/lit/ - Literature

>>6699926
Damn, error in the OP: pages 49-63

>>6699931
the error was making the OP

>>6699953
But the other thread's going to 404 soon?

Can this be read with the endnotes ignored?

>>6700046
Why would you want to do that? They're part of the book.

>>6699926
>tfw you would actually buy this heap of memes if it had a cover that sexy

>>6700052
They're boring

>>6700060
I was watching an interview with DFW's sister Amy on Youtube. When she was proofreading IJ, pparently she rebuked him for all the footnotes because she thought they were annoying and that nobody would want to read them.

That said, you should read them, since they are part of the book.

>>6700139
I am forcing myself to read, though they do hamper my enjoyment of what is otherwise a prettay prettay prettay good novel

>>6700180
eventually the footnotes will have essential passages. for now they're all just minor clarifications and such.

>>6700197
I hope so

>>6700060
If you're the type of person who finds endnotes boring Infinite Jest probably isn't for you. Though at the same time they're not typical endnotes. Often they'll add narrative commentary or tell large chunks of the story.

>>6700212
The entire history of the AFR and I think Madame Psychosis are revealed in like 10 page endnotes

>>6700222
>>6700228
Why didn't he just write all of that in as part of the main body of text

>>6700233
To piss off you specifically

>>6700233
It was a stylistic choice. It makes you conscious of the fact that you're reading a work of fiction and gives the impression that the main text isn't giving you the full story.

There are plenty of important things in the endnotes, planted in the middle of seemingly innocuous random information. Hell, in today's end notes, the character Pemulis is introduced.

Thematically, a lot of the book is making a choice between something easy and hard; a lot of it is about choosing your addictions, but this choice also applies to entertainment, do you choose to recline and fall asleep in front of your teleputer every night or read a book? So he did it to make the book purposely harder than it should be as a statement about people sucking away their lives on easy soulless entertainment.

That's pretty pretentious and a bit of an asshole thing to do but there's plenty of great stuff in the end notes

>>6700259
This, he also calls into question the whole 'accuracy' of the text by stuffing plenty of endnotes with both pointless and inaccurate information

I'm having trouble imaging the layout of ETA, and also the pump room.

Who is the boy with the flashlight?

How can I be sure I have a decent copy of the ebook. Anyone care2share their copy? My epub version doesn't seem to have any names to the chapters

>>6700973
Seconding this.
I'll join your fruity reading group but I'm gonna need an version of the book to actually read along with you nerds.

why did he put the footnoots at the end an not at the bottom of the page. Atleast he gave you numbers unlike some older classic books. The copy of the Gambler I read didn't give any indication of the notes at the end which were essentially to fully understanding the book

>>6699926
Is that penguin cover legit? Fuck, I think I prefer it over the cover that always gets posted

>>6700909
>imaging the layout of ETA, and also the pump room.

Mostly unimportant
>Boy with the flashlight
Haven't done the reading yet today but is it Hal going to smoke some bob hope?

>>6700986
To simulate the back and forth if a tennis match and interrupt the narrative further

>>6700987
It's a photoshop as is the one of the hot emma watson looking check leaning on the net

>>6700986
Some of the endnotes go up to 15-20 pages or so, and many of them have notes within themselves, it wouldn't work on the bottom of the page or it'd end up looking like House of Leaves

>>6700973
>>6700984
A quick google search gives this
https://thepiratebay (dot) gd/torrent/7764040/Infinite_Jest_by_David_Foster_Wallace_(ePUB_Mobi)

Fuck, why can't that Penguin Classics edition be real? I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

What's the best edition to buy, /lit/? I'll join

>>6701004
>many

Its like a dozen maybe

>>6701010
There's only a couple English editions and they're basically the same, just get the blue one everybody has

>>6701014
The memory cheats

Im alway just impress by the sheer effort it takes to write and edit a book like this. How do you get ideas to flow like that? How can you have so much to say? In just 3 years. Always blows my mind. It takes a special talent to write a book this long

>>6700987
It's about as legit as this.

>>6700233
Because the wraith narrator cannot sit still for very long. He spastically jumps around in time and perspective and POV.

>>6701068
>U CAN'T BE SERIOUS
kek

What exactly makes Infinite Jest so good?
Why should I read it? I have never heard of it outside of this board.

>>6701260
you could read the foreword by Dave Eggers or what's his name, might help you get a picture. And concerning here contra otherwise, this place has taken it as a meme in addition to just a book so of course it's over saturating the discussion partly, but it is also well known among reader at large

>>6701279
Alright, thanks for the reply!

In one of the longer endotes is given the transcript of a letter Avril wrote to Orin. It begins, "Things are fine here in Mt Godawful." Or something close to that. The letter follows exactly the format of Charlie Weaver's "Letters From Mama" which always began "Things are fine here in Mt Idy," the fictional home of the fictional character of Weaver. The letters from Mama were collected under the title

http://www.amazon.com/Charley-Weavers-Letters-From-Mamma/dp/1258174472

The significance of the decision to model Avril's communication with Orin after a late night talk show comic guest from 1959s, who, from within a fictional persona, is making parody out of a certain type of flyover small town busy body, remains a complete mystery.

On page 65 we are told, with no indication of red herring at all, that James Incandenza is buried in Quebec, at L'Islet County.

Based on maps of both the real place, and the concavity as imagined by other readers, this composite map shows his burial precisely on the edge of the radioactive waste zone.

>>6701138
>forcing this macro

>>6701413
You dealing with this macro, you pee huffing taint gobbler

>Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: InterLace Telentertainment, 932/1864 R.I.S.C. power-TPs w/ or w/o console, Pink2, post-Primestar D.S.S. dissemination, menus and icons, pixel-free Internet Fax, tri- and quad-modems w/ adjustable baud, Dissemination-Grids, screens so high-def you might as well be there, cost-effective videophonic conferencing, internal Froxx CD-ROM, electronic couture, all-in-one consoles, Yushityu nanoprocessors, laser chromotography, Virtual-capable media-cards, fiber-optic pulse, digital encoding, killer apps; carpal neuralgia, phosphenic migraine, gluteal hyperadiposity, lumbar stressae.

>>6700262
>pointless
sometimes, ye
>inaccurate
wat
is any of it really inaccurate?

>>6699926
Is that Mary Esther Thode?

On page 92 a parenthetical narrator interrupts the convo between Marathe and Steeply to inform that Rodney Tine Sr., intelligence head of USA, is very likely a spy for the AFR wheelchair assassins. Later in the convo, Marathe assures Steeply that Tine is in love with an AFR honeypot, Mdme Lurec, and is indeed in a state of betrayal of President Gentle.

Which makes very curious the scene which begins on page 876. Which, of course, we will return to if the group gets that far, later.

>>6701438
World building and pontificating. Also taking his shot as spec fic prophesy.

>tfw dropped
Such trash, I'd sooner force myself to read Tolkien with prose in mind.

>>6701520
The spy stuff is all a huge joke and what is or isn't true during it is irrelevant. You know it's not serious when it starts talking about triple agents and quadruple agents.

Office of Unspecified Services

In my head I'm thinking, like, disbandment of CIA was an ONAN agreement so the US opened the OUS as a replacement

Is that sort of it? It seemed quite plausible and funny to me

>>6701138
please kill yourself

>>6701574
You are going to miss an awful lot of this with that attitude.

And the "odd or even final total of loyalties" thing is the kind of gag that Wallace put everywhere. Not just in the geopolitical thread.

So if the spy stuff is all irrelevant, then when "the spy stuff" murders a busload of school children, as well as several dozen non-combatant bystanders, including Madame Psychosis' audio engineer, by getting him to cut his fingers and toes, then arms and legs off at the price of one view of IJ V per digit or limb, all of that is also irrelevant?

The death of Lucien Antitois, just before the moment Rodney Tine arrives in Boston during the snow storm, to attend the meeting where they view the "public service announcement" video? Irrelevant?

Or were you just of pretending to be pretending to be pretending to pretend to be retarded?

