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/lit/ - Literature

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8389416 No.8389416 [Reply] [Original]

I just finished Infinite Jest. Anyone care to explain the significance of the final scene? Are they making Fackleman watch the Entertainment? Wasn't this several years before its creation?

>> No.8389423

Yeah

>> No.8389470

>>8389416
It's where everything refracts into madness and infinity. Is gately dying by resisting the medication with this strange fever dream being what he sees while he dies in the hospital, does he literally wash up on the shore, are they all watching the entertainment, is IJ a book about a movie starring gately, and etc... Think of the two chinks with the two mirrors with gately in between. Really though it's about how whatever you use to escape from life will eat you alive as will the cure. He resists the drugs and it kills him, he accepts the drugs and he goes back on all of the progress hes made. It's not supposed to make sense on purpose

>> No.8389480

>>8389470
Read the first chapter. Hal refers to Gately, Gately can't be dying since the first chapter is chronologically last.

>> No.8389499

>>8389416
It's when Gately hit rock bottom, which spurred him toward recovery from his addiction. I thought it was sort of a parallel to his physical condition; he was completely broken, turning down medication that was going to keep debilitating pain away for the sake of all the work he'd done to stay clean. It seems like that's Gately's physical "rock bottom," so to speak, in parallel with his rock bottom as a junkie degenerate piece of garbage (i.e., the whole Fackelman situation).

It makes it clear that Gately is going to be fine; he's hit the bottom and now he can start recovering, like he did from the Demerol addiction.

>> No.8389504

How does Hal meet Gatley, and why is John Wayne with them when they're digging up James Inc? Is this every alluded to other than that one sentence at the beginning of the book and Gatleys dream towards the end?

>> No.8389522

>>8389480
There isnt any chronological order of story. He purposefully dead ends these theories at every turn in service of the fact he wants you to take only the language of the book as fact and fulfillment. Gately very well could have died, he could have lived, it ultimately doesn't matter to the purpose of the story, a point dfw is making

>> No.8389534

>>8389522
HMMM...

but how do you explain
> I think of John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year's WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head.

>> No.8389545

>>8389522
Also, the dated sections and the list of years about halfway through the book with Year of Glad last, and the first chapter being the only one dated that?

>> No.8389573

>>8389545
>>8389534
Yes I know what it says. He wants you to think of rings and infinity as a linguistic concept, not a physical one pertaining to the structure of the book. He includes many other examples that contradict your claims. Re-read the ending. Why is facklemann or whoever it was in a directors chair? He has thousands of these contradictions throughout. Remember, he loves Wittgenstein

>> No.8389604

>>8389573
I don't have the book on me, but I'll re-read it with this in mind; remember though that the ending scene is Gately's semiconscious remembrances while he's potentially going to die (although I really think he doesn't), so why shouldn't Fackelmann be on a director's chair?

Wallace said in interviews, also, that he tried to model IJ like Gaddis's works so that it demanded you reread it and make sense of what was thrown at you in the beginning and only later explained, and also that the plotlines were supposed to converge after the end for the attentive reader; in other words, there's an ending, it's just not there.

"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."

You're smart, but I also think you're being a little artsy-fartsy and not admitting Wallace also wanted to have some fun with the plot.

>> No.8389760

>>8389504
One theory goes that Hal is taken to the hospital sometime before the AFR crash the gala and put in the same room as Gately, and Joelle recognizes him when she goes back there.

>> No.8390193

new sincerity bump

>> No.8390714

whoa whaaat?