where did the other copies come from?

The medical attache is killed during YDAU. Himself an heroed April 1, Year of the Trial Sized Dove Bar, five years earlier.

Gately burgled DuPlessis' copy in the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland, four years after JOI's suicide.

The copies that turned up in Berkeley, Louisiana, and Tempe are listed as having happened within two years of YDAU, which is at least three years after JOI's suicide.

So that's five copies that were not sent by himself on his last day on Earth.

>>6774466
>>6774343
Plus, "three members of the Academy of D.A.S. had received unlabelled copies in the mail" also within two years of YDAU, which makes the recent count of copies at least eight.

>>6774466
Now there is a real trivia question.

The word "Louisiana" appears in the whole text once - the location of a Steeply Marathe meeting on an oil platform.

The town of New Iberia, LA is mentioned on one page - giving the location of an appearance of a copy of IJ V.

Who did Orin mean to de-map in Louisiana?

Also - who was the Patient Zero for IJ V? Who first discovered its power? Two possibilities:

1. Some minor character who worked with JOI, who would likely be mentioned in the filmography, disappeared or was institutionalized during the Year of the Trial Sized Dove Bar, or

2. JOI was Patient Zero, but was able to cure himself using the Clipperton film, already extant in or around Year of the Whopper or Tucks Medicated Pad; or because he knew the trick of the lenses, was able to view the film during editing in such a way as to judge the effect without becoming subject to it. Which would yield the culpability path of communication of the secret of IJ V as JOI>Avril>Orin.

>>6774610
jesus christ this is such bullshit.

FORGET ABOU THE CLIPPERTON FILM BEING THE ANTIDOTE

the book is complicated, but its not that complicated. Its basically just DFW crucifying himself

>>6772519
It seems you've thought about it. Alright, I'll engage:

In Wallace's essay E Pluribus Unum he writes about how postmodern fiction influenced television. His thesis is that while postmodern fiction had the intention of challenging the "constructions" and assumptions that guided traditional fiction by bringing attention, it unfortunately had the ultimate effect of becoming self-referential to the point of meaninglessness.

That is to say, postmmodernism is all about "look at you, sitting here, reading this book, right now," in the book itself. The problem with that is it doesn't lead to anything conclusive or "real". If you wanted to learn what the world is truly like, you're not going to learn that by reading books that critique and solely draw attention to the world of books.

>>6775067
>That is to say, postmmodernism is all about "look at you, sitting here, reading this book, right now," in the book itself. The problem with that is it doesn't lead to anything conclusive or "real".

Is this really all you got out of like Gravity's Rainbow or J R or something? Damn.

has anyone read this?

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/images/theses/badger%20michael%20-%20an%20exhaustive%20essay%20of%20pages%20380-442.pdf

if you haven't only do so after reading the novel

>>6772145
>tfw reading through with you guys before I start college
>tfw I'm going to be another white dude majoring in English that worships David Foster Wallace

>>6774957
"I would like to thank the Millennial Academy of Narcissistic Arts And Sciences, along with my mommy and daddy, and of course my big black bull, and my Boy Scout Troop leader...."

>>6775254
where are you going? it probably won't be the college you expect. nobody will even know who wallace is and their favorite books will be heart of darkness or the great gatsby.

>>6775289
what shitty junior college did you attend?

>>6775297
Actually he just might be right.
>>6775289
I'm going to university of Utah

>>6775067

Right, postmodernism criticizes the search for truth as something rooted in subjectivity, and doesn't replace it with anything. But does Wallace really advocate returning to a state of self-delusion?

>>6774957
Oh, look. Shitposting temper tantrum absent anything resembling evidence of actually reading the book. Your bait smells like rotten chicken livers soaked in pickle juice. pic related.

>>6775067
>The problem with that is it doesn't lead to anything conclusive or "real"

two things:
how is that a problem? how is anything other than postmodernism leading to something real?

>>6775254
no one reads DFW in college, I go to a liberal arts school and the only other people who have read IJ graduated. people in college just pretty much read heart of darkness and think they like shakespeare

>>6775254
>>6775289
>>6775674
I know a few currently studying English majors who read DFW and worship him, but the same is true for John Green

Day's comments on cliches reminded me a lot of Wallace's "This is Water" speech and other comments i've seen of his

>>6775716
yeah i (>>6775674) do go to a school of only 2k people so its also a way small sample, but really there were only 5 or 6 people who had read any DFW as of last year. theres also a ton of people into john green in college and everyone talks about how they 'want' to read hemmingway and GRRM

>>6775746
>>6775674
>>6775289
Fuck, I don't know if I want to go to college anymore

>>6773086
so hal can't be in the gravedigging scene right? hal's fucked up from the DMZ he took the day before whataburger and wouldn't be able to talk, so it has to be Mario, Gately and Joelle right? that is if Hal was either poisoned by JOI's ghost with DMZ (i highly doubt) or decided to take DMZ before the whataburger as planned which fried his brain combined with marijuana withdrawal,

>>6775768
if you plan on being an english major it won't be that bad, i'm the one who goes to a liberal arts school and no one reads dfw or anything (but we're also in the south so its not the most culturally oriented school, ie frat culture is huge) but if you plan on being an english major you'll meet a lot of professors and probably have a really tight group of friends who are interested in this

>>6775790
Yeah I am majoring in English so this is good news, thanks anon.

why don't you fucking people learn how to use spoiler tags? seriously... I'm at pg. 650 but the reading group is only a couple hundred pages in, don't fucking talk about end-of-book shit in these threads, or if you have to, at least fucking label and spoiler tag them, cunts.