>>6701627
Correct. Steeply is a field officer of the US intelligence service OUS, reporting to Rod Tine Sr. (Rod the God) who is under the influence of the AFR, via his sexual liason with their agent, Mdme. P. And who, Rod Tine, has access to the president of the United States on a daily basis.

>tfw first time reader and have no idea what the fuck you guys are talking about

theres really no point in joining these discussion threads if you're a first timer

>>6701890
because you people aren't discussing anything
ask questions, make comments,

>>6701890
This one is not official.

>>6699926

I thought this started June 21st :(

>>6702018
It's only at page 63 by the end of today, you can easily catch up

>>6702028

I'm reading another book and was kind of scheduling it to finish on the 20th, I'd have to go ham on that tonight to finish early and go ham on IJ starting tomorrow.

That's the plan.
Cu guys in a few days

>>6702066
Going ham? That's kind of drastic, isn't it? I mean, isn't it still kind of early to go ham?

Okay reading for today finished. I really want to work "howling fantods" into my daily lexicon. The kid with the flashlight is ortho stice which will become clear -much- later. I didn't really get much out of Troelsch being sick out of his mind, other than noting I missed this mention of him stealing Tenuate from the Peemster, anyone got anything they could weigh in on that scene?

I liked how our status update in the medical attache comes after the bit about Hal and other americans not knowing why they feel certain ways about things.

>>6702509
Just that it's important to keep an eye on that bouncing Tenuate, because what it gets shuffled with and where the pills all end up is critical to the fate of John Wayne and Pemulis.

bit further along than you guys but these descriptions of joi's art films are very interesting to me

as a non-film buff, are there any directors/ films i can watch that reflect these? things as conceptual and bizzare as the medusa and the obelisque or anything?

>>6702641
Several youtubers have made several of the films as described.

Also, Michael Snow, Maya Deren, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Kenneth Anger, and Luis Buñuel.

>>6702671
oh cool. care to share the links?

also thank you, i will look into those filmmakers

>>6700233
Because tennis.

>>6702641
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_8cwAcYImQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivYn7oKAexM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9com2cBzluk

>>6702682
>>6702688

What chapter should I be im at the beginning of ch 2

>>6702682
>>6702688
>>6702693
I once searched every title in the filmography in youtube and someone at one time or another has made or attempted at least two thirds of the ones that wouldn't get stuck behind the age gate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJpfK7l404I

>>6702686
Oh wow I didn't even realize that

>>6702694
Page 63

Oh baby I just read the part where the Canadian separatist assistant leader was killed by a cold and a dish towel in his mouth

Things seem like they're gonna get hairy!

>>6702641
Nicholas Rey's "We Can't Go Home Again"

Dali's "Un Chien Andalou"

Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon"

>>6702778
Yeah, and guess what was included in the loot stolen in the burglary?

>>6702807
wha? the samizdat?

>>6701539
>well, this anon is out, guess we all should as well

what's the point of these sort of posts? why is shit-posting so popular? these are the modern day's philosophical questions that need answering

>>6701741
spoilers faggot

>>6702844
Shitposts are the banal platitudes of /lit/

>>6701492
you'll begin to notice inaccurate information once you begin to get to know the flaws of the characters. footnotes will hold your hand through some of it, although a lot of stuff is extremely subtle, i.e. intentional misspellings/misheard words/obvious biases

>>6702934
*unobvious biases

>>6702748
i dont know what book that is
mine has a foreword

>418-430
That was embarrassing.

>>6700060
That's almost like saying you don't like reading Kinbote's part of Pale Fire. THey add something (not as much in this case but still)

Well glad to see I'm not the only one reading IJ for a summer project. I'll try and pop in to these threads of I happen to run into them. So far, I'm really connecting with Hal.

I like how no-one in this thread is actually talking about the assigned reading. Kek.

this book reminds me of a coen brothers movie for some reason

p. 281
Pemulis drugs his Port Washington opponent to win the match, probably so that he can make the WhataBurger Invitational and do DMZ with Hal
favorite character for sure.

>>6704121
He's a tragic character to. He's one of the worse players, with no real chance of a future and only wants to remain at ETA so he doesn't have to go home and face his father. That part where it's describing everybody's sponsors and then lists Pemulis "at liberty" or whatever gave me major feels. And then how he gets his rackets sprayed like he's sponsored anyway. Oh god. Poor Peemster ..

>>6704121
I'm not reading along right now but I am dropping by to say that Mike Pemulis is one of the greatest characters in any book I have ever read and whatever shit Infinite Jest rightfully or wrongfully takes I will always love DFW for Pemulis

>>6704121

He's a tragic character too. He's one of the worse players, with no real chance of a future and only wants to remain at ETA so he doesn't have to go home and face his father. That part where it's describing everybody's sponsors and then lists Pemulis "at liberty" or whatever gave me major feels. And then how he gets his rackets sprayed like he's sponsored anyway. Oh god. Poor Peemster ..That's not even mentioning the ending..

>>6704121

>spoilers
wait, so orin is trying to smash on the reporter who is actually steeply?!?!?
Oh gawd, my sides

>first time reader
>read all of the spoilers in this thread anyway
>mfw I still don't know what's going on

>>6704142
>That's not even mentioning the ending..

He's even literally relegated to the endnotes.

>>6702778

He was a separatist? Thought he was working for the government.

>>6704513
Yeah the text said he was the leash holder of several groups of Québécois separatists and Albertan right wing extremists

Cool, so this book is essentially just a really long light read? Its very enjoyable so far and if it stays kind of like this the entire time I imagine I will be wishing for more.

We should do one of these for Ulysses at some point. The discussion aspect of the book club might be crucial to alot of peoples comprehension of it (me probably being one of those people).

>>6705439
I would love it if /lit/ read books like this. Spread out over ~1-3 month depending on length with a daily schedule to keep everyone at pace. This allows for readers to join in while also reading their own material.

How to read a huge paperback like this comfortably?

For the plebs reading this as an ebook how does it work with the footnotes?

>>6705441
Ya Its also a good motivator to get people to take on more challenging works if they know a bunch of people are doing it with them.
I would of waited much longer to pick up this book if I were left to my own devices but seeing that I could read it along with a bunch of people bumped it to the top of my list.

>>6705449

>>6705446
Use your thighs for support for the first couple hundred pages.
>>6705455
You should read the popular books. This whole "le meme xD" mentality is less than a year old and is just tumors from other boards acting like retards

Can people put the page number or section the spoiler pertains to before their spoiler text?

That way those of us who miss more subtle details can check spoilers for sections we've read to see if we've missed any key points, and won't scroll over unlabeled spoilers containing end-of-book information.

>>6705441
>>6705455
I agree; I think it also provides a lot more opportunity for discussion with just a couple/few scenes a day instead of making threads about the book as a whole, which are way too nebulous

The Filmography could be a turnoff for a lot of people but it was more enjoyable and light than I remembered, with a strange rhythm to the repetitive nature of it

We also start to see the first hints of a lot of the ONAN stuff today, with tons of Canada and ONAN timeline references in the filmography and JOI's short bio section

Does anyone have any ideas about the importance of naming it ONAN? I know what it stands for and the book's history (although I may've forgotten some) and the bible story of Onan but I don't really see the connection. Unless it's just a dumb joke where Wallace is labeling the book itself as some kind of mental masturbation? I just feel like there has to be something more to it, but I think that plot line is the most difficult to clearly grasp on a first read.

>>6705538
I do read popular books, its really just that the length and vocabulary is daunting to me. Like in order to read Ulysses I would like to read the Odyssey first and I just finished portrait of the artist.
I guess I just think of the "meme trilogy" more as something I have to work up to. Am I even correct in thinking that? I read a few pages of Ulysses a while ago just to see what it was like and it wasn't nearly as impenetrable as I was expecting and I know nothing about Gravity's Rainbow.

>>6705580
You should read the Iliad and Odyssey because they'll help you pick up on tons of stuff in literature as a whole, but they're not completely necessary for Ulysses. Joyce bases the structure on the Odyssey and knowing that will help you understand the direction of the plot in more obtuse sections, but it only helps on a very surface level.

