View from The Cage

IJ, the Third Time Around

2011-02-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

I finished reading "Infinite Jest" for the third time. Let me tell you, it just gets better with each read. Sorry, no reading notes this time; I read it just to savor each word. It was worth it. Maybe my next time through it.

I can't recommend enough reading IJ more than once.

Other Notes of Note

2011-02-14T17:13:00.000-08:00

"Every minute spent in introspection is a minute outside of reality. But without introspection, reality is merely reaction." -- (I came up with that today.)

Humans and Humanity

2011-02-14T17:10:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, my son popped off a term in one of our uniquely deep and personally satisfying conversations that stuck in my head long after the conversation ended. At the time, it was the right phrase at the right point in the conversation. It was the perfect cornerstone for our topic of conversation at that point, and I recall that our conversation from that point on built on that term. The term was "the law of large numbers."

I have long since forgotten the conversation from that time, but "the law of large numbers" has been stuck into some back recesses of my neurons and has never left. I've been turning over the concept in my head, like turning over a rock with a fossil embedded in it, feeling that there is more to the imprint than the surface reveals, but unable or unwilling to crack the surface to see what was inside and possibly destroying the embedded fossil in the process.

So, the idea of "the law of large numbers" has been going around in my head over and over since I first heard of it. I've considered it from one direction and then another, and it seems to keep popping up when I'm reading something in the least bit philosophical.

This morning, as I was having coffe and catching up on the New Yorker fiction of the last few weeks, I finished the last story (mentally thanked the New Yorker for such good writing and good writers) and realized that I still had half a venti Starbuck's Pike Place blend left and nothing to read. I pulled out my iPod, plugged in the earbuds, and began browsing for something to fill the mood. I came across DFW's Kenyon Commencement speech and put it on.

As Dave's voice came on and the speech came to the part of You being in the exact center of everything you experience, "the law of large numbers" came back into my head. And it seemed to dovetaile (in my mind, anyway) perfectly with what DFW was saying. It was like getting X-ray vision for a moment and being able to see into that rock with the fossil and seeing, just for that moment, the entire shape of the rock and the fossil within. It was sorta like that, seeing a connection between DFW's thoughts on solipsism as a "default setting" and "the law of large numbers."

The "large numbers" seemed to me to refer to a large collection of human organisms, and by large I mean, like, millions, even hundreds of millions, maybe even billions or more. On this scale, the human mind simply cannot discern individuals, it simply overwhelms the intellect. On this scale, the collection seems almost to be an individual of its own, much like we are completely unaware of the individual cells that make up our own bodies. (I mean, yeah, I know what a cell is, but as far as one particular cell in my body, I have no clue.)

From what I was hearing from my iPod, our default setting may tend to be the conclusion, individually, that what happens to the collective happens to us, individually, that what is directed at this collective is also directed at us.

I observe that advertising is almost always universally disliked, yet advertising continues to exist. How could something universally disliked continue to exist? Advertising is still with us, I believe, because it works. It may be universally disliked on an individual level,but it works on a collective level.

Advertising works because the collection of individuals exhibits an emergent patterm of behavior of its own, like the collection is itself an individual, composed of us individual human beings who, like the cells in our own bodies, are completely unaware of the larger organism we compose. But this larger organism exhibits its own behavior and its own preferences. Advertising is merely poking and prodding this larger organism to elicit the behavior that the advertisers desire; there is no more awareness of the individual human beings composing this corpus than we have of the cells composing our own bodies. The whole point of advertising is to prod this slug of collective humanity to make it twitch in a desired way.

So it is nothing personal, this pointless, continuous blather of advertising. It really as nothing to do with you, as an individual. Advertiser are only trying to make the larger collective organism twitch in a desired direction.

Individually, our perception is that each poke and prod is directed personally at You! It is personally offensive to discover (or perceive) that one's own behavior and choices can be so easily manipulated.

Behind the emergent pattern of the collective is, in fact, numerous individual choices. Most of these choices seem to be the result of "default settings" (as DFW put it), meaning that each and every individual human being is responding to the advertising message, most of them not from conscious awareness of their choices.

As DFW points out in his speech, it is unimaginably difficult to exercise conscious choice over one's own thoughts all the time, which is probably why nearly everyone does not do it most of the time, and most people don't bother to do it at all. Imagine the change in the collective emergent pattern if they did!

Portrait of a Young Man (Not Necessarily an Artist)

2009-05-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

After reading the Jest, it seems quite natural to me to pick up some more heavy reading, so why not "Ulysses", right? And (thanks to my son (again)) Joyce wrote some background for "Ulysses", e.g., "Dubliners" and "A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man". I had an encounter late this morning that, now that I'm through "Dubliners" and halfway through "Portrait", just screamed for an entry with the above title.

Early this afternoon I stopped for lunch at the local Subway. I was on my way to pick up my car, which in the midst of my unemployment had started overheating. (The timing could not have been better, really.) Since I was without wheels, and not averse to a little exercise, I walked the three miles to the Goodyear dealer where my car was located. The car still wasn’t ready; the filler cap that it needed yesterday still had not arrived. All it would take would be to screw on that cap once it got here. After that three-mile walk, and a very early breakfast, I definitely felt that an early lunch was in order.

So while I’m placing my order, this guy walked in and asks for some water. The counter staff ignored him like totally, which I thought was a bit rude. I was scanning the people, looking for reactions, when he looked directly at me and said they were messing with him. They were always messing with him. They messed with Bruce, too, and Bruce stopped coming around. It wasn’t exactly a rant, but there was an odd sort of edge to his whole soliloquy. (I call it a soliloquy because, although he was facing me, he didn’t seem to expect a reply or even an acknowledgment. It seemed more rhetorical than anything else. But, well, he was looking right at me.)

As I paid for my sandwich and drink, I asked for another drink and gave it to the guy. He said thank you, thank you very much, and his eyes actually started tearing. It caught me a little by surprise. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such gratitude for such a small act. I encouraged him to fill his cup and enjoy his drink.

He sat down. I sat down at the next table and asked, “So, what’s your story, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, I’m just curious to know. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” He said no, he didn’t mind and offered the chair across his table to me, where I then sat.

He said he was handicapped and these people were stressing him out. He sipped on his drink, appreciatively and gratefully. He said he was on medication. For stress and for high blood pressure. The high blood pressure medication surprised me, because I guessed he couldn’t have been much more than 30. But considering his nervous and highly agitated state (which seemed to be a more or less constant condition for him) it made sense.

I tried to make more sense of him. He wasn’t homeless; he said he lived with his parents, who he said would fight all the time, stressing him more. Said his mom was always yelling at him, and that stressed him more. His brother borrowed his mom’s car that morning, but he knew his brother had driven it to the local liquor store. Or he had driven it to one of his friend’s, and the friend had driven him to the liquor store. Or he left the car in his mom’s driveway and his friend drove him. It was hard to make sense out of his story. But he didn’t seem strung out on drugs or medication or anything. But I got the sense of a somewhat underdeveloped adult in a very bad home life.

He look like he was scared. Constantly scared. That kind of scared like being constantly under attack by everyone around you. His hands shook the whole time I sat there at the table with him, and he had those vertical furrows in his brow, between his eyebrows, that someone under constant worry gets. He spoke with long pauses between each sentence, like something else was demanding his attention. My impression was of hunted prey. And, yes, I could see how someone not quite sharp enough to deal with the world around them could become prey to at least some elements of the world.

He had mentioned Bruce. I remembered Bruce from several years ago. I used to hang out at the Starbuck’s next door, and there was this character named Bruce who would come in there once in a while. Bruce was unquestionably mentally handicapped, but a very pleasant guy, really, and liked to talk, although you had to use simple sentences in any conversation with Bruce. Compound phrases just totally lost him. Bruce’s big thing was always asking for a hug. Eventually his conversation would always turn to a request for a hug. Most people, myself included, indulged him, disregarding whatever social discomfort it produced, which seemed pretty minimal in retrospect. And Bruce always appreciated a good hug. He always said thanks.

But there was an unfortunate side to Bruce as well, which you would find out if you talked to him for a length of time, that is, if you took the time to actually talk to him. Bruce had a hard life. He talked about his parents beating him, and of how hard it was for him to keep a job, and how he had to live at home because he couldn’t live on his own. Talking to Bruce, I could imagine the frustration of his parents dealing with their son who (through no fault of theirs, his, or anyone's, really) just didn’t have the mental horsepower to function on his own in the world and who would depend on them probably for the rest of his, and their, lives. This, in no way, excused the beatings (if, in fact, there were beatings, keeping in mind the child-like intellect I was talking to here.)

And this guy knew Bruce, apparently reasonably well; well enough it seemed to identify with him somewhat. He seemed familiar with Bruce’s situation, so I reasoned that this must be what his handicap was, as well.

He said I reminded him of his uncle Darrell, the way I calmed him down was like his uncle Darrell could do (but, hell, all I did was listen to him!), but his uncle Darrell died several years ago, and he missed him.

Aside from the store owners stressing him, there were these two kids on the sidewalk in front of the stores that were always messing with him. The cops were always chasing these kids away, and they were always in gang fights up the road. These kids threatened him with all kinds of things, and he gave them money to make them go away. I pointed out that giving them money was only encouraging them to keep threatening him, but he seemed to have trouble getting his head around the concept, and all I could see was predator and prey, a sort of intraspecies Darwinism. Considering that it was humans involved, it kinda made my stomach lurch; I guess I’ve held out hope that, just maybe, we could be better animals.

After going on about these two kids who seemed to be terrorizing him on the sidewalks in front of these stores, he told me that he guessed he needed to block out those kids somehow. His tone was kinda flat; his statement came across as, I dunno, a request maybe, or a confirmation or admission of sorts. But his face looked like a mixture of hope, deprecation, maybe a little embarrassment, maybe more. All I could think to tell him was some breathing exercises that seem to work for me; I didn’t know if they would work for him or not, because everyone is different, and our feelings are the hardest things to control.

After finishing my sandwich, and after one of the more interesting lunchtime conversations I’ve had in a while, I excused myself to go see how my car was doing. The kid wished me good luck on my job search (I thought of him as kid, because however developed he was physically, he still seemed to be a kid, a confused lost kid in a world he was trying very hard to figure out), with probably the most sincerity I’ve ever witnessed from another human being. I said, yeah, good luck to both of us, right? And he almost smiled.

More Signs of the Times

2009-03-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, in my pocket change, I found a wheat penny. Wheat pennies have the image of two stalks of wheat stamped on the obverse side, where modern pennies have the Lincoln memorial. Nowadays they are scarce and maybe somewhat valuable, and as coin collectors hoard them they are becoming scarcer and more valuable (perhaps). This one in my pocket change is worn from years of apparent penny-pinching and bears the date 1929, the year of the last great depression.

This morning, as I was getting the oil in my car changed, I witnessed a drug bust on a street corner of my pretentiously upscale, suburban bedroom community. The county officer making the bust was very business-like and no-bullshit, definitely getting the job done. He smashed some sort of paraphernalia under his heel as the two perps, already in handcuffs, watched, then he made one of them deposit the smashed-up bit of paraphernalia in a nearby trash can. The perp making the deposit looked very unhappy. I'm not really sure what to make of this observation.

Sign of the Times

2009-03-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the general tenor of the times and of the economy, I lost my job. No, not like I drove all the way in to work and then realized, “Dang, it was here yesterday”. Actually, my job was taken from me. My company gave me two week’s notice.

Not like I didn’t see it coming. At the end of January, I was cut from the project I was working on due to cost overruns. (Severe cost overruns, I might add.) What happens in my company whenever anyone gets off of a project, they get assigned to a “special” office, where their job becomes to find a job. While they are performing this very special job, they charge their time to a very special charge number. (More about the very special charge number later.) Now, if you find yourself in this position, there are numerous resources at your disposal. For example, your manager helps you locate jobs within the company, but you must realize that your manager is up to his ass in alligators trying to deal with the cost overruns that put you in this very special office to begin with, so he (in my case it was a he) doesn’t have a lot of spare cycles to devote to your personal catastrophe. Nonetheless, I had a good relationship with my management (including the guy up to his ass in alligators) and they were very useful in getting other manager’s attention focused on my particular job application.

That very special charge number that I mentioned earlier? Well, it’s an overhead charge number, which is just an accountant’s way of saying you are now costing the company money. See, before, when you were on that project that was hemorrhaging finances so badly, you were actually making more money for the company than it cost to keep you employed. (Or so it appeared; don’t ask me how the accountants figure that.) Now that your circumstances have changed, this equation has flipped over, and you are now costing the company money. Now you get to charge your time to that very special charge number, so the company can keep track of exactly how much you are costing them. You can only suck on that tit for so long before it runs dry.

All this I knew when I walked in to that very special office and began my very special job. Almost immediately I formed a plan; a plan and a schedule. It looked something like this.

Week 1: Search the company job resources for jobs within the company and apply to them, as many as I possibly can. Involve my manager.

Week 2: Same as week 1, but if no interviews by now, start to worry. Otherwise, keep searching and applying for as many jobs in the company as I possibly can.

Week 3: If still no job interviews, begin looking outside the company at job prospects, but continue to apply within the company and involve my manager as needed.

Week 4: If still no job interviews or interviews are not resulting in jobs, put my resume out on the streets (applying for as many of those jobs as I possibly can). Begin looking seriously outside the company. I felt no need to mention this move to anyone in the company, nor did anyone ask. I’m not sure how I would have answered if they did ask.

Events began to follow my plan uncomfortably closely. I was not getting any interviews for company jobs. I wasn’t even getting acknowledgments for my applications. (Here’s where a manager comes in handy as well. A word to my manager, and he would drop a word to the hiring manager, and I would very quickly hear what my standing for the job was. Generally, it was not good, but at least I knew.) But by week 5, I was getting interviews outside of my company. Incredibly, the market was far more responsive than my own employer. (Go figure!); there were jobs out there. By week 6, I was getting job offers from outside my company, nothing from the inside. There were jobs, just no jobs in my company. It was looking like I was going to have to change employers.

Back to that very special charge number; there are ways to minimize your use of it. In my case, I found training, lots of it, as much as I could find. If there was a training course within the company, and I could get to it, I enrolled in it. You see, training is also overhead (you’re costing the company money) but it’s more like an investment. You are learning skills that the company can market to its customers and, thus, make even more money from you. So training is a more acceptable form of overhead than simply sitting on my ass and waiting for the next great job to come my way.

So to all you other bread-winning life forms out there, the secret is to get up off your fat asses, guys. Here’s what I’ve learned you can do instead of waiting for that choice plum of employment you feel so entitled to.

Get up and look. Hit every job search resource you have at your disposal and hit it hard.

Network. Network like crazy. Get out of your comfort zone and go talk to people. (You're going to wish you had started this a lot earlier.) Yeah, you hear this one all the time, but only because it works. Networking deserves its own blog entry, at the very least. There are more networking books on the market than you can shake a pink slip at. Some of them are probably worth reading, but since it’s your economic survival at stake, maybe you should open one or two of them.

Have a plan. Knowing that you have a course you are going to follow calms the mind and gives you confidence. You are going to need confidence going into the numerous interviews you will be doing, because you aren’t going to have much of it when you get out.