>>6775878
this thank you.

>>6774957
I think The Clipperton film makes sense being the rumored antidote if any was intended, but I do not think within the context of the book that it was meant to actually work. In my opinion, any antidote at all would be thematically weak and go in the face of everything else the book says about addiction and the energy and mental strength required to go against it.

Why do people even bring up marihuana withdrawal as a possible explanation for Hal's state?
First off that makes no sense and totally ignores the significance of the wraith
Also I'm the angry guy because I can't stand that no one understands what dfw meant with this wraith shit.
I mean honestly has no one considered the turn of the screws influence on this book?

>>6775777
Jesus Christ u don't get it all

>>6775716
This is water is practically lifted from the book.
It's kinda sad how ppl miss this

>>6777092
I mean I think it's just because they don't want to accept/didn't think about the toothbrush/DMZthing. I have seen people mention the weed in conjunction with him eating the mold-on-mold as a potential alternative

>>6777107
I think it's kind of a thematic bridge between this and The Pale King, although I know a lot of people listen to that without reading his books

>>6775777
It is Hal at the grave, as given. There is no esoteric glyphology about that.

Hal's condition is progressive. Notice how he describes the onset of his symptoms as he's watching videos that last night. He is kidnapped by the AFR right before the last tennis tournament which includes a locker room rumor of adult Special Olympic-ish players in wheelchairs. That's the AFR enacting their final most desperate plan to kidnap Hal.

Hal at that point, the grave site, is also not described as particularly lucid. "TOO LATE" in shrieking panic isn't exactly a discourse on Justinian Erotica.

So yes. It was Hal. He was going downhill but still able to communicate in two-word sentences. An ability which went away as he worsened over the next at least nine months.

http://www.academia.edu/274996/The_Work_of_Play_In_David_Foster_Wallaces_Infinite_Jest

Very interesting read but it has spoilers so watch out.

>>6775777
The DMZ goes missing on the 17th, and the guys planned on taking it on the 20th. Also, Hal says to Pemulis on the 18th that he's not going to take the DMZ anymore (unaware of course that it's missing) because his marijuana withdrawal is fucking him up enough. So Hal must have taken the DMZ unintentionally, or had a sudden change of heart. (but that still asks the question of where the DMZ is and how Hal would get it back)

>>6775777
The DMZ goes missing on the 17th, and the guys planned on taking it on the 20th. Also, Hal says to Pemulis on the 18th that he's not going to take the DMZ anymore (unaware of course that it's missing) because his marijuana withdrawal is fucking him up enough. So Hal must have taken the DMZ unintentionally, or had a sudden change of heart. (but that still asks the question of where the DMZ is and how Hal would get it back)

>>6777092
Why do people even bring up the wraith as a possible explanation for Hal's state?
First off that makes no sense and totally ignores the significance of the marijuana withdrawal
Also I'm the angry guy because I can't stand that no one understands what dfw meant with this addiction shit.
I mean honestly has no one considered real life's influence on this book?

>>6774348
please instead of trollfighting with the other anon JUST EXPLAIN IN DEPTH WHAT YOU MEAN for fucks sake. There are some of us who want to learn. If IJ is some meta-message hidden inside a 'conventional' story, and if DFW deliberately obscured this, A) what is the message (I'm assuming it's a statement on entertainment and inescapable addiction) and B) why does he obscure it?

>>6779299
Not him but I'd start by saying Infinite Jest doesn't have anything near a conventional story or narrative and there are many messages to it, some more meta than others

If I were to sum up the central point, the best I could say would be "try to choose your addictions/passions" and he makes the book difficult because for many people their key addictions/passions in life are extremely easy sources of entertainment like television, drugs, sports, etc

This could also be seen as an endorsement of literature on a meta level, him offering an alternative to these easy entertainments which is why (end speculation/spoilers) Infinite Jest, the book, can be seen as the antidote for Infinite Jest, the film

>>6779078
very fitting with today's longwinded description of Orin's relationships with tennis and football

>>6779349
dammit, i missed the first weeks of this,
ill catch up soon

>>6779299
I'm not him. He's got the kernel, but lacks the vocab.

The fixation of pomo crit is "Who is the narrator" or "Is it even possible to have an authentic narrator?" Because pomochniks think that the novel is a fundamentally flawed form for this crack in its artifice.

1st p POV narrators are "inauthentic" because you know, to a certainty, that the author (IRL) is not "I" telling you the story. Fourth wall problem. 2nd POV, and 3rd omni and limited all share some quality of being visibly "fake" in this sense.

The Vics tried to address this by couching all their classics (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.) in framed narratives, basically the 19th C. version of found-footage.

DFW was convinced the most clever solution, couched in pomo crits' own punny joke, was to make the narrator dead (See Barthes, "IS THE AUTHOR DEAD?" 1967).

The late sections of IJ take great pains to explain the wraith's abilities. Which include omniscient mind reading, omnipotent 2-way telepathy, omnipotent time travel, and limited agency over physical objects. Wraiths also experience time at breakneck speed, which causes them to jump around in time, place, and POV a lot, since they get bored taking three hours for one of our minutes to go by. The word "Heisenbergian" is deployed.