He was annoyed with people overly clinging to the Oddysey layout and said that other things' importance get overlooked with how much people focus on just that.

Infinite Jest similarly takes its structure from Hamlet and Brothers Karamazov, and it is very helpful to know those two works but not absolutely necessary.

If you were going to read anything to prepare for just Ulysses, I'd say read as much Shakespeare as you possibly can and just continue studying/reading the canon as much as possible.

>>6705580
You should have a firm foundation in Byzantine Erotica to appreciate Infinite Jest.

>>6702830
Says Marathe during the mountain meeting with Steeply, yeah.

>>6704331
DFW goes to great lengths to play up the gag that Orin is a repressed homosexual.

>>6705615
Thanks, Hal. Nice to see you can type coherently, ever since the accident.

Could any anon help me out with the endnote of A.F.R's history. I'd like to think I've got the major grasp of it though I'd appreciate someone just briefly going of what ideas A.F.R is founded upon etc. thanks.

Trying to catch up atm^1. I'm on page 60 and there is a paragraph of random shit...like key words used in ads to describe and sell products...? Not sure what the significance is here.

1. Anon was at a wake/funeral out of town over the past 2 days.

>>6705756
Do you mean endnote 304?

I also wouldn't mind a quick summary of their founding ideas etc. From what I gathered they're all in wheelchairs from playing the train-game in their youth and then there are other, less radical groups, founded upon the miners' kiss game instead.

>>6705756
/TRIGGER WARNING FOR SENSITIVE SPOILER TYPES WHO THINK IT"S POSSIBLE TO SPOILER THIS NOVEL/


Marathe's mountain meetings with Steeply are so long winded and philosophical mainly to answer exactly this q in the context of the novel's thematics.

The short answer is, the wheelchair assassins want a sovereign independent Quebec and they want to destroy the United States, 1. out of perceived self-defense for the concavity and 2. out of a deeply rooted philosophical disgust with what they believe are the savage children who populate the US without exception, especially its leadership.

Quebecois yearnings for independence are expounded upon so many places and in so many ways by so many characters that I'll get another round of SPOILER shit flung at me if I say much more.

page 144 contains a concise summary of the US views toward the various groups of Canadian agitators.

Soon, a connection will be drawn between the AFR and the train jumping blood sport enjoyed by certain rural Quebecois boys who, as veterans of the game, keep popping up in the plot.

>>6705771
It further breaks up the narrative but also does some worldbuilding, further familiarizing the reader with the technology of this pseudo-future

>>6705823
Why don't you use spoiler tags? It'd just be easier that way

>>6705771
you are referring to this:
>>6701438
A suitable summary was given here >>6701526

While listing the "furniture" of the future world. he can't help but point out the self-destructive side effects; migraines, eye fatigue, back pain, and fat assedness. He is basically describing the plight of the DAU-era neckbeard netizen.

>>6705839
Not just neckbeards, but also everyone who watches Infinite Jest

>>6705806
>>6705756
Note 304 is the story of Struck plagiarizing an academic article. The article describes the origins of the AFR as well as can be expected, since the author of the article is now a resident of Ennet House.

It can be read, like almost everything in the novel, out of sequence without doing a great damage, if you aren't there yet.

and again, the deepest expression of AFR's malice is found in Marathe's meetings with Steeply.

Today's section with Kate Gompert is probably my favorite section thus far.

"John Wayne is of the sock-and-a-shoe, sock-and-a-shoe school."

>>6705922
No one could accuse DFW of inexpertise when it comes to clinical depression.

>>6705922
After about page 200 the book steadily gains steam until well you know it stops

>240-258

best scene so far imo. though i liked the the part with joelle/madame psychosis an heroing[?] as well.

anyone starting to notice that JOI is kind of filling a similar role as Pierce Inverarity in Lot 49? i don't doubt that this is intentional.

>>6706437
also, re: hal and orin's toenail chat. what does everyone make of the Hal's "mispronoucing" telemetry as "telemarchy?"

best guess is a ref. to Telemachus eg calling Orin a Telemachus to JOI's Odysseus but. idk.

>>6706437
ehhhhhhhh
I don't see it. He's more of a Citizen Kane, to me, than a Pierce Inverarity.

>>6706470
ie*

128-135 would probably be one of my favorite chapters if it weren't for the ebonics.

>>6702934
Oh, mispellings/misheard words, ofcourse, I was more of scared about some chunks of text/footnotes being intentional red herrings
I'm on p390 and haven't yet found a single 'vivid' contradiction between the plot and the notes content

>>6706501
lol, that's not ebonics. 'yrstruly' is white. He even calls the project blacks "Nigers"

>>6706520
>black men don't call other black men "nigger"

>>6706516
Yeah. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the existence of some text as "endnotes" is itself a red herring and every word on each one of the 1079 pages is of equal narrative value.

Has anyone noticed that the boilerplate on the copyright page is itself not standard boilerplate?

>>6706568
>not knowing the difference between niggaand nigger

>>6706568
They worry that the project blacks will beef with them if they go by there to cop too late. Specifically, they worry Roy Tony's crew would be too drunk to be kept calm by Roy Tony. Later, once they've gotten drug money and are going to cop, they pass the projects again, and yrstruly goes on a racist diatribe against the blacks for smoking crack and drinking crown royal, and for not helping their so called "brother" when he falls over from some sort of heart incident
why would that shit be, if he were black too?

>>6705868
Thanks. So Marathe's meetings with Steeply is carrying the suggested weight of whatever is essential about AFR?

>>6705924
The only correct way

Fuck the filmography.

>>6706787
It's actually really worth reading though, unlike... hmmmmmm... some drug data, let's say

>>6706787
I thought it was great.

>>6706787
push through it. i know it sucks now, but you'll find yourself referring back to it repeatedly.

>>6706689
/SPOILER TRIGGER WHATEV/
I would argue so, yes. Marathe's loyalties are complicated. Deepest down, I believe we are supposed to believe he really truly hates the United States and every breather in it. The contempt is practically drooling down his chin.

But we are also supposed to believe that he truly loves his wife, and only US OUS can provide (or clamp off) access to the med tech she needs to live.

So for Steeply's practical outlook, Marathe is his agent to control, and can be trusted to comply.

For Marathe's arc, he hates Steeply, the US, and everything Canadian, ex-Quebec and would kill them all if he could get away with it while saving his wife. Per the AFR charter.

I actually don;t want to ruin the actually good parts for everybody, ro for anybody in particular, but when we get to the Antitois cartridge shop I would give this hint:

In thematic terms, all AFR other than Marathe are /inutile./

IN - U - TILE!

>>6706856
protip: you can do [s p o i l e r] tex here that you want concealed [/s p o i l e r] to cover some of your text. it helps in these threads

okokkokokkokokokok

w/r/t/ the war theory, why would us go to war with canada as a nation, and not just the seperatists?or is that specifically the theory

>>6705441
dumbass non-reader here (Infinite Jest is probably the most challenging book i've read).
please do this again /lit/.
I'm slowly working through Infinite Jest. I'm struggling to understand it, but I like what I do understand. Also have many questions about the prose and plot.

If /lit/ had threads like this for more challenging authors, I would definitely join.

>that Nestle Quick story
I get the impression it was supposed to be funny, and with all the children at the end it does become kind of funny, but damn, that first part hit me hard for some reason

Flashbacks to my dad teaching me baseball I guess

The titles in the filmography are hilarious, though. Three Cheers for Cause and Effect?

Blood Nun get a full synopsis later in the book. Someone will eventually write the screenplay.

>>6706900
I'd make the threads sometime over the next 6-8 months for any of the following:

The Brothers Karamazov
Against the Day
Europe Central

Planning to read them all so I'm happy to fuck off at work for a little extra time too. Post if anybody's interested in any of those. I don't think TBK is nearly as difficult as either of the other two but I'd maybe do it anyway.

>>6707129
against the day is fucking weak
wouldn't be worth a readlong like this

M&D, v or GR would be cool though

>>6706900
but then how can i be elitist and talk down to people?

