Thread For People Who Have Actually Read INFINITE JEST

Orin was just too busy chasing tail and having mental breakdowns to know what the fuck was going on. Daddy Stork was the real mastermind, and everybody's already dead.

>>9442177

Orin stole the master copy from his father’s grave and was the one who distributed to his J.O.I’s enemies tho. He’s the one behind the dissemination.

>>9442169

Why was Gottfried in the rocket?

I'm currently reading it and more than halfway through and it's nice to see everything come together. The first half just felt so disjointed without random events happening here and there but now it's really starting to feel like it's all tied to one main narrative. I'm starting to see why there's so much praise for it.

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>>9442193

>>9442169
I think DFW is largely overrated.

If you read Underworld and Gravity' Rainbow, IJ is essentially obsolete. And both of those novels do it better.

The most evil character is clearly Troeltsch for being responsible for getting Pemulis expelled.

>>9442611
even the worst passages in infinite jest (and underworld for that matter) are better than 6 pages of diving into a negro toilet filled with shit for a harmonica

GR is /b/ incarnate

>>9442637
pemulis will be fine
r-right?

>>9442647
Clearly you never did the Kenosha Kid

>>9442185
True, but he was forced to by the AFR. Recall the scene where he is tortured by cockroaches in the big glass cup. He is just a tool of the AFR.

>>9442708
he was doing that before they caught up with him

>>9442557
>everything come together
>halfway

Bruh

>>9442730
no, he was just sending it out to people he didn't liike.
The AFR had it mass-distributed.

also you could argue that Orin was under his father's influence when we was seeking revenge. so there's that. (not that it's really saying much)

>>9442732
Meant to say it's starting to come together.

>>9442746
spoilers: it never really does.
the big pay-off is almost like an off-screen event and the story doesn't really end.
the finale of teh sopranos clearly copied the idea, a reference even being thrown into TPK with Toni Ware's mom's death (being so similar to how tony kills Chrissy). It's complicated

>>9442193
because the true swartchgarrat must go to the moon and never return

>>9442611
I honestly think it's right up there with those novels, not to mention the fact that underworld is a pretty simple and incomparable book to GR other than the whole "muh pomo" thing

>>9442637
Blaming Troeltsch is just babytown. Really, juvenile reading.

>>9442884
>not realizing the AFR and Orin are just puppets in the hands of Troeltsch who is trying to bring the overall quality of sports journalism down via a complex, devilish plan to become the undisputed GOAT of commentating

did you even read the book mang?

>>9442169
"Help wanted"

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>the novel's discussion centers entirely around understanding the plot that was too poorly written to follow

You guys really want to like this book, huh

>>9442901
That was hilarious. I gigglekekked for a minute.
>>9442918
People have questions first about such things. Then you get to the rest after. You're ten posts in. Ease up.

I'm reading "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" and it sort of bothers me how much of IJ is just straight non-fiction. Really makes his holding up of Don Gately even less interesting.

>>9442557
i just finished it for the first time last night and it was honestly unironically the best book ive ever read. dont put too much faith on anything coming together though

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Bear with me guys, it's been almost ten years since I last read it.

I liked the book but what was up with that random "black slang" chapter in the beginning? I don't remember it having any significance on the story and it almost put me off the book altogether

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>>9443047
that part also threw me off. i have no idea about its relevance.
another part that threw me off was at the very end, the speaker at an AA meeting talking about not being allowed to see his kid. There was only like 20 pages left and i was just thinking "stop now! youre not gonna have enough time to wrap up the plot!"
little did i know...

also no one has posted this pic yet and i feel its necessary to a DFW thread

To be perfectly honest, I don't think Wittgenstein would be good on Jeopardy

>>9443047
It's something that should have been cut. Wallace literally only put it in because at the end of the process he realized that there weren't any black perspectives in the book.

>>9443061
Ya i have this question as well. In a thread some weeks ago, an anon asked if that was Pemulis future.
Definitely not, but I'm not sure what it is. It can't be just another "dude addiction lmao" example so late in the book.

>>9443108
well he really nailed it with that part

>>9443108
I remember being very off-put by it because it's not even how black Americans actually talk
I live in Atlanta and you can absolutely tell when somebody's making fun of the dialect and when somebody actually understands it because it's very internally consistent

>>9442637
troeltsch is probably unironically my favorite character. the guy was pure gold in every scene.

>>9443150
Everyone knows that, except Dave of course

>>9443021
did you read the beginning again?
>>9443061
>>9443124
>>9443047
do you guys remember the chapter where someone is talking about a movie where all the characters' conversations are given equal volume and no one is given priority? i think that's what dfw was doing with all the seemingly random characters. he was giving them each equal importance in the book.

>>9443184
What a brain blast dude

>>9442185
where did you guys read all the parts that happened in year of glad?
all i can find are the first couple chapters with hal in arizona and the locker room. other than that there's the scene at the end where gately dreams of people digging up Himself's head and the mastercopy is already gone and orin is trapped by the AFR in a glass box.
i think i missed a few chapters somewhere.

>>9443205
So what is not in there

>>9442740
> giving it to just a few people
> it totally won't end up in the hands of others.

>>9443047
i read someone's comment on that saying that it was supposed to be someone that is mentally disabled rather than a black person. it never mentions that they are black.

>>9443338
Someone should have said that to Sean Pratt

>>9443150
i live in NJ, right next to Newark and my high school was 60% black and i can promise you that is EXACTLY what black people speak like

>>9443184
ok, now im going to go read the beginning again. thanks... for sucking me into reading the whole thing all over again (im okay with it)

>>9443411

Can confirm. I live in Nunavut and all the black people here talk like this. Dave had his finger on the pulse of the African American community.