Follow the plan. As your confidence wanes, it’s going to become harder and harder to hit the job searches and go to the interviews. And you need to hit the job searches and go to the interviews. See, getting a job is all a numbers game. To get a job, you need at least one job offer. To get that offer, you need to go to at least ten interviews (just a round number, but you get the idea. Your mileage may vary (and not necessarily for the better!)) To get an interview, you have to have submitted at least ten applications. Right there, that’s a hundred jobs you have to apply to, to get the ten interviews, so you get the one job offer. Having a plan helps you do all this on autopilot. Realize this, and be empowered.

Involve your manager(s). Managers can be extremely powerful tools when wielded properly. All you have to do is ask. Even the busiest manager will spare a minute or two to make a phone call on your behalf. Besides, it’s good networking.

There are those who may point out that my approach is perhaps optimistic, maybe a bit naïve, maybe a little too positive, perhaps even unrealistic. All I can say is, I have a new job.

Connections: Ulysses and Infinite Jest

2009-03-01T08:38:00.000-08:00

I'm tackling James Joyce's Ulysses now and finding similarities between Ulysses and Infinite Jest as well as insight into The Jest. Here's one example.

3.416-417, in the Gabler edition of Ulysses is this little piece of text: the veil of the temple. I was actually looking on Google for anything about airing his quiff, from 6.196, and came across a good description of this phrase in Ulysses Annotated, by Don Gifford. Poking around in Ulysses Annotated, I found the veil of the temple, and then the A-Ha neuron fired.

Get this (from Ulysses Annotated): 3.416-417 the veil of the temple...shovel hat -- As described in Exodus 26:31-35, the veil acts as a multicolored screen between the outer "holy place" and "the most holy" (behind the veil). And this veil is rent at the moment of Jesus's death (Matthew 27:51). Berkely argued that "Vision is the Language of the Author of Nature" (The Theory of Vision [London 1733], section 38); in other words, the visible world is like a screen with signs on it, a screen that God presents to be read and thought rather than seen. Thus, the signs on the screen could be regarded as something taken out of one's head (or hat). A "shovel hat" was worn by some Church of Ireland and Church of England clergy in the eighteenth centure.

So, Madame Psychosis sat behind a tri-fold screen during her FM broadcasts from the MIT student union. And she wore a veil.

This seems to mean so many things on so many levels; I'm still piecing it together. And I'm just blown away by an intellect that can intentionally make connections and references like this, although I realize my admiration may come from reasoning more like the Watchmaker argument of Creationists (i.e., the Universe is too well put-together to have come about by chance, therefore, there must be a God.) Maybe DFW just accidentally put veils and screens in The Jest just because he read a lot; I just have trouble believing that it was accidental.

The Trivium

2009-02-14T09:56:00.000-08:00

David Foster Wallace mentioned the Trivium and the Quadrivium in Infinite Jest as the foundation of the curriculum at Enfield Tennis Academy. The Trivium/Quadrivium was (and still is) the classical liberal arts curriculum. This was how the young were taught to reason and communicate in the classical era and through the Middle Ages.

My son gave me a book on the Trivium, titled The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, by
Sister Miriam Joseph. The Trivium explains the three liberal arts that compose the Trivium, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. This isn't your standard "i before e, except after c" kind of grammar. This is grammar in its most abstract, most general, all-encompassing form, applicable to any language, really. This is more like foundational linguistics than grammar. The book links grammar to logic, and logic into rhetoric. Thus, the student learns how to express thinking, how to reason, and how to present thinking and reasoning to others.

This is such foundational stuff that I wonder why it isn't taught in this form any more. (If it is taught, it is exceedingly rare, e.g, E.T.A.) The ability to express ones' thoughts, to reason, and to present would seem to me to be the most important abilities any young student could cultivate. The ability to reason and to discourse seems to me to be fundamental to any civilization as complex as ours has become. It was certainly fundamental in the classic years.

I've been taking reading notes, but the book is very tightly written. There is not a word that goes to waste in this book. It is demanding very close and very careful reading to grasp what it is presenting. It's difficult to note it without leaving out large and important pieces. I'm halfway through, and my copy looks like it was salvaged from the Titanic.

This is really valuable stuff to know, and worth the struggle to know it. But I wish I had learned this stuff back in grade school.

The Jest: pages 917 - End

2009-01-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

Page 917 line 14: The capitalized Virus, again.

Page 919, 10 lines from bottom: LISLE, a strong smooth fine cotton thread or fabric, used in gloves and stockings.

Page 919, 9 lines from bottom: EMBRASURE, an opening in the wall of a building for a door or window, tapered so as to be wider on the inside than on the outside; a slanted opening in the wall or parapet of a fortification, designed so that a defender can fire through it on attackers.

Page 920 line 3: CIRCUMAMBIENT, surrounding.

Page 923, middle: What is the connection between James O. Incandenza and Don Gately? Why does the wraith, which is clearly the ghost of James O. Incandenza, appear to Gately and converse with him?

Page 926 line 26: The FREE MILKEN bumper sticker is an historical reference. I wonder how long it will be before readers of Infinite Jest will no longer remember that it refers to Michael Milken, known as the Junk Bond King, from the 1980s? But how much of, say, Shakespeare’s plays and writings made reference to significant events of his day that are no longer remembered? (Not that Michael Milken will be forgotten, given the extent of information on the Internet, as much as lost in the volume of available historic fact.)

Page 928 line 10: post-coital vestibulitis, DFW just had to have invented this condition. He seems to have exaggerated every athletic coach’s fear of pre-game sex and his player’s performance.

Page 933 line 12: The first hint at Mt. Dilaudid (i.e., mountain of Dilaudid).

Page 933, 7 lines from bottom: It seems that Lyle is somehow on the same plane of existence as James O. Can he somehow commune with the dead, as a psychic, or is he, like, really dead?

Page 934 line 11: In Gately’s dream, the grave scene. Ref: p. 16 – 17, where Hal has the same dream or vision.

Page 935 line 4: Fackelman is watching “Various Small Flames”, one of James O. Incandenza’s films. See p. 988 line 1.

Page 938 line 15: “His rising was more like the floor lowering.” C.f. p. 12 line 16: “The chair recedes beneath me.”

Page 938, 8 lines from bottom: I believe this is Joelle answering questions from someone else. Note DFW’s Q and A format, without the Qs.

Page 938 – 941: Joelle describes making the Entertainment, at least what she remembers of it. Says the master, as are all masters of his films, is buried with James O. Incandenza, whose grave is in the Annular Zone. The Annular Zone doesn’t even belong to the U.S. anymore. Joelle makes this reference as “your country”, so she must be talking to someone from the U.S., or O.N.A.N.

Page 939 line 9: Joelle must be talking to Steeply.

Page 934 line 12: From the way James O. Incandenza died, there wouldn’t be much left in the way of a head, now would there?

Page 941 line 7: This text starts out in the third person, but by line 12 on this page (“He was sitting on my…”) reveals the first person (Hal (?)). But it actually makes sense.

Page 943 line 11: No, he said “bolted”. See p. 942 line 25.

Page 943, 10 lines from bottom: Here the word “map” means Stice’s face.

Page 943, 8 lines from bottom: Coyle’s comment to Hal: “I don’t see what’s so funny about it, man.” Hal seems to be stuck in a facial expression of perpetual mirth, i.e., Infinite Jest.

Page 944 line 1: This is Hal’s situation, too. Has it been his mind’s (map’s) alteration that has him playing such good tennis?

Page 945 line 19: The Virus, this time given its full name: It, the Human Immuno Virus.

Page 946, 18 lines from bottom: Kaposi’s Sarcoma = Spider, and therefore all other spider references in the book?

Page 951 line 22: A surreal memory of a steamed lavatory mirror with a knife sticking out of the pane. See also page 16, 18 lines from bottom.

Page 951, 10 lines from bottom: The Moms felt that Himself was uncommunicative, as Himself felt that Hal was. Maybe Hal has been uncommunicative all along; maybe he’s been leading up to the condition he’s in for a long time.

Page 952 – 953: Hal, who memorized the Oxford English Dictionary up to “R”, can’t remember things from his past and is starting to lose memory of word definitions. Is this situation here the reason he never got past “R”?

Page 953, 9 lines from bottom: kyphotic, involving a permanent curving of the spine that makes somebody look hunched over.

I just noticed that in these last few pages Hal is recalling his past as Don Gately was in the 20 or 30 pages before.

Page 954 line 20: “The brutal questions are the ones that force you to lie.”

Page 957 line 13: Has Hal been aware (perhaps just subliminally) of the Moms and John Wayne all along?

Page 958 line 14: The last Clenette reference.

Page 961 line 12: The Assistant DA who has been pursuing Gately is in a 12-step program to help those who deal with someone with a deep phobia, which Gately resurfaced in the Assistant DA’s wife with his little stunt on p. 55, 12 lines from bottom, – p. 56, 17 lines from bottom.

Page 965 line 9: piaffer, (piaffe?) a dressage movement performed by a horse in which it trots in one place and raises its legs very high.

Page 964 – 966: Third person point of view throughout, but p. 966 line 3 reveals that the narrator is one of the E.T.A. players. But which one?

Page 966, 14 lines from bottom: Hal’s face is “weird” with numerous expressions.

Page 966, 9 lines from bottom: Note how this exhibition match is being played inside a brain-shaped structure.
Page 967 line 6 – 971 line 24: The Barry Loach story; a must-read. It’s like DFW has set up Mario all along for this story.

Page 971, 16 lines from bottom – 972, 5 lines from bottom: Orin is being held captive by the AFR.

Page 974 line 4: Abrupt scene change here; from his hospital bed Gately is remembering Mt. Dilaudid and Fackelman’s unmapping.

Page 976, 7 lines from bottom: Girl; red-leather coat; large adam’s-apple; could be Poor Tony if the feather boa was present.

Page 981 line 19: The End. (The rest of the book are the end notes.)

The Jest: pages 844 - 916

2009-01-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

Page 845 line 14: This “eccentrically dressed and extremely irritating without-home man” has to be Poor Tony. He is apparently a “test” subject for the AFR.

Page 848 line 27: Mrs. Waite eventually hung herself.

Page 849 line 9: Gately wrestles with a moral dilemma and wins. Perhaps there is something redeemable about him after all.

Page 849: A couple days after Gately’s birthday and Mrs. Waite isn’t answering her door and the bills and papers are piling up. Her birthday cake to Gately must have been a farewell gesture. Other clues on pp. 848 – 849.

Page 850 line 24: Death’s explanation of death has appeared before in the book. Where did DFW get this mythical concept of death?

Page 851 line 1: Gately’s dream is exactly like the Entertainment. How is he not totally transfixed and absorbed by it like viewers of the Entertainment?

Page 851 line 10: Hal is definitely the first-person narrator here. This section is subtitled “Gaudemus Igitur” like the Eschaton section.

Page 853 line 12: terre batu, literally “beaten earth”.

Page 857, 14 lines from bottom: Use of “to” instead of “too”; has DFW made a grammatical error? Maybe this is Gately’s error and not the author’s.

Page 860, 15 lines from bottom: Gately’s breakthrough realization. Maybe a breakthrough for all of us.

Page 865, 13 lines from bottom: Hal perceives his voice as neutral, but to Ortho Stice it sounds like he’s been crying. Is this the beginning of Hal’s condition at the Whataburger? Also notice that Ortho cannot see hal directly because his forehead is stuck to the window, so he cannot see Hal’s facial expression, whatever it might be.

Page 870 line 28: The ghost of James O. Incandenza reappears.

Page 870, 3 lines from bottom: Has Hal had this, like, disconnect in his speech since he was a kid?

Page 873 line 5: The Betel Caper, like Gately’s stunt with the assistant DA’s toothbrush; p. 56 line 20.

Page 875 line 27: Hal’s voice and facial expressions are not matching.

Page 878, 17 lines from bottom: This meeting has something to do with the Entertainment.

Page 878, 3 lines from bottom: The OUS is trying to counter dissemination of the Entertainment cartridge with PSAs on the Mr. Bouncety Bounce show.

Page 885 line 3: Aaagghhhh!!! Gately has the revelation of his life, the biggest realization he’s ever had, and FF isn’t even paying attention to him.

Page 886, 15 lines from bottom: A preview of Gately’s dilaudid feast.

Page 886 – 887: The MD as the Last Temptation in The Passion of Gately.

Page 888, 10 lines from bottom: the cage again.

Page 889, 3 lines from bottom: “…woke Gately up…” Were the last five pages just Gately’s bad dream?

Page 890 line 24: the cage again, although as an idiom. Yep, this was Gately’s bad dream.

Page 895 line 10: God as a figurant; interesting.

Page 896 line 6: The narrator here is Hal, in the first person. (I wonder if all first-person passages are Hal?)Hal seems to make a massive transition of consciousness here. He would be extremely spaced out if not for being so lucid.
Hal's focus on the "cumulative aspect" (p. 896, 5 lines from bottom) of his life is the opposite of Gately's, who is literally taking one second at a time (see p. 860, 15 lines from bottom). But unlike Gately, who finds hope in taking it one second at a time, Hal is overwhelmed by the volume of the sum total of everything in his life.

Page 898 line 3: Just noticed how the name “Orin” has been passed from generation to generation of Incandenzas.

Page 898, 4 lines from bottom: “…a nearly impossible choice to make…” Like Erdedy on page 27, at the top.

Page 899 line 3: Hal’s return from Natick (the encounter group that wasn’t the meeting he intended to go to) seems to be when his outward facial expressions weren’t matching his speech.

Page 899 line 9: Could it be that Himself’s belief that Hal was not speaking was a fact; Hal was not speaking when he thought he was. And would any of this have anything to do with the Mom’s “introduction of certain esoteric mnemonic steroids…into your innocent-looking bowl of morning Ralston”? (see p. 30) Or with the mold that Hal ate?

Page 901 line 6: A brief glimpse at Charles Tavis’s genealogy. These genetics explain Mario.

Page 902, 16 lines from bottom: This legend is hilarious.

Page 904, 5 lines from bottom: droogs: a salute to Anthony Burgess and “A Clockwork Orange”.

Page 906 line 6: Howl being Allen Ginsberg’s poem.

Page 907, last line: Pemulis, after a week-long absence, has to have a serious talk with Hal.

Page 908, 19 lines from bottom: Hal is declining the DMZ.

Page 908, 5 lines from bottom: Hal echoes Gately in his refusal of temptation.

Page 909 line 5: Hal’s expression apparently still one of hysterics.

Page 909, 2 lines from bottom: A cage again; Hal making a cage of his hands, like the leader at the encounter group meeting that Hal went to by mistake; p. 801 line 12.

Page 911 line 11: teleologic, the study of ultimate causes in nature; an approach to ethics that studies actions in relations to their ends or utility; any activity that tends towards toe achievement of a goal.

Page 914, 2 lines from bottom: the capitalized Virus again.

Page 916, middle text: Pemulis is retrieving the DMZ. Note that the ceiling tiles are broken and in disarray, and there is no sign of an old sneaker on the floor. Pemulis hid his stashes in the toe of a rotty old sneaker to discourage anyone from looking for it. Some possibilities here, that remain for the rest of the book to unfold: 1) someone has been here and already made off with the DMZ. This someone may be dosing Hal with it, and this someone would be a “dish served cold” kind of individual. I was suspecting John Wayne, after his episode with what he thought was Sudafed from Troelch’s night stand. The trouble with this is that he would be more likely to extract this revenge on Troelch. 2) Hal has already taken the DMZ himself, which would explain his disconnection. It would also explain his refusal of the DMZ on p. 908.