Towards the end, Gately goes on this internal reverie about Cheers! the sticom. This reverie, we are to understand, is largely guided by wraith JOI. Because you can never tell the difference between your own thoughts and wraith-sent thoughts you mistake for your own (we are told).

So, what would the written-recorded thoughts of such an entity look like?

They would be jumbled in time. They would b e fractured in POV. They would jump back and forth. They would be easily distracted for long periods on details, due to their omnisicient powers of observation. They would often sound like the internal voice of the character whose mind is being read at that moment. The important details of their lives plot would be buried amongst long discursive observations of things like mattress casters rolling in circles.

Sound familiar?

IJ is narrated, in its entirety, by wraith JOI, "forcing" the words into your brain. POMO narrator problem solved. The author is dead.

>>6779349
None of that has to do with the guy who sperged the fuck out and failed to ever sufficiently explain why what he was saying should be considered
>The wraith doesn't exist god you retards
>"why"
>BECAUSE NOTHING EXISTS RETARD
>"why"
>THE BOOK ISN'T COHERENT RETARD

>>6779390
I agree. I like his original points that there is an antidote, and that it's a macguffin and the book is representative of an antidote but he freaked the fuck out for no reason and didn't justify or expand on a lot of his points, seemed like he thought people were attacking him for no reason

>>6779349
you're blowing my mind frank. And, thanks, man. It makes sense that DFW made his work hard for the reader, he's always done that. Force us to invest our own thought, reclaim our mind, if you will.
I've always wondered about why film and novel share the title. Seeing one as the antidote to the other makes a certain amount of sense.

>>6779450
It really fits once you realize (more end spoilers/speculation) that JOI, the wraith, is the implied narrator or author of Infinite Jest, the book

It fits his style described in things like endnote 61 and makes perfect sense with the wraith's monologues later in the book

It also adds a layer of cheakiness with the Death of the Author and the whole postmodern idea

>>6779387
Dude, are you writing papers about this shit? Because that is a brilliant theory/analysis.
Seriously, you're making my day here.

>>6779387
There are several instances where wraith JOI basically tortures Gately in the hospital by telepathically screaming big long words into Gately's head. Words he knows Gately knows he doesn't know, and has never heard before.

Like wraith JOI screams "LATRODECTUS MACTANS", into Gately's mind, and Gately has the experience of thinking, in his own mind's voice, "LACTRODECTUS MACTANS," and then thinking, "what the fuck does that even mean and why would I think that?"

These are meant to be the informing anecdotes about how the narrator-to-reader communication of IJ functions. The whole novel is being read into your mind by wraith JOI, who, true to form, is torturing you woith big long words you've never heard before, and finding yourself often wondering "what the fuck does that even mean," just like Gately.

These passages are, actually, DFW mocking every reader of IJ as being as stupid as Gately. His whole fucking program is meta-trolling mockery of every human being he could cram into the novel's universe. He hated you me and the human race so much that the only solution of sufficient ontic annihilative power was to eradicate the entire universe and every living thing in it. First by ending the world in IJ, and then, by killing himself - the ultimate act of genocide.

>>6779475
>papers

No. In fact, it is my deeply held wish that no one ever devote so much as one more electron of serious academic attention to this book ever again.
Here's why:
>>6779477

>>6779461
All I can say is holy shit. I'm gonna have to reread IJ soon, looking for the parralels between narrator/wraith/DFW.
Cheers mate.
One more thing though. There seems to be a certain amount of (i'm sasuming intended) self-contradiction here. The author is dead is being used as an excuse to broadcast underlying meanings (the opposite of the author being dead, no?); IJ the film is cancelled out by IJ the book.

>>6779494
Yeah there are inevitably a lot of contradictions with any theory, which is why I don't focus on the specifics of the plot much and like to think about the novel on a grander scale and things that fit more thematically rather than a whodunit approach some take to the ambiguities of the text

A lot of this has been cleared up for me during my reread with this group and thinking about what others have said, and I really think the novel functions a lot more as a cohesive whole on the second read

>>6779487
I'm not sure man. Seriously, having read a lot of DFW's work it seems unlikely that his final statement would be so destructive. He wanted IJ to be sad, but not destructive. And I don't think he hated you me and the human race so much. Lots of his characters are treated with a great amount of love and compassion throughout his work. Shit, look at the ending of Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.

>>6779461
Exactly my interpretation >>6774389
and why I have absolutely no fucking clue what that guy was on about

>tfw losing interest

>>6779487
i think he wanted to confront us with the despair of it all, sure, but i dont think he wanted to 'destroy the world'
that said, i agree that the book's secrets are deeply depressing. But art is catharsis through confrontation, no? DFW was as interested in catharsis as in anything else.
The Truth Will Set You Free, But Only When It's Done With You.

>>6779475
>>6779477
>>6779487
See for example the long dense passage about "figurants" which term wraith JOI gives to Gately telepathically to define characters in sitcoms whose mouths move in the background of scenes, but no noise comes out. See phrases like "concessions to realism" and "dramatic pathos of a figurant" and "narrative periphery" and "crafted imitation of aural chaos" and "real life's egalitarian babble."

