/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7033171]

Memes aside what's your interpretation of the end of infinite jest ? Spoilers obviously

[Anonymous No.7033175]

For those of you unfamiliar with this idea of how it pans out

[Anonymous No.7033194]

>>7033171
it ended with the guy pissing himself and his friends got their mouth or eyes sown up can't remember which it was fukken boring man

[Anonymous No.7033198]

JOI possessing The Darkness, finally finding a way to communicate with Hal
JOI contacts Gately knowing Hal will show up near him
Hal takes Peemster's DMZ
Hal is hospitalized after using DMZ, gets ptu next to Gately
Gately debriefs Hal on their mission from JOI
The Master copy isn't in the grave when Hal and Gately go to dig it up
Hal spasms at the interview from stress/ptsd/dmz damage
Cartridge is dispersed
WW3 with Canada starts
ONAN dissolved

I don't see it as an apocalyptic ending though

[Anonymous No.7033253]

>>7033198
You know you're a serial masturbator when you read JOI as jerk off instructions. Sigh.

[Anonymous No.7033342]

What happens to orin? Who is "her"? I need to know

[Anonymous No.7033349]

>>7033342
Orin gets interrogated by AFR as to where Himself's buried tapes are

'Her' is presumably Joelle

[Anonymous No.7033353]

How fucking based is Gately

[Anonymous No.7033359]

>>7033349
Obviously but does he die? Was it him definitively who sent the one to the Atache? Did he fuck the moms?

[Anonymous No.7033364]

>>7033175
the shape of this diagram makes no god damned sense
the time axis is the vertical, that much I understand. now why not simply use one line for ETA, one for the Ennet House and one for ONAN, with horizontals across plot the intersections. and the main lines finishing with JOI's head exhumation.

[Anonymous No.7033368]

>>7033359
Don't have the book on hand but iirc there is a mention of Orin during Hal's admission interview so he presumably lived.
It is strongly implied that Avril fucked the attache and Orin sent him a copy of the tape as revenge.

[Anonymous No.7033561]

>>7033349
How the fuck is her Joelle. Chronologically she's at the hospital with Gately while Orin is being tortured.

[Anonymous No.7033589]

>>7033359
No, yes, yes.

Orin isn't dead because he's mentioned in the beginning of the book without any reference to his death. He was the one sending out the tapes to his father's enemy's (slash mother's lovers) and it's likely he gave up the tape so they let him go. It's implied that he probably fucked the moms. (John Wayne in the football uniform, etc.)

[Anonymous No.7033599]

>>7033353
Gately is the man.

[Anonymous No.7033622]

>>7033364
Because the book's cyclical structure is a major part of its design; using straight lines wouldn't capture that.

[Anonymous No.7033628]

>>7033171
Anybody have any thoughts on the actual end, though? I get that DFW wanted us to piece what we could together of the end (and probably start over at YG), but I'm still wondering why he leaves us with the image of Gately's breathing hole in the ceiling, and then Gately on the beach. Wasn't there some other image of a breathing hole somewhere in Infinite Jest...?

[Anonymous No.7033655]

>>7033628
Maybe vaguely comparable to the face in the floor Hal used to see?

[Anonymous No.7033671]

>>7033655
Well, i mean, a breathing hole in the ceiling sounds to me a lot like a metaphor for a bottomless pit, an unfillable emptiness... So Gately lying under that in the throes of suffering and addiction make some sense. Also because Gately (IIRC) is a kid again in the final sequence, bringing the book symbolically full circle. But it still feels incomplete.
Why send Gately out to the beach/into the sea?

[Anonymous No.7033693]

>>7033671
>Last night, I was treading through random pages and was lucky enough to catch something peculiar. At the top of page 833, Gately noted that a can of coke “smells a little funny, like low tide, the can.” Note the mention of low tide. Further down the page, we read “This is the only time he’s ever been struck dumb except for a brief but nasty bout of pleuritic laryngitis he’d had when he was twenty-four and sleeping on the cold beach up in Gloucester”. And voila, that is it. The last sentence in Infinite Jest may not be the esoteric metaphor some of us thought it was (Gately dies, Gately re-birth etc.) – it’s simply Gately waking up on the beach with a bad case of laryngitis after passing out, likely after being dumped there by Bobby C and crew.

>DFW even goes out of his way to tell you Gately was 24 when he woke up on the beach with laryngitis. Assuming that the very last sentence in the book is taking place shortly after Bobby C and crew raid the apartment, Gately was 24 at this time. We know this because on page 917, it’s mentioned that “Fackelmann had been fraudulently getting over on Whitney Sorkin…didn’t even find out until the not at all small scam with Eighties Bill and Sixties Bob, which took place during the three months Gately was out on bail…”. Bobby C pays Fackelmann and Gately a visit (the last scene in the book) right after the Fackelmann scam was brought to light. Gately is on bail at the time. On page 463 we see “At twenty-four he’d done 17 months at Billerica for assaulting two bouncers”. Therefore, Gately was 24 in the very last scene when he wakes up on the beach, and 24 when he suffered from the laryngitis – it’s the same scene.