>>9442169
>He truly was an infinite Jester
Kill yourself and maybe in your next life you'll have decent taste

>>9442611
Sorry anon but Underworld isn't anywhere near as good as IJ
White Noise is better, but still lower tier imo. DeLillo is among the best on a sentence to sentence basis, but the ideas are simple and repetitive. I took a lot more from Wallace's work. He's not Pynchon, but he's the closest we'll see for a long, long time.

>>9442611
What does a book making another book obsolete entail?

Putting too much emphasis on the plot of the novel
Missing the behind the novel

>>9443511
Behind*
Also, the novel is open ended and can be deconstructed so many different ways. The contrast between Hall and Don Gately is imo the skeleton behind IJ.

>>9443511
>Missing the behind the novel
There's nothing to miss. If you've been alive for the last ten years IJ is an unseasoned meal. The only thing to even bother talking about is the plot.
>>9443534
And again, thanks for nothing.

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maaaan i read this book and enjoyed every page of it, but i missed something, something big obviously

the last scenes in the novel are the afr coming into the school (i imagine theyre there to kill hal or at least capture him and get a hold of the pgoat somehow) and don overdosing (but i thought this was a flashback to when he was a druggie, no?)

also, what happened when john wayne sperg'd out? did he somehow get dmz'd? was it on purpose or accidental? was he an afr agent? how do you know this?

when do you find out that orin digged up the tape? and when were orin/hal/pgoat/don all together to dig it up?

was the wriath JOI? i literally dont understand the relationship JOI's supposed ghost-presence has in this book as ive read in some synopsis' as i was under the assumption that this was a fairly realistic novel

can some explain to me the capital-T Truth to this brainlet
what the fuck did i miss

>>9443662
bumping for this as well.
from what i read the afr didnt capture or kill hal. if you read the beginning again, he's in arizona talking to the school deans and he starts having communication problems(shrieking and shit). then they stuff him in the locker room and he gets sent to the ER.
during this he recounts how he helped don gately dig up JOI's head and they didnt find the master copy.

during the end of the book gately has a dream of PGOAT, hal, john wayne and him digging up JOI's head.

john wayne recovered after being sent to some kind of psych hospital, the same one hal got sent to after JOI died i believe.

JOI was a wraith, as well as lyle(the kid who can levitate. yeah apparently he can become a wraith as well). i dont know why this happened but it did.

im sure im missing more so if someone else can fill in the holes like how orin got the mastercopy that would be great.

>>9443712
thanks
>from what i read the afr didnt capture or kill hal. if you read the beginning again, he's in arizona talking to the school deans and he starts having communication problems(shrieking and shit). then they stuff him in the locker room and he gets sent to the ER.

yes, i realise this is after when the afr came into eta, but i thought this reaction was a personality-thing, i.e. hal was too scared of 'growing up' as he's looking for unis to attend because he couldnt make it into the 'show' (but he didnt really want to in the first place) and as stated in the book, playing uni tennis, is basically a dead end and you may as well just kys at that point

>during this he recounts how he helped don gately dig up JOI's head and they didnt find the master copy.
looks like i missed this part; will have to re-read

>JOI was a wraith, as well as lyle(the kid who can levitate. yeah apparently he can become a wraith as well). i dont know why this happened but it did.
i guess i just have to accept the supernatural parts of the book; i thought the supernatural parts were hallucinations or something.

thanks. so i guess i also want to understand john wayne's relationship with the afr, and if the afr ever got hold of the master copy and if they did, did they distribute it to destroy society or what

>>9443150
>I remember being very off-put by it because it's not even how black Americans actually talk

i live in africa and i can confirm its EXACTLY how african-africans talk

>>9443738
>looks like i missed this part; will have to re-read
Well, you won't have to get too far.

>>9443738
yeah there's also all the stuff with The Darkness's bed being stuck to the ceiling and moving around the ETA. also the broomsticks help onto the wall and the tomato in The Darkness's bowl when he's eating lunch after the match with hal.
i think it's implied that JOI or Lyle is messing with stice for some reason.

>>9443712
>>9443738
>>9443826
>i dont know why this happened but it did.

all of the "supernatural" stuff is an attempt at surrealism, same with the levitating characters in TPK. DFW had a softspot for this kind of stuff

it would be supernatural if it was questioned extensively

>>9443826
puts thing all together if i look at it this way

i thought all those antics pemulis' and co.'s doing, but never explained by the author as i figured it was implied (for a few reasons mostly that 'kids will be kids') and never really considered a supernatural element to the novel

>>9443047
It was a POV of someone who knew one of the blacks from the halfway house, so when she shows up several hunderd pages later you have some context on her. If you remember her name.

Guys im at 800 something and holy shit this book is gold.

what do you think of Wallace's dissection of depression? Do you agree that depression falls into two buckets, anhedonia and "It"?

One of my favorite scenes was Tony Nwangi, a lesser character, prorector, barking during drills around p459, to ignore the conditions in which one performs.

"Is no cold. Is no wind. No cold wind where you occur. No? Not "adjust to conditions." Make this second world inside the world: here there are no conditions."

Later on,pg461:

Hal, responding to Schtitt:
'The human head, sir, if i got your thrust. Where I'm going to occur as a player. The game's two heads' one world. One world, sir.'

>>9442611
I'm about 1/3 of the way through Underworld right now, and it's not really scratching the itch like IJ. I've heard a lot of good things about it though, so I'm going to finish it.