The Jest: pages 787 - 843

2009-01-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

Page 1067 line 34: uncolloped, without small rolls of fat on the body.

Page 1068 line 29: Pemulis blackmails Avril with what he witnessed on p. 552 line 29.

Page 1072 line 15: John Wayne loses it publicly.

Page 787, 8 lines from bottom: R. (‘the G.’) Tine = Rod (‘the God’) Tine.

Page 788: More evidence that “Infinite Jest V” or VI was the real Entertainment.

Page 789 line 1: parturient, related to the process or time of childbirth; about to give birth; on the verge of producing something or coming forth.

Page 789 lines 4 – 8: WOW!!!

Page 791 line 3: olla podrida, a miscellaneous mixture or assortment of things; a traditional Spanish and Latin American stew of meat and vegetables, usually containing sausage and chickpeas, and highly seasoned.

Page 791, 4 lines from bottom: malcathected, wrongly concentrating emotional or psychic energy on something such as an object, a person, or an idea that does not deserve such attention.

Page 793 line 21: A description of Orin’s Thanksgiving dinner with Joelle Van Dyne’s family. Sounds like as much of a nightmare as her Thanksgiving dinner with the Incandenzas on pp. 744 – 747. Here is where the acid gets spilled on Joelle.

Page 795 line 9: What? Notkin must have the name wrong. Or maybe she is deliberately misinforming Rodney Tine.

Page 1073 note 332: Pemulis catches the fallout from the John Wayne public disclosure, see p 1072 line 15.

Sometime earlier in the book John Wayne was in Pemulis’s room talking to Troeltch and complained of some nasal congestion. He helped himself to some Sudafed on the table between Pemulis’s and Troeltch’s bed, but the Sudafed was actually Troeltch’s purloined Tenuates from Pemulis. No wonder Wayne went off on a rant.

Page 1075 line 24: Pemulis tries to play his blackmail (again; see p 1068 line 29), but Avril apparently has had enough (in the following sentence).

Page 1075, 2 lines from bottom: Yep, Avril has pretty much defused Pemulis’s blackmail. Did Avril set up John Wayne to get dosed, just so she could prosecute Pemulis so effectively? Talk about a dish served cold!

Page 753 line 25: “perdant son coeur” refers to note 314, which in turn refers to note 304 sub. See p. 1060 line 27, ties this phrase to Le Jeu du Prochain Train.

Page 799, 3 lines from bottom: Why does the room’s color scheme make Hal uneasy? I thought it might resemble the mold he ate (see p. 10), but that mold was more of a greenish color.

Page 801 line 12: The meeting’s leader makes a cage with his hands, over the bear’s head.

Page 802, top of page: Weird meeting, but Hal arrived early. Is he at a preceding meeting?

Page 802 line 18: “…the cage again on his poor bear’s squashed head…”

Page 802 line 22: Kevin describing his Inner Infant behind the bars of a crib, i.e., a cage.

Page 803 line 28: Yep, Hal’s at the wrong meeting. Here he has just encountered Kevin Bain, Marlon Bain’s (Orin’s doubles partner at E.T.A.) brother. The Bain’s parents were killed in the helicopter crash that Lateral Alice Moore flew.

Page 805 line 1: Hal, who in his childhood was held and told he was loved feels no less messed up than Kevin Bain, who wasn’t.

Page 809 line 15: cytological, the examination of cells obtained from body tissue or fluids, especially to establish if they are cancerous; a branch of biology dealing with the study of cells, especially their structures and functions.

Page 801 – 809: Hal at the (what he thought was) N.A. meeting. Interesting, the metaphysics of the kertwang.

Page 809: Don Gately’s childhood fear was a bulge in the ceiling. Hal’s was the face in the floor; see p. 62.

Page 809 line 21: The blurred figure in the next bed is Otis P. Lord, after the Eschaton debacle.

Page 821 line 5: Corvettes do not have back seats.

Page 809 – 823: Don Gately’s inability to communicate seems very much like Hal’s in the beginning of the book; see pp. 11-17.

Page 825 line 4: Clenette H. reference.

Page 825 line 19: Clenette H. did, in fact, bring all those TP cartridges from E.T.A.; see p. 750 line 12.

Page 809, 3 lines from bottom: “…tall and slumped ghostish figure…”; ghost of Himself.

Page 828 line 24: The tally insubstantial ghostish figure again.

Page 829 line 12: A detailed description of the ghostish figure that Gately’s been seeing.

Page 830 line 26: The wraith (ghost) looks down on Gately, like Madam Psychosis in The Entertainment.

Page 809 – 831: Gately has become everyone’s confessor; it seems that nearly everyone is confessing their sins to him.

Page 832 line 3: strigil, in ancient Greece and Rome, an instrument with a curved blade used to scrape dirt and sweat from the skin after bathing or exercising.

Page 832, 10 lines from bottom: flow of words, here separated for clarity: CIRCUM/AMBIENT/FOUND/DRAMA/LEVIRATE/MARRIAGE

Page 832, 19 to 8 lines from bottom: Might there be a message in this list of words, or is DFW just illustrating the inrush of information into Gately’s head?
PIROUETTE
ACCIACCATURA
ALEMBIC
LATRODECTUS MACTANS
NEUTRAL DENSITY POINT
CHIAROSCURO
PROPRIOCEPTION
TESTUDO
ANNULATE
BRICOLAGE
CATALEPT
GERRYMANDER
SCOPOPHILIA
LAERTES
EXTRUDING
STRIGIL
LEXICAL
LORDOSIS
IMPOST
SINISTRAL
MENISCUS
CHRONAXY
POOR YORICK
LUCULUS
CERISE MONTCLAIR
DE SICA NEO-REAL CRANE DOLLY
CIRCUMAMBIENTFOUNDDRAMALEVIRATEMARRIAGE
HELIATED

Page 832, 3 lines from bottom: The wraith seated in the position of Lyle the sweat guru.

Page 833 line 13: Is James O. Incandenza Don Gately’s understanding of a higher power?

Page 834 line 16: Gately probably means “Northern Exposure”, a real television series from the eighties.

Page 834 line 17: Another Cage reference.

Page 834 line 21: the switch over to InterLace and HDTP seems a lot like our own present-day switch to DTV.

Page 834, 12 lines from bottom: The Wraith explains figurants.

Page 834, 11 lines from bottom: The wraith admits to making films while alive; more evidence that the wraith is James O. Incandenza.

Page 835, last line: agora, in ancient Greece, an open space in a town where people gathered, especially a marketplace.

Page 837, 8 lines from bottom: “…no horror on earth…”; see pp. 11 – 17 and pp. 27 – 31.

Page 839 lines 1 – 13: The Wraith (James O. Incandenza) explains why he made The Entertainment.

Page 839, 12 lines from bottom: Another hint at the Cult of the Endless Kiss.

Page 840 lines 4 to 13: Good question!

Page 843 line 2: Interesting image; flies in deep denial.

Page 843 line 18: from wounded flies to the wounded Nuck.

The Jest: pages 739 - 786

2009-01-08T17:09:00.000-08:00

Page 739 line 23: “It was like when she exhaled he inhaled and vice versa.” Like the Cult of the Endless Kiss, see p. 1061 last paragraph.

Page 740, 16 lines from bottom: mordant, sharply sarcastic or scathingly critical; having a corrosive effect.

Page 741, 11 lines from bottom: The Shiny Prize Biting Shoats; what a name for a H.S. football team. Shoat, a young pig that has just been weaned.

Page 742 line 17: The alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman must be James O. Incandenza’s father, who was The Man From Glad. Is this sobriquet a sarcastic statement! As in, the Man from Glad, being someone from a place of gladness? Definitely not the case for James O.’s dad.

Page 742 line 26: Could it be that the Cage is one’s own head, one’s own P.O.V.?

Page 742, bottom half: The Medusa v. the Odalisque seems almost as James O. Incandenza’s statement of intent to produce the Entertainment. Also says something about the transcendence of self. There’s a lot being said here.

Page 1062, note 309: boniface, the proprietor of a hotel or restaurant; an innkeeper; after Boniface, an innkeeper in The Beaux’ Stratagem, by George Farquhar, 1707.

Page 743, 11 lines from bottom: J.O.I., famous hailer of cabs.

Page 744-747: the Dinner Scene. (And what a scene it is!)

Page 745, 2 lines from bottom: haplology, the accidental omission of one or more repeated syllables or sounds when speaking.

Page 747 line 28: blancmange, a cold dessert similar to pudding made with milk, sugar, flavorings, and cornstarch.

Page 747 line 28: This last sentence wraps up the Dinner Scene quite succinctly.

Page 750 line 12: Does Pat Montesian have copies [copies, no less] of the Entertainment at Ennet House?

Page 751, last line: katexia, perhaps an alternate spelling of catexia, meaning mental or emotional investment.

Page 752, 9 lines from bottom: restenotic, recurrence of stenosis after corrective surgery on a heart valve. Stenosis, a constriction or narrowing of a duct, passage, or opening of the body.

Page 753 line 24: Marathe’s situation compared to Le Jeu du Prochain Train, see p. 1058, last line.

Page 754 line 9: Another Clenette reference. She brought some donated cartridges down from E.T.A. Could this be where the (possible) Entertainment cartridges in Pat Montesian’s office came from?

Page 766, 2 lines from bottom, to page 767 line 2: The Moms discussing emotions with Mario quotes Dolores Rusk about people being imprisoned, maybe born imprisoned. A Cage reference, or about DFW’s own depression? The Moms may have explained the Cage here.

Page 765 line 23: “He’s not himself today”; a play on words.

Page 768 line 19: Another play on the word “himself”? (Love how DFW leaves it so ambiguous.)

Page 769 line 13: Hal waking up Mario to talk to him, like Mario did to Hal at p. 39.

Page 770 line 5: Hal had a nightmare of losing his teeth. See note 316; also Joelle’s dream on p. 724.

Page 773 line 2 on: Hal speculating how Mario perhaps alters lies into truth before they ever reach him. Compare to the tennis ball trajectory on p.p. 651-682, the exhibition match between Hal and Ortho Stice.

Page 773, 12 lines from bottom: rococo, a style of architecture and the decorative arts characterized by intricate ornamentation that was popular throughout Europe in the early 18th century; any very ornate style.

Page 794 lines 19 – 26: Must Read! Hal figures out what the real Monsters are.

Page 776 line 9: Electroshock therapy or Kahlua and milk; same difference. Saying people drink/get drunk for the same effect.

Page 777 line 10: Marathe refers to the Cage.

Page 778, 14 lines from bottom: Marathe finds his way out of the Cage.

Page 780 line 16: The Cage specifically mentioned.

Page 781 line 20: This reads like Marathe only traded one Cage for another.

Page 782 line 8: Kate Gompert states that she’s a “shitty lay”. (Reading this paragraph, no wonder the real Kate Gompert took DFW to court.)

Page 782, line 1: We (the reader) know what Marathe is offering Kate, but she isn’t picking up on it.

Page 782, 10 lines from bottom, to page 783, 13 lines from bottom: Hal knows why Pemulis sold the O.N.A.N.T.A. urologist (see p. 772, line 12)

Page 785 line 9, to note 321: A hint of what is coming at the Whataburger. Hal dreams of DMZ. Note 321 gives some insight of what Hal was going through at the start of the book.

Page 1062 line 20: a Squeak reference.

Page 786 line 18: Hal’s checking in to Ennet House.

Page 1067 line 17: gonions, the points on either side of the lower jaw where it turns upward.

The Jest: pages 652 - 738

2009-01-07T18:13:00.000-08:00

Page 654 line 7: cathected, to concentrate emotional or psychic energy on something such as an object, a person, or an idea.

Page 654, 4 lines from bottom: Remember that this section is titled “11 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT”.

Page 661: DeLint explains sheltering the E.T.A. prodigies in order to prepare them. Is this the way out of The Cage?

Page 1048 line 34: anaclitic, characterized by strong emotional dependence on a mother or other nurturing person, especially to the extent of exhibiting or causing serious developmental and psychological disturbances. (good word)

Page 1051, 4 lines from bottom: Orin’s re-enactment of his nightmare, see p. 47.

Page 668 line 17: concavitated, a DFW neologism. He makes up words and they make sense.

Page 669, 12 lines from bottom: cute little nursery rhyme.

Page 670 line 21: pace, [pronounced pay-see or pay-chay and used as a preposition] with all respect to, used in front of a name or title as a gesture of real or ironic respect to somebody who is mistaken and about to be corrected.

Page 672 line 17: There’s that mammal thing again.

Page 680 line 8: More weirdness going on around the courts. Hal’s tennis balls seem to go off in a direction of their own. (A continuation of the weirdness from p. 632, perhaps) But Hal seems unconcerned.

Page 635 line 3: A whole new Hal – chemical free. Is this what’s changing his game?

Page 682 line 18 and 31: Does DeLint see what’s going to happen to Hal [by the front of the book]? By what’s happening to him now? Forgetful will.

Page 651-682: Hal Incandenza v. Ortho “The Darkness” Stice. Incandenza = incandescence; therefore light against darkness.

Page 678: Word play throughout on Ortho Stice and his large head, either his tennis racket or his ego.

Page 1052, note 275: s’annular: cancelling out as, like, annulations.

Page 682, last para: Introduces Matty pemulis.

Page 688: synopsis of “Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat”. By line 31, the bureaucrat is caught between two demands, q.v. Erdedy on p. 27.

Page 691 line 14: epicene, having both male and female characteristics; of neither male nor female gender; indeterminate gender; describing a male having typically female characteristics.

Page 694 line 28: a reference to encagement.

Page 695 – 698: A description of Kate Gompert’s depression. Depressing and chilling.

Page 699 line 15: 11/01 is a Sunday (as stated by the expiration date on the WalMart coupon). That makes Y.D.A.U. our year 2009. Happy new Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.

Page 1053, note 285: catachresis, the incorrect use of words, e.g. by mixing metaphors or applying terminology wrongly.

Page 702, 16 lines from bottom: descant, a melody that is sung or played above the basic melody of a piece of music.

Page 707 line 22: catexic, cathexic, mentally or emotionally invested.

Page 723 line 11: So it really may have been Orin mailing the copies of The Entertainment. See p. 36 line 15: “…the padded mailer is postmarked suburban Phoenix area…”

Page 723, bottom: Joelle Van Dyne concerned about her teeth. It seems that a member of U.H.I.D. would not be overly concerned about appearance.

Page 726 line 8: “An employee at the Academy of Tennis of Enfield has been recruited and joined the Canadian instructor and student already inside for closer work of surveillance.” The instructor would be Theirry Poutrincourt. The student would be John Wayne. Who is this third agent. (Perhaps Clenette? She’s on part-time work at E.T.A.)

Page 726, 11 lines from bottom: “…several curious claims that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was defensive in bed.” I.e., not to be fucked with.

Page 728 line 4: sybaritically, devoted to luxury and the gratification of sensual desires.

Page 729 line 19: agnate, an unfamiliar use of the word here.

Page 729 line 26: “The alley was devroid of cats and rodents both; he did not stop to reflect why.” It is because he’s been here before, killing them off.

Page 726, 6 lines from bottom: demi-maisons, literally half-houses but meaning halfway houses. I guess some idioms don’t translate well.