The wraith is spelling out IJ's narrative program. In detail.

"meaningful central narrative conversations"
"incredibly dull and self-conscious and irritating"
"heavy-art directorial pose instead of radical realism"

It's all right there.

>>6779521
>>6779534
For years I wanted to believe, guys. I'm Mulder twenty years later. The truth is not out there. Franzen had his number. But he still has to worry about his own legacy, so he's too polite to the survivors to strip off the varnish. But I know he knows. I've got a bet with two friends from college who beat this horse dead with me back then that Franzen's estate will publish the truth about DFW after Franzen's death. Most relished $50 I will ever make.

>>6779521
>>6779534
>>6779561
And let's look at Orin one more time. Serial pussy hound. Self-absorbed asshole. Cretinous human being all around. Creator of Strategies to X Subjects. So selfish that all he could think to say when being tortured was "Do it to her," because, you know, spreading the torture around is what would make him feel better. This is all judged by fans to be a really rather authentic portrayal of that personality type. I agree. It is. Because DFW knew exactly what that personality type felt like. The boundaries of his contempt were cosmic in scale. "Torture" is perhaps the one best synoptic description of both the method and motive of IJ.

>>6779561
I guess we gotta admit that we don't know and... think for ourselves....
oh boy did we just cum full circle.
That said, I feel for you man. Respect for the effort you've put into this book. I do hope that one day we really know, though I don't believe DFW was such a simple character that something as bland as hatred for the human race was his main motivation.

>>6779591
>do it to her
Pretty sure that was meant to be a 1984 joke.

>>6779591
I would still substitute catharsis for torture. That DFW hated Orin is clear, but that Orin isn't all of DFW, that there was more to DFW than there could ever have been to Orin, also seems clear as the blue fucking sky.

>>6779607
it was meant to be a 1984 reference, obviously, but only cause it fit Orin's personality.

And, guys, about that 'DFW is trying to tell you that you're stupid, that you are Gately' and so on... not really. DFW was a genuine and troubled person, and it's JOI who is meant to be the narrator, it's all his PoV and his way to describe everything. It even differs from Hal's.

Obviously the descriptions of IJ VI are meant to describe IJ. But that's if readers weren't at first too sure whether DFW was aware of the way we feel while reading it. He was. It was kind of a disclaimer, as in: 'yes, this is literary fiction, with meta elements, self-references and all this shit, and you got to keep going a bit.' Nothing beyond that.

>>6779689
i'm not sure about 'nothing beyond that', but other than that
THANK YOU, THIS

>>6779696
Yeah, I have probably put the 'nothing' in there cause I'm bit tired.

seriously fuck you guys. everybody who posts spoilers about the end of this book can eat shit, this thread is for people following the daily reading schedule, fuck you for talking about end-book shit without using spoiler tags.
Does this board not have any mods? If there are any mods here, why do they let all this spoiler-fagging run rampant and unchecked?
Anyway in case you didn't get it from the beginning: FUCK YOU assholes that spoil the ending and ending-related theories for those of us that are only like 200 pgs in. EAT SHIT.

Reading the chapter with madame psychosis doing the radio show (way behind)...infuriating to read. Is the studio supposed to be a brain or something?

>>6780112
No it just looks like one.
OK i'm just gonna explain this 'cause i'm proud as fuck that I figured it out by myself.
Madame Psychosis is a pun on Metempsychosis. Google it.
Now that you've googled it, think about it. A faceless voice on the radio, which you hear in your head... Almost like the voice of... the novel...

>>6779487

Okay, I'll just gonna steal your interpretations as my own and create an essay to add in the upcomming Harold Bloom's Modern Critical Views: Infinite Jest (I plan on changing his mind on the book as well, make him see its genuis, although we already know he secretly realizes that and is just mad at endnote 366).

>>6779689
I see what you're getting at with Orin being the DFW's-self-hatred-incarnate character, but he does plenty of that in the short stories and Brief Interviews and never really goes beyond that - Infinite Jest goes way, way beyond 'waah I suck'.

>>6780668
Yep. It's also a reference to Ulysses, and specifically to Molly Bloom, who is universally desired by men (except by Thersites, who just calls her fat) but never quite described physically by Joyce.

Is Joelle trying to kill herself because of drug addiction, Orin or Himself?

Can someone do my homework for me and comment on the Hamlet allusions? Surely they can't be more than simple references.

>>6779931

If it makes you feel any better, not much of any of this is really much of a spoiler, any more than me telling you the Sun is going to go down is going to 'spoil' the sunset. If you read some of this stuff and it helps you notice the significance of some things that, on first read, didn't seem important to me, then you come out ahead. It's not like someone telling you Bruce Willis is dead the whole time when you sit down to watch The 6th Sense.

Sorry to anyone who hasn't seen The 6th Sense.

But I don't post some of the things I want to share because I don't know how to do that black-box-over-text thing.