>>6707266
I've already read M&D/V./GR so I wouldn't want to be the one who sets the reading pace and makes threads and shit. I just said the others because I haven't read them yet and I was planning to. But yeah any of those would be great picks.

>>6706895
/SPOILER SPERG TRIGGER BLAH BLAH/

You are assuming there is a difference between the US, Canada, and the separatists.

One whole thread of IJ consists of narration of a film made by Mario which is based on the current events of the timeline of the whole novel. It's beginning is coming up soon. Follow it. Don't skip over it as if it were just comic relief. It is chocked full of clues. Notice Bene the number of times nuclear weapons are referenced, and in what context.

Also follow the decline of Gentle himself. I won't ruin it, but Mario is the unsung genius of the plot.

>>6707291
can't you just give me your view?

>>6707291
You're typing out more to be a unique autistic snowflake than if you just used spoiler text
>>6707304
Read a book nigger

PLEASE USE PAGE NUMBERS FOR SPOILERS.
and jesus spoiler tags aren't hard people

>>6706787
one of the better endnotes thus far imo. im up to ~80 re: endnotes tho

>>6707304
This guy >>6707376 seems to be in possession of some special 4chun code which would eliminate the need to be coy, for the special snowflake sensitivities of the 19 year olds who haven't memorized long passages of this novel since they were 19 themselves in 1996.

And also, this is a promotional thread to an honest attempt to plow through the whole thing over the next two months. Frankly, it would be a freaking miracle. I can't hardly wait.

So that said, stick with the long haul. This >>6701520 is relevant. The page 876 part. I've said quite a lot. Marathe's true disposition is: he hates you. Me. Everybody not Quebecois. That is AFR. They want an island Quebec. Instead of the stench of concavity, the stench of dead ONAN would be equally rank, but much more satisfying to their sense of revenge. Their sense of justice.

The reading schedule over the next week covers the Marathe-Steeply meeting in detail.

One other thing I can say because the typical pleb here won't get it at all.

Wallace was a rural kid who converted to urbanity and who developed the snobbery of the convert. The city-mouse / country-mouse arrogance of the convert is very much an important part of IJ. And Marathe, Wayne, Avril, DuPlessis, Mdme Luria/Lurec, Rodney Tine, Thierry Poutrincourt, et. al. and even JOI himself all figure into it.

Westward The Course Of Empire Takes Its Way says much about DFW's anemically developed positions about the role of rural culture in his bigger picture.

>>6707376
I've already read the book once, not that it should really matter. I'm just trying to figure out how this theory works

So we see how involved JOI is with nuclear technology (!!!!) so lets examine the filmography. I think the Cage series is important, the first one showing the theme of parodying entertainment (and all done with one woman and mirrors (who in the story is a self obsessed woman?)) the second one showing difficulties in communication, the third showing someone getting basically cucked (various small flames, I mean come on). Three Cheers for Cause and Effects is obviously about Avril and seems to hint JOI knew he was distant. Cage III I think it basically what it seems to be, you can engage in life and be harshly judged or stand back and just become a huge gawker.

Many of the films show his feelings about Avril including fun with teeth and I think kinds of pain as well. The American Century as Seen Through a Brick seems to mirror the entertainment's journey. Mobius Strips is... Important, shall we say. Blood Sister: One Tough Nun I swear is ripped straight from Vineland, which it almost seems all of infinite jest is ripped from DFWs comment about vineland "spent 20 years smoking weed and watching television" or whatever. Infinite Jest IV stars Madame Psychosis. Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed and As of Yore are memories of James' childhood we see in great detail later on . Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators is Eschaton as a film. Low Temperature Civics seems to be about geopolitical relations and The Entertainment.

Safe Boating is No Accident, Very Low Impact, The Night Wears a Sombrero, Dial C for Concupiscence, Insubstantial Country, and The Film Adaptation of Peter Weiss' etc are all mirrors of the novel at large.

>Too Much Fun
>The Unfortunate Case of Me
>Sorry All Over The Place
Keep these unfinished films in mind regarding James and the novel as a whole.

Dunno if I'm gonna do the rest of todays reading tonight, I'm wiped.

>>6707689
Oh whoops I switched Cage III and Various Small Flames up in my mindbrain. sleep it is I guess.

p.233
it seems one of the grad students at the party JvD attends on 11/7 of YDAU mentions the Entertainment, saying that some people in Berkeley aren't answering their phones, and describing the film as a "visual dopamine-cue."

Question time. Plebeian here. Assistance is needed.
Current progress: at page 49.
>“Orin also shaves in the shower, face red with heat, wreathed in steam, by feel…” - leading into Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment

1) Plot recap
>Hal's interview:
Did it occur in the present, past, or was it imagined? Is Hal insane? Did readers just get Hal's perspective? Do we hear Hal communicating normally, whilst other people see him convulsing or just spouting shit?

Erdedy trying to get Pot
I think I understood this. Prose was good. I got picture of a massive pothead trying not to twitch and show everyone that he's a pothead. Getting anxious about some pot that he really really wants, but is totally ok (what he wants his liason to belief) with not getting.

>Hal's wordplay with a cunninglinguist
What's going on? Is this Hal having night sweats or does it really occur? Is Hal schizo and we're seeing what he perceives?
>Hal's conversations in the dorms
Presently occurring or are they flashbacks?

2) What am I reading?
Everything seems so disordered and unconnected. I can see individual spots of paint on the canvas, but no image. How do I read this novel?

3) Wallacisms
Is DFW trying to make a point with his abbreviations and names for technology?

4) DFW's Prose
When I can follow along, it's intelligent and amusing.
When I can't: it's frustrating and requires multiple rereads.
Gems:
>Orin calls his fucks "subjects"
>Erdedy's pot fever
Seriously struggling to follow his dialogue. At times I can do it. Other times I just get a headache. Help /lit/.

5.) Question about a passage
> Hal talking to Boo
"So listen - one way to lower the flag to half mast is just to lower the flag. There’s another way though. You can also just raise the pole. You can raise the pole to like twice its original height. You get me?"

What is Hal saying about his mother's reaction to Himself dying ?

>>6700222
I haven't read IJ but I assume the point is something about how so much of modern knowledge, while perfectly fertile ground for thought, is thought unliterary knowledge, and how that is one of the difficulties for the modern writer?

I'm guessing obviously but I assume that would be partially the point of footnotes about vcr programming: that we know a lot more than we think we know, that our culture of knowing about TV and car maintenance and so on is not empty, that it can be as beautiful as knowledge of the Greek gods or the Bible or European history or botany or whatever

am I close?

>tfw half of the chapters are excellent and half are just frustrating

>>6707898
>tfw you still don't know what the hell you're reading

At least I'm becoming a patrician, r-right /lit/?

>>6702641

Godard, Buñuel, Bergman, Gaspar Noé, and early Herzog are the best directorial primers for the type of bizarre cinema that JOI was interested in producing.

>>6707917

Once you get to the stories about JOI's childhood and the "Lessons Learned in an Inpatient Addiction Treatment Facility," you'll know what you're reading.

>>6705579
i think it comes to deal with how America comes to be the head of ONAN (or the USOUS) and the American hedonist lifestyle, these themes will be discussed at length later on though

>>6707839
I thought he meant that everyone grieves differently, like how there are different ways to lower a flag

>>6707839
2) The Story is what's not shown. Like the way a prism's shape is revealed not by its own shape, but by how light reacts to it. All this random stuff will show something.

3) I don't know. I think it's to add realism. Abbreviating things the way people would in casual writing adds to that.

4) it was hard for me to get into at first but eventually I got used to it. Going back to something that isn't so wordy was actually difficult. I think you'll get used to it, and even really like it.

5) I think it's about workaholism. A lowered flag is grieving. Avril achieves a lowered flag without having to grieve. Instead she makes herself busy. I see a raised pole meaning being productive or overextending yourself.

I question Hal's ability to see Avril's flaws and think this could be him rationalizing her not actually being sad.

What's a good epub reader?

>>6708202
Thank you. So this style of prose is almost like jazz in a sense. Dissonant sounds become consonant and pleasing.