Page 737 line 11: Don Gately brings up thoughts of the Incandenzas in Joelle Van Dyne.

Page 737 line 16: Orin felt that his father did not acknowledge him in the same manner that the father felt Hal didn’t acknowledge him (the father). See pp. 27-31, the conversational professional.

Page 738: Joelle’s theory of why Orin dropped tennis and started kicking footballs.

The Jest: pages 589 - 651

2009-01-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

Page 581, 13 lines from bottom: The Unexamined Life located on the corner of Comm. Ave. and Brainerd Rd.

Page 589 line 25: “It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know.” Exactly how I felt about DFW’s suicide.

Page 590, last line: “a woman’s voice, calling for help without any real urgency…” This is perhaps a reference to Don Delillo. In Ratner’s Star, there was the Screaming Lady. But this particular character (in the Jest) in the Enfield Marine P.H.H. compound is mentioned earlier.

Page 592 line 12: “It is increasingly hard to find valid art that is about stuff that is real in this way.”

Page 592 line 19: Pemulis’s idea for a Dial-A-Prayer line for atheists.

Page 592, 2 lines from bottom: Of course it doesn’t hurt Mario. He’s got Familial Dysautonomia; see p. 589, 9 lines from bottom.

Page 593 line 4: the “wide square-headed boy” must be Don Gately.

Caught this idea from somewhere, not sure where: Orin is mailing out copies of The Entertainment, meaning he has the master.

Page 601 line 2: comme on dit, French for “as they say”.

Page 601 line 10: Another Clenette H. reference.

Page 604: A supreme insight: it just happens to be much easier for the rest of to watch over these types of people [i.e., the fuck-ups, screw-ups, general listless non-caring short-sighted individuals] and protect them than to deal with the after-crap of their consequences (which they can’t see will ever happen to them.)

Page 609 line 24: Clenette again.

Page 601 line 22: “…lending weight to yet another cliché.” I.e., where’s a cop when you need one. Ordinarily they’re handing out parking violations left and right at 0005 hrs.

Page 614 line 25: Clenette H. again.

Page 615 line 3: Randy Lenz finally getting some resolution of his pent-up anger- and powerlessness- issues, going “There, there” as he pummels the Nuck.

Page 619, 10 lines from bottom: “And Lo” she said softly. This is how Madame Psychosis would start her radio program. See p. 184 line 12. Joelle v. D. is confirming Gately’s guess.

Page 624 line 21: …because that is as far up as someone can wash and wax a van … in a wheelchair!

Page 625 line 20: That would be Mario.

Page 625, 8 lines from bottom: There’s the squeak.

Page 620-626: WYYY student engineer kidnapped by men on wheelchairs.

627, 5 lines from bottom: R.H.I.P. = Rank Has Its Privilege

Page 632 line 25: saltire, in heraldry, one of the basic designs used on coats of arms, consisting of a diagonal cross.

Page 632: Weird goings-ons at E.T.A. giving everyone the fantods. I suspect it’s the ghost of Himself (if I believed in ghosts).

Page 632 line 27: tektitic, like a small dark-colored glassy object, possibly resulting from meteoric impact, found in groups at various locations throughout the world.

Page 633, 2 lines from bottom: Another Clenette reference.

Page 634, 11 lines from bottom: “Hal is maybe the one male E.T.A. for whom lifetime virginity is a conscious goal.”

Page 634, 8 lines from bottom: colposcope, a magnifying and photographic instrument used to examine the vagina.

Page 642 line 29 transperçant, see Note 216

Page 647, 8 lines from bottom: What Steeply is describing is what happened to Erdedy; see top of p. 27.

Page 648-651: Geoffrey Day describes a horror that cannot be denied or avoided. Perhaps the opposite of the Entertainment. (Might have been DFWs worst depression.)

The Jest: pages 529 - 578

2009-01-04T17:27:00.000-08:00

Page 529 line 4: The A.F.R. believes Marathe to be a triple agent. This paragraph explains the intricacy of this double-double cross.

Page 531-538: Don Gately and Joelle Van Dyne talk late at night. Not immediately clear, so have to read on. But, damn, this is some intense stuff.

Page 534 line 22: another cage reference.

Page 534, 9 lines from bottom: See pp. 144-151. An explanation of the rise and complete and utter decline of the videophone. D.G.: “Is this like this thing they talked about about people hating their faces on videophones?”

Page 535, last line: another “annular” reference.

Page 536, 10 lines from bottom: “…Ken E. like to get killed by some son of a bitch last night at that Waltham NA thing…” q.v. p. 506-507.

Page 537 lines 1-24: Dang! DFW is on to something here, I think, about totally open honesty as a tautology, because of, what?, a lack of corresponding trust?

Page 538, 9 lines from bottom, to 549: Randy Lenz dealing with his well-known Rage and Powerlessness issues.

Page 539, 2 lines from bottom: mongo, objects plucked/rescued from trash, also means huge; see this definition.

Page 541, 13 lines from bottom: brisance, a measure of the rapidity in which an explosive develops its maximum pressure; the shattering effect of the sudden release of energy in an explosion.

Page 542 line 25: “…a reckless amount of a hallucinogen he’d referred to only as ‘The Madame’…” as in ‘Madam Psychosis”? This text refers to someone who actually took DMZ. Apparently it took several weeks to come off it.

Page 542, 16 lines from bottom: reseau, a grid of lines photographed onto or cut into a glass plate and used as a reference for astronomical observations; a mesh foundation on which lace is made.

Page 543 line 14: “Workers Comp scam gone rye” q.v. p. 138-139.

Page 543 line 15: Another Clenette Henderson reference.

Page 543 line 22: Which is why this particular book, in note 224, has come to mean a great deal to Lenz.

Page 543, 4 lines from bottom: why Lenz’s E.M.I.T. screening on p. 539, 12 lines from bottom, got so fucked up.

Page 544, 7 lines from bottom: scopophobic, fear of being looked at, stared at.

Page 548-549: The Entertainment is popping up all over the place. (Where is it coming from?)

Page 552 line 29: Pemulis catches Avril and John Wayne in a compromising position.

Page 556, last line: threnody, a song of lamentation for the dead.

Page 560 line 22: Randy Lenz blathers on about some cultish group searching for a cartridge of very compelling pornography. A suicidal Nuck cult that worships a kind of Russian roulette that involves jumping in front of trains. According to Lenz, the stuff of urban legends.

Page 562 line 9: yrstruly = Randy Lenz. Also see pp. 128-135 for yrstruly.

Page 1038, note 234, 24 lines into the note: “…went around impersonating various kinds of health care professionals during periods when he believed he was a health care professional…” See pp. 27-31, the conversational professional.

Page 1040 line 25: “She’s got to keep Hal’s skull lashed tight to hers…” ref. Orin’s recurring nightmare on p. 47 and also pp. 1061-1062 (note 304) La Culte de Baiser Sans Fin, the Cult of the Endless Kiss.

Page 1041-1044: Orin relates the story of Hal and the mold he ate. Ref. pp. 10-11.

Page 1042 line 8: Little Hallie wearing Happy Slippers.

Page 566 line 20 to 567 line 13: Wow! What a take on love. E.g., “…Love, which kills what needs it.”

Page 572 line 23: Treating cancer with the annular paradigm; giving the cancer cells cancer.

Page 574 line 7: Eliotical, in the manner of poet T. S. Eliot (as far as I can tell). T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, was a landmark in modern English poetry.

Page 574 lines 13-29: Pemulis deals for Idris Arslanian’s pure unpolluted Muslim urine. OMG: Pemulis annulizes urine.

Page 1044, note 239 (from page 575): Yeesh! And I’ll just bet those “…personal and extremely unsavory reasons” involved Charlotte Treat.

Page 575 line 22: Note that the word Virus is capitalized.

Page 578 line 20: A comment on Allston, MA: Kiss me where it smells she said, so I took her to Allston. Can't wait to use that line in some other context.

The Jest: pages 441 - 528

2009-01-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

Page 451 line 22: There, he said it. Charles Tavis may be Mario’s father.

Page 453, bottom line: VAPS = Vector/Angle/Pace/Spin, an E.T.A. idiom. See also on p. 265, 13 lines from bottom.

Page 455 line 5: The tip I remembered for drinking water after a hard workout, except this involves Gatorade.

Page 455, 5 lines from bottom: nacreous, like mother-of-pearl, with the iridescent quality of mother-of-pearl.

Page 456 line 2: picric, probably referring to picric acid, a strong, toxic, yellow crystalline acid used in dyes, antiseptics, and high explosives. Picric clouds would be clouds that are yellow and toxic.

Page 461 line 10: revenant, a dead person believed to have come back as a ghost.

Page 461 line 15: morendo, growing continuously softer and sometimes slower.

Page 459-461: Schtitts’ motivational speech about the two worlds, the outer real world and the inner world of tennis. (Is the Entertainment its own world, too?)

Page 463 line 5: pace, [pronounced pay-see or pay-chay and used as a preposition] with all respect to, used in front of a name or title as a gesture of real or ironic respect to somebody who is mistaken and about to be corrected.

Page 465 line 6: misprision, the failure of somebody who knows of but is not involved in a felony or treason to report it to the authorities; a misunderstanding of something, especially a failure to appreciate the true worth of somebody or something.

Page 468 line 1: [like, the very first word on the page] Free, as in free from a cage.

Page 473, 7 lines from bottom: “or off-the-record amputations for daring young train-cultists, no?” Was this to take care of the damage after, or a way for someone to get into the cult without confronting the train?

Page 473: Larry Niven, in his Known Space series of science fiction stories, foresaw this kind of addiction and even gave it a name: wireheading.

Page 474 line 14: Happy Patch; see note 8.

Page 474, 2 lines from bottom: Another cage reference, but not of the kind I’ve been looking for. A figure of speech here.

Page 476, 4 lines from bottom: mysticetously, in the manner of a baleen whale.

Page 478 line 3: Cage reference

Page 479 line 18: propinquous, nearness in space, time, or relationship.

Page 481 line 7: see p. 59 …but it was an unfortunate burglary-and-mucus mishap.

Page 481 line 11: “..quality Van Buskirk of Montreal exotic reflective glasswares…” i.e., mirrors.

Page 481 line 24 to bottom: That wrinkled long-haired person of advanced years in a paisley Nehru jacket would be Sixties Bob.

Page 481, 3 lines from bottom: …which Pemulis purchased.

Page 482 line 1: Part of Sixties Bob’s deal for the Lava Lamp was a trash bag full of old cartridges. Could one of them be the Entertainment? If it is, how did Sixties Bob get it?

Page 482 line 16: The squeak of the door hinge, like the squeak of a wheelchair’s wheels. Find out very soon that Antitoi isn’t really paranoid.

Page 486 line 2: transperçant, (french obviously) to pierce, to skewer, to impale (as far as I can determine).

Page 488, 10 lines from bottom: culcate, doesn’t appear to be a real word, but inculcate means to impress upon somebody’s mind; to fix something in somebody’s mind through frequent and forceful repetition. The latin root, inculcare, means literally “to stamp in”, from its root calcare, meaning “to step on or press in”. In this sense, culcate might mean to impress upon somebody’s mind but without the frequent and forceful repetition.

Page 488: This description of Lucien Antitoi’s dying seems a lot like the Entertainment and its effect on people.

Page 418 line 20: The collapse of network television seems a lot like the collapse of the American political party system (p. 382), and both resemble annular fusion.

Page 498 line 1: Dust that looks like mold, smells like mold, that James O. Incandenza is exposed to. Like Hal’s encounter with mold? Could this mold have had an effect on James O. Incandenza?

Page 502-503: James O. Incandenza’s first concept of annulation. I think DFW is identifying some deeper concept he has in mind, perhaps of something consuming itself to produce itself. This idea has appeared before. I recall myths about snakes consuming themselves eternally, their consumption feeding their growth, which they consume again.

Page 503, 7 lines from bottom: catalepsy, state resembling a trance; actual or apparent unconsciousness during which muscles become rigid and remain in an position in which they are placed. The condition occurs naturally in diseases such as schizophrenia or epilepsy and can be induced by hypnosis or drugs.

Page 506-507: Roy Tony, who seems like a real bad-ass (see pp. 37-39) seems to shock Ken Erdedy into getting with the NA program. Someone so bad actually accomplishing something good.

Page 509 line 27: Hal has had that tooth pulled.

Page 509 bottom: How Lateral Alice Moore got her name.

Page 510, 13 lines from bottom: felo de se, an act of committing suicide.

Page 524: 10 lines from bottom: didn’t Hal have a dry-mouth problem? (see p. 27) But, then again, after withdrawing from “Hope”, the book says one’s mouth starts to water after being dry for so long.

Page 527 line 5: Clenette mentioned again. Clenette’s cleaning cart is compared to Otis Lord’s gamemaster’s cart in the Eschaton Game. So, is Clenette like Lord, god (or goddess) over some sort of game?

Page 527 line 23: sallet, a light helmet protecting the head and the back of the neck, worn in the Middle Ages.

Page 1036 line 4 (note 222): obstreperous, noisy, unruly

Page 528: Steeply talks about a mythic oriental or Indonesian woman so beautiful to the men of that culture that they can't refuse her and are killed. Kinda fits in with the black widow spiders in the book.

The Jest: pages 389 - 440

2009-01-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

Page 389 line 5: hagiography, biography of a saint or the saints; biography that treats its subject with undue reverence.

Page 389, 12 lines from bottom: “Fame is not the exit from any cage.” Another cage reference.

Page 388-389: Lamont Chu discovers the nature of truth; it can be a crushing disappointment.

Page 390 line 10: turpitude, extreme immorality or wickedness.

Page 390 line 10: C.F.D.C. = Caffeine Free Diet Cola. DFW loves him his acronyms.

Page 393 line 4: pruritis-cream containers = tubes of acne medication

Page 395 line 8: calotte, a skullcap, especially one worn by Roman Catholic priests. This word was used in the description of the I-day festivities, where everyone at E.T.A. is wearing some kind of hat.

Page 396 line 5: Hal’s issue with sugar; is something about his metabolism changing, with puberty, perhaps?

Page 396-397: “The Medusa v. The Odalisque”; a model or concept for The Entertainment? The Odalisque is described later as a purely Quebecois myth, so does this fictional film model the conflict between the U.S. and Quebec in this book?

Page 397-398: If the above is true, or possible, then “The Joke” could be a model or concept of the anti-Entertainment, the video that was supposed to be the cure for the effect of The Entertainment.

Page 399, 3 lines from bottom: The presidential declaration that established the Great Concavity.

Page 400 line 15: January 16^th meeting of the Concavity cabinet. My birthday :-)

Page 400-401: All president Gentle can say is “Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh”. Does he now have Hal’s problem?

Page 403 line 7: “Allow me to illustrate what Lur—just what the president means.” Rodney Tine, influencing president Gentle to give away the Great Concavity, was influenced by Luria Perec, his stenographer. See p. 92 line 23.

Page 403 line 15: The Great Concavity looks like a bite taken out of the old U.S.

Page 404, 5 lines from bottom: brillantined, (maybe intended brilliantined) hair oil, an oily hair cream, used by men to keep hair in place and make it look glossy.

Page 407, 7 lines from bottom: The story of Eric Clipperton and the the Clipperton legend.

Page 411 line 21: Hal, in the seventh grade, has memorized only up to “R” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Did he ever get beyond “R”? Why or why not?