>>9443950
>two buckets
>anhedonia and "It"

I thought he was calling anhedonia "it", because it's the only way Kate Gompert knew how to identify, not seperating the two?

>>9443205
Orin is trapped in an upside down glass like he did to the cockroaches in his shower.

>>9443915
It also mentions the Punk guy that crashes Gately and Fax's binge towards the end of the novel.

>>9443950
I also love the part where one of the prorectors is talking about holding in an iffy fart during a match.

>>9443980
>troeltsch commentating into his hand
that part was great.
>>9442637
honestly i feel really bad for pemulis most of all. i dont know why he's so likable.

>>9442664
Not Matty.

>>9444298
the matty as a kid part was probably the most disturbing passage ive ever read

made me question what kind of person dfw really is to put those descriptions into words

>>9442664
Earlier on someone says that Pemulis could get into any school he wants on test scores alone. That and he's a pretty good tennis player who could easily get a full ride the way Orin did before he switched to football. He's a similar caliber player.

>>9442918
>>9442918
>>9442918

We're still here.

>>9444305
He obviously didn't experience every single thing he writes about. He just had a dark mind to come up with some of this shit.

>>9444305
Kek. What a softie.
I was jerking off while reading how that one father was fucking he's paraplegic mute daughter in a Raquel Welch mask, then left the mask on her and her covered in his cum, and the foster daughter had to watch and clean her up.

Why would Hal's dad make a film about a graphic, homoerotic sex scene?

>>9444322
It basically tells you why. Just reread that part.

>>9444316
well obviously, that isnt what i was implying

>>9444320
oh yeah
that scene was fucked up

for some reason i found the matty one the worst of all (maybe because i have a younger brother and like matty/mike, as kids, we shared the same bedroom, so in a way, it was sort of relatable)

>>9444337
The foster daughter shared a room with the Raquel Welch doll.
There's also this part >>9444322 but it's easy to just find that incredibly funny

>>9444320
There's plenty of bad ones, like the chick that holds on to her dead baby for a bit too long. Maybe the Pemulis one just hit harder because even though his character is well-developed, you just know him as this confident chad at this point in the book.

>>9444342
didnt matty & mike as well?

maybe i mixed it up; its been a while since ive read the book

>>9443662
followup questions:

can we track the tape a little more percisely? and why did it end up in the same movie shop that pemulis bought the superacid from?

who was that figure outside in the snow near the end of the book, out by the bleachers I think

is there a "fourth" brother in the same way we're sort of pushed into the Karamazov metaphor near the end?

Why does madame psychosis sound like metempychosis

>>9444350
No, you're thinking of a different child rape scene

>>9444361
>Why does madame psychosis sound like metempychosis
You can't be serious

>>9442611
>Underworld
lmao bruh
I'm no DFW stooge and even I think IJ is leagues better

>>9444361
>and why did it end up in the same movie shop that pemulis bought the superacid from

damn good question. Maybe Orin had something to do with it? Or maybe DFW justs didn't want to bother with the explanation

>
is there a "fourth" brother in the same way we're sort of pushed into the Karamazov metaphor near the end?

sounds like nonsense to me bro

For a while I thought that it was unambiguous whether or not PGOAT was really hideously deformed or extremely, can't-look-away, restaurant quieting beautiful. One could argue that it's the same but for the sake of talking about it not like fucking faggots, deformed here should just mean "wince-worthy".
For a while I thought it was for certain that she was ugly because Orin left her, but I could persuade myself Orin is fucked up enough to leave for other reasons.
But the whole ordeal is very simple in a way. JOI tapes her unveiled. People can't stop watching, and you don't look at something hideous and ugly and deformed in the way the "it was like watching a car accident" cliches go. She was Medusa, not the odalisque.

>>9444361
it's probably nonsense, but there are a good amoung of parallels between the two either way:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40755487.pdf

>>9444361
>>9444384
>is there a "fourth" brother in the same way we're sort of pushed into the Karamazov metaphor near the end?
>sounds like nonsense to me bro
Actually that's a good question (not that poster) and I never thought of it before.

Smerdyakov is the semi-official 4th brother of the Karamazovs, often forgotten when talking of them because he is illegitimate and doesn't have the Karamazov name. Who's the Smerdyakov of Infinite Jest (where DFW really does push the TBK-similarities, with Orin = Dmitri, Hal = Ivan, and Mario = Alyosha)?

>>9444414
Gately

I have no other place to ask this, but it seems kinda fitting.
What's a good "advanced" grammar book?

>>9444408
>http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40755487.pdf

Well shit now I want to read that article. I haven't dabbled that much into Russian Literature. Got like 300 pages into War and Peace and I've read Solzhenitsyn. Maybe I should try out some Dostoevsky...

>>9444422
Eh, you're kind of misreading here.

Smerdyakov is an smug asshole and an atheist/anti-Christian who is less intelligent and less deep than Ivan in how he goes against religion, and ultimately hangs himself.

Gately is nothing like that and in fact an argument could be made that he's the most successfully heroic hero (yeah, my writing sucks, I'm too lazy to make it better right now) in the book.

>>9444438
That's nice. You have the the brothers mixed up. But there is only one candidate to be a fourth brother, that's Gately. Do some jumbling and you'll find it works.

>>9444414
Well for all the possibly (definitely) illegitimate children Avril had, you would think that she would be ok with another. Which would mean that to have another biological sibling JOI would have to be the father. But he seems deeply asexual... Gately's life is intertwined but he is not actually acquainted with anyone in the family until some point in the future after the events in the book take place. I don't buy this particular theory.

