You can only post in this thread if you understood the ending

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I didn't!

>>7406557
Gately passes out and wakes up on the shore and the tide was way out.

Not really rocket science m8

>>7406566
I bet you also think Gately has never met Hal

>>7406570
The book ending has nothing to do with the ending of the overarching story. The end of the book is about Gately hitting his bottom

Protip: The last thing chronologically to take place during IJ was the conversation between Hal and James while playing a tennis match at the Whataburger. The Darkness was playing Hal but taken over by James' wraith at the time.

>>7406586
chronologically it would be Hal going full retard in the interview

>>7406557

this sounds like a dumb book

>>7406594
>>7406594
>>7406594

>>7406594
Good catch, almost forgot I was a dumbass for a second there.

The ending is the beginning

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>The wraith puts the DMZ on Hal's toothbrush (Hal is brain damaged from eating mold as a child and his father created DMZ in an attempt to reverse the effects)
>Hal starts tripping out
>Robotic and emotionless before, he gradually learns how to feel
>However, he is losing his ability to communicate
>Eventually his symptoms grow so severe that he's taken to the hospital, put in a bed next to Gately's
>Joelle visits Gately and recognizes Hal
>She tells them about Infinite Jest and how they desperately need to find it to prevent a "Continental Emergency"
>With John Wayne, who was an AFR spy (he later gets murdered by the AFR), they go to JOI's grave in Quebec
>They dig up Himself's grave
>It's too late, someone already took Infinite Jest (Orin dug it up first and sent out copies to Himself's enemies: the medical attache who fucked Avril, a bunch of film critics, etc, it's possible that the wraith made him do it)
>Orin is captured by the AFR and tortured into giving up the tape
>The AFR uses the tape to start a war between the USA and Canada, thus causing the dissolution of ONAN and the end of the Gentle administration
>Hal is completely gone; he cannot communicate at all
>All he can do now is tennis
>He looks forward to playing against Ortho Stice
>Stice is possessed by JOI, so the book ends with Hal finally connecting with his father in the only way he has left

Am I at least close?

>>7406650
you mean is http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend close? i highly doubt you got all that from your first read

>>7406659
To be honest I did re-read parts of it.

>>7406650
But anon, I thought DMZ was invented in the sixties. Wasn't James a teenager at that time?

>>7406628
woah

>>7406650
As someone who has never read a page of the book, this makes it sound like a fucking Mission Impossible film. Neurotoxins? Continental wars? Some kind of macguffin called Infinite Jest? I can't believe this is real.

>>7406924
It's all pretty much as he said it. It's a spy novel set in a scifi future where everything is foreground and every character, regardless of their proximity to the plot, gets equal weight. The primer on how to read it is included toward the end, explicated by a ghost speaking to a comatose drug addict by means of a Heisenbergian mind meld.

Totally on the level.

i really liked the martian, will i enjoy this book?

>>7406650
Something I forgot: the game of Eschaton, possibly influenced by the wraith, predicts nuclear war between the US and Canada. It's kind of like the Hamlet play-within-a-play of IJ.