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I have just finished this book, someone give me a medal. My feeling is it's a masterpiece of craft and writing but also kind of a lovely, self-aware joke in that it's knowingly testing your patience and trying to get you to throw it away. There's a bit towards the end (pg. 946-947 in my version) talking about one of Incandeza Sr.'s films that goes: "Did Himself subject us to 500 seconds of the repeated cry 'Murder!' for some reason, i.e is the puzzlement and then boredom and then impatience and then excruciation and then near-rage aroused in the film's audience by the static repetitive 1/3 of the film aroused for some theoretical aesthetic end, or is Himself simply an amazingly lovely editor of his own stuff?" and I think that sums things up pretty well. It's an incredible piece of work. Staggering in the effort and ability and the knowledge required to write it. I haven't the faintest idea how DFW completed it in only 3 years, the man was capital B Brilliant. Still kind of a shaggy-dog joke tho.
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May 14, 2021 23:23
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 23:26 |
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I wouldn't cut it down - the length and aimlessness and repetition of themes of it seems like part of the point. You could probably cut 500 or 750 pages out of it and lose nothing of the plot, but you would lose the point of writing a super long and unfocused book that is still extremely careful and precise. Spoilers (in case the OP returns) - What's going on with Hal by the end/start? There's a summary here: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend that says Hal's brain got messed up by eating fungus and his Dad (James) was the only one that noticed, and James comes up with the movie and some drugs to treat him. But Hal's "Call it something I ate" (pg.10) leading to the fungus-eating story is ambiguous, we only know about that story from Orin (whom no-one trusts), no-one else in Hal's life seems to think he's deficient or unable to connect or communicate and as for James, the Incandezas seem to have a familial trait of bad father/son communication - James seems permanently broken by the idea that his father never communicated with him but we have chapters that show otherwise, and not in an uncaring or abusive way exactly, James was just a cerebral and awkward child and his dad (James Sr.) was an unbelievable drunk, also in turn hosed up with the idea that his dad (James Sr.'s dad) didn't care about him. The summary (written by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz incidentally, big rips to that guy) suggests that Hal is sick from eating the fungus and the film Infinite Jest was intended to be used alongside the drug DMZ as a treatment, so the ghost of James Jr. drugs Hal with DMZ via his toothbrush to start the process of fixing him. Now Hal's problems by the start of the book do resemble the legends he and Pemulis share about people who've taken too much DMZ (singing show tunes all day and unable to communicate), which suggests he must have taken the DMZ at some point. But ghosts aren't real, and Hal is also going through a kind of depression and personal crisis brought on from his withdrawal from constant cannabis use, which could also be responsible. Has maybe Pemulis drugged Hal with the DMZ in some attempt to help him? (Pemulis being against the idea of going white-knuckle cold turkey and probably worried about his friend spiralling into depression). Does anyone have any theories about this? Is Hal actually deficient in any way beyond being a bit cerebral and a weed addict? Does the fungus have anything to do with anything? Did he take the DMZ somehow or is he just going through some kind of extended psychosomatic rebellion that he was previously suppressing with cannabis? Are ghosts real? Often Abbreviated fucked around with this message at 12:32 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 12:28
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My PIN is 4826 posted:but I'm persisting in the hope that the book gets going soon... Persistence and hope are valuable traits.
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May 20, 2021 14:24
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