>>6708347
wrong thread

>>6707839
holy fuck you're stupid
I read infinite jest in middle school

just keep reading, things will have clicked into place by page ~100 or so

>>6706856
>select text you want blacked out
>ctrl + s
It's as simple as that nigger, lrn 2 spl

>>6699926
who is this fluid druid

seriously

So I'm supposed to read the filmography thoroughly? I kind of just scimmed through it, although reading all the parts about Infinite Jest since I felt it carried weight.

>>6709008
Bridget C. Boone

>>6705336

Aren't the Quebecoi separatists far-left? Sre they colluding with the Albertians for pragmatc reasons or is there some ideological similarity. Though, I think infighting was mentioned somewhere.

So I forced myself to read through the entire filmography. What's the significance of it? I caught on that that one movie where the professional conversationalist talks to his son actually happens between James and Hal. Was the movie made before or after that scene?

Also, theory: the Saudi medical attaché was watching Infinite Jest V.

>tfw you will never have a James Incandenza marathon

>>6707863

Any comments on this, guys? Thought this anon made an interesting point.

This is my first time reading, but I feel that Wallace is criticizing the kind if entertainment/consumerist foxus we have as dehumanizing — almost in the clinical, calculating fashion the doctor approached Kate's depression.

>>6709036
>>6709087
The filmography is almost like a coded message for the entire book, there are films that parallel specific scenes, the book itself, the world's new ONAN history, JOI's life and plenty of other little bits of information innocuously hidden in there. Films of JOI are referenced throughout the book and there is a major significance to the way Wallace introduces a lot of important things through such a seemingly boring factual piece of writing.

It's interesting to consider that the filmography comes next to Kate Gompert's talk of depression, and the specific line that "classic uinpolars are obsessed with communication" (or something very similar to that). This line rings very true for Wallace, with communication being a major thematic element throughout the book but also for JOI, with films like the Cage series. The filmography is one of the closest points in the book the reader can come to understanding JOI, who moves the entire book but also to understanding Wallace who shares so much with him.

In today's reading, the similarities are further seen between JOI and DFW with the narrator noting JOI's academic focus on different types of infinities, which DFW himself actually wrote a whole book on.

Today's reading was very enjoyable and light in contrast to the filmography.

I find most Mario scenes to be very comfy. Can anyone more philosophically minded tell me what school of philosophy or who Schtitt's views are modeled after?

I also forgot the amount of focus the book lends to the medical attache, with those scenes having an enjoyably foreboding atmosphere.

>>6709110
DFW explained why he used endnotes, probably more than once. Here's one example:
https://youtu.be/wDIVX7pNwGE?t=425

As >>6707863 said, he hasn't read the book so his theory is really off-base. The endnotes are not merely "unliterary" information. Many (most?) are extensions of the narrative itself. Only some, for example the ones explaining different drugs, are traditional informative endnotes like >>6707863 is probably imagining them all to be.

>>6709087
>>6709036
I pointed out stuff about the individual film contents here>>6707689

>>6709148
So if I continue reading and stay alert I will notice where the Filmography and JOI's life intervene?
If I'm getting this correctly, the Filmography is filled with messages that serves the purpose of sharing an insight to JOI, his life, his depression and also his relationships, right?
Please do correct me if I'm wrong, I'm only here to assure I'm having the correct thought-process;
JOI has severe issues regarding alcoholism, depression and his relationship with Joelle (Madame Psychosis) & Avril. This peaks, together with his implied insanity, in 3 of his last 4 films. Whereas Too Much Fun, The Unfortunate Case of Me and Sorry All Over The Place is connected to his feelings towards his family and Avril.
I haven't gotten to the part where Madame Psychosis is introduced so I'm really not aware of whatever the relationship between her and JOI is and how it develops. This might lead to me misunderstanding the films.

>>6709518
You're pretty much on track, you'll know when the particulars of James are being expanded on. How far are we scheduled to be today in the 90's somewhwere yeah?

>>6709902
87 today, 97 tomorrow

Today's read goes by really quickly

>>6700233
he has said in interviews he wanted the story to be fractured and bounce around because so many of the characters are like that, and the stylistic choice reflects the compartmentalized fractured lifestyle in modern america. the footnotes are important to telling the whole story too, for sure

>>6709087
The film is made after the actual event, if I'm not getting the dates mixed up (later in the book a timeline of the subsidized years are given)

>tfw Kate Gompert and Ken Erdedy are a bit too close to home

Did anyone else notice Schtitt's speech mirrors exactly Hal's dream of indecipherable playing lines and an opponent he can't quite see?
>>6709087
>The saudi is watching Infinite Jest
Yeah at this point I think it's not enough of a spoiler to try and evade, you're obviously correct.
>>6710194
The film is released one year after Hal's perspective of the event, and the filmography is admittedly not rock-solidly accurate. Considering editing and release I would say it's ostensibly one event.

How do I determine whether or not I understand it?

>>6709186
7:05.
He will do anything, go down any distraction, any dissembling tangent, to avoid spelling it out: The narrator is spastic in time, voice, and POV.

>>6706974
just got to this part as well, this book is pickin up serious steam

>>6711038
you mean plot wise? just go with it

>>6711231
I mean plotwise, and also characterwise and thematically.

>>6710217
>Hal's dream of indecipherable playing lines and an opponent he can't quite see

Keep that image in mind later.

I have a question for someone who has read IJ, but I don't want to open another thread since this one is already up.
Let's suppose I finally cave in and give in to this meme.
Will I be able to understand (enjoy?) anything of it if I'm (a) outside of the US (b) not familiar at all with tennis (c) 'This Is Water' is the only thing by DFW that I've read? Basically, what I'm trying to ask is—are there many cultural references that will probably ruin the reading experience for me?

>>6711526
a) can't say
b) I know nothing about tennis and enjoyed it
c) I never heard of DFW before reading IJ. I enjoyed it anyway.

>>6711526
You'll be fine. It's really not that hard of a book, it's only notorious for its length. The cultural references are mostly self-contained, that is, referencing the book's own sci-fi world or aptly explained. In fact there's more reference to Canadian culture than American I'd say.

The one red flag I do see here, though is your referring to the book as a "meme". If you can't respect literature enough to see an acclaimed work as more than an extension of your misanthropic anime site, you may have trouble understanding literature in any capacity.

>>6711526
Everything you need to know is explained. In detail. In great detail. In great, windy, elongated thoroughly and mind bogglingly efficient detail.

Women, in general, either think it is a hilarious parody, or hate it with a hard blue flame.

But really, it's not Ready Player One. It's dense and esoteric and opaque. It makes demands.

I know people who have made it all the way through multiple times. I have worked it over through the witching hours with them. Here's the thing:

None of them are happy about it. Maybe five people in my life have become infected by this thing and we've mapped it and listed all the cites and wrestled it and pinned its shoulders down and made it cry and say, "Uncle!" and give up the MacGuffin.

All them wish they had never heard of it. It's like a tumor that you have to remove from your body by yourself with no doctor or nurse or anaesthetic.

>>6711526
Non-american, basic knowledge of tennis and haven't read anything by DFW prior to IJ. Am enjoying it greatly.

>>6711236
>characterwise and thematically
You just need to know Hamlet and popular dystopian visions, Im feeling like. Obviously DFW takes it a bit further, but I'm one of the people who would answer with a lots of negatives to >>6711526 (if I had anything new to add) and I'm not feeling too ''lost'' myself

DFW has...um, met a black person before, right?

I'm so confused by this book. Seems to be a world more imaginary than real.

>>6711621
>written in early 90s
>action takes place mostly circa 2009
well doesn't it kind of make some sense to you anon

>>6711621
"I'm so confused by this book. Seems to be a world more imaginary than real."

>postmodern hysterical fiction sci-fi about wheelchair bound quebecois terrorists and a movie so good it kills you to watch it inspired by shakespeare, dostoyevsky, and delillo

geeeeeeee, you mean this thing isn't real?

>>6711621
Upstate NY, Urbana IL, Amherst College, U of Arizona, and Harvard, before Claremont CA. You tell me: Has he?