Page 223: w.r.t. the names given to the subsidized years; some are obvious jokes (#6 in particular), but the first and the last might be significant. Maybe the last year (Year of Glad) was something to be glad about.

Page 410, last line at bottom, to page 411 line 1: Describing the effects of sugar (at least on Hal) as a kind of drug, at least sugar’s drug-like effect. See p. 396 line 5.

Page 412-413: The Viney and Veals ad campaign for cable TV, and the anti-ads for Nunhagen Aspirin, and how Viney and Veals almost single-handedly took down broadcast television.

Page 415, 13 lines from bottom: How InterLace Entertainment got started.

Page 417 line 12: Refer to pp. 144-151 for an explanation of how GTE and Sprint stock got so low.

Page 418 line 20: After reading of the success of Viney and Veals (p. 411-418), it starts to become clear how J. Gentle won the presidency.

Page 418, 7 lines from bottom: Marathe lost his legs to a U.S.A. train. But wasn’t La Culte du Prochain Train performed in Quebec?

Page 420 line 2: Steeply’s need to appear grotesque seems to oppose the purpose of U.H.I.D.

Page 420 line 19: Steeply’s description of terrorists, how there is always an agenda or purpose. Compare that to what the O.U.S. is doing to Steeply.

Page 421 line 28: A landing aircraft describes a spiral. Steeply’s tossed cigarette describes a spiral. Note that both spirals are descending.

Page 422 line 20: “…a caged rodent…” Another cage reference.

Page 422 line 9: These two, Marathe and Steeply, are discussing some deep philosophy while watching celebrating and merry-making down below them. (The celebrating and merry-making of a primitive sort, around a bonfire.) They are like gods on Mt. Olympus looking down on the world. I believe Shakespeare did this kind of scene as well, did he not?

Page 423 line 21: “A wife who doesn’t mistake your job’s requirements for your own fetishes.” Ref: p. 419, 12 lines from bottom. Steeply is just a full-on company man.

Page 429, 8 lines from bottom: mafficking, a boisterous and extravagant public celebration.

Page 431, 14 lines from bottom: cuirass, a protective covering, or a means of protection; a piece of body armor made of metal or leather, covering the chest and sometimes the back.

Page 438 line 18: orts, scraps or bits of food remaining after a meal is finished.

Page 440 line 9: A yawning red skull, also on p. 411, 10 lines from bottom; Mr. U. Ogilvie marked it on Hal's term paper.

The Jest: pages 343 - 388

2008-12-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

Pages 343 – 357: This section also subtitled “Gaudeamus Igitur”, but this describes Boston AA. After a description of a game about the end of the world, a description of real life and the possibilities of putting lives back together, so it isn’t so odd that both sections have the same subtitle.

Page 344, 15 lines from bottom: imbricate, overlapping like roof tiles, describes plant or animal parts that overlap in a regular pattern.

Page 346 line 18: formicative, (yes, with an m) a feeling of insects crawling on skin, a neurologically based hallucination in which somebody feels as if insects are crawling on his or her skin.

Page 347 line 22: The Face in the Floor, also on p. 62, where it appeared first.

Page 347 line 23: “…and the face is your own face in the mirror…” See p. 1025, note 129, and how Pemulis dickies with the mirror over the bureau in the little recessed part of your subdorm room so that when you look in the mirror in the A.M. to comb or tend to a blackhead or something you see something staring back at you that you’ll never entirely get over. Another point of commonality between widely divergent E.T.A. and Ennet House.

Page 348 line 9: Balaclavan, (with the initial capital) the Turkish infantry in the Crimean War from the village of Balaclava, where the Charge of the Light Brigade was conducted. See wikipedia .

Page 348 line 10: prognathous, having projecting jaw, describes a jaw that sticks out markedly.

Page 350 line 5: A Cage reference.

Page 351 bottom: Only in Boston AA can you hear a fifty-year-old immigrant wax lyrical about his first solid bowel movement in adult life.

Page 352, 4 lines from bottom – page 354 line 10: One incredibly long sentence.

Page 353, 9 lines from bottom: fremitic, in the manner of a vibration or tremor, resulting from a physical action such as speaking or coughing, felt by hand and used to assess whether the chest is affected by disease.

Page 354 line 7: majisculed, in the manner of large printed letter: a large letter used in writing or printing, for example, a capital letter or any of the large rounded letters used in ancient manuscripts.

Page 357 line 7: "Like most young people genetically hardwired for a secret drug problem..." Do Hal's genetics have anything to do with his condition at the beginning of the book?

Page 359, 11 lines from bottom: another Cage reference.

Page 362, 14 lines from bottom: venulated, with a large number of small blood vessels visible.

Page 363 line 21: Another reference to Clenette Henderson

Page 364 line 4: refers to Gately’s dream on p. 358 line 15 – p.359 line 12.

Page 366 line 8: apicals, consonant sounds pronounced with the tip of the tongue, e.g. “t” or “d”.

Page 366 line 29: “…put her head in a RadaRange.” That’s how James O. Incandenza did himself in.

Page 366, 2 lines from bottom: Another Cage reference.

Page 367 line 5: caparison, decorative covering for a horse; harness or saddle decorations; elaborate clothing.

Page 368 line 15: cunctations, hesitations or procrastination in the performance of some things.

Page 371 line 14 submammalian; DFW seems to have a thing for this genus.

Page 372, 9 lines from bottom: Go ahead, work out the acronym for this 12-step group. (Starts on p. 370, first full paragraph.)

Page 1024 line 13, note 145: orthochromatic, reproducing accurately the colors found naturally in a subject; describes film that is sensitive to all the visible colors except red.

Page 1027 line 13: après-garde, probably a DFW neologism meaning the opposite of avant-garde.

Page 1027 line 14: atavism, the recurrence of a genetically controlled feature in an organism after it has been absent for several generations, usually because of an accidental recombination of genes. But what does it mean to be intentionally atavistic? OK, it can happen. Atavism isn’t only genetic.

Page 1027 line 15: chiaroscuro, artistic use of light and shade: the use of light and shade in paintings and drawings, or the effect produced by this use.

Page 1027, 19 lines from bottom: Here is the definition of Found Drama, which James O. Incandenza invented. This definition might explain why the films “Found Drama I” through “Found Drama XI” were “concept, conceptual, unreleased.”

Page 376 line 1: anti-confluential, a DFW neologism, defined more fully in end note 61; we can parse it out:
anti-, opposed to something, expressing or holding an opposing view, particularly regarding a political issue or moral principle.
confluential, merging into one, merging together.
So, anticonfluential probably means a drifting apart or spreading apart. Could very well describe this book.

Page 379, 11 lines from bottom: chyme, a thick fluid mass of partially digested food and gastric secretions passed from the stomach to the small intestine.

Page 380 line 16: Here is mentioned that an American (James O.) married a Canadian (Avril). A union of the United States and Canada, i.e., O.N.A.N.?

Page 1029 line 10: “…—unlike, thank God, John—…” What has the Moms just revealed here?

Page 1029 line 25, note 148: I don’t think a harquebus is a hat.

Page 380, 1 line from bottom: tendentious, written or spoken with personal bias in order to promote a cause or support a viewpoint.

Page 381 line 6: falcate, curved and tapered to a point like a sickle.

Page 382 line 14: “a surreal union of both Rush L. – and Hillary R. C. – disillusioned fringes.” A contemporary reference here.

Page 1029, note 150: A brief explanation of annular fusion (very, very brief). This text explains that annular fusion involves consuming waste to produce fuel whose waste was also fuel…

Page 382: Explains the collapse of the U.S. political parties (all of them). After note 150, referenced at the very beginning of this text, the collapse of the U.S. political party system seems very much like annular fusion (fueling itself with its own waste.)

Page 384 line 16: imbricate, overlapping like roof tiles, describes plant or animal parts that overlap in a regular pattern.

Page 385, 7 lines from bottom: prandial, related to a meal, especially lunch or dinner.

Page 385, 16 lines from bottom: Who is J.J.J.C.? Seems to be the prime minister of Canada, but what do the initials stand for?

Page 385 line 22: jejune, boring, uninteresting and intellectually undemanding; childish, lacking maturity or sophistication; without proper nourishment, lacking or not providing proper nourishment.

Page 387, 2 lines from bottom: fulgurant, flashing with or like lightning.

Page 388 line 1: glabrous, smooth and lacking hairs or bristles.

ESCHATON!!! pages 321 - 342

2008-12-17T18:41:00.000-08:00

Page 321-342: Eschaton!!!

Page 321, bottom: Begins an explanation of Eschaton. Subtitled “Gaudeamus Igitur” (Let us then be merry).

Page 322 line 23: vademecumish, like a useful book, guidebook, handbook, or manual, especially one carried around or designed to be carried around constantly and referred to often.

Page 327 line 6: thanatoptic, perhaps thanatotic, the death instinct, esp. as expressed in violent aggression.

Page 329 line 21: first mention of Hal’s tooth starting to ache.

Page 330 line 18: MVL = Most Valuable Lobber (from p. 1025 note 128)

Page 333, 6 lines from bottom: refer to note 129 (p. 1025), reveals Pemulis’s vengeful side.

Page 334: The map/territory confusion could be legitimate. If the map represents the real world, and it is snowing on the map, does that represent snow in the real world? This would mean that snow was falling everywhere in the world at that moment (extremely unlikely). Page 334, 11 lines from bottom, clarifies this.

Page 340 line 24: Hal is watching a representation of the End of the World As We Know It.

Page 322 line 3: Calls Eschaton a “homemade Academy game”, but on p. 284 line 16, Eschaton originated at Palmer Academy in Tampa.

Some useful notes about Eschaton:

Teams:

AMNAT: 3 players

SOVWAR: 3 players

REDCHI: 1 or two players

LIBSYR (later IRLIBSYR): 1 or 2 players

SOUTHAF: any remaining player

INDPAK: any remaining player

Or any other, like, terrorist cell: any remaining player

Acronyms:

MAMA: major Metropolitan Area

CONFORCON: Conventional Force Concentration

SSTRAC: Site of Strategic Command

MILABREV: ?

SPASEX: spasm exchange

SACPOP: Strike Against Civilian Population

INDDIR: Infliction of Death Destruction Incapacitation of Response (points used for the final score)

SUFDDIR: Suffering of Death Destruction Incapacitation of Response (opposite points used for the final score)

TRIGSIT: Triggering Situation

Target representations:

folded gray-on-red E.T.A. T-shirt = MAMA

red tennis shirt w/gray trim = CONFORCON

red shorts (not tennis)w/gray trim = SSTRAC

Stolen motel towel = airfield, bridge, satellite-linked monitoring facility, carrier group, conventional power plant, important rail convergence

Black E.T.A. armband = atomic power plant, uranium-/plutonium-enrichment facility, gaseous diffusion plants, breeder reactors, initiator factories, neutron-scattering-reflector labs, tritium-production reactor vessel s, heavy water plants, semi-private shaped-charge concerns, Annular Fusion research labs (especially point-heavy)

Sock = missile installation

Boy’s tennis sock = antimissile installation

Boy’s street sock = isolated silo-cluster

Girl’s tennis sock (w/bunny tail) = cruise-capable B2 or SS5 squadron

Girl’s tennis sock(w/o bunny tail) = (MILABREV)

Worn-out sneaker = submarine

White Beanie: signals temporary cessation of SPASEX between two combatants (p.332 line 17)

Black Beanie: ?

Red Beanie: signals utter global crisis (p. 336, bottom). Flicking the red beanie propeller signals a worst-case and utterly decontrolled Armageddon type situation (p.340, 6 lines from bottom).

Page 323 line 2: synoptic, constituting a general view of the whole subject, pertaining to synopsis.

Page 323 line 11: There really was a computer called the DEC 2100. It was based on Digital Equipment Corporation’s Alpha chip.

Page 1025 note 129: It states here that Pemulis is a real revenge-as-a-dish-best-served-cold gourmet.

Page 334, 14 lines from bottom: The wind spinning the propeller on the white beanie. On p. 336, bottom, Lord flicks the propeller on the red beanie (he puts on before p. 336, bottom), signaling a worst-case and utterly decontrolled Armageddon type situation.

Page 336: Instead of calling the worn-out tennis balls used in the game “balls”, DFW calls them warheads, keeping within the mapping of the game. It gives the reader a mental picture of 11- and 12-year-olds playing with nuclear armament.

Page 323 line 10: EndStat, such an appropriate name for the math software used in this game.

Page 336, 3 lines from bottom: solander box, a book-form case used for storing manuscripts, maps, prints, documents, etc. It is commonly used in archives and libraries. The case is usually constructed of hardcover or wood, and has a hinged lid connected to its base. The front-edge of the case often contains a clasp for closure. The exterior is covered with heavy paper, fabric or leather, and its interior is lined with padded paper or felt.

Page 338 line 12: J. J. Penn, now that the players have been mapped into the territory in the previous four paragraphs, proceeds to map the articles of clothing that Ann Kittenplan is wearing as targets (refer to the table of clothing/target correspondence on pp. 323-324).

The Jest: page 311 - 320 (from the end notes)

2008-12-17T17:47:00.000-08:00

Page 1016: 14 lines from bottom: Hal’s toothache.

Page 1018, 14 lines from bottom: “…Pemulis, who’s pacing and holding the Constantine bust in his hands and examining it at close range, shaking his head.” A scene from Hamlet?

Page 1019 line 21: swivet, a flustered or agitated state.

Page 1019 line 26: falcate, curved and tapered to a point like a sickle.

Page 1020 line 16: Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime.

Page 1021, 18 lines from bottom: mayhi, an attempt to make mayhem plural?

Page 1021 line 25: anapestic, in the manner of a metrical foot of three syllables with the stress on the third syllable, or of two short syllables followed by a long syllable. The word “unconcerned” and the phrase “up the hill” are anapestic.

Page 312, 6 lines from bottom: Charles Tavis was present at Mario’s birth, having arrived 6 months earlier; too short a time to have been the father of Mario, but Mario was “terribly premature” (see p. 313 line 5), so the question is still up in the air.

Page 313 line 19: This paragraph seems to describe the effects of Thalidomide, which was a popular tranquilizer in Canada during the mid- to late sixties; probably too early for Mario’s gestation. I’ve heard some speculation that Mario’s deformities could be the result of a brother/sister coupling, but C.T. was Avril’s half-brother and unrelated by blood.

Page 312 line 18: “…seven month pregnancy”; so C.T. could have been Mario’s father.

Page 313, 13 lines from bottom: The description of Mario’s arms: “impressively – almost familial-dysautonomically –pain-resistant.” Interesting choice of adjective-adverb.

Page 313, bottom half: Boy, Orin does not care for his younger brother!

Page 314 line 22: Mario’s hair looks like C.T.’s hair. And a cute jab at C.T.’s comb-over.

Page 314, 8 lines from bottom: Ages of the Incandenza brothers: Orin, 17; Mario 9; Hal 8. So, Orin is 8 years older than Mario, and Mario is 1 year older than Hal.

Page 314, 5 lines from bottom: Mario is the only individual at E.T.A. that is physically challenged in any way.

Page 1022 note 117: The author’s mild apology for a piece of text that he should have place earlier.

Page 312-317: this part about Mario—incredibly revealing of the Incandenza brothers and the Moms.