>>6780668
It makes sense. The studio is/looks like a brain or is at least described anatomically when you first meet her. She also lists of all these diseases and conditions people in the book actually have. She is addressing the character of the novel

"The depressed person then killed himself, in a way calculated to inflict maximum pain on those he loved most, and we who loved him were left feeling angry and betrayed. Betrayed not merely by the failure of our investment of love but by the way in which his suicide took the person away from us and made him into a very public legend. People who had never read his fiction, or had never even heard of him, read his Kenyon College commencement address in the Wall Street Journal and mourned the loss of a great and gentle soul. A literary establishment that had never so much as short-listed one of his books for a national prize now united to declare him a lost national treasure. Of course, he was a national treasure, and, being a writer, he didn’t “belong” to his readers any less than to me. But if you happened to know that his actual character was more complex and dubious than he was getting credit for, and if you also knew that he was more lovable—funnier, sillier, needier, more poignantly at war with his demons, more lost, more childishly transparent in his lies and inconsistencies—than the benignant and morally clairvoyant artist/saint that had been made of him, it was still hard not to feel wounded by the part of him that had chosen the adulation of strangers over the love of the people closest to him."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/18/farther-away-jonathan-franzen

"The people who knew David least well are most likely to speak of him in saintly terms. What makes this especially strange is the near-perfect absence, in his fiction, of ordinary love. Close loving relationships, which for most of us are a foundational source of meaning, have no standing in the Wallace fictional universe. What we get, instead, are characters keeping their heartless compulsions secret from those who love them; characters scheming to appear loving or to prove to themselves that what feels like love is really just disguised self-interest; or, at most, characters directing an abstract or spiritual love toward somebody profoundly repellent—the cranial-fluid-dripping wife in “Infinite Jest,” the psychopath in the last of the interviews with hideous men. David’s fiction is populated with dissemblers and manipulators and emotional isolates, and yet the people who had only glancing or formal contact with him took his rather laborious hyper-considerateness and moral wisdom at face value."

"At the level of content, he gave us the worst of himself: he laid out, with an intensity of self-scrutiny worthy of comparison to Kafka and Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky, the extremes of his own narcissism, misogyny, compulsiveness, self-deception, dehumanizing moralism and theologizing, doubt in the possibility of love, and entrapment in footnotes-within-footnotes self-consciousness. At the level of form and intention, however, this very cataloguing of despair about his own authentic goodness is received by the reader as a gift of authentic goodness: we feel the love in the fact of his art, and we love him for it."

[is anyone else really embarrassed that captcha can't tell the difference between ribs and steak?]

"On the title page of one of them, I found the traced outline of his hand; on the title page of the other was an outline of an erection so huge that it ran off the page, annotated with a little arrow and the remark “scale 100%.” I once heard him enthusiastically describe, in the presence of a girl he was dating, someone else’s girlfriend as his “paragon of womanhood.” David’s girl did a wonderfully slow double take and said, “What?” Whereupon David, whose vocabulary was as large as anybody’s in the Western Hemisphere, took a deep breath and, letting it out, said, “I’m suddenly realizing that I’ve never actually known what the word ‘paragon’ means.”"

"The need to have something apart from other people, the need for a secret, the need for some last-ditch narcissistic validation of the self’s primacy, and then the voluptuously self-hating anticipation of the last grand score, and the final severing of contact with the world that would deny you the enjoyment of your self-involved pleasure: I can follow David there."

"Buy the print »

It is, admittedly, harder to connect with the infantile rage and displaced homicidal impulses visible in certain particulars of his death. But even here I can discern a funhouse-mirror Wallace logic, a perverse sort of yearning for intellectual honesty and consistency. To deserve the death sentence he’d passed on himself, the execution of the sentence had to be deeply injurious to someone. To prove once and for all that he truly didn’t deserve to be loved, it was necessary to betray as hideously as possible those who loved him best, by killing himself at home and making them firsthand witnesses to his act. "

"What I find hard to believe is that he didn’t have very bad reasons as well. Flickering beneath his beautiful moral intelligence and his lovable human weakness was the old addict’s consciousness, the secret self, which, after decades of suppression by the Nardil, finally glimpsed its chance to break free and have its suicidal way."

>>6781121
nah man it doesn't make me feel any better that you're too fucking stupid to know how to use spoiler tags (which, by the way, is just [ spoiler ] blahblahblah [ /spoiler ] without the spaces).
And it's not like knowing the sun will rise. Shit starts vague and is gradually pieced together in the later pages, despite the circular time of the narrative. I have already seen a sunset and sunrise, just as you've already read the entire book.
Seriously man not only are you a tripfag, you're also a total moron. Good job.

Here's the reading schedule with dates, for those still following it.

new theory
hal steals the dmz

>>6783424
Thanks for this anon.

>>6780773
This is why moot was against the idea of archives. As long as this thread is archived, the idea is theft-proof. Besides, what kind of academic would dare replicate an idea that had first appeared on 4chan?

That's basically why I'm here. To inoculate IJ against institutional scholarship.

About 6 months ago I got halfway through IJ then some stuff happened and I stopped reading... Do you think I should pick up where I left off or start it over?

So am I actually expected to waste my time with footnote 110 (the 17 page one). Is it ok if I skip it?

>>6785724
The longer ones are all important.

>>6785733
fuck dude...

>>6783424
>tfw started 2 days early and finished on day 16

>tfw 2 only days behind but 50+ pages

At least I have good stuff to catch up on...

When one of the footnotes refers you to a later footnote which is related to a part of the book you haven't read yet, do you guys just skip it and wait till the actual book refers you to that section or just read it anyway?

>>6785724
>>6785737
that footnote's great though, why would you want to?

