Infinite Summer - Thread #3

About 200-250 pages in. Don't know where that would land you in your book.

also, wanted to add, the yrstrully part was so tedious to read through, i hated it. what the fuck was that about.

Randy Lenz's increasing psychosis over the course of the book was pretty great

is JOI a jew?

Use the scene-by-scene guide link in the OP if you want to know how many scenes behind you are. Seems like the audio/video communication bit was scene 48, and today's reading is 57-59.

That's a nice tattoo actually

I'm reaing through it all just now and you guys will catch up to me soon.
I want to read the tattoo bit again and can't find it, anyone know?

before i buy infinite jest can anyone summarize in their own words?

DUDE TENNIS LMAO

been reading this bad boy on and off since November 2014, going to try and finish it in the next week while I am cottaging

Scene by scene guide said it's scene 57, YDAU.

There's a later chapter from Mario's perspective about detached cynicism that feels like DFW's take on irony

question: if the AFR get the samizdat from the antitois ... what are they looking for at the end of the novel when they infiltrate ETA and dig up JOI's head? why doens't the novel end around page 700, why do they not disseminate right away?

It was read-only copy. They needed the master in order to copy/disseminate it

Nobody really knows. It doesn't fit very well with the rest of the book and it's one of the few chapters that doesn't get plot relevance later

Okay got it, thanks

The animal killer

There was some kind of overwrite mechanism in JOIs skull

post some rare daves

>tfw you will never plan with Pemulis in taking DMZ at ATE

I thought one of the ennet house residents were a side character or something (pretty sure they already referenced it later) in the yrstruly thing

SO 10% THROUGH AND THE GROUPS DEAD RIGHT?

O BOI I AM LAFFIN

WELP GONNA GO FIND ANOTHER MEME GROUP TO TROLL

I mean it at least gets plot relevance with the lady whose purse heart gets stolen, and I have a feeling that will matter to some degree later. Also, wasn't Poor Tony the crossdresser also named Rob Tony? And wasn't Rob Tony the guy from the wardine be cry section? Could just be a coincidence, and they aren't related characters, but it feels like it's supposed to feel related.

roy tony is not poor tony krause.

yrstruly is emil minty, and they're mugging burt f smith.

I've seen this connection somewhere, yrsetruly being Emil, I think it might have been the scene by scene guide?
I'm reading the book for the third time right now and I think the connection is strenuous at best.

Erdedy and Green. I feel for em.

It's one of my favorite chapters by far, even if the slang is way overdone.

>what the fuck was that about.
Sets up Poor Tony, who goes on a to be main-ish character throughout the rest of the book, as well as Bobby C (the guy who gets fucked up by Wo), who becomes central to the narrative later on. (obviously in flashback because he got his head popped by the hotshot...) Roy Tony is also mentioned in the chapter and he shows up later in Boston NA.

>It doesn't fit very well with the rest of the book and it's one of the few chapters that doesn't get plot relevance later
Man, I don't get this. I find the 'Wardine's Mama' chapter way worse for this. How can it not fit or hold plot relevance to have a chapter detailing the lives of homeless Boston junkies in a book about drug addiction? This is the low point for these characters, a concept that recurs throughout the book where someone either plunges headlong into death or starts their path to recovery. It shows the absolute ugliest of street drug addiction and sort of justifies this long tedious road to recovery detailed in all the Ennett House chapters.

addiction, depression, entertainment, family, sports, irony.

How just talking to people openly and sincerely can seriously make you and those you talk to better off.

If you've ever been high, and during that high been super anxious, inside your own thoughts, paralyzed, then read it.

If you wanna improve your vocabulary, read it.

also french canadian extremists in a zany allegorical terror plot to fuck up the US and David Duchovny's Twin Peak's character investigating

Coincidentally at the city where I live there was this kind of 'sport fest' at the park where you can check out different sport stands and sign up for attendance.
>And but so; good day to go read my 15 pages of IJ to the park - it's sunny why not
>See pic related
>ETA
Feels bad no one to share my outburst of kek

Title reads in Portuguese 'Become a champion - come learn how to play a sport of choice'

That's pretty funny. What does the 'ETA' stand for in this case?

' Escola de Ténis de Almada' or in English - ' Almada's Tennis School'

oh alright, so pretty much any tennis school has a 1/26 chance of being called ETA, no?