>>9444441
John Wayne?

>>9444361
oooh one more question:

what do we make of Lyle, his connection to the tape and JOI, and his weird Canadian super powers

>>9444448
Tertiary candidate. It really depends how far you want to go with this theory at all. Wayne just feels almost like a non-entity in the book to me, despite his often presence.

>>9443047
I thought that page was Poor Tony, or at least related to Poor Tony am I wrong? it's been a while since I read IJ, but I remember the part with Poor Tony convulsing on the subway was one of my favorite passages in the book

>>9444458
It's from the point of view of one of Poor Tony's addict friends iirc

>>9444449
Ok this is the character that confuses me most in the entire book. He levitates? Well before other weird shit starts happening, the book asserts in the first few hundred pages that the guy levitates and licks people as his only sustenance. Later on, when he is still purportedly alive, he appears with JOI as a specter (or is he real?) at Gately's hospital bed. The only time I legitimately laughed out loud in this book was the description of Don's awakening to Lyle licking him. The kids at ETA seem to be ok with him. I he the one fucking with shit at ETA towards the end of the book? is he the channel between the real world and JOI's spirit realm? I really just can't figure this guy out. Is he the fourth Karamozov?

>>9443967
Here's a paragraph from IJ that illustrates the two buckets comment I made

"Hal isn't old enough yet to know that this is because numb emptiness isnt the worst kind of depression. That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names- anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton's melancholia or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative psychotic depression- but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It."

He lengthily goes on to describe It. I interpreted this whole section as a vague categorization of depression: anhedonia, and It.

Maybe this was just my way of interpreting this section of the book but it seems to me that DFW is suggesting two different kinds of depression; they are linked and related but -It- is the soul crushing evil force that pervades life.

>>9443184
Seconding what this anon said. You have been reading nearly a thousand pages about the same group of people; so I took the random AA guy as a reminder of this idea.

It was basically like getting told
"you only think these characters are special and significant because you've been learning about them for so long. Don't forget other people exist"

Did Pemulis titty fuck Kate Gompert and tell her she had a flat ass? Or just sell her weed?

>>9444513
>"you only think these characters are special and significant because you've been learning about them for so long. Don't forget other people exist"
This isn't necessary at all though. The entire book is strewn with disruptive passages about other people. I don't see this point at all.
DFW really didn't need to add yet another, another, another, fucking account of addiction with twenty pages left.
Maybe that's what he's doing, but I really fucking hope not.

this thread is god-tier. didn't think we could talk about this book without memeing anymore.

>>9444361
fuck i totally forgot about the figure sitting on the bench.
>>9444474
i have no idea what lyle's significance is in the book.

>>9444474
I think that was part of a joke, an ostensibly realistic novel with some ridiculous fantastical corny Eastern-mysticism type shit thrown in, with this guru who does all the stuff you say.

>>9444528
Unless I am misremembering, though, a vast majority of those people are involved in the larger plot in some minor way, even if it is only by association to other characters.

The guy at the end of the book is the most distanced from the action of every other character.

Though I will agree, I didn't particularly like it either. Sure, I get it, other people exist, but I still don't care about this dude.

>>9444458
Roy Tony and Poor Tony are two different people.

>>9444542
Not really, there are a lot of parts like that. I'm just not interested in discussing that line because well, it's pretty fucking lame, I'd rather give an attempt to find his connection with the main group of people. Though I'm really not sure where to go.
I really don't like invoking this, but it reminds me of the way Dr. House treated patients, it's never a condition which is incurable in the speculation, because at that point there is nothing you can do.
If it's not interesting, it's hard to care, and if it's simply more evidence of how addiction and what drives one to addiction is destructive, I don't care. Sadly, that's probably what it is.

>>9444547
Poor Tony is the tranny who seizes on the train, Roy Tony is the guy who yells at (I think?) Ken Erdedy for not hugging him at the AA meeting. Both of those characters are in the ebonics section at the beginning of the book if I remember correctly, in addition to the heroin punk kid who interrupts Gately's binge flashback at the end.

>>9444534
Our best insight into Lyle, or his place in the book, is the fact that he is with fucking JOI at the hospital with Gately. Is Lyle a lightswitch wraith? Is he a fucking medium? I have no idea.

>>9444570
Fair enough, it's been too long since I last read the book.

I certainly think that IJ would have been improved without the scene (or at least not have lost anything), but DFW had a real hard time when it came to cutting down material (see: all the fucking end notes).

On another note, what is the significance of Pemulis getting end-note'd out of the book? I've read some justifications, but I am not particularly satisfied.

I will also openly admit I don't have any even decent explanations myself.

>>9444474
"The wraith is back, right by the bed, dressed like before and blurred at the edge in the hat-shadowed spill of hallway-light, and except now with him is another, younger, way more physically fit wraith in kind of faggy biking shorts and a US tank top who's leaning way over Gately's railing and . . . fucking ""licking Gately's forehead"" with a rough little tongue (...) no man put his tongue on D.W. Gately and lived (...)

>>9444595
>but DFW had a real hard time when it came to cutting down material
Which is funny, because the book could be like at least three hundred pages shorter and lose none of it's thematic force. Even the concrete themes (the flipping back and forth, the sheer size of the thing, etc) would be unchanged.

And Pemulis' expulsion is altogether flimsy. Avril being a hardcore classist isn't all that satisfying. It also dismisses the fact that Pemulis is certainly not above a little blackmail.
Although...maybe Avril found the drugs, and that's her leverage for ousting M. Pemulis? I've never thought about the Avril finds the drugs theory. Which would several implications. It would give the AFR the antidote to the entertainment and a couple implications to Hal himself.