>>6786857
>not just following the footnote's instructions

pretty sure you're talking about endnote 304, which is one of the best. It'll also give you a better understanding of some shit throughout the book, but it doesn't really "spoil" anything.

i dont think im enjoying this as much as you guys. endnote 110 was a pain to get through for me. im losing interest rapidly

As someone with no knowledge or prior interest in this book/author, can you recommend it to me in a brief post? (Or not brief)

was the character of mario inspired by jimmy from south park?

>>6773210
DMT is DMZ noob

>>6787574
http://harpers.org/blog/2008/09/david-foster-wallace/
http://flavorwire.com/170083/a-david-foster-wallace-primer
These links will give you an overview of his work. Would start with his essays tbh, then if you like it explore more

>>6787604
South Park came out over a year and a half after IJ hit the shelves. So the question is was Jimmy based on Mario. The answer is no.

>>6787710
Extract from pg. 170: "The incredibly potent DMZ is apparently classed as a para-methoxylated amphetamine but really it looks to Pemulis from his slow and tortured survey of the MED.COM's monographs more like more similar to the anticholinergic-deliriant class, way more powerful than mescaline or MDA or DMA or TMA or MDMA or DOM or STP or the I.V.-ingestible DMT…"

>>6787604
I'm enjoying Mario as a character so far.

>the way he religiously listens to Madame Psychosis' radio shows
>his interest in filming everything, yet being slightly naive towards film

>endnote 123

>>6786864
>>6785733
I've read it now and it was totally worth it

>>6787557
back to Harry Potter and Steven King then faggot

Charles Travis comes off as a real piece of shit to me. Does anybody else get this impression of him?

>>6787917
Its the fucking Mean Value Theorem dude

Can we do this for the count of monte cristo or War and Peace next. I love this group discussion and I can actually get through other books while tackling this giant. I feel like Im getting way more out of this book this way too

>>6788050
Thanks, Mike. By the way, your cap is crooked.

>>6788121
Seconding for War and Peace

>>6788121
i was actually planning on doing one for Gravity's Rainbow
considering GR has a shit ton of references and stuff that go over everyone's heads a group discussion may help everyone understand the refs better

Is 'Mikey' on page like 958 supposed to be a future Michael Pemulis?

The fact that the chapter near the end where everyone is in the locker room getting ready for the invitational is narrated from a first-person perspective other than Hals supports the "JOI is the narrator" theory. This is on about page 966

I just got to page 312, after the section about Poutrincourt's class and the long endnote. It's amazing how Wallace weaves in so many real details about Quebec in with his fantasy worldbuilding but I also felt Pemulis's annoyance and irritation at their conversation never seeming to end

>>6788458
If I remember correctly, that's supposed to be him as a child

>>6775491
Dfw has cited guys like Dostoevsky. So called "regular" books that say, show the value of real love, coming of age etc. Trite perhaps, but we can always push our values further. Postmodernism doesn't propose useful virtues or give a meaningful experience..

i still don't understand why all the stuff with fackleman etc. even exists. what the fuck?

>>6788012
i'm pretty sure he IS a piece of shit

>>6788399

GR is probably the best choice because it's one of those books here that's mentioned (or memed) more than actually discussed. I'd like for us to get to know the book better.

It's pretty shitty that we had a couple GOAT scenes back to back at a time when it seems almost everyone is behind

>>6790746
he should have made the 3rd and 4th of July break days. Most people were getting drunk and shooting fireworks rather than reading

>>6790864
I'd rather the 4th and 5th personally but I completely agree with the sentiment, I was busy not reading as well

>>6788399
I would join GR for sure. I don't think I would be able to keep interest alone

>>6789414
Yeah also the continued part of Marathe & Steeply weaved together with the long endnote and Poutrincourt's class.

>>6790746
I don't know if you read that part of no, but I'll ask anyway.
I've come to guess that Joelle will soon be a resident at the Ennet House, correct? So at the end of her last scene she gets caught doing coke right? I was so tired reading that part and I'm not sure I fully understood the context and what was happening.

>>6791133
I was pretty tired when reading that part too. Somehow I was under the impression that she was trying to smoke as much crack cocaine as possible to kill herself? Was also thinking that she'll end up in Ennet.

>>6789753
Aside from filling out Gately's recompense and remorse, there is a cartridge copy, stolen from DuPlessis, which that passage and event sequence fills out to get that copy to the Antitois shop.

It also provides a couple of little Easter eggs that complete the picture of wraith JOI as the narrator, most notably including the mention, on the beach, of a Coca Cola can labeled in Japanese, which wraith JOI much earlier retrieved from out of time and space sequence to place on Gately's vitals monitor in his hospital room.

Can someone tell me in what chapter/time/page the child abuse scene happens?

>>6792197
Pemulis', or Raquel Welch?

>>6792246
I can't recall, it's the one where the boy pretends to sleep and makes cartoon-snoze noises

>>6792251
Well, in any event, Raquel Welch, which involves two sisters, starts two-thirds down page 370, and includes a description of one of the sisters breathing; Matty Pemulis treatment by his and Mike's father begins on page 682, Man-O-War Grille.

>>6791133
>>6791235
Both of these are true

much as it pains me to say so, I predict some misguided anon will bump this thread in the next 8 minutes.

Failure to do so would be the best thing you could do for literature in English, though I know the imp of the perverse will force you to do otherwise.