>>6709186
>the ending to that interview

>>6711671
>"I wanted it to be sad and tragic."
>"None of the reviewers seemed to 'get it.'"

Tony, Don, Jim.

>>6711694
Watch the end to part 4

Ok I just finished the conversation between the German tennis administrator and Mario that harped on infinity and the infinite nature of tennis and Im going to make a prediction, JOIs film "Infinite Jest" is about tennis.

>>6711719
we got a natural here, boys!

>>6711705
Yeah. I've seen it. "Not getting ready to jump off a building." "Haven't found a reason to get out of bed."

The only difference between The Depressed Person of the short, and him, is that The Depressed Person never wrote a Zeitgeist-fracturing novel.

>>6711719
I don't think it spoils anything, and may even add some incentive to the long slog to post that you are going to find out exactly what Infinite Jest V is about, and what is in it, and what is supposedly so mind-blowingly rapturous about it and there will be no doubt about the veracity of the reported content.

The discussion that day should be a pip.

>>6711721
It's my first time reading and I'm trying to make conversation about today's text.

>>6711732
The suspense is already killing me and I mean that in a sincere way. The more I read, the more I want to know!

>>6711723
>The only difference between The Depressed Person of the short, and him, is that The Depressed Person never wrote a Zeitgeist-fracturing novel.

Not seeing any differences here.

>>6710217
>>6711240
How do we know it is Hal's dream? Honestly

What page is the group at today?

>>6711732
Weird as it may sound, I feel like most of this novel exists in non-fiction form in the "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" collection.

The nature Infinite Jest V reminds me a lot of the cruise ship.

I actually think that essay collection may be better than Infinite Jest. It really is great.

who sold the antitois the dmz?
from where did they get the samizdat

Pg 83 at the bottom... Is this related to pemulius' dream earlier on pg 67-68?

>>6711721
Kek. You asshole

>tfw didn't do my reading for yesterday
>tfw gotta read double the amount today

>>6713374
the footnote from yesterday were only 25 pages though :^)

>>6713522
RIP

>>6712824
Pem's dream? You don't mean the dream with the face in the floor?

>>6713829
No where the lines in the massive tennis court are "convolved like string " or something like that.

>>6712122
The exact trail of the master and copies of IJ V takes hours to nail down. One person has done it and the reader's guide that resulted is at B&N for $29.99.

Within the scope of the schedule, watch closely what Marathe tells Steeply about how the DuPlessis burglary is involved.

>>6713829
The face in floor was Hal.

>>6712824
>>6713842
All the dreams are related. But you won't find out how till the 800s. But you will find out.

>>6713374
yesterday and today were only 19 pages combined. You should be able to catch up.

I will say though...this book is 2-3 times longer than the average book, and I am rereading most pages. I thought I would be able to handle other readings along side infinite summer but I feel like I'm reading a lot and just keeping up with the timetable. Been a fun read so far. Plus everyone asks me about the book because its so big. (big books are like big cocks to women)

>>6714006
>yesterday and today were only 19 pages combined.

what do you mean 19? i thought it was 15 pages every day (not to mention the extra from the endnotes)

>>6714072
>Day 1: 1 - 17 (Optional: foreward by Dave Eggers)
>Day 2: 17 - 33
>Day 3: 33 - 49
>Day 4: 49 - 63
>Day 5: 63 - 78
>Day 6: 78 - 87
>Day 7: 87 - 97

It's not strictly 15 pages. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

>>6714150
I see.
Which day are we on today then?

>>6714163
We started on the 14th. Today is the 7th day so we will all be at page 97 or further by the end of today.

>>6714168
thx

>>6713901
Are you sure? The face in the floor part seems to be from Troeltsch (p. 60 in the physical book). But correct me if I've misinterpreted something.

As for the other dream, the one about tennis (sort of), half the people think it's Hal's dream and the other half think it is Pem's.

Today's section was interesting, first real information about the AFR and first mentions of "The Entertainment" but it felt light on actual thematic content imo, with the main scene setting up Marathe and Steeply and the endnote acting as exposition for their goverments and the AFR. The fact that the source Struck was plagiarizing was extremely purple prose and brought up multiple times made me laugh but it really was a slow section to read.

In the Struck essay part, did anyone notice the bit about Wayne?

>>6713898
>at B&N for $29.99.
the fuck.
this should be public property. ;_;

>>6714369
I have a copy of both of these, I can take pictures of anything people want specifically. Not for a couple days because they're back in boxes somewhere but in a few days for sure
http://www.amazon.com/David-Foster-Wallaces-Infinite-Second/dp/1441157077/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434817302&sr=8-1&keywords=infinite+jest+readers+guide&pebp=1434817351111&perid=08W4KYSNN42HPRPV2XW8
http://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Complexity-Foster-Wallaces-Infinite/dp/0976146533/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1434817302&sr=8-3&keywords=infinite+jest+readers+guide

Am I doing this right?

>>6714400
this makes me want post-its right now

>>6714376
Woah, that's awesome, might come across as super handy later on, cheers.
>>6714400
I have that edition! And I haven't yet seen anyone else w/ it. and I have quite a few similar notes, this is almost scary, but unbelievably cool

>>6714209
//THIS POST SPOILS PAGE 172 and the section following that page//


>Are you sure

No. Troeltsch is the character in closest word-count proximity, but there is nothing in the passage to tag it to any one character. No one, for example, specifically mentions owning a Tawni Kondo poster.

My assertion is textual. The passage is in second person and that POV is prominently deployed only elsewhere in the Tennis And The Feral Prodigy section, page 172. The film is narrated in second person by Hal. Though the filmmaker who wrote the narration is Mario, equal weight could attribute the face in floor to him. Though he could never play tennis and is therefore unlikely to have roomed in a common dorm with other several tennis players in their bunks in the same common, leaving the balance of evidence with Hal.

Also, one of Hal's near-conclusive emotional realizations is described as a "nostalgia" for things he didn't know could be missed. A young person's first acquaintance with that mode. The face in the floor passage conforms with that state, again suggesting Hal. Though for the bigger picture, it does not really matter.

>>6714434
this was the kind of thing i was looking for, thanks.

>>6714209
I have always attributed the tennis geometry dream to Hal, for reasons which will only become obvious at the conclusion. As the face in the floor could be Troeltsch, tennis geometry could be Pemulis' and the placement of Troeltsch and Pemulis just ahead of these nameless passages is suggestive.

But really it depends on who you think the narrator of those passages is. Notice, for example, if you take out the interceding passages, including Troeltsch and Pemulis' paras, the dreams also fit into the strand of third person POV passages describing ETA in general which also pre- and proceed the two dreams. I would argue that this thread about ETA is written in Henry James' third-person limited, and on purpose. Very calculated purpose.

I think it can safely be said here though, that Pemulis is the exact opposite of any kind of character whose dreams are of any consequence, or to whom dreams matter at all. Every word that comes out of his mouth is discursive. The kid-professor persona he always assumes even in the immediately preceding paragraph is at strong odds with the confessional voice of the tennis geometry dream speaker.

>>6714477
Also, trivial spoiler of the Eschaton passage unless you're really into the marijuana aspect, Hal is the only character who gets to experience an in-depth description of "bong hit thinking" in which a simple thing - like a tennis court - gets magnified into an immense complexity to big to ponder all at once.

This mental paralysis prevents him from intervening in the Eschaton debacle, and again only happens there and in that dream.

>>6714477
If you want to draw out the Dostoevsky parallels it'd probably be Hal but those parallels get more fuzzy/complicated once the wraith appears

Also wraiths were mentioned in today's reading

>>6711719
>>6710217
>Schtitt's speech mirrors exactly Hal's dream of indecipherable playing lines

Yes. Did you notice this line, introducing it:

"Schtitt's thrust, and the one great irresistible attraction in the eyes of Mario's late father:"

Wouldn't that be an interesting way for a Henry James-ian 3rdPOV-limited narrator to put that?

>mfw finished the book yesterday and it all starts coming together
>mfw missed that reference to Don Gately, John Wayne and Hal digging up JOI's head THAT early in the book
and wait, was Rodney Tine Sr. a double agent?

