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.