>>6794561
How did you not bump it?

>>6794632
I am the wraith of James Orin Incandenza. I can do anything.

>>6794632
>>6794728
I used my Heisenbergian time travel powers to downvote this subreddit.

has anyone finished yet?

>>6795370
finished what?

What day are we on?

>>6797501

>>6797834
wow I'm blind, thanks

>>6797501
Download (>>6783424) for reference

>>6797501
Download (>>6783424) for reference

>>6795370
Just finished.
Super disappointed, really lame ending.

>>6799805
Which page do you consider the "end?"

>>6799821
I get the whole pre-ending post-ending concept, circular narrative, etc. But there weren't nearly enough nuggets of info related to the whataburger invitational, the dmz, or really many of the other loose ends
Just pissed that I read over 1000 pages to be left without enough information, ya know?

>>6799857
Probably do yourself a favor and never read anything pomo again
>tfw 100 pages behind
welp time to skim like the dickens

>>6799857
also the fact that like 2/3 of the last 150-200 pages is about Don Gately, and largely about his past
I had to wade through a bunch of info that could've been spread out through the text, all while dying for more info on the parts of the story I care more about, and I'm rewarded with nothing.
Basically the last 200 pages took me from thinking IJ was the fabled "Great American Novel" for the 1990's-2000's generation, to being glad that DFW killed himself.
Seriously, what an asshole.

>>6799857
Yes. I also would assert that the narrative craftsmanship is flawed to the obscure. Yet, which page number do you consider to be the final page number?

Because I've been there. And I've also been past there. The tide was way way out is the greatest red herring of the last 20 years.

It's in there. Is the thing. All I want to know is what numbered page you think was the final page number.

>>6799857
A lot of it is left open to reader interpretation, but if you want what is most likely the "correct" solution, I would read Aaron Schwartz's theory. It all, more or less, makes sense.

I felt cheated after I finished IJ too, but after a while of thinking about it I'm 100% ok with how it ended.

>>6799900
Organization-wise, the last page is 981 (1079 if you count endnotes).
Chronologically, the last pages are the first pages.
But the "ending" for me is the shit between 11/20 YDAU and the Year of Glad scene.
What does it matter what page number I consider the end? My complaint is that so many of the scenes I expected to be key are only portrayed in single sentences or paragraphs within other chunks of text.
I'm not even irritated that those scenes aren't portrayed in vivid detail and length, just that there aren't enough little references to them throughout the book.

>>6799857
it probably would've taken at least 500 more pages to wrap up all the things you're complaining about. a lot of people on this thread have posted some really excellent theories and resources you should check out if you feel upset.
>>6774330
>>6779387

http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf

http://www.academia.edu/274996/The_Work_of_Play_In_David_Foster_Wallaces_Infinite_Jest

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/images/theses/badger%20michael%20-%20an%20exhaustive%20essay%20of%20pages%20380-442.pdf

>>6799935
Because--

"There is an ending as far as I’m concerned. Certain kinds of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an “end” can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you."

And

"Plot wise, the book doesn’t come to a resolution. But if the readers perceive it as me giving them the finger, then I haven’t done my job. On the surface it might seem like it just stops. But it’s supposed to stop and then kind of hum and project. Musically and emotionally, it’s a pitch that seemed right."

The end of IJ is the interview with Molly Notkin, the torture of Orin, the fever dreams of Don Gately, the technical interview of Joelle, and the scene of Rodney Tine's Boston meeting review of the Fully Functional Phil PSA. The year of Glad chapter is just frosting on the cake. Gately's suspended beach ending is chronologically displaced on purpose. I think you fall into the "failed for you" category.

Which is not an insult. Your experience entitles you to evangelize the essential stupidity of this novel, but on a more plebian basis. Run with that.

>>6799857
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend

spoilers

tfw you first realise Joelle is the P.G.O.A.T.For some reason I initially assumed she was a middle aged women

I'm 450 pages in, and I don't feel like reading it any more. Would it be a shame to quit now?

I find nearly everything in the novel so grating and uninteresting. DFW is even more overt than DeLillo with his themes...
Should I power through it? Is there a turning point in the novel?

I got through Gravity's Rainbow, Moby-Dick, and other long novels without issue, but this is just a fatiguing read.

>>6801303
drop it then. There's too little time on this planet and too much literature to read to suffer through a book you dont like

>>6801448
But the real question is, when he inevitably drops it, should he lie and tell people he got through it, or should he be honest in his failure?

Shouldn't there be a new thread created each day and the old one deleted? Why do we still have a new thread which says "day 20"?

Just trying to understand how it works...

spoiler

>>6801267
what? isnt she introduced as the PGOAT right away? its not a secret or anything

>>6801303
It's ok, not everyone can handle Infinite Jest. Atleast you tried!

>>6801638
kek, for some reason I was under the impression that she was called that ironically...

>>6802108
well... it's complicated. i'm not really sure where you are, so i won't say

>>6801638
yeah, pretty early on it directly links them I think

>>6802360
I'm going back to re-read the whole party section.

>>6803355
look for that line where the party-goers mention Berkeley. Not really PGOAT related, but interesting nugget.