>EDIT: This is not to say that this last sentence is not inferring to more than its literal translation. I have heard a number of good interpretations of this last sentence that, I think, can still hold true.

Would post the source but 4chan thinks it's spam.

[Anonymous No.7033719]

>>7033671
I think mostly its a symbol about Gately internalizing limits.

Wittgenstein: “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”

Hamlet: "Bound me up in a nutshell, and I would be a king of infinite space / were it not that I had bad dreams."

Consider, for example Gately's realization that in order to endure pain - including the desire for drugs - all that's necessary is to "hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and just live there" (page 859). Ultimately why the book is uplifting is because it is both interminable - the beginning is the end - but it also has an ending.

[Anonymous No.7033722]

>>7033693
This is the literal translation, I still think it makes sense to attach it to the themes of the book, centrally addiction.

[Anonymous No.7033743]

>>7033719
>>7033693
hey, anons. you guys rock. thanks,
the guy who asked

So, Gately, in the hospital, learning to Abide (beat the Lebowski by two years to that line, GJ DFW), ends up transported back in time (coming, in a sense, full circle, infinite, etc.), hunkered down in his little hole facing eternity, after which he wakes up with laryngitis, mute, unable to communicate... like Hal.
Still feels a tad incomplete but we're getting there.

[Anonymous No.7033748]

>>7033743
i should specify that i'm mixing the book's 'actual' (gately shot -> gately hospital -> gately + hal find JOI's head) timeline with the narrative timeline (Gately in hospital -> gately dreams -> gately has vision of Too Late! -> gately wakes up again as a baby in crib -> gately wakes up again on the beach as a 24 year old) skipping back and forth through the chronology here.

[Anonymous No.7033758]

>>7033743
I wonder how Hal and Gately are able to get their plans in order when Hal joins him in the hospital, given how at that point Hal has already started to become externally incomprehensible and Gately might still be on the ventilator.

>tfw captcha asked me to select all images with wheelchairs

[Anonymous No.7033787]

>>7033743
Gately's retains his ability to communicate. I think a big part of IJ is Gately's approach to life and language juxtaposed with Hal's. We can read in auto-biography here - it's clear DFW thought AA followers had internalized some true secret to life, and that that brought them some peace that inaccessible to someone like himself or Hal, who is constantly rationalizing (this is maybe similar to early Van Gogh's obsession with the faces of painters). Hal's rational-mastering approach to language is ultimately not commensurable with the reality of language as use and results in his being unable to communicate: Gately, on the other hand, is able to come to terms with his limitations and rather than trying to dominate and master language as a rational system, can live within its limits, thus his little waking up on the beach moment. (Perhaps the juxtaposition of Hal: Gately is mirrored by Early Wittgenstein: Late Wittgenstein.)

[Anonymous No.7033872]

>>7033787
love the notes on Wittgenstein etc.

I'd also like to note that, boyoboy, remember the scene where Gately and Joelle sit up late at night discussing whether Gately's as dumb as he thinks he is, who's hiding from whom and what exactly, etc., where Gately at some point snaps and more or less refuses to think about stuff--- that in this scene we can see how Gately's approach to life saves him from the beautifully disfigured, the veil of secrecy, the unanswerable question, etc. -- but that it also costs him his chance at communicating meaningfully with a woman he seems to kindof love. So--- I'm not sure Gately's entirely capable of communicating. I think he just has different problems than Hal - opposite, I guess. I think the book's point about communication is just like its point about addiciton: that everyone has some limits, that it's never entirely possible to get what you want.

[Anonymous No.7033882]

>>7033758
pretty easily, I think. Hal can still talk by this point. And didn't someone leave good Mr. Gately the Abider a pen and legal pad?

[Anonymous No.7034153]

>>7033622
there is no cyclical structure in this book champ, that thing you're parroting is about GR, not IJ. learn your meme trilogy please. anyway the book is linear, the chapters are scrambled and the end of the story is not explicitely narrated, but it's linear alright

[Anonymous No.7034198]

>>7033349
its either Luria or Avril... I like to side with Avril because I don't see how Orin would believe Luria has any stake in the matter, it would have to be his incestuous mother

[Anonymous No.7034225]

>>7033758
Hal's loss of communication occurs over a few months, him yelling "Too Late! Too Late" shows his loss for putting sentences together but not his entire loss of communication

[Anonymous No.7034259]

>>7033198
Best interpretation.

How I would end the HBO Infinite Jest series.