1/23 actually as we don't use K's W's and Y's

What is with the cardboard cutout of AFR on Boston's streets?

No no, it's there somewhere, but damned if I remember where. Emil Minty is definitely yrstruly, and the woman with the purse becomes relevant later on.

The first time through I didn't spotted the connection but maybe guerrilla advertising for the samizdat?

Pretty sure it says that was a falseflag by the FLQ somewhere

I don't understand either of these answers...

So since this group is dying anyways, let's try to hash out the book's ending again.

Wraith JOI alerts Gately and Hal who ends up in hospital beside Gately due to DMZ of the Master Entertainment buried in his skull?

So DMZ, although the chemical itself is fictional, is supposed to be a mix of an "ergotic psychedelic" and a muscarinergic deliriant; i.e. LSD and diphenhydramine or datura.

So, I've been toying with the idea of an acid/DPH trip, maybe just a small dose of each to test the waters (50ug/300mg). Maybe DXM or ketamine mixed in with the DPH, so that the spiders aren't so terrifying. Anyone else into terrifying hallucinogens want to give an IRL DMZ trip a try?

I don't think that's what you should take away from this novel

>using deliriants, ever

Pretty fucking dumb

I also realized how easy it is to secretly dose people with LSD. My roommates and I have put like 8 tabs worth in each others' food and drinks at this point (although it's always microdosing; I wouldn't want to be at work when a full tab hits)

Have you tried them and disliked them, or just heard that they're bad for you? (or heard that they're "not fun" but that's the point)

The samizdat is the video the attache was wathicng. Les Assassins wanted to turn it into a weapon, so they "advertise it". People at Molly Notkin's party were talking about it, so it seems its spreading slowly. At least the idea of a letal film.

This sounds like a good idea, you have my go ahead!

was The MP supposed to be a takedown of Pynchon?

Did Pynchon cuck DFW's dad and beat his mom????

underrated post

>Mr. Incandenza, this is the Enfield Raw Sewage Commission, and quite frankly we've had enough shit out of you.
Gotta love the mad banter between the Inc brothers.

What book is he holding?

I read to p. 170 two years ago then gave up. Should I start from there or reread?

There's one thing and one thing only that the mods could do to immensely improve the board, instantly, overnight, and that's facilitate more threads about David Foster Wallace. Create them, nurture the ones that exist, guide the discussions, and make sure they stay on track. If we're here to discuss literature, ultimately, we are here to discuss David Foster Wallace. There is no way for a person to grasp the full implications of Infinite Jest and not realize this. We're talking about the smartest man who ever lived. You must realize this. It's not a joke anymore. We're seeing the world degenerate further and further into chaos, and we're standing by and watching it happen. You want to fix this board? You want to fix the world? You want to fix your life? You need only take one step: read Infinite Jest. There is no substitute for hard work, and that's what Wallace requires of you if you are to understand him. If you are to understand not just him, but the world. We're not talking about escapist literature, fan fiction, genre nonsense. We're talking about saving our lives. We're talking about meditating on God. We're talking about communing with the primary presence. This is not an issue to be treated lightly.

lenz is my favorite character in the entire book by far

Gately is the correct answer

Question: does anyone practice 12 step programs? Gone to meetings?

no but if you are a pseud you can take advantage of their trust and sit in on their meetings and use people and their stories as material for your shitty ironically pomo turd that you are writing solely to impress mary karr

well guys I've been reading at about ~50 pages a day and will probably finish today

thanks for the reading group, it was a good ride

Can you explain this a bit more? Is this what joi describes in the professional conversationalist section early in the book? I could never understand that long sentence where joi talks about a priapristic something or other in his head

perhaps "too late" is not "too late [the afr have it]" but "too late [it auto-erased]"

this also explains why john wayne is there standing guard with a gun, not defected from flq and standing guard for others but standing guard over hal and gately who he is forcing to dig this also 100% explains how gately gets involved because even if the meeting point is sharing a hospital room with hal (after he takes or is dosed dmz) there is no explanation for how gately gets involved in the plot to go to joi's graveyard and dig up his head
but if the afr when they arrive at ETA send wayne, their undercover kid to go find hal for interrogation (mario ignorant, the moms already questioned previously by duplessis and orin currently captured (and maybe not having the answers they need) john wayne is sent to get hal from the hospital and takes him and the big guy in the room to the graveyard because gately would be 1. a witness to dispose of 2. a good digger

i also wonder if this doens't mean gately's fate is face down in a shared grave with joi's bones

That hair is all wrong

Sorry if this is off topic, but ive seen a fair amount of hate for this novel from /r/badliterature. Ive been wondering what about this novel people really hate.

