Infinite Jest FN. 304

WhatABurger, 737 E Mcdowell Rd, Phoenix, AZ, April 2009

Oh you know it. I wish I had made a tic mark beside FN. 304 just so I'd know how many times I've read it - I'm guessing at least 6 times. I started reading it again @ about 2am this morning and I have to say, for the first time, it seemed very clear to me. Like my brain could actually parse each sentence in one complete take. I didn't have to back up and re-read a phrase or ask myself, wait, did he just say....It's as if my previous reading had been as congested as Struck's head. Or indeed the writing itself is. I don't mean congested perjoratively, just very full of detail that is frustrated by the length of the sentences sometimes. FN: 304 is, in a way, a microcosm of the book experience.

But also: structurally FN. 304 serves different purposes. The first time you read it it's informational if you can pick up all the detail the first time which you can't because it's seems structured to just wear you down.

The final time you read it, it serves as a speed bump slowing down the action and sustaining your suspense about what's going to happen when Poor Tony gets to the Antitoi Entertainment. We kind of know and we're kind of on edge about it, but DFW (kind of like Hitchcock) plays with that expectation by slowing us down and diverting us to good old FN. 304, thereby sustaining suspense. And we all know that suspense is more powerful than surprise right?

The repetition of FN 304 is also necessary if you, like me, about this far into the book reading FN 304 for the 3rd time or even the 6th if you're on your second go through (as I am), have lost track of the story lines and little details that link things together because of the incredible storm of data coming at you, and words, words, words, and, like Jim Struck blithely read, "Faire un Bernard Wayne" and similarly "not even a miniature appliance-size bulb" begins to "flicker anywhere over your head." My light bulb flickered about two reads ago, but this is the first time I've seen how obvious DFW made it in the first place by including that light bulb comment about Struck. Duh?

And now the light bulbs are indeed going off for me.

I have a little theory about that film Gately sees while he's in and out of his coma - of Joelle. The one of which Joelle and Molly Notkin speak. The theoretical "Entertainment" (as Joelle states - JOI called all his films entertainments, 743) consisting of many moments of a pregnant Joelle repeating I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, etc. I don't think that's the entertainment (and I'm probably not alone here), but could that film be the anti-samizadt remedy that Marathe mentions on page 752? It's a convoluted theory, but could it be that the wraith plants this image in Gately's head so that he'll know of it's existence? So that when he meets Hal...I don't know, he and Joelle can eventually put two and two together and apply the cure to Hal? I'm not sure how this is going to fly ie, be supportable by the text, but I'm just putting it out there as a theory which I may disprove in another 100 pages.

NB:
1. Okay. Make that 8 times. In the course of 20 pages, between 732 and 752, DFW refers to FN 304 twice. The last time, regarding Marathe's perdant son coeur, I kind of lived a little and just laughed, but did not return. Sure. There may come a time when my hubris will sink me.

Mr. Yuk & Don't Pay for TV

o = o

Last night I was reading Geoffrey Day's description of how the shape, dark, and either billowing or flapping form culminated in a boy from the dorm below coming up to Day's room and staying up all night with him and it reminded me of Tolstoy's A Confession. This sentence where Day describes the boy as a piece of string "by which I hung suspended over hell itself" particularly stood out.

There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.

And most especially read the end of the confession here.

Also: it's not the words themselves necessarily, but the rhythm of Day's language that ultimately reminded me of those sections.

But also I read the whole essay and found this quote in Christ's Christianity/How I Came To Believe (also called A Confession) which seems relevant to Infinite Jest:

What is this Faith? I understood that faith is not only the apprehension of things unseen, is not only a revelation (that is only a definition of one of the signs of faith), is not the relation of man to God (faith must first be determined, and then God, and not faith through God), and is not, as it has so often been understood, acquiescence - faith is the knowledge of the meaning of man's life, through which man does not destroy himself, but lives. Faith is the force of life.

If man lives, he believes in something. If he did not believe there was something to live for, he would not. If he does not see and understand the unreality of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he sees that unreality, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith there is no life.

And it goes on - read the rest here.

Interesting is all I'm saying.

I'm Having a Hard Time

You know how when you read something and it sort of invades your consciousness? And little things - images and the like - start popping up in your everyday life?

Well every time I see this, and I'm seeing it a lot, I just freak out.

I accidentally hit the magnify button while I was downloading the image. Try it. Magnifying it. See what I mean?

This is the very least of my issues.

N.B. I also want to point out that 611 seems to be the resting number of unopened emails in my inbox today. 611 was the title of my own little play about terrorism (Note: This title has no relation to 911; I had already titled the play prior to that day.)

Marlon Brando Interview

Parts 2 & 3 here and here.

9.12.09

'Is it dark or is it me?'
'The sun won't be up for a while, I don't think.'
'So it's dark then.'

Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein

Um. About the film. Just remember it took three writers to pull this off - and a director, of course.

Ravel's Concerto pour la main gauche played by Paul Wittgenstein (brother of Ludwig) who commissioned it for what appears to be a rather obvious reason.

Forest v. Trees Situation

...the really tricky discipline to writing is trying to play without getting overcome by insecurity or vanity or ego. Showing the reader that you’re smart or funny or talented or whatever, trying to be liked, integrity issues aside, this stuff just doesn’t have enough motivational calories in it to carry you over the long haul. You’ve got to discipline yourself to talk out of the part of you that loves the thing, loves what you're working on. Maybe that just plain loves. (I think we might need woodwinds for this part, LM.) But sappy or no, it’s true. - David Foster Wallace, The Review of Contemporary Fiction.

Bad Writing Day

Ugh.

Really.

Jeez.

Bad writing day.

Minimal progress.

Funny how this measures out. Like I'm only basing this on the last 45 minutes of writing - which wasn't even writing at all. More like searching for a document that invariably every time I need it I have to spend hours searching for it. Even though I am always certain I've bookmarked it. This time I'm going to email the link to myself. But anyway, I kid you not, it so upset me that my heart thumped wildly in my chest and I felt nauseated. Just so upset with myself and truly frustrated.

Ack.
9.9.09/8:45: Finished condensing bibliography. Found my link. Things are looking up.

Big List: TBA Festival Madness

I head up to Portland, OR next Friday for the Time Based Art festival. It's like becoming my annual art binge. Here's my short list of shows to see.

9/11/09
12:30 - Inside/Outside, Back to Back Theatre
6:30 pm - Back to Back Theatre - Small Metal Objects.
8:30 pm - Raimund Hoge, Bolero Variations

9/12/09
12:30 - Theme and Variations, Raimund Hoge
2:30 - Tarek Halaby Lecture/Performance: An attempt to understand my socio-political disposition through artistic research on personal identity in relationship to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Part One.
6:30 pm - Pan Pan Theatre, The Crumb Trail
8:30pm - Erik Friedlander, Block Ice & Propane

9/13/09
2:30 pm - Melody Owen, circles and spinning wheels & if I could crowd my souls into that mountain
4:30 pm - Carter/Erased James Franco

TBA On Sight - a collection of installations, exhibitions, projections, and gatherings

Bonus: tba: 09 Reference Reading List - Selected artists share some of the books, films, etc that have inspired them.

Jeanette Winterson: Keynote Address 2009 TCG Pre-Conference

ACTivate Change: Jeanette Winterson from Theatre Communications Group on Vimeo.

Radiolab: Moments

Keep Coming Back Part 2: DFW Reading

Jeez. Yeah. I've totally given in to obsession. I wish I could give you a more succinct reason for all this - frankly, no. I don't really give a fuck. It is what it is.