>>6714541

I think Henry James has the most ineffable narrative techniques in the language. His description of the nuances of human interaction is so complete that it strikes one as omniscient, even though it is technically not.

>>6714559
///Total SPOILER. Page 876 and passage following///

>was Rodney Tine Sr. a double agent?

And what happened to him the instant after they turned off the lights and viewed that "public service" cartridge in the meeting in Boston, remember? The cartridge of Fully Functional Phil that had been so painfully delayed because of "matteing" problems in post-production? The one that needed a special player at the last minute to satisfy the meeting agenda?

And given what we are to think about the mental condition of president Gentle by that point, what do you think might be Gentle's reaction to what has been done to his senior most intelligence chief and several key aids, including Tine's son, at the hands of Canadian terrorists?

>>6714563
>it strikes one as omniscient, even though it is technically not.

I completely share the laudation for James. Since DFW publicly name-checked him many times in interviews, I think he would, too.

>>6714605
Why do you hate spoiler tags?

>>6714605
ctrl + s
it's very simple m8
like this

>>6714643
>ctrl + s
>it's very simple m8
>like this

That's all I see.

pic related.

>>6714655
ghkjghjkghjkghjkghjkghk

test.

My computer reads right through that. It literally does not appear. For that reason, I thought you were a troll.

>>6714643
Can you screencap that so I can see what it looks like to you?

>>6714663
Well try looking at it on a different device or browser

>>6714669
There can be only one.

4chan device or browser.

Reasons.

>>6714605
So they loaded Infinite Jest V at the meeting? And this made the crazy John Gentle go to war with Canada?

>>6714668
here you go. even if you can see it, others cannot.

>>6714686
Can you do it for courtesy in the future?

also your big spoiler warnings trigger my autism

>>6714712
That's what I think. The alternate explanation for that passage is that we are supposed to believe that the Fully Functional Phil spot, which notice will be only disseminated in /cartridge/ form, will be substituted with copies of IJ V. By Rodney Tine Sr., working as a double agent for the AFR.

My preference for the first scenario is personal. I just hate Tine. But the second is equally functional as a trigger for the Continental Emergency.

>>6704142
Peemster's dad is dead by YDAU, at least. TBH I think DFW's a bit cruel to the Peemster, making it clear that the deficiencies in his game are his own fault (he's the paradigm case of a player who works around the chinks in his game instead of fixing them, 'two steps too slow to get to the net'), he doesn't cause his downfall but still gets blamed and forgotten. I think DFW was trying to make him a sort of Buck Mulligan character whom we're expected to see as a bad friend, but overshot and made him incredibly likeable by accident.

>>6706520
yrstruly is Emil Minty. Incidentally, remembering the yrstruly characters will help the final scene make more sense.

>>6714434
>>6714477
I suspect that it might be Ortho Stice if the Face in the Floor prefigures his possession.

Definitely could also be Hal. I feel like if it's not one of those two it loses a bit of its thrust within the narrative. If it's Hal then that adds to his weird supernatural connection to Gately, who also sees the Face. Either way I think the Face and the Wraith may be related

>>6714744
>>6714712
And in fact, the two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. Depending on the time of day Orin capitulated in the roach tumbler, Tine's late afternoon meeting that same day could have been contaminated /and/ the mechanisms of switching FFPhil for IJ V could have been already underway.

It is also interesting to conflict with the famous blog post "What Happened At the End of Infinite Jest" that Orin may not have been the one who dug up the antidote from Himself's grave before Hal and company got there.

It could also have been Steeply.

It is also possible that the Tine meeting of page 876 is just the blueprint for a future attack which is still imminent - or even better just beginning - when Hal is being admitted to the hospital in Glad. Which would be why that chapter is the last one.

Look retards, label your fucking spoilers with the section or page number they refer to/come from. if it's from the very end, specify that. All these spoiler tags are meaningless if you don't say which part(s) of the book they spoil.

>>6715027
ok

So guys, is the bit when [page 500] Himself's first experience with annulation is described of a n y importance?

>>6715202
I understood it mainly as filling out another example of father son relationships. Also, page 65, Himself was recognized by the president and by Cornell university after his death, so his contribution to the technology changed North America in a big way. Plus, annulation contributed to the need for the experialist concavity/convexity, which has those Quebecois seperatists so righteously pissed off.

>>6715202
>I understood it mainly as filling out another example of father son relationships.
yeah, it's starting to become a major theme it seems.
>annulation contributed to the need for the experialist concavity/convexity
I can't remember this too well, what's the relation here?

>>6714792
I was wrong about it possibly being Ortho, just read the grief therapist section which confirms the dreamer's Hal

>>6715202
I think it started off as a short story that got incorporated into the book. It just gives some detail on Himself, really, helps us see him develop from earlier experiences like the garage scene.

>>6715283
The waste products which cause the really weird shit like hyperfloration are waste products of annular fusion.

>>6715283
Even though annulation is an improvement over conventional nuclear fission for power generation, it still produces prodigious amounts of concentrated radioactive waste. [Mario's movie:]Gentle decided to dump the waste, along with the nation's regular garbage, into the convexity/concavity (c/c) and then reverse-annex the territory to Canada.


For reasons, Ottawa accepted, which is an inside joke about Canada and its angry forever-betrayed Qeubecers (who held a referendum IRL to secede from Canada in 1995, btw, while IJ was in the editing and proofs stages).

[No idea, doing this from memory]All this jazz about herds of feral hamster and marauding feral infants with giant heads is all related to the c/c. AFR's reason for being is to get revenge for the c/c

>>6715339
I liked the garage scene a lot.
And regarding the waste... my God, you're right.

>>6715355
Yeah, I read a huge article on why are there two names for the c/c earlier on today. It all makes sense.

I finally got caught up with the week's reading

What's with the chapter titles?
What's with the 2 agents (the crossdressing one and the other)

Will the novel start to make more sense, and jump around less?

I've read and enjoyed other non-linear stuff (slaughter-house 5 and House of Leaves) but this just reads as pretentious. I guess I'm asking when does it get good?

>>6715373
>Will the novel start to make more sense, and jump around less?

Yeah, on your second reading.

And by the way, anybody still sufficiently confused about which level of reality they are operating on with regard to this kind of ideational inversion >>6700056 >>6701260 >>6705580 >>6711526 should also know that the general attitudes of the people of Quebec toward Canada, and Quebecois Separatism are not figments of the author's imagination.

That shit is 100% this world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_re_Secession_of_Quebec

>>6715388
I wonder how the political content of the novel would have changed if it was written after 9/11? The Pale King's one serious-politics-culture-talk scene is extremely inward-looking, and I think that was generally DFW's response to America's political reengagement with the outside world after 9/11, a desire to find 'pure' Americanness in the good people of flyover country.

>>6715373
If you don't get at least to the Eschaton, you are not exercising personal taste, you are quitting. If you drop it after the Eschaton, you are exercising personal taste.

>>6715373
>>6715383
It really ties together halfway in, second reading or not, especially after the concepts mentioned early on are explained, I think(it's the thing that a lot of mysterious names and theories are dropped early on and discussed by fluent-with-their-world characters, only to be explained 100 or 200 pages later... or 250 pages later, and in an endnote. But it helps make it all even more mind-blowing.

>>6715373
Just enjoy the individual scenes, the writing is good and most of them are pretty clever so you should be able to enjoy them on their own. That being said, they'll start to fit together more the further along we get and I do agree today's scenes were exposition / setup heavy.

I think the scene around pg 500 just serves to add to the circle circularity motif. I didn't get the purpose of this thematically until reading these comments

The circle motif puzzled me because the ending of the book implies the end of the world but maybe Wallace is just saying that all cycles have run off and over time it built up into the key conflicts

Still unsure of these ideas and would welcome any opinions on the thematic importance of the circle motif

>>6715373
Chapter titles tell you the official name of the year in which they are set.

Not sure how the agents are confusing once you know who they work for. You'll figure out more about them as you read on.

It won't jump around less but hopefully you'll start identifying times, places and characters enough to piece it together.