I read this book about a year ago and I dont remember the digging. What page is that on? I want to freshen up. In fact, mentioning the head.

i don't have exact pages, though it is addressed once in a dream the wraith gives gately in hospital around page 800 and briefly in the book's first 20 pages while hal is in ambulence

Within the first 15 pages. If there is an Infinite Jest, it's that DFW hid it that openly.

he didn't even hide it though. allow me to quote openly, because this isn't even a spoiler.

"I think of John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year's WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head."

Thanks mates.

bump

infinite bump

Latecomer here.
Been wanting to read IJ for some time. I'll go buy it tomorrow to catch up with you guys.

How do you pronounce pemulis?

pem you luss

they mostly hate the people who like it

Vocabulary

Loupe - Small magnifying glass used by jewelers and watchmakers.

Otiose - Of no practical use or end, inutile.

Entrepot - City or port, i.e. hub, where goods are imported and exported to and from.

Infinite Jest is kind of the epitome of middle-brow. The people who hate it, I'm sure, are mostly seriously into literature and see it as way overrated and get sick and tired of hearing praise on something they deem totally mediocre, or, people who are stupid as fuck and angry that there are books they don't understand or can't read in a weekend.

PSA: Dosing people without their knowledge is extremely poor form. Hallucinogens affect people in different ways and it's pretty fucking shitty to subject someone to a potentially scarring or psychologically difficult experience without their consent.

Plus you probably don't even have real acid, because the type of person to surprise dose somebody isn't the type to do their due diligence on that sort of thing.

I know how umadbro I sound bug it's that sort of thing that gives drugs and responsible drug users a bad rap. So go fuck yourself.

I really want to fuck every female in this book.

wow congrats you are a beta male with the same taste in fantasy women as another beta male (dfw)

avril: the mommy slut who will love you because she treats everyone like a child and fucks around
kate gompert: the sub dependent who won't judge you because she is at a low point
joelle: the popular but "not like other girls" attractive goddess who will love you because she is 'deep' and likes NERD things like art film
pamela hoffman jeep: literally a fuck toy
the eta girls: innocent young atheletes

ET CETERA

done the book, here's my last bump

have a good summer friends

So what exactly was wrong with the ETA girls? They're old enough to have a boyfriend, and probably aren't sluts since they focus on tennis.

*iss

Can anyone pick apart the Eschaton scene? So Lord, who they say plays god, puts his personal map through the monitor, which houses the map, not the territory...there's deffo some deep abstract shit going on there...Help me please lads

DFW really needs to make attributions in dialogue.

If only I could be there to help that girl ponder the beauty of her tits.

My take on eschaton was that it's a Warhammer 40k x DnD type thing, don't worry too much about the particulars it escalates pretty quickly

yeah this,

i forget which is which wrt territory/map but peemster's flipout is people thinking snowing on the physical play area is snowing in the game's play area
imagine someone spilling a glass of water on a warhammer game and a bunch of the pieces get moved and drenched. you move them back to where they were and dry them off they don't take water damage

the overall point of eschaton, if there is one, i've never been sure of, but there are a few interesting ways to read it, namely, the cutthroat total war between players at eta reflecting the dark and lonely nature of the academy's competition, the detachment from and trivialization of world politics and atrocities in a landscape of statisticians and entertainers, and the obvious commentary on modern warfare that serves both critique and foreshadowing

also important in this chapter: the green car watching the kids play ... shadowy movement at the edge of the page

Holy shit. Just found out about you guys. I'm at page 90.
Reading it as I travel through Europe. I guess I'm a little behind, but I'll be saving these.

check out last year's on the catalogue too
had more active members and some really great discussion

I found this effect really nice. I assume you mean when Joelle's at the party? It's like being among a bunch of strangers who are talking and you fade in and out of different strangers' conversations, listening. Didn't you like the excerpts from interviews with Ennet House residents?

Thanks for putting that scene in perspective. But still, voices are for more than verbal communication.

you should stop reading this and spend your time on better books instead. have a nice summer

well today I skipped another day just to keep reading Hamlet

I do wanna finish the book eventually though senpai

bump