>>9444449
>>9444474
>>9444534
>>9444575

Here's a bit on Lyle I was able to tear from jstor without too much work:

>As the analogies between tennis and capitalist striving mount, we imagine
the E.T.A. players as young workers who have diffi culties—and who are
systematically kept from—balancing their massive physical exertions with
mental labor on the question of what all this body-work is for, the “question[]
of why ” ( IJ 900). From this perspective, the weight-room guru Lyle
becomes a sinister and parasitic fi gure. Associated with the underground
and foundational, Lyle speaks pithy truths, among them a formula on work,
lifting, and respecting embodied limits: “Let not the weight thou wouldst
pull to thyself exceed thine own weight” ( IJ 128). A fl oating listener and
therapist, Lyle anticipates Shane Drinion in The Pale King and is, Holland
writes, a “spokesperson for positive self-forgetting” (“‘The Art’s Heart’s
Purpose,’” 240n11). Yet note that Lyle’s weight room is a scene for Himself’s
continued drinking ( IJ 379), and compared to the mentors of AA,
Lyle, his tongue out, is an invasive and suspect fi gure. His licking practice
underscores the strange economy that keeps E.T.A. running: he upends the
cliché of living off the sweat of one’s brow; he in a sense lives off the sweat
of others’ brows, children’s, a byproduct of their diffi cult thinking, however
sauna induced the sweat seems. For while he does help the youngsters
think, their capacities for it are underdeveloped compared to the outsized
anxieties their obsessions produce. Lyle is an heir to Zusatz’s hewing and
has as a namesake the also levitating Lyle Bland of Gravity’s Rainbow (290–
291), Slothrop’s Freemason uncle, responsible for selling his nephew for
Pavlovian experimentation. Are the children of E.T.A., many essentially orphaned
by negligent parents, new kinds of test subjects, expressive of their
own culture’s dark excesses? In Wallace’s world, it seems so.

>>9444620
source:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.7312/seve17944.8.pdf

>>9444620
I'm glad that part about GR was in here or it would have been a serious waste of retinal energy.

>>9444620
What do you think DFW's rection would be upon knowing so many people are trying to find hidden meaning in his book? Would it fuel his tortured ego or just aggravate his eternal feeling of being misunderstood by peons?

>>9444534
i just finished the book last night and i was hoping to get some good discussion on here. during the last few weeks i was searching the catalog for IJ threads and i havent found one. then BOOM the day i finish, we get a legit deep thread going.
i was worried i fell for the meme, im just glad people will still admit to loving this book despite its memeiosity

In subsidized time, does the year change on January 1?

>>9444665
I don't see any reason that would change, plus normal months on the Julian Calendar are refeered to throughout the book.

>>9442674
underrated

>>9444656
Alright, don't let this thread die. Any conspiracies you picked up on upon your first read?

>>9443738
>>9443662
still want to know the answers to these:
>what happened when john wayne sperg'd out? did he somehow get dmz'd? was it on purpose or accidental? was he an afr agent? how do you know this?

>did the afr ever got hold of the master copy and if they did, did they distribute it to destroy society or what

>>9444534

This discussion is shit-tier. All you're doing is running down the plot, which everyone involved in a discussion should already know. There's zero analysis.

>>9444733
>>did the afr ever got hold of the master copy and if they did, did they distribute it to destroy society or what
John Wayne was very obviously a an AFR agent. He was with Hal digging up the grave, keeping lookout. And the AFR seize him sometime in the year of GLAD, Hal confirms this in the opening pages. The question is if they killed him or some lesser punishment.
>did the afr ever get hold of the master copy
Of course they did. This isn't even much of a question. They had O cold, and subsidized time ends due to the AFR's leverage with the entertainment.

>>9444744
>subsidized time ends due to the AFR's leverage with the entertainment.
do you remember where this is in the book?
so...what did they end up doing with it?

>>9444728
I'll bite:

I always liked just how stratified the novel was in terms of its absurdity. At the bottom you have the gately story which is fairly grounded, doesn't really mention the acme fans or any of the other absurd abreviations, then you have hal sort of in the middle, juggling between a sort of grounded story and the crazy insular schtick of the city on a hill/tennis academy, and on top you have marathe an steeply, openly sort of acknowledging the conspiratory elements at work in the book. IJ is fun because these worlds, even when they intersect, are still tonally distant from one another. When mario (later hal) wanders into the half-way house, their presences are only felt at a certain distance, in the case of mario he overhears madampsycho recordings whereas we're forced to sort of take hal's visit there from hearsay of others

>>9444743
Agree the discussion is shit tier. There's analysis here and there.
But DFW's themes are pretty uninteresting. And if you want to start talking about something else, like, go ahead, I won't be the only one who will indulge you.

>>9444743
Bullshit. You are lying to yourself if you think you picked up on every single thing discussed here on your first read. Tell me why Lyle exists, dammit.

and one more thing: what was avril's true connection with john wayne? it cant just be because they're both canadian...was she AFR too?

>>9444752
Quebecois separatists threaten to make all of a America into a fucking potato farm.
>>9444759
I just want speculation on whether or not Pemulis fucked K Gompert
>>9444762
They were fucking almost the minute Wayne got there. Heavy AFR implications.