It is pretentious, but it's also fun. I mean, "let's write a book that's hard to parse to make a statement against entertainment being too easy to access" takes some pretension to say.

>>6715399
>the good people of flyover country.

I'll tell you the truth, I think he hated them. From LBJ to the Girl With Curious Hair - and her boyfriend, it is nigh on impossible to think of one of his characters who is not dissected like a corpse upon a steel table.

I'll try to explain, briefly. When I read Chekov's Sleepy, I see a very humane mind trying to unpack the murder of an infant in the context of brutal oppression, grinding poverty, and crass ignorance resulting from lack of education. It becomes, in Chekov's hands, very difficult to blame Varka. That success clears Chekov of any stain of voyeuristic or prurient intent, to my sensibility

DFW's response (conscious or not) was Incarnations of Burned Children. It is not an indictment of state-inflicted poverty. And after he takes us through that stripper's veil of vanity prose styling, he just can't resist projecting the infant forward into adulthood with that socially ostracizing ending.

Compared to Sleepy, it's like watching 8mm porn at five times speed, you know?

Like when TE Lawrence went back to see Allenby: "No. Something else."

"I enjoyed it."

He had the good sense to be disgusted by his own contempt, but he couldn't help it.

Should I care about James Incandeza's filmography? There's a lot of complex film shit I don't understand.

>>6715443
You should care and you should read it but it's expected for you to not understand much on your first read

>>6715437
DFW is horrible at not hating his characters, but I think his attitude towards midwesternness and lower-class americanness is mixed, it's definitely an other for him which he projects a lot onto, both a lot of hate and a belief that there has to be goodness and genuineness somewhere out there (so it must be in the other).

>>6715388
True. The only reason I knew that Quebecois Separatism was a real thing was because I read Romeo Dallaire's biography right before I started IJ, and he from Quebec and was a young soldier at the time of the movement. If I hadn't know this I would easily have supposed Wallace just pulled some fabricated political movement out of his ass.

>>6715458
OK. I intend to read everything. But I feel better knowing I'm not supposed to understand every detail.

>>6715477
This reply's final point sums it up >>6715411

It's purposely obtuse but it fits in very well thematically

so far I really liked Kate's section best.

I'm reading on kindle so I highlight passages and one of the ones I did was when she says all the drugs she took, and she says "I took all I had in the world"

Gately's home invasion was pretty decent as well.

>>6715408
end of the world by?

>>6715602
Same
My third favourite alongside those two was that guy getting ready in his apartment to smoke some weed

>>6715408
>just enjoy individual scenes

I think this is how I'm going to approach the book from this point on. Pretty sure I'll read it again in a year anyway. This book reminds me of the Illuminatus! Trilogy

>>6715931
>Illuminatus Trilogy
damn I can't wait to finally get to that
been on my list a while

Reading pages 87-97 again... The scene between marathe and steeply is amazing. I love the shadow play.. The description is just incredible and most definitely worth reading twice in a day.

I'm guessing all the shadow description is supposed to be symbolic of their surreptitious( shadowy )meeting. They are casting big shadows and so maybe they have a big role to play in this book? Maybe their actions will have a big effect that gets larger as the book comes to a close: "..further elongation of their monstrous agnate shadows" pp91

Also in the wiki it defines agnate :
>In this case agnate seems to mean that the shadows come from the same source, the setting sun.

Light comes from the sun. Shadows are cast by the men .. hence use if the term agnate?

Anyway... Am I off base here or are these legitimate insights?

>>6716877
I don't understand how a shadow could cast that far. There is a similar scene in Gravity's Rainbow where it looks like Slothrop and Geli are casting shadows far off a cliff over the countryside, but I think it specifically mentions it as some kind of illusion with the shadows on the surface of high and light clouds. Is that what's happening here, or is it really possible to cast such a shadow at the right time/place/angle? I live in a pretty flat place and have no experience with this. Stupid as it may be this little detail really tripped me up.

>>6715411
>It is pretentious, but it's also fun. I mean, "let's write a book that's hard to parse to make a statement against entertainment being too easy to access" takes some pretension to say.

Is there anything we've read so far that expands upon this theme? Closedt thing that comes to mind is the speech by Schachter (forgot his name, the German coach Mario hangs out with).

>>6717399
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocken_spectre
Shit's for real.

>>6717450
erm, drugs? Kind of one of the main things to come under critique in the book.

>>6715931
I read in another thread that DFW might have intended the narrative to take place around the actual plot so the book is a novel where nothing happens but the plot happens between the vignettes where nothing happens. I hope someone else remembers that because I can't seem to rephrase it clearly at all.

>>6717450
I definitely got the theme of easy access trash versus difficult to process honesty.

was the last paragraph of page 559 meant to be a d-i-r-e-c-t reference to delillo's mao II, or am i just seeing the connection because i only read mao II recently

i know that stuff happens in real life, but it seems very similar and dfw was a delillo fan

I have forced myself to read this twice now and it really is the pseuds fucking holy grail isn't it. It is the ultimate Emperor's New Clothes.

>>6717794
Care to expand on that?

elegant complexity pdf
you're welcome fucks

https://www.scribd.com/doc/269267314/EC-IJ-DFW

>>6717981
>scribd

can you upload it somewhere that isn't shit

>>6718045
http://www.mediafire.com/download/reajlyl4md8o84l/EC.rar

>>6718057
thanks

OP are you still gonna write points of reference for us kindle readers?

Time for a new thread. This one is sinking. We are reading to page 109 today. For e book readers:

>Marathe continued to hum the USA song, all over the map in terms of key.

leading into Nov. 3 YDAU

>>6714792
It's definitely stice. Hal's only room mate is Mario.

>>6715339
>definitely wrong about it being ortho
Oh well fuck

>>6718502
The floor face passage need not be contemporary to any given date. It is the voice of an early matriculant who is rooming in a common with several others. It is not clear that Hal did not have to go through that process as a younger player before gaining the upper-class-year privilege of a double private room.

>>6717947
Sounds like he didn't get it.

So, on the schedule, the following seems at least worth noting:

Page 30: Do you think for one moment that a professional plier of the trade of conversation would fail to probe beak deep into your family's sordid liason with the pan-Canadian Resistance's notorious M. DuPlessis and his malevolent but allegedly irresistible amanuensis-cum-operative Luria P_____?

Page 64: Avril....whose involvement, however demonstrably nonviolent, with certain members of the Quebecois-Seperatist Left while in graduate school placed hehr name on the R.C.M.P.'s notorious 'Personnes a Qui On Doit Surveiller Ateentivement' List.

Note 16: Extremely unpleasant Quebecois-insurgents-and-cartridge-related subsequent developements make it clear that this was (again) Trent (Quo Vadis) Kite.

Note 18: "upscale arty looking film cartridges which latter Don Gately's colleague just about drooled all over the parquet floor at the discriminating-type-fence-value of, potentially, if they were rare or celluloid, or not available on the InterLace Dissemination grid.

Page 91: involvement with the widow of the auteur resonsible...for ...the samizdat

Page 91-92: the wife was fucking anything with a pulse, particularly a Canadian pulse."

>>6717691
He intended all the divergent threads and sub-threads to be developed and unwound completely by means of, yes, vignettes and seemingly pointless data so that by the end of the book the reader can start putting all the details together and see the storylines starting converge, with the true ending or climax of the novel happening sometime during Year Of Glad.

>>6719380
yeah i noticed that too

>>6719456
>>6719380
Yeah, so to sum that up, Gately and Kite burgled DuPlessis, and killed him by accident by stuffing his mouth with a rag while he had a bad cold.

Unbeknownst to them, he was the Canadian Separatist mastermind and was fucking Avril. He also had a really aces cartridge collection, which Kite couldn't wait to fence. He also has an agent named Luria P, who is fucking Rodney Tine, the president's intelligence chief, and Gately's boss.

Note 16 virtually confirms that a Master Cartridge was among that really slick upscale cartridge collection.

That's all just from the in-schedule reading.

>>6719480
>Gately's boss.

No. DUH

>Steeply's boss.

Me eat frech fries