Page 318, 5 lines from bottom: Marathe is talking like a drug dealer, absolving himself of any responsibility for the damage his product brings.

Page 319 line 25: The “razzle incident”, what is it? Perhaps p. 87 middle paragraph.

Page 317-321: Every time the Jest brings up Marathe and Steeply in the desert, it gets deeply philosophical.

The Jest: pages 238 - 310 (plus end notes)

2008-12-15T18:26:00.000-08:00

Page 270 line 13: erumpent, bursting through or as if through a surface or covering.

Page 271 line 23: sedulously, working persistently, painstakingly.

Page 272 line 11: nictitated, to blink or wink.

Page 1001 line 27: redolent, suggestive or reminiscent of something, with a particular scent or odor.

Page 274 line 7: Eugenio Martinez, a.k.a. Gene M. – refers to the Disease as The Spider. Orin and James O. Incandenza were terrified of spiders. Spiders a recurring theme or symbol.

Page 280 line 23: supporating, forming or discharging pus.

Page 280 line 14-25: This whole paragraph about Pat Montesian’s dogs and their part in Pat’s admissions interviews is just amazing.

Page 279 line 26: Mention of Randy Lenz going back to Chianti and ‘ludes and getting assaulted by sidewalks. Mention of the killer sidewalks to come. DFW does this, drops hints of an idea or concept that he explains more fully later. Sometimes all that you learn about a character or situation is what DFW sprinkles on you a little bit at a time like this.

Page 280 line 11: Talwin, a trademark for the drug pentazocine hydrochloride, the brand name for pentazocine lacatate, a potent analgesic, which is as effective as morphine. Talwin is a controlled substance.

Page 281 line 7: distaff, referring to a wife’s or mother’s side of the family. In this case, I think DFW is simply saying the women’s team.

Page 281 line 16: The reader need only guess what happened to Pemulis’s opponent to figure out why he became so lethargic in the second set or found the balls to be too pretty to hit, or a number of other behavior changes during the day. This supports the hypothesis that Pemulis had something to do with Hal’s “change” in the beginning of the book.

Page 281, 5 lines from bottom: nystagmic, an involuntary movement of the eyeball.

Page 282 line 16: “Schtittless”: interesting play on a name.

Page 283 line line: “the tumescence of O.N.A.N.ism.” That says it all. And DFW had to have deliberately chosen Organization of North American Nations just for the acronym.

Page 1003 note 94: neurasthenic, marked by chronic mental and physical fatigue and depression.

Page 284 line 3: afflatus, creative inspiration, usually thought of as divine.

Page 284 line 16: A little more about Eschaton. Orin was the first Eschaton Grand Master at E.T.A. But Eschaton seems to have originated at Palmer Academy in Tampa.

Page 285 line 16: The Moms, a contortionist of other people’s bodies.

Page 284 line 20: deafflatusized, A DFW neologism, must mean loss or removal of afflatus.

Page 1003, note 98: lordotic, an unusual inward curving of the spine in the lower part of the back, which may be medically significant.

Page 286, 15 lines from bottom: felo de se, an act of committing suicide, somebody who commits suicide.

Page 288 line 6: Salic Law, a body of Medieval law. the best known tenet of Salic law is agnatic succession, the rule excluding females from the inheritance of a throne or fief. See Wikipedia.

Page 289, 13 lines from bottom: strabismic, having eyes that are not aligned in parallel or move the eyes so that they are not aligned in parallel.

Page 290 line 17: ascapartic, Ascapart or Ascupart was an enormous giant, thirty feet high, who carried off Sir Bevis, his wife Josian, his sword Morglay, and his steed Arundel, under his arm. Sir Bevis afterwards made Ascapart his slave, to run beside his horse. In this context, it probably means “big guy”. See WordWizard or Wikipedia.

Page 290 line 1: Where the term P.G.O.A.T. came from.

Page 290, 12 lines from bottom: attar, essential oil extracted from flowers.

Page 292 line 16: CNS = Central Nervous System

Page 293, 7 lines from bottom: factota, pl. of factotum, somebody who does many jobs.

Page 293, bottom third: DFW seems to be really making a statement about the fear of expanding one’s boundaries.

Page 294 line 15: Actaeonizingly, and again on p. 295 line 19, in Greek mythology, Actaeon was a hunter who was turned into a stag after inadvertently catching sight of the goddess Artemis bathing. This word is probably one of DFW’s to mean the sight of one so beautiful that it physically changes the beholder.

Page 299 line 14: “Madame P.G.O.A.T. …”, a sly hint at her future name, perhaps? This page seems to describe one of those life-changing events for Orin, then the opposing football team makes contact with him. What exactly happened to Orin? DFW is only dropping his usual hints.

Page 299, bottom: Introducing Poor Tony Krause. Poor Tony was mentioned on p. 128, 7 lines from bottom, and throughout the whole story on pp. 128-135. Poor Tony was the thief who stole the lady’s handbag with her heart in it, on pp. 142-144.

Page 301 line 22: neurasthenic, marked by chronic mental and physical fatigue and depression.

Page 301-303: An absolutely chilling description of heroin withdrawal.

Page 310 line 21: SACPOP, an achronym from Eschaton, soon to be explained.

Page 1005 line 5: The Unexamined Life: a great name for a bar. When I open a bar, that’s what I’m going to name it.

Page 1005 line 20: Interesting observation, that all of Emily Dickenson’s poems can be sung to “The Yellow Rose of Texas”. But this really isn’t true. I guess this is the kind of observation that Orin would make but that Hal would rebut.

Page 1006 line 8: solecism, a grammatical mistake, error, or breach of good manners.

Page 1009 line 1: Ainsi, French, meaning something like thus, so, in this way. Makes sense that Orin is using it; probably the Quebecois influence of the Moms.

Page 1009 line 7: gynecopia, a word that Orin just made up (has to be), a cornucopia of female genitalia.

Page 1014, 8 lines from bottom: A reference to Avril Incandenza’s forgiveness of Orin for killing her dog (Orin and Marlon Blain).

Page 1016 line 2: “Chortles are good. We like chortles.” Orin echoing Avril, from p. 1006 line 26.

Page 1016 line 27: “Me tell the truth? Me lie?” When Orin tells the truth, he’s lying?

Page 1016 line 29: ascapartic, again, previously on p. 290 line 17.

The Jest: pages 221 - 237

2008-12-14T19:19:00.000-08:00

Page 222: 3rd paragraph (if you count the ½ paragraph at the top of the page); “Joelle Van Dyne is excruciatingly alive and encaged,…” Another Cage reference.

Page 222, 9 lines from bottom: more about the Cage.

Page 223: A list of the years of Subsidized Time. Note this list: you will need it to keep track of what’s going on. You will wish you had it about 222 pages ago.

Page 224 line 2: “The encaged and suicidal…” Two characteristics of the same person, or one or the other being sufficient for the object of this sentence. Either way, another Cage reference.

Page 224 line 4: “the second cage”. Another Cage reference.

Page 224 line 9: Material capitalized like the Entertainment.

Page 224, bottom to page 225 top: Film cartridge suicide notes; was The Entertainment a suicide note from J.O.I.?

Page 225 line 2: Joelle’s personal name for him was “Infinite Jim”.

Page 225 line 19: James O. Incandenza, among many things, was a great hailer of cabs. But so was Avril, but I can’t remember where in the text.

Page 225 line 28: Joelle Van Dyne a.k.a. Madame P., the two outright equated.

Page 225 line 28: tumbrel, a cart used during the French Revolution to carry condemned prisoners to be executed by guillotine. What a word to use for a cab, but how appropriate for a suicide.

Page 226 line 19: How the U.H.I.D. was founded, and how Winston Churchill initiated its founding.

Page 226, 13 lines from bottom: scopophobic, fear of being looked at or upon.

Page 227, 2 lines from bottom: “…that Joelle’s been in a cage…”: a reference to the U.H.I.D. veil? Another Cage reference.

Page 999, note 80: “…although by the time of Joelle’s acquaintance with him Jim wasn’t in a position to be lovers with anybody,” see p. 31.

Page 229 line 3: “…the encaged rapacious thing…” Another cage reference.

Page 229, 22: Y.D.A.U. ‘s Minimal Mambo, this autumn’s East Coast anticraze… It seems that everything in this book is like adolescent rebellion against the status quo.

Page 229, 5 lines from bottom: “…retroironic by having the frames themselves framed, in wry allusion to the early-Experialist fashion of making art out of the accessories of artistic presentation…” More adolescent rebellion.

Page 230, 16 lines from bottom: “…the difference between suicide and homicide consisting perhaps only in where you think you discern the cage’s door: Would she kill somebody else to get out of the cage?” Another cage reference.

Page 232 line 22: phenomenology, in philosophy, the science or study of phenomena, things as they are perceived, as opposed to the study of being [ontology], the nature of things as they are; the philosophical investigation and description of conscious experience in all its varieties without reference to the question of whether what is experienced is objectively real.

Page 235 line 16: afflated, creatively inspired, usually thought of as divine.

Page 235 line 5 on down: the concept of Too Much Fun.

Page 237 line 19: Joelle and her own personal daddy.

Page 239, 8 lines from bottom: First mention of P.G.O.A.T.

Page 241 line 25: acclivated, upwardly sloping.

Page 240, last line: “…Dicalced monastery…” maybe a misspelling, discalced would mean that the monks go barefoot.

Page 243 line 18: propitiate, to appease or conciliate somebody or something.

Page 243 line 21: apotropaic, intended to ward off evil or bad luck.

Page 245 line 26: lacuna, a gap or place where something is missing, e.g. in a manuscript or a line of argument.

Page 249 line 14: Hal’s use of the word telemachry, which Orin corrects as telemetry, is a Freudian slip. Telemachus was the son of Odysseus and Penelope, who contrives with his father to slay his mother’s suitors.

Page 250, 18 lines from bottom: asphyxuated, a misspelling? But it appears again on page 251 line 14.

Page 252: Hal’s sessions with the grief counselor after his father’s death, cf. his sessions with the “professional conversationalist” on pp. 27-31.

Page 252 line 25: synclinal, like a fold in a rock formation that is shaped like a basin or trough and contains younger rocks in its core.

Page 254 line 7: Here is where Hal says the nightmares and the face in the floor dream (see p. 62) started, with these grief therapy sessions.

Page 255 line 10: “The nearest library…and step on it.” Ref. p 12 line 3.

Page 255 line 28: paroxysmic, a sudden and uncontrollable expression of emotion.

Page 258 line 10: Hal corrects the use of asphyxuated on p. 250 line 18 and p. 251 line 14.

Page 260 line 20: revenant, a dead person believed to have come back as a ghost.

Page 260 10 lines from bottom: Note 87 refers to the James O. Incandenza film “Homo Duplex”.

Page 262, 2 lines from bottom: hypertonic, describes a body part such as a muscle or artery that is under unusually high tension.

Page 262-263: I believe Pemulis’s pre-game nerves are mentioned earlier, but not sure where.
Page 265, 13 lines from bottom: VAPS, An E.T.A. term meaning Vector/Angle/Pace/Spin. See note 236.

Page 237 line 7: Schacht’s reason for Pemulis’s vomiting.

The Jest: pages 186 - 220

2008-12-12T17:16:00.000-08:00

Page 187 line 20: steatopygiac, one with an accumulation of fat on the buttocks. (Yes, there is such a word.) No wonder they needed special slacks.

Page 187 line 27: U.H.I.D., Union of Hideously and Improbably Deformed. An agnostic-style 12-step program for what it calls the “aesthetically challenged”. Started in 1941 by that matron that Winston Churchill insulted. More on p. 226, and it's f'ing hilarious.

Page 187, 2 lines from bottom: “Like most marriages, Avril and the late James Incandenza’s was an evolved product of concordance and compromise,…” This phrase first appears on p. 183 line 28.

Page 188 line 9: L.A.S. = Liberal Arts School

Page 188 line 12: mens-sana, latin for “sound mind”.

Page 188 line 13: ad valoremized, according to value, in proportion to the value of something. So Avril’s “flinty mens-sana pedagogy wasn’t diluted so much as ad-valoremized…”

Page 189, 2 lines from bottom: “Her voice seems low-depth familiar to Mario…” Of course it does, considering that J.V.D. was one of J.O.I.’s prime actresses in his films while Mario was essentially an apprentice under J.O.I.

Page 190 line 9: lazarette, quarantine facility.

Page 190 line 9: oubliette, a dungeon made so that the only way in or out is through a trapdoor at the top.

Page 192, 5 lines from bottom: The caller describes the moon as never turning its face away from the Earth, much like viewers of The Entertainment never turn away from it.

Page 195 line 15: “Apeshit has rarely enjoyed so literal a denotation.” Man, that’s good!

Page 195, 11 lines from bottom: aminating, (not animating, with the m and the n transposed), the chemical process by which an amine group is introduced into an organic molecule. What’s this got to do with a needle?

Page 195, 7 lines from bottom: Residents of Ennett House get regular urine tests, just as the students of Enfield do, but no M. Pemulis selling them Visine bottles of clean piss. (Where would Ennett House residents get clean piss, anyway?)

Page 196 line 1: “…thoroughly eliminated personal map…” Map meaning, what, consciousness? I wasn’t paying attention to the occurrences of “map” up to this point. I’ll have to do that on the 3rd reread of The Jest.

Page 997, note 67: First use of the word figurant. Also in this note: the woman in Ennett House #5 (where the catatonics are kept) who, the security guards reason, is so terrified of being blind that she keeps her eyes tightly shut, afraid to find out if she is really blind or not. (Same sort of reasoning for catatonics and a fear of being paralyzed.) The fear so terrifying it cannot be faced.

Page 200 – 205: This reads like “Tennis and the Feral Prodigy”, pp. 172-176, but w/r/t substance abuse. It’s even in 2nd person narrative.

Page 202 + note 70 on p. 998: Inventorying every possible substance or activity that can be abused (and wrapping up, in note 70, of the ultimate consequence of stopping that abuse. Is it that we are all abusing one thing or another? Is that the point of our lives?

Page 208 line 6: Calvin Thrust : Charles Tavis; same initials, Calvin Thrust @ Ennett House, Charles Tavis @ E.T.A.

Page 208 line 8: magiscule, perhaps majuscule, a large letter used in writing or printing, for example, a capital letter or any of the large rounded letters (uncials) used in ancient manuscripts.

Page 208, 6 lines from bottom: mucronate, ending in a sharp point.

Page 209 line 19: “…St. Columbkill…” The Columbine High School shooting did not occur until April 20, 1999, but Infinite Jest was published in 1996. A tempting reference, but ahead of its time.

Page 209, 4 lines from bottom: autolyzed, broken down by cells by an enzyme that is produced within them. In this context, the tattoo fading away by the natural enzymatic action of the skin cells.

Page 213 line 25: titration, a method of determining the concentration of a solution.

Page 211 – 215: Details about DMZ.

Page 214 line 18: The Vaught twins get counted as one entry in the Dorm Room Draw. An explanation of why at p. 217 last line to p. 218 line 9.

Page 214, 16 lines from bottom: “’I mean literally lost his mind, like the massive dose picked his mind up and carried it off somewhere and put it down someplace and forgot where.” Like being lost, without a map. Yet another map reference.

Page 214, 9 lines from bottom: Axford speculates that maybe DMZ explains Lyle and his more-or-less permanent lotus position down in the weight room.