[Anonymous No.7034284]

>>7033599
YFW Gately is basically described as having a He-Man haircut

[Anonymous No.7034292]

>>7034153
The first chapter is the chronological end of the book, champ. You can make the claim that most of the book is structured in an orderly fashion, but that fact alone repudiates conventional linearity. The book's different sections have been arranged specifically to model a Sierpinski gasket.

[Anonymous No.7035364]

>God tier
Donald Fucking Gately
Mario
JOI
>great tier
Orin Inc Sr
Hal
JVD
Pemulis
>Good tier
Orin
Steeply
Marathe
>decent tier
Everyone else
>shit tier
Poor tony

[Anonymous No.7035386]

>>7035364
Poor tony is so fucking pointless also who was Mikey at the end? What wish is purpose other than hilarity?

[Anonymous No.7035618]

>>7035386
it ties into the fractal nature of the structure: poor tony and mikey being connected into the narrative with everyone else as their personal narratives are revealed that share themes to the rest of the book, obviously addiction, isolation, depression, parent-child conflicts, etc.

[Anonymous No.7035766]

>>7035386
Poor tony's accolyte, "matty" is a homosexual prostitute and junkie. Suffered child abuse, comes from a very low place on the social ladder.

He's michael pemulis brother.

That makes the downfall of the Pemster a very fucking tragic story. Essentially his tennis was the only thing that tethered him to a potentially good life. Since was into drugs one can imagine how fucking miserable his life was going to be after being kicked out of ETA.
Also the fact that he exited the story very vaguely through an endnote makes his fate pretty dark: this is how you go back to poverty after fucking up and no one cares.

[Anonymous No.7035767]

>>7035386
I figured Mikey was a throwaway character being used to "sign off" Ennet house. His story is not as bad as some of the others (like the chick with the dehydrated denial-baby she walked around with) and thus leaves Ennet house with a glimmer of hope.

[Anonymous No.7035776]

>>7035766
I love your commentary on Matty and Mike Pemulis, but I think the guy was asking about the very last bit taking place at Ennet house, which is just a guy named Mikey talking about his "Cunt sister."

[Anonymous No.7035799]

>>7033758
Joelle has to come into the room to visit Gately, but also recognize Hal there. Then begins their misguided journey to JOI's grave. Which is sort of like the DFW equivalent of a journey to middle earth, and probably why he didn't end the book on that note.

[Anonymous No.7035840]

>>7035776
Oh right,

I just reread the passage.
Seems old, with a child who was recently in a cast and seems friends with "Vinnie" and "Tommy E".
Can anyone recall a young character with a cast? an ETA student perhaps?

[Anonymous No.7035874]

Who dies?

[Anonymous No.7035901]

>>7035874
Clipperton, Eric.
Everyone will agree on that one.

[Anonymous No.7036492]

>>7034198
Orin was abducted by the "puptative Swiss hand model, who was Luria Perec. Orin is so full of himself, that when he sees her standing right there outside the tumbler watching him get covered with cockroaches, he still thinks she's a Swiss hand model. He can't grasp that she doesn't worship his cock. He thinks she's been captured too. So, "Do it to her!" It's Luria. The Avril=Luria thing is short bus potato level brain dead.

[Anonymous No.7036554]

[Anonymous No.7036975]

Does anyone else ever think about how books are far more free to be gruesome or sexually explicit than any other medium? Like even infinite jest would have to be hugely toned down to ever be released as film. I know it's because it is down to imagination rather than visuals but I feel it feels more real to me on paper.

[Anonymous No.7037104]

>>7033364
Because nobody who would make a diagram like that could possibly understand how to express himself to others in a way that makes sense to anybody but himself, due to intense autism.

[Anonymous No.7037113]

>>7034292
So go back to your original point and explain how it can't be demonstrated with straight lines, you smelly poop.

[Anonymous No.7037117]

>>7036975
That's because nobody reads books, so no one cares.

[Anonymous No.7037153]

>>7037113
The point was never that it can't be demonstrated, it was that doing so would gloss over a unique and important aspect of the book's construction.

[Anonymous No.7037173]

>>7037153
Your imagination is too small if you think it can't. Dream big, anon.

[Anonymous No.7037182]

>>7037173
How about you draw it then?

[Anonymous No.7038181]

>>7036975
That scene where Lucien is killed by the AFR was slightly too vividly portrayed in my mind...

[Anonymous No.7038207]

So, is it a given that Joelle was actually disfigured? Or is the ambiguous nature of her story part of the intrigue.

Stranglely enough, this girl on /fa/ tells a story very similar to Joelle >>>/fa/10308562

[Anonymous No.7038323]

>>7038207
>someone once said that they'd like to splash acid on my face so I'd know what it's like to be ugly

Spookeh

[Anonymous No.7040061]

So the AFR got the master copy in the end? Did they release it to the public?