>>6801453
this tbh

>>6801488
>i'm too stupid to keep up with the discourse provided through the thread

>>6796441
our ice cream sundaes

>>6772145
nah

>>6801488
>>6783424
Download this m85

i'll miss you /dfw/

>>6805805
the day i finished the threads started to slow
this is the part where you realize i was samefagging 8 way conversations to sort out my thoughts while finishinh the book for the second time and this thread has really only been me you and the other guy

I'm actually enjoying the tennis more after reading Infinite Jest

Which one shall I buy?

>>6806751
Right hand copy tbh, that's the one I have.

>>6806932
thanks.

>>6806751
Left. The one on the right is very small, pulp paper back size. The typeface is miniscule.

I've read the book in both formats and the one on the left is much better in my opinion.

>>6806932
Why do you say this? Have you ever read the left one? I think a lot of people don't realize that the copies are physically different, its not just a cover difference.

I just passed through the tattoo obsession scene, I'm really behind ain't I? Considering reading alone and just get back here when I finish it.

>>6807052
I always had the impression that the left hand copy was big and bulky? Admittedly I'm in the UK, so that's the cover we got.

>>6807086
It is larger but with that comes a larger typeface which I found to be very helpful. Also, the copy on the left fall apart quicker as it's spine is thicker. (All my personal experience)

>>6807069
ya you're like a week or more behind I think

So why do they call it de-mapping again? I feel like he might have explained already but I forgot.

Next, the names of the years. Those are taken from Mario's film right? or are they related to something bigger?

>>6807310

Map is just a slang term they use in IJ's fictional future to mean face/life/body.

The name of the years are an aspect subsidized time -- in this future, companies are able to 'buy' the name of the year as a method of advertising.

>>6775297
I went to Berkeley and >>6775289 is like 70% right. Most people aren't smart or well read at all

>Hal and Orin's underwhelming stature in comparison to that of the Moms and JOI proves that all three of JOI's ostensible children were in fact the products of Mrs.Inc and the diminutive C.T's pseudo-incestuous union (Avril's height is listed around 6'5", and IIRC JOI standing properly erect was described as having almost a head of height on her, meaning he was likely around 6'10"-ish; Hal at age 17 is only about 6'0". In addition, C.T. reflects to himself with uncertainty about the paternity of Mario.)
>JOI/Wraith as the implied narrator is a vehicle for direct interface between DFW and the reader's thoughts
>DFW = JOI
>JOI = cuck
>DFW = cuck
>yfw

This is water

>>6807069
I'm around 100 pages behind schedule, due to being busy with various things. So you're not alone.

>>6807783
>>>/tv/

>>6807341
wouldn't be surprised if that actually started happening tbh

>>6807910
it's never more than 20 pages a day. You don't have an hour to spend. That should be your before bed reading

Hal being at the grave-site isn't debatable you morons.

It's literally in the first chapter. Of all the tings to guess and pick at this is one of the few things that are concrete.

huh

Like IJ, Frank Miller’s "Give Me Liberty" also features a president elected to more than two terms governing in the third millennium and a surgeon general obsessed with cleanliness. The headline referencing “SIN CITY” on p. 406 of IJ recalls another work of Miller’s which was made into a film. Alan Moore’s "Watchmen" (which like "Give Me Liberty" is drawn by Dave Gibbons) begins with blood on a smiley face.

>There is no choice after the first viewing, but 'to be this pleasurably entertained in the first place. This is still a choice, no? Sacred to the viewing self, and free? No? Yes?' (Maranthe)

>>6812785
what point do you wish to make, anon?

>>6812813
The conversation between Steeply and Maranthe could just as easily be about IJ the book as IJ the samizdat. We each choose the amount of pain (work) we can tolerate for the pleasure of being entertained by the book.

>>6812835
o dear. But IJ the book offers us slightly more than entertainment, does it not?

>>6812869
what more is there than nonstop pleasure to the maximal degree

>>6812900
wallace forces us to think about a bunch of things in order to make sense of his book. it's not just about pleasure; he is confronting us with le choice re: what about and how we want to think. (O, kn this sense: yes, Marathe´s statement can be seen as a challenge to the reader of IJ.)

>>6809430
I went and visited some friends for a week and didn't have much time to read during that time, almost caught up now though.

When he sees the screen at the radio station in Note 180, does Mario make the connection that Madame Psychosis is the same "apparently mute veiled graduate-intern” (p. 315) for whom he used to fetch Big Red Soda Water while working with JOI?

>>6815370
he do not.
it's one of the book's many tragic failures to recognize one another, where people seem to hide from those they love, come to think of it.

>>6772152
Kate Gompert a shit
SHIT
H
I
T

>>6815370
Also, does Joelle veil herself and join the UHID because she's too beautiful for anyone to approach her?

>>6817237
maybe you should keep reading and find out

>>6817237
all will be revealed. the book holds you in suspense for a reason.
(man, is anybody else struck by what an incredibly sad character Joelle really is? and Orion? how they're both just so fucking trapped and lonely? I mean, Orin calls his baby brother with pathetic confessions at three in the morning, and clearly never felt capable or entitled to give a fuck about anyone except... well, maybe Joelle. Maybe. And maybe his dad. Maaaybe. Also this is not a spoiler, you faggots.)

_

>>6807052
There have been several reports of printing errors in the one on the left.

New thread
>>6817676

>>6820519
Why? This one is 50+ away from the bump limit and there are only a few posts a day