Page 215 line 22: DMZ nicknamed “Madame Psychosis”, (also see p. 170, 3 lines from bottom). Follows with the transmigration of the soul. Pemulis got the DMZ from two reputed Canadian separatist insurgents (see p. 171).

Page 216 line3: otiose, with no useful or practical purpose, with little or no value.

Page 216 line 10: entrepôt, a bonded warehouse.

Page 998, note 75, refers to losing a match as demapping.

Page 999 line 3, note 76: glabrous, smooth and lacking hair or bristles.

At the tail end of note 76, the description of the afterglow of Hal’s literary prodigity (hey, if DFW can do it, so can I) seems a lot like a description of the effects of viewing The Entertainment (not described yet, but I remember from my first reading).

Page 219, mid-page on: Introducing Joelle Van Dyne.

Page 220 line 9: another reference to map elimination.

Notes from The Jest: Page 157 - 185

2008-12-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

Page 157 -158: Description of Marlon Brando and sprezzatura.

Page 159 line 28: parping, british slang, to break wind. In this context, literally “farting around”.

Page 159, 6 lines from bottom: rutilant, glowing red.

Page 170 line 15: Introducing DMZ. DMZ may parallel The Entertainment, in the way that DFW seems to parallel everyone and everything in Infinite Jest.

Page 996, note 56: fitviavi – eventually defined on p. 170. Also I like the simile: “…DMZ resembles chemically sort of the way an F-18 resembles a Piper Cub…”

Page 170, 3 lines from bottom (last para.): DMZ is also called Madame Psychosis by the Boston chemical underground.

Page 171, last 2 para.: This reads like Hal is making a purchase from Pemulis, after Pemulis has just made a transaction for DMZ. Has Hal purchased the DMZ from Pemulis?

Page 172 – 176: Tennis and the Feral Prodigy. Understand fully the word feral before reading this piece.
feral, gone wild, describing animals or plants that live or grow in the wild after having been domestically reared or cultivated; savage, similar to or typical of a wild animal.

Page 173, 10 lines from bottom: Hal’s father succeeded at everything he tried; Hal’s father’s father failed. Neither one seemed any happier or mentally stable for it. What does that make Hal?

Page 173, 12 lines from bottom: “Talent is its own expectation”

Page 173, bottom: So, the irony of working very hard when you’re very young to be good at something means that when you finally become good at it, it is seen as a talent that now you have to work even harder to develop and fulfill.

Page 174 line 7: formant, a frequency range where vowel sounds are at their most distinctive and characteristic pitch.

Page 174 line 7: fricative, made by breath friction, describes a consonantal speech sound made by forcing the breath through a narrow opening.

Page 174 line 7: trochaically, relating to, belonging to, or consisting of trochees.
trochee, a metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, e.g., the word “human”.

Page 174, bottom: “Expect some rough dreams. They come with the territory. Try to accept them. Let them teach you.”

Page 175, top: “Keep a flashlight by the bed. It helps with the dreams.” Cf. page 62: the face in the floor. The narrator on p. 62 also kept a flashlight by the bed.

Page 175, 8 lines from bottom: “…sometimes words that seem to express really invoke.”

Page 177, 11 lines from bottom: formication, a neurologically based hallucination in which somebody feels as if insects are crawling on his or her skin. It is found in some case of chemical toxicity and among drug and alcohol abusers.

Page 180, 5 lines from bottom: Reference to Clenette.

Page 183 line 28: “Like most marriages, theirs was the evolved product of concordance and compromise.” Spoken as a sound check by Madam Psychosis. But M.P. has a history with James O. Himself. Maybe this is a Freudian slip, or a bit of sarcasm.

Page 184 line 5: Madam Psychosis == metempsychosis, the passing of the soul at death into another body. (A lot of sources make this connection.) This character, Joelle Van Dyne (a.k.a. the PGOAT) seems to represent this concept.

Page 184 line 18: WYYY-109, Largest Whole Prime on the FM Band. Actually 107.9 MHz is the highest frequency on the FM band, but this is DFW’s book and his made-up reality, so the FM band can be whatever he wants it to be.

Page 185 line 14: treillage, a trellis or piece of latticework.

Page 185 line 29: dramaturgy, the art of the theater, especially with regard to the techniques involved in writing plays.

Page 185 12 lines from bottom: après-garde, opposite of avant-garde?

Page 185, 11 lines from bottom: anticonfluential, a DFW neologism, defined more fully in end note 61; we can parse it out:
anti-, opposed to something, expressing or holding an opposing view, particularly regarding a political issue or moral principle.
confluential, merging into one, merging together.
So, anticonfluential probably means a drifting apart or spreading apart. Could very well describe this book.

Notes from The Jest: page 104 - 155

2008-12-10T16:33:00.000-08:00

Page 105 – 106: A conversation between Steeply and Marathe that, as I recall, continues throughout the book. This conversation goes in many directions and covers a slew of deep philosophical topics. On these pages their conversation seems to compare Luria Perec (Rodney Tine’s undercover stenographer, see p. 92 line 23, also p. 94 line 32) to Helen of Troy. Steeply is making this comparison, but perhaps only to bait Marathe. Then, a comparison of Rod Tine’s love for Luria Perec to Marathe’s own love for his wife.

Page 108, 7 lines from bottom: crepuscular, active in low light,describing fish and land mammals that are active at dusk and dawn.

Page 108, 3 lines from bottom: End note 45 refers to Note 304 sub, just as end note 39 does. Note 324 explains “La Culte du Prochain Train”, the Cult of the Last Train, whose survivors formed “Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents”, the Wheelchair Assassins.

Page 110 – 120: Big Buddy/Little Buddy sessions

Page 111: Hal and Kent Blott talking about love of tennis along the same lines as Marathe talking about love and fanaticism on pp. 105-108.

Page 117 line 21: ancipitals, two-edged instead of rounded, of or being two-headed or two-edged. In this case, referring to those teeth that have two edges.

Page 120 line 19: guilloche, decorative border of interlaced bands; in architecture, an ornamental border formed by two or more interlaced bands around a series of interlocking circles.

Note: I was reading these pages on September 12, 2008, the day that DFW killed himself.

Page 121 line 3: aperçu, a revealing glimpse or insight, or a concise outline or summary.

Page 121 – 126: Mario and the U.S.S. Millicent Kent

Page 122 line 15: osseously, made of or resembling bone.

Page 122 line 16: reticulate, having a network structure.

Page 127 line 22: eidetic, able to recall with startling accuracy.

Page 127 line 27: murated, walled up, imbedded into a wall [Italian, murare]. Also appears in Note 304 at page 1056 line 9.

Page 127 – 128: Lyle, the Sweat Guru

Page 128- 135: Who is yrstuly in this soliloquy? Here is mentioned “C” (not Clenette, because C dies here) and Poor Tony Kraus and Susan T. Cheese and Lolasister.

Page 140 – 142: A comment on the post-modern hero.

Page 142 – 144: The woman who had her heart stolen. (It was an artificial heart she carried in a purse.)

Page 144 – 151: The arrival and departure of videophone.

Page 151 – 156: Michael Pemulis and his urine enterprise.

Page 151, 13 lines from bottom: “Competitive junior tennis is meant to be good clean fun.” Here, in a text about beating the drug tests. A sly note of sarcasm.

Page 155 line 27: erumpent, bursting through or as if through a surface or covering.

An Editorial Comment

2008-12-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

In response to the complaints and the "whinging", I have broken up my marathon posts into smaller, bite-sized chunks. I can only imagine the fantods it must have given some readers to see posts over a thousand lines long; it certainly gave me the jaw-clenching, tooth-grinding fantods to type that much in. And I still have many pages to go just to catch up with my place in the book now.

Notes from The Jest: pages 87 - 103

2008-12-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

Page 87 line 22: (block of text in the middle of the page) candidiatic, related to a fungus that causes yeast infection.

Page 88 line 1: “area code 6026” Four-digit area codes!

Page 1056 line 9: murated, walled up, imbedded into a wall [Italian, murare]. Might be one of DFW’s neologisms. This text refers to the “Great Concavity”, created in the Year of the Whopper, the first year of subsidized time.

Page 1056 line 36: The use of O.N.A.N. throughout the book: an acronym for Organization of North American Nations, or also a reference to onanism, particularly in regards to the focus on entertainment throughout The Jest.

Page 1057 line 3: also line 10: euphemismic, probably a variation on euphemistic.

Page 1057 line 32: Y.P.W.c. = Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken.

Page 1058 line 4: stelliformism, from stelliform: shaped like a star (?), but in context seems to refer more to political movements.

Page 1058 line 6: cui bono, the legal principle that somebody who would gain something from a particular act or event is probably responsible for it.

Page 1060 line 17: numinous, mysteriously associated with a deity; having mysterious powers that suggests the presence of a spirit or god.

Page 1060 line 31: “Faire un Bernard Wayne”: John Wayne’s father? In Le Jeu du Prochain Train, he didn’t jump at all.

Page 1061 line 28: DFW points out that James Struck is writing a term paper about being struck by a train, thereby using his own name as a verb.

Page 1061, last para., to 1062: The Cult of the Endless Kiss, compare to Orin’s nightmare on page 47.

Page 91 line 22: agnate, relative descended from the same man. But this adjective is used to describe Marathe’s and Steeply’s shadows. Opposite of distaff, which appears with relative frequency.

Page 91 line 32: pedentive, from pedate, having a foot or feet.

Page 92 line 19: The effects of The Entertainment, like the effects of DMZ? (DMZ not mentioned yet.) (Just a thought.)

Page 92 line 23: Rodney Tine, the architect of O.N.A.N., aka “Rod the God”. Rodney Tine’s stenographer was also stenographer to M. DuPlessis; named Mlle. Luria Perec, of Lamartine,county L’Islet, Quebec (same county as the widow of a certain film producer.)

Page 93 line 11: pedalferrous, soil with aluminum deposits; soil without a layer of accumulated calcium carbonate, but in which iron and aluminum have tended to accumulate. (And there is a reason for this. Incredible attention to detail by DFW to note this.)

Page 93 line 12: fulvous, of an orange-brown color.

Page 93 line 26: teratogenic, an agent, for example, a chemical, virus, or ionizing radiation, that interrupts or alters the normal development of a fetus, which results are evident at birth.

Page 94 line 32: A hint of a sexual liaison between Rodney Tine and his stenographer. Rodney seems to be aware that his stenographer is a foreign agent.

Page 94 line 31: Marathe: “We get paid to drive ourselves crazy.” Man, that’s good!

Page 94 line 33: Remember, M. DuPlessis was the victim of Don Gately’s botched burglary (see p. 58-59). Marathe is suggesting B.S.S (nee O.U.S.) involvement.

Page 98 line 33: ephebes, in ancient Greece, a young man aged between 18 and 20 who had just reached manhood or full citizenship and was undergoing military training. DFW is taking a more liberal interpretation of this word here.

Page 99, 5 lines from bottom: piebald, marked with patches of white.

Page 101 line 3: semion, [no idea]

Page 101 line 12: extant, still in existence.

Page 103 line 17: carminative, purgative.

Notes from The Jest: pages 79 - 86

2008-12-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

Page 79 line 26: Lebensgefährtins: Seems like this term would be sort of like “little farts”, if not in German or some Germanic language, then in some phonetic imitation of German.

Page 79 5 lines from bottom: leptosomatic, same as ectomorphic.

Page 80 line 6: post-prandial, after a meal.

Page 80 line 7: quincunx, an arrangement of five things in a square, with on at each corner and one in the middle.

Page 80 line 16: bradykinetic, slow moving.

Page 80 line 25: varicocele, swollen veins in scrotum.

Page 81 line13: tympana, plural of tympanum, an architectural recess, especially between the top of a door or window and the arch above it, or between the cornices forming a classical triangular gable pediment.

Page 81 line14: aphoristic, like a succinct statement expressing an opinion or general truth.

Page 82 line 5: simpatico, sharing similar temperaments or interests.

Page 82 line 8: Extra-Linear Dynamics; near as I can tell, DFW made all of this up.

Page 82 line 12: prolix, again (see p. 61) tiresomely wordy.

Page 82 line 15: aleatory, depending on chance or contingency, having the sequence of given notes or passages in a piece of music chosen at random by the performer or left to chance.

Page 83 line 3: palestra, a public sports ground or gymnasium in ancient Greece.

Page 83 line 8: experialist, DFW obviously made this word up (which he’s entitled to do, being the author), but now it’s up to the reader to figure out what he means by it. I suspect it means the opposite of imperialist, (i.e. empire-building, the policy of extending the rule or influence of a country over other countries or colonies) in that a country gives up its territory, influence, or rule over other countries.

Page 83 line 15: “Except why do you let DeLint tie Pemulis and Shaw’s shoes to the lines, if the lines aren’t boundaries?” Is this statement intended figuratively or literally, considering that it is Mario making it? My choice is figuratively. And if Mario said this (as it seems he did, following the conversation between him and Schtitt), then not a bad observation from the slow-thinking boy.

Page 83, 12 lines from bottom: Mario, who is young and moves like an old man, next to Schtitt, who is old but athletic (see p. 80).

Page 84 line 16: (2nd paragraph) refer back to p. 42 and Hal’s discourse about a flag at half-mast.

Page 86 line 1: The reference to “pisscatchers” I’ve been looking for. “Happy Slippers”, slippers of green foam-rubber with smiley-faces embossed on the tops. In my first reading, I really pictured the footwear called “Crocs”, but I guess The Jest was published before they became popular, and Crocs aren’t made of foam rubber, either.

Page 86 line 9: skallycap, a scally cap, or flat cap (q.v. Wikipedia) commonly worn by and associated with Irish immigrants.

Notes from The Jest: pages 65 - 78

2008-12-10T14:22:00.000-08:00

Page 65: chiaroscuro, artistic use of light and shade: the use of light and shade in paintings and drawings, or the effect produced by this use.

Page 65: Festschrift, a volume of writings by various
people collected in honor of somebody such as a writer or scholar.

Page 64: The birth of the Incandenza’s first child (that would be Orin) had been at least partly a legal maneuver, part of the “bureaucratic tribulations involved in obtaining an Exit- then and Entrance-Visa, to say nothing of a Green Card, …”

Page 64: enkephaline, a peptide produced by the body that has analgesic properties, e.g., endorphin.

Page 64: psychodysleptic, a hallucinogen.

Page 64: deliquesce, dissolve, become liquid, form many branches without a main stem.

Page 67-68 [block of text]: This first-person narrative describes a dream sequence that may be about Eschaton, although the name “Eschaton” never appears here.

Page 69 line 22: hypocapnia, a physiological state in which the carbon dioxide level in the blood is lower than normal.

Page 71 line 7: diagnostic plexor, a hammer used in diagnostic percussion.

Page 71 line 26: plangent, resonant, expressing or suggesting sadness.

Page 73 line 16: tetanic, spasm-producing, such as the muscle spasms produced by tetanus.

Page 75 line 12: thigmotactic, same as stereotaxis. Neurological surgery involving the insertion of delicate instruments that are guided to the relevant area by the use of three-dimensional scanning techniques.

Page 75 line 18: A play on words. The meaning becomes clear in a couple of paragraphs.

Page 75 line 24: synclinal, like a fold in a rock formation shaped like a basin or trough.

Page 75 5 lines from bottom: “One kid makes you ask him to please commit a crime.” That kid would be Pemulis.