[Anonymous No.7040134]

>>7040061
It's implied that some sort of international conflict then began, judging by the military jet Hal sees flying from south to north as he's being brought to the ER.

[Anonymous No.7040143]

>>7040134
They need a military jet for terrorists in wheelchairs?

[Anonymous No.7040193]

>>7040143
I think the presumption is that the dissemination of the Entertainment killed the Gentle administration and ended subsidized time, and that a subsequent conflict escalated. I forget whether ONAN's dissolution is mentioned at some point as well.

[Anonymous No.7040241]

Has anybody else actually read it chronologically? I just finished reading it this way. I have read it 3 times before in the order it was meant to be read in, but this time I followed this guide http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/images/theses/chronijfinal1.3.pdf and I found it to be very rewarding.

[Anonymous No.7040245]

>>7040193
If the Gentle administration is killed and ONAN is dissolved, who is leading the assault against AFR?

[Anonymous No.7040277]

>>7040245
I thought of it as similar to the start of World War I; an independent politically-motivated group of radicals carry out an act of terrorism for their own desires, which ends up setting off war between larger global powers.

[Anonymous No.7040924]

>>7040245
>>7040277
>>7040277
A lot of the motivation for the armed conflict between USA and Canada is given in Mario's film abount the formation and ongoing souring relations of ONAN (itself an inside joke about masturbation - the anon who thought he was shitposting about JOI reading as jerk off instructions was closer to a real theme than he thought).

Mario's film includes information that:

-ONAN replaces NATO as USA's main mutual defence treaty. 385, 391

-Gentle agrees to the removal of NATO nukes from Canadian soil. 386

-Those nukes are not removed after all. 391, 392

-They are instead deployed just over the border in North Dakota. 392

-Gentle is a paranoid hypocondriac. various 390-420

-Gentle is emotionally unstable. 406

-Gentle is threatening nuclear detonations if Canada does not comply. 407

-Gentle has lost his mind. 407

The standdard pomo sophistry that "but it's all made up. Mario's film is just a puppet show. It's all unreliable" is cancelled not only by dozens of other exchanges between other characters on the same topics, but also by the prior assertion of wraith JOI as the novel's sincere and factually objective 3rdPOVomni narrator.

Gentle is shown to be lunatic enough to argue at length about the taxpayer funded expense of flipping the USA's entire nuclear arsenal upside down in their silos so that they can be destroyed, eliminating the nuclear deterrent of the newly formed ONAN (do you doubt its existence?) before Russian and Chinese aggressors.

If your author does not intend all that to be significant foreshadowing to the novel's conclusion, then why is it there?

Empty comedy?

A cop out.

[Anonymous No.7040936]

Why did Madame Psychosis read seemingly meaningless stuff on air? Is there significance to her name being the same for that of DMZ? Perhaps relating to the effect of the drug…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcGr7XVlIEs

[Anonymous No.7041467]

>>7040936
This is oddly seductive...

>tfw you'll never hear the real MP or see the PGOAT

[Anonymous No.7041486]

>>7041467

Good. Having my P Terminal stimulated so that I turn into a hedonistic vegetable would be miserable

[Anonymous No.7041552]

>>7041486
I meant the radio rather than the entertainment. I wonder if we will see an equivalent of the film Infinite Jest within our life times. I imagine the way in which virtual reality hardware will develop could create such a scenario, with people preferring the virtual world/game to their actual real world. Plus the increasing toxicity of the planet, which was portrayed well in the book.

[Anonymous No.7043535]

Is one of the reasons for Hal being so absent and encased in his mind throughout the university admissions interview, partly because at ETA he'd been obsessed over the lexical semantics in too much of an analytical and abstract way (fueled by his Marijuana thinking, followed by the cold reality of his sober existence - potentially over analysed during the use of DMZ, which he'd already become more aware of how he was presenting himself to other people with the facial expressions etc.).

[Anonymous No.7044239]

>>7043535
It isn't that Hal doesn't speak, he physically cannot. The DMZ Hal took, compounded with the latent mold he ingested, somehow fucked his ability to speak.

[Anonymous No.7044273]

>>7034259
welll thats what happened so...

[Anonymous No.7044277]

>>7035776
I dont really wanna spoil it but it has to do with the conceptual idea behind "accomplice!"

thats one u gotta thnk about

[Anonymous No.7044545]

>>7044239
Yeah, it's that idea that DFW used a lot of how we're all trapped in our heads with the only way to vaguely communicate our ideas is to use this agreed upon system of sounds. I've had experiences like this really bad when I did psychedelic drugs, as you actually notice the delay between hearing stuff and seeing it happen, which caused an extreme anxiety at how we're never fully in the present with other people.