>>9444762
It's more than possible that she has a few connections to AFR but it's hard to make the distinction, we know that she's more than a little vocal about her beliefs but part of me refuses to believe she'd stand for wallace's bastardized french puns, going to step out for a stog, brb

>>9444767
On the Peemster-Gompert issue, what pages should I look at? Is Gompert the lady that Ken Erdedy is waiting for at the beginning of the book? Why is PGOAT wearing Erdedy's pants to the hospital? Is Erdedy fucking Joelle? ahhh wtf did DFW mean

>>9444784
also who's gay for whom in the snowy morning scene near the end

>>9444757
ok if you want to go off topic, what should i start next? Moby Dick, The Sound and the Fury, or Gravity's Rainbow?

>>9444784
>Peemster-gomp
Kate certainly buys weed from Pemulis. She mentions his paranoia in having his clients ask him to commit a crime
>Is Gompert the lady that Ken Erdedy is waiting for at the beginning of the book
no
>>9444784
I really dont' know why PGOAT is wearing Erdedy's pants. Do you recall the College that is imprinted on them?
>>9444787
Who gives a shit about that, who is in the bleachers at the end?

>>9444790
It's not that I want to go off topic, I just don't want to discuss the American malaise, the etiology of addiction, boredom, and more addiction again for the five thousandth time here. But there is plenty of other analysis to be had, I'm just asking you to offer something up.

My obsession with figuring out if PGOAT was actually Medusa or not is pretty much over.

>>9444805
guess how many other threads there are going on right now on /lit/?
why don't you fuck off to one of them if you arent into this one? you pretentious fucking party pooper

>>9444805
or... or... orrrrrrrr maybe, just maybe, if you arent interested in what the rest of us are discussing, why dont you bring up a question or idea that does get your worthless faggoty juices flowing?

>>9444808
I really am not sure what you're on about. I just told the guy I'd be willing to talk about whatever analysis he wanted to, as he's deeply unsatisfied with conversation regarding the plot. I just noted I didn't want to talk about addiction in that analysis.

I've posted more about the plot here than anyone and am having a good time doing so. Don't get your impression.

you should end this shit right now before you make another hundred posts back-and-forth and completely destroy the thread that's been good for the vast majority

if this thread doesnt jive with you, then keep it to yourself

let others discuss what they want

>>9444794
>the college that is imprinted on them

BUM
... Boston University Massachusetts? I dunno

I just looked that up in the book. What page is the bleacher thing on? Is is Steeply? he/she had been hanging around the campus for a while. Or the female Quebecois that he talked to? Who the fuck knows, tell me what page that's mentioned on please

>>9444831
There is a person just sitting out in the snow when the Darkness' forehead is glued to the window. This seems like a good spot for spec.

>>9444824
its okay, im done

>>9444844
cheers buddy & thanks for all the work (im assuming) youve put into here

>>9444831
according to my "how to read IJ chronologically" chart, joelle visits him from 854-864, the sweatpants should be in there

>>9444839
Either JOI or Lyle? If it's during that scene, it should be a wraith, right?


Stupid fucking captcha made me call a saxophone and a trombone a "trumpet" before it declared me human. What bullshit

>>9444847
no, im the other guy
but i reread his comment and ive come to the realization that i was being a dick.
ok back on track fellas

>>9444853
top of 856 in my copy

>>9444853
A little while after this Don Gately tries to rationalize that they aren't Ken's because he's hopefully in a dream state, or some fervid psychic tornado or whatever.
But, they're probably just an old pair of sweats O left at their apartment.

let me see if I can find the bleacher passage:

"The snowfall was intense and looked silky. The East Courts' pavilion's green canvas roof bowed ominously down, its white GATORADE logo obscured. A figure was out there, not under the shelter of the pavilion but sitting in the bleachers behind the east Show Courts, leaning back with his elbows on one level and bottom on the next and feet stretched out below, not moving, wearing what seemed to be puffy and bright enough to be a coat, but getting buried by snow, just sitting there. It was impossible to tel the person's age or sex. Church spires off in Brookline were darkening as the sky lightened behind them. The beginning of dawn looked like moonlight through the snow. Several people were at their vehicles' windshields with scrapers down along Commonwealth Avenue. Their images were tiny and dark ..."

>>9444831
>>9444839

>>9444873
was for you guys

just want to say as someone who has been to countless AA/NA meetings and hated every second of it after the novelty wore off, i absolutely loved the scene where Hal ends up in the meeting with the dudes holding teddy bears and crawling towards each other for hugs.

i cannot imagine how that would affect someone less perceptive who was going to their first meeting. haven't laughed like that while reading a book in i dont even know how long

>>9444873
My only guess here is that it's Lyle. Him and JOI are having some post fuck-up-Stice's-mind party.
The term "figure" might be clue to something though. Figurant and tableau and words like that are sort of rampant in the final couple hundred pages.

>>9444873
Ok bottom of p867.
It could be AFR maybe, doing some surveillance before they roll into ETA. but how would they get up the bleachers?... Is it a member of Ennis house? If a wraith is responsible for Stice's forehead on the window, maybe another wraith is watching. Maybe DFW just put this in 'cause it seems creepy and he didn't really feel the need for an explanation.

>>9444891
>>9444903
my guess is something similar to the man in the macintosh in Ulysses

>>9444891
This comes back to the question, Who or What the fuck is Lyle?

>>9444873
You know, some of DFW's passages are really well-written taken out of context, I've read IJ and don't completely venerate him/it and have some reservations about the book but I think he's a good stylist when he wants to be.

>>9444903
>but how would they get up the bleachers?
Sneak in/Avril is a part of the AFR, not hard to get in.
Could be a member of Ennet house. But I don't see why.
>>9444913
I like the idea of Lyle being a lightswitch wraith. It's just so odd he is there with JOI and Gately. Or maybe just, he is a wraith himself and no one has noticed. He does sorta haunt the place doesn't it.
He's there. And he communes with JOI somehow. Elsewise, I'm not sure. Would probably require some Lyle specific rereading.