Page 78 line 30: “That old cartridge, Nichols and the big Indian.” A reference to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

Notes from The Jest: pages 32 - 64

2008-12-10T14:19:00.000-08:00

Page 32: 9 MAY – YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT (one year before the first episode) Introducing Mario and Orin.

Page 34: Sufism, from Sufi, a Muslim mystic.

kif, marijuana, especially in North Africa.

Page 39: anfractuous, twisty: with much twisting and turning.

Page 39: Introducing Bruce Green, Mildred Bonk, Tommy Doocey, and Harriet Bonk-Green. These guys live in a trailer. Tommy Doocey deals pot and other sundries and keeps snakes. Are these the people in the trailer, ref. p. 17-24 by Erdedy?

Page 42: Introducing Orin Incandenza.

Page 45: Orin is overdeveloped on his left side. I noticed the asymmetric physical development of Orin and the tennis prodigies. Hal’s right arm is overdeveloped (I think; need to check this out).

Page 44: Hobbesian: from Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)
English philosopher and political theorist. In Leviathan ( 1651 ) he advocated absolute monarchy as the only means of controlling clashing human interests and desires and guaranteeing their rights of self-preservation and happiness.

Page 45: First occurrence of “howling fantods”.

Note to self: Need two bookmarks for this book: one to mark your place in the book and one to mark your place in the end notes.

Page 47: phylacterish, as in "phylacterish bird”, variation of (?) phylacteric, magical or talismanic.

phylactery
1. JUDAISM Jewish aid to prayer: either of two small leather boxes containing slips of paper with scriptures written on them, traditionally worn by Jewish men during morning weekday prayers as reminders of their religious duties (often used in the plural)
2. reminder: a reminder of something important
3. amulet: something worn because it is believed to have special powers, for example, the power to keep away evil spirits (archaic)

Orin’s dream of his mother’s head bound to his own: a memory of incest? See pages 1061-1062, the Cult of the Endless Kiss.

Page 51: pargeted, from parget
1. plaster for walls or chimneys: plaster, whitewash, roughcast, or any similar material used to coat walls or line chimneys
2. plasterwork: ornamental plasterwork on a wall

Page 55: Introducing Don Gately.

Page 57: chiffonier, chest of drawers: a relatively tall narrow chest of drawers that often has a mirror attached to the back

apocope, omission of end of word: the loss or omission of one or more syllables from the end of a word, for example, the shortening of “kind of” to “kinda”.

Page 59: comm-il-faut, variation of comme il faut, being in accord with conventions or accepted standards; proper.

Page 61: prolix, wordy: tiresomely wordy.

Page 62: reglet
1. ARCHITECTURE flat molding: a flat narrow architectural molding, or a narrow strip separating moldings or panels
2. PRINTING piece of wood for spacing type: a piece of wood used to separate lines of type in traditional hot metal printing

The face in the floor, and the nightmare about it. Not clear from the writing who the dreamer is; DFW writes this in the first person about the reader in the second person, but this second person could be any character in the book.

Page 63: dipsomaniacal, variation of dipsomania, alcoholism: a habitual and uncontrollable craving for alcohol.

James O. Incandenza invented cold annular fusion. It was called annular for a reason. A side note: I just read on Slashdot that researchers have discovered how to make a light wave travel in a circle without decaying or dying out, using some sort of newly discovered optics. See http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/14/1324233 and http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/36400/title/A_knot_of_light
The researchers foresee this as a means of making fusion possible.

Page 64: optative
1. of choice-making: relating to the making of choices (formal)
2. GRAMMAR containing a verb expressing a wish: containing a verb in the subjunctive mood that expresses a wish or desire, as does the independent clause “God save the queen”

Since there is a reference on this page to end note 24, this would make this the first reference to “The Cage” in the book, in the form of James O. Incandenza’s title of his film/entertainment cartridge works. Beginning on page 986, this filmography lists five films titled, “Cage”, “Cage II”, “Cage III”, “Cage IV”, and “Cage V”.
Check out Sidney Peterson’s 1947 classic, “The Cage”: http://www.canyoncinema.com/P/Peterson.html

Page 986: incunabular, from incunabulum, PRINTING early printed book: a book printed from movable type before 1501.

The J.O.I. filmography also lists five makes of “Infinite Jest”, with possibly a sixth.

Page 988: Just a thought: how small can a flame be and still be a flame?

Also in the J.O.I. filmography, DFW brings up the concepts of the antinarrative and the antidocumentary, which one can only imagine.

“Found Drama VI”, the ultimate concept film, being conceptually unfilmable. Doesn’t this just hint at Goedel?

In “Mobius Strips”, a theoretical physicist who can only achieve mathematical creativity during an act of creation (sex).

This end note is also the first reference to “Madame Psychosis”, if you refer to the end notes in the order encountered in the body of the book.

Page 991: The J.O.I. film, “Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators”, makes perhaps the first reference to Eschaton: “Children and adolescents play a nearly incomprehensible nuclear strategy game with tennis equipment.”

Page 991: propitiate, win somebody’s favor: to appease or conciliate somebody or something (formal)

Page 985: In the James O. Incandenza filmography, Pam heath seems to play the role of Death in all of J.O.I.’s films.

Page 993: According to this James O. Incandenza filmography, Infinite Jest (V?) was the last film he made, and it was apparently lost. I suspect this one was The Entertainment.

Page 993: sui testator, as near as I can tell, this is Latin for “in its own creator of a valid will”.

Notes from The Jest: pages 17 - 31

2008-12-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

Note: The page numbers jump in and out of order because I'm noting the end notes as I encounter them.

Page 17: Introducing Erdedy
· A woman who is bringing him a fifth of a kilogram of unusually good marijuana for $1250.
o From a guy in a trailer in Allston, who has a harelip and keeps snakes and has no phone.

Page 20: Erdedy realizes how he is like the insect in the girder of his shelving unit. 15 lines up from the bottom of this page.

Page 21: Another comparison of Erdedy to the insect, 10 lines down from the top.

Page 22: pleurisy, inflammation of pleura: inflammation of the membrane ( pleura ) surrounding the lungs, usually involving painful breathing, coughing, and the buildup of fluid in the pleural cavity

pastiche,
1. mixture: a piece of creative work, for example, in literature, drama, or art, that is a mixture of things borrowed from other works
2. use of pastiche: the creation or use of a pastiche
3. imitative work: a piece of creative work, for example, in literature, drama, or art, that imitates and often satirizes another work or style

majisculed: maybe a variation in spelling from this:
majuscule, large printed letter: a large letter used in writing or printing, for example, a capital letter or any of the large rounded letters ( uncials ) used in ancient manuscripts

Page 27: 1 APRIL – YEAR OF THE TUCKS MEDICATED PAD
Hal is 10, will be 11 in June.
Note the day.
Low saliva output; anything to do with that mold he ate when he was five? (see pages 10-11.)

Page 30: amanuensis
1. scribe: somebody employed by an individual to write from his or her dictation or to copy manuscripts
2. writer’s assistant: a writer’s assistant with research and secretarial duties

Noticed on this page that the Moms was dosing Hal’s morning cereal with “esoteric mnemonic steroids”.

Page 31: mise en scène
1. CINEMA THEATER arrangement of actors, scenery, etc: the positioning of actors, scenery, and properties on a stage or movie set for a particular scene or particular production
2. setting for something: the physical environment in which an event takes place
[From French, literally “putting on stage”]

anaplastic, having lost distinctive cell features: relating to or characterized by the loss of distinctive cell features ( anaplasia )

gastrectomy, operation to remove somebody’s stomach: surgical removal of all or part of the stomach. It is usually performed in the treatment of stomach cancer or severe stomach ulcers.

prostatectomy, surgical removal of prostate gland: surgical removal of the whole or part of the prostate gland.

pancreatectomy, surgical removal of pancreas: whole or partial removal of the pancreas by surgery.

phalluctomy: variation on (?) phallectomy, Surgical removal of the penis.

Yeesh! No wonder Himself killed himself!

Notes from The Jest: pages 1 - 17

2008-12-06T23:01:00.000-08:00

Here is a web site that just might help with the words DFW used in the Jest
http://www.williams.edu/English/faculty/rbell/scholarship-and-criticism/Infinite_Jest_NOTES.html

Page 3: 2nd paragraph: “I am in here.” A number of ways to take this sentence; in this room, in this body, in this body in this room… Almost like Hal has just come to some conscious realization of the reality he is in, like he is waking up or something.
Here is the layout of the room and the characters in it as I picture it.

Page 4: wen skin cyst: a cyst containing material secreted by a sebaceous gland of the skin, usually on the scalp or genitals. It may grow to an appreciable size and become infected.

Page 5: Kekulean knot: I couldn’t find any definition on this, but check out this link: http://infinitejeaun.blogspot.com/2005/06/kekulean-knot.htmlSome other people have had the same question I had. Worth a search on Google, but not much to be found.

Page 7: lapidary
1. engraved on stone: engraved in stone or on a gemstone
2. of engraving gemstones: relating to the art of engraving gemstones
3. dignified and elegant: careful, elegant, and dignified in style (formal)

effete
1. decadent: characterized by decadence, overrefinement, or overindulgence
2. weak: lacking or having lost the strength or ability to get things done (archaic)
3. barren: no longer able to reproduce

Montague Grammar: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Semantics of Physical Modality: Again, I couldn’t find much about this topic, at least, specifically about this topic as worded. But check out:http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/uncollected-dfw.html. Here there is this note: "Richard Taylor's 'Fatalism' and the Semantics of Physical Modality". Department of Philosophy of Amherst College; March 22, 1985. [NOTE: This is DFW's Philosophy Thesis, decidedly not written for laymen.]

Page 8: “The familiar panic of being misperceived.” Who among us hasn’t experienced that?

Page 9: Oxford Quadrivium-Trivium: a curricular model. Here’s what I’ve found.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Trivium
Quadrivium
About the quadrivium, Proclus Diadochus said in In primum Euclidis elementorum librum commentarii:
Arithmetic is the Discrete At Rest
Astronomy is the Discrete In Motion
Geometry is the Continuous At Rest
Music is the Continuous In Motion
DFW explains this a little later in the book.

Page 10: posit
1. put something forward: to put something forward for consideration, for example, a suggestion, assumption, or fact
2. position something: to place something firmly in position

Page 12 line 9: Dennis Gabor invented holography (for real). Holography seems to have something to do with the TP cartridges of recorded video that will appear later in the book.

Page 13: “I’m in here.” Echo of the statement on page 3. But the p. 3 statement was something Hal thought. This is spoken, although from what it seems is going on it probably didn’t come out that way.

pase, matador’s movement with cape: a movement a matador makes with a cape to attract the bull’s attention and make it charge.

enfilade
1. vulnerable position: a position in which troops are exposed to gunfire along the length of their formation
2. raking fire: gunfire that strikes a body of troops along its whole length

Page 16: “At the only other emergency room I have ever been in, almost exactly one year back, …” I’m hoping to find out what made that previous emergency room visit necessary.
“…a T-shirted woman with barnwood skin and a trucker’s cap and a bad starboard list…had almost a parodic Quebecois accent…” I found it interesting that Hal picked up on the Quebecois accent.

hypophalangial: I couldn’t find a flat-out definition, but can piece together what this probably means.

hypo- prefix
1. under, below • hypodermis
2. abnormally low • hypotonia
3. in a lower state of oxidation

phalangeal
relating to phalanx: relating to a phalanx or the phalanges
pha·lanx
1. tight group: a group of people, animals, or objects that are moving or standing closely together
2. ARMY HISTORY body of troops: especially in ancient Greece, a group of soldiers that attacks in close formation, protected by their overlapping shields and projecting spears
3. (plural phalanges) ANATOMY finger and toe bone: a finger or toe bone of a human being or vertebrate animal

So, from hypo- (2) and phalanges (3), it must be abnormally low or abnormally small fingers.

etiology
1. study of causes: the philosophical investigation of causes and origins
2. medical specialty: the branch of medicine that investigates the causes and origins of disease
3. cause of a disease: the set of factors that contributes to the occurrence of a disease

Page 16-17: The opening scene of Hamlet, played out by Hal, Don Gately, and John (N.R.) Wayne. This seems to connect the three of them. I was aware of the connection (in the book) of Hal and Don Gately in my first reading, but at that time John Wayne seemed almost incidental.

Alright! Alright! Alright!

2008-12-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

It all began with a second reading of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest", which is just an outstanding piece of literature. My son gave me a copy for my birthday, and it just absorbed me for the next three months. After that, I never was quite the same. I quit calling it a book and referred to it as a mind-altering literary experience.

So, I began to read "Infinite Jest" a second time. But it took me over a year to get up the gumption to open it again. The Jest demands much from the reader. At 1079 pages, it takes a good while to read, and the end notes add another challenge. The depth of the material is hard to work through. There are more characters than you can shake a pencil at. And there are plots within plots within plots. It is really quite intimidating.

(My advice to any reader: have at least two bookmarks; you're going to need them. One to mark your place in the book and the other to mark your place in the end notes. You need to read the end notes, every one of them, as you encounter them, and you're going to be flipping back and forth in the book a lot. But you need to read them. They really add a lot to the story.)

But it is so rewarding to the reader who pushes through it. When I finished it the first time, it was 1:00 in the morning, and I had to get up and walk around my neighborhood for the next two hours going "Wow! Oh, Wow!" It really was a profound experience for me.

So, it took a good while to work up the nerve to face it again, but I did. And it is at least ten times better reading it the second time. For one thing, the jumps in time aren't as foreign the second time around and are easier to keep up with. The reader has more background about the characters, the terminology, and all the other background stuff, so the individual pieces begin to make sense together. And overall, the plots and subplots and the characters all begin to pull together into a bigger whole. Still, it is a very complicated book. I bought a moleskine journal and began taking lots of notes as I read.

(More advice to any reader: keep a journal. It will help you keep track of everything that is going on, and there is a lot going on.)

My son thought my notes were worthwhile, for some odd reason, and prodded me to put them on the web. I was hesitant, partly because I found other web sites and blogs that seemed to do a much better job at describing the Jest than I felt I ever could (q.v. http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/ or http://russillosm.com/ij.html), partly because I thought there were better minds than mine out there with a lot more to say about the Jest, but mainly because these notes were my own personal thoughts about the book.

But [blast him!] he started putting my notes up on his blog (see http://evanbaer.blogspot.com/2008/12/infinite-jest-corner-clenette.html, if you're interested) and so, basically, shamed me into starting a blog of my own. Now, I'm not sure a blog is the best way to present reading notes. For one thing, the blog entries are going to be in reverse chronological order, with the latest appearing on the web page first. To read the blog entries as they appear on the blog page will be like reading the book backwards. So the reader must locate the first blog entry and read each entry in the order in which they were posted, to read them in the order that they were written from the book. Personally, I think a wiki might be a preferable way to publish reading notes, if one is going to publish them while reading the book, as I am doing now.

I'm about halfway through my second reading now, and I have a considerable backlog of notes to hammer in on my keyboard. But I'm going to type them in to save my son the effort of putting them up on his blog when he really should be working on his college papers.

I'll also put in the definitions for words that I had to look up. There were a lot of them. "Infinite Jest" is a real vocabulary builder.

(One more piece of advice for the reader: get a dictionary, a really big, thick one. You're going to need it.)