>>9444922
i think they meant how would they get up the bleachers in their wheelchairs...

>>9444926
Not everyone in association with the AFR was in a wheelchair.

Just an aside, I thought it was cute as hell that Dave's mom was the one who used to say that something gave her the "howling fantods".

>>9444929
Even if they were able bodied, mhy would they get in a position to surveil the window that Stice happens to be stuck at? Or maybe the wraith chose that location for a reason, fuck I just don't know anymore

>>9444934
And "greebles"

>>9444934
i loved the terminology in IJ.
"Eliminate your map" and "howling fantods" are two of the best examples, but I also loves "kertwanged"
It really gave the book a sense of its own culture or something, like "DuBois" or "bing"

>>9444936
>Even if they were able bodied, mhy would they get in a position to surveil the window that Stice happens to be stuck at?
It's possible they weren't watching him at all, if it was someone from the AFR. I don't think it was someone from the AFR, I still just would guess, and diffidently, that it is Lyle. It seems like something he would do - let the snow of the morning collect on him.
>>9444939
My favorite part of the greebles thing was that it had an "especially" clause to it.
Kertwang, also, is loosely something his mom used to say, though it was "twang" - a word you couldn't think of or was on the tip of your tongue.
>>9444943
It's wonderful. The syntax he uses is quite deliberate, though there are a lot of reasons for this. But it really is great to see it on paper, it's a closer to home stream of consciousness type writing than you see in a lot of places, full of slang and ten dollar words and imprecations and medical terminology.

>>9444943
"experialism"

- The idea that forcefully ceding territory to another nation is in your country's best interests

>>9444955
i loved how he used "like" even when it wasnt someone's internal monologue or anything. i felt like his editor kept trying to take it out and he kept saying "no, its in there for a reason"

>>9444966
I hate and love that. It's a little condescending and understanding at the same time. And maybe I hate it because I've used it to sort of frame myself in a way before using a phrase I believe whomever I am speaking with will find pretentious or something.
It's both that and a thinking out loud.
From what I understand his editor really had confidence in him and let DFW have really as much as he could. He did grouse about the Marathe and H. Steeply clandestine meetings a lot though. I can't blame them. Was a little expository and preachy. And flimsy.

Do you think it was alright for Marathe to euthanize Kate Gompert?

it's been a few years since I read IJ and my memory had gotten pretty hazy so I just wanted to say thanks to all the anons itt for the good discussions

I wish DFW had written an Autobiography of JOI. I loved reading anything regarding him.

And Lo, for the Earth was empty of Form, and void. And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. And We said: 'Look at that fucker Dance.

>>9444960
there's so much irony. makes me kek every time.

>>9444891
well the chapter was from Hal's perspective if i remember correctly and stice couldnt see out the window since his breath was fogging up the glass.

>>9444873
>puffy and bright coat
do we remember anyone with a bright and puffy coat in the book?
all i can remember is hal's fila coat when he went to the NA meeing, which doesnt make sense because hal is the one narrating from inside.

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i missed everying in post-ending. is there a chronological reading guide somewhere?

>>9443493

Academic masturbation.

>>9445066
This kind of makes sense, but when does John Wayne get murdered?

>>9445066
i have it, how can i send it to you. its like 20 pages long

>>9445066
nvm i remembered that pastebin is a thing

https://pastebin.com/9T5QAcvp

>>9445066
the formatting is a little fucked because its in a chart form in the pdf that i have. but hopefully you can make sense of it.

now im off to bed, thanks for the discussion guys. this thread made my day not want to eliminate my own map today.
smooches

>>9445095
be good anon

>>9445061
>well the chapter was from Hal's perspective if i remember correctly and stice couldnt see out the window since his breath was fogging up the glass.
There's no point here. The fact that it's not the Darkness' perspective changes nothing.

>>9445144
That must mean that it's Hal that sees the figure. Hal at this point is an unreliable narrator.

Does anyone have a .pdf of DFW's mom's book "Practically Painless English"?

>>9445161
Ya, it probably wasn't snowing either.

>>9445185
I guess you're being facetious... it was definitely snowing based on other characters' impressions in the 3rd person narration. I'm just trying to throw stuff out there because DFW doesn't seem to give us even a hint. Is it fuckin' Lyle? Just tell me it's Lyle and I'll shut up.

>>9445202
I told you it was Lyle. I have no idea if it is, I'm asking for speculation mate.
If you want to go down the "unreliable narrator" path, talk about why he is unreliable (your theory, I think he may really have accidentally seen the entertainment, the cartridge that was mislabled). The point is that he sees something. If he's not actually seeing it, which er ok, what is it a projection of, it's not very interesting to just tell me he's crazy.

>>9445223
I think we agree. The end of the book definitely leaves some loose ends. He was watching some of JOI's old movies right before his little episode. Also may have been dosed with the DMZ on the toothbrush. The last 150 pages are hard to tie together for sure. But there is something there I think.

also he's crazy

>>9444644
You see that was what I was thinking. I read Dfw's essay on Michael Joyce and then an essay in response to it and thought that most often these critics are trying to unravel a meaning that if anything isn't there

>>9443467
dfw fans confirmed for middle-brow

>>9445066
>>9445092
>>9445095
I think it's this:
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/images/theses/chronijfinal1.3.pdf

Also, how is one supposed to read that plot summary diagram? Pre-ending? Post-ending?
??????

But wait.

How could Orin know what the Samizdat even did without watching it? How could even he know to disseminate it?

>>9446452
Yeah I don't quite get how and when he got the tape

I mean, like in the middle of the book he phones Hal and starts asking him about JOI and his work and stuff so to me, he seemed relatively oblivious of the work and it's 'value'

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>>9445066

>>9442611
you're a fucking retard

>>9442918
oh so you're telling me the novel that coined the term "anticonfluential" doesn't have a connected plot?

gtfo

>>9446857
wow wtf have you done?
although ive gotta say i love
>hal eats a trial-size dove bar

Can anyone give me the page number where Orin sends out the tapes? After i read IJ a couple weeks ago i spent some time trying to draw lines to everything but that was the one thing i kept hearing about that i didnt understand or even remember

Also i know im shoehorning this in but I think the ambiguous plot points and connections and possibilities are all part of DFW's mission to make a difficult and interactive piece of work instead of something the receiver just passively reads. Same thing with the footnotes and all the unnecessary details (Im pretty sure he wanted us to constantly decide what info is important and what's just put in there for length or just to show off). DFW wasn't against all entertainment, just mindless entertainment that didn't do anything to or for you. I dont really get the people who say that David used entertainment to dismantle the idea of entertainment because this book, while it is fun and pretty addictive, is sometimes difficult and tedious and only about half finished plot-wise. People who say that must think there's no difference between mind-numbing fun and turgid, rigid academia.

Also, why have we stopped liking IJ? Is this book another victim of the "too many people like it now so its therefore bad" plague?

>>9447096
>unnecessary details (Im pretty sure he wanted us to constantly decide what info is important and what's just put in there for length or just to show off)
I pretty much agree with you, but I think the 'unnecessary parts' are put in there to 'give equal weight' to the people involved in the Ij world and to not make the story revolve around a single or single group of characters...or at least make the reader understand that the secondary characters have lives and problems of their own

Least that's how I took it and I remember reading this as well somewhere. Maybe dfw himself said this I don't remember

As for your last part - who cares. I know I enjoyed the book and love it for what it is

>>9443662

This explains it all:

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

>>9447042
plz

people take this shit too literally.
Its almost like a thought experiment.
The characters and events represent different ideas. Some stuff literally doesn't make sense but it's all done for conceptual reasons.
How people read this kinda shit without engaging that fact is mesmerizing to me.

Like seriously, you want to "understand" Lyle? lol you dont even realize

>>9444911
bingo
it's just a conceptual character representign an idea.
it's a parallel to the idea of what's occuring to Hal as the DMZ hits, the idea of time being a horizontal line.

What did I miss if I didnt read the endnotes.

>>9448340
>Some stuff literally doesn't make sense but it's all done for conceptual reasons.

Everyone ignored my surrealism comment earlier and continued to speculate "supernatural" elements.

Look up the interview DFW praising Lynch's "franco-philistic surrealism" in Blue Velvet and how it changed his outlook and its clear that sort of stuff was inspired by it.

>>9448340
No fuck. Who cares?
>How people read this kinda shit without engaging that fact is mesmerizing to me.
It's tacit, because, no fuck. Give yourself a hand.
>>9448320
He recalls to Hal a situation where he is at the post office. Orin hates the post office. All the entertainment was sent from places he was known to have been.
>>9448526
A lot.

>>9448551
the fuck are you saying with this "no fuck" shit?

>>9448563
That coming into the thread and acting as though you are dispensing wisdom when you're ten steps behind is embarrassing.

>>9448563
how dare you question the "no fuck" man
he said "no fuck" and he meant "no fuck"

>>9448601
nah im on the next level.
im just very anti-literal-reading when it comes to this book as well as the rest of the meme trilogy. i've noticed a trend where people pick these books up for the wrong reasons, take more from them than they should i mean.
for instance, i bet you have strong feelings about the "anti-entertainment" as well? its a stupid point of debate but people love to get into it.

i can literally recite this book forward and backward (scene-wise) for your information.
i know the first and last sentences too.
dont under-estimate me son.

>>9448629
first and last sentences of each scene*

>>9448629
what are the other books in the meme trilogy? my newfag is showing...

>>9448649
Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow

They're all pretty similar.
Ulysses is probably the questionable member though in a way. It's hard to call it a meme when it has such respect outside the nerd-o-verse

>>9448663
thanks, i figured GR was part of it. thats the only one i still need to read until i can truly become the meme master

>>9443150
>it's not even how black Americans actually talk
LOL what planet are you on?

>>9448829
>t. 15 year old suburban /pol/ack
I wasn't saying they speak like fucking William Wordsworth, but black Americans have a consistent grammar that you pick up on if you talk with them frequently
DFW got it completely wrong. It would be like if he wrote a section from an English guy's perspective that was nothing but "ELLO GOVNUH, PIP PIP CHEERIO, AVE A SPOT O TEA LAD." "Wardine be cry" would never come out of a black native English speaker's mouth, it would be something more like "Wardine crying" or maybe "Wardine be crying."

>>9448914
You make some good points but black people don't speak the same everywhere, I understand what you're saying but admit maybe DFW could be realistic.

Or, conversely, it could be deliberately futuristic, since languages/slangs evolve --- this could be a speculation on what ebonics would be like in the future compared to the timeframe he wrote it in.

>>9448914
>>9448928

where the fuck did dfw get the idea that blacks don't put "ing" onto gerunds? even a cursory review of the most stereotypical black language like "shuckin' and jivin'" would show they use that...dude was a pseud, anyone who know anything about language and linguistics wouldn't have fucked that up