Let's Read Infinite Jest6. Year of Glad (Part Five of Five)

Characters
Hal Incandenza, Losing It.
Aubrey deLint, More Esteemed Than Usual.
Paramedics, Not Important.
Psychiatric MD, Probably Important.
Charles Tavis, Mario Incandenza's Father.
The Three Deans, Boil and Bubble, Baby.
Pilot of the ultra-mach fighter, Defending the End of the World?

Characters Mentioned
Orin Incandenza, Ex-boyfriend of PGOAT.
Woman with Big Right Titty, Waiting Room Waitee in Hal's First Emergency Room Visit Memory.
Cosgrove Watt, Professional Actor used by James Incandenza.
Hal's Grief-Therapist, Tiny Hands.
Avril Incandenza, the Moms.
James Incandenza, Himself.
John "No Relation" Wayne, Masked.
Don Gately, Alcoholic and Gravedigger-upper.
Venus Williams, Real Life Tennis Prodigy.
Dymphna, Blind Tennis Prodigy.
Petropolis Kahn, Student at Enfield Tennis Academy.
Ortho Stice, The Darkness.
Polep, Never Again Mentioned Possible Tennis Opponent.
Hypothetical Nurse's Aide, Hospital Security Guy, or Cuban Orderly, "What's Your Story?" Novel Jump Start Asker.

Scene: Exterior: the University of Arizona. Interior: Back of an Ambulance.

The opening scene as Hal reacts to the heat of Arizona sounds strikingly like he's experiencing what it's like to cook your head in a microwave. That might be important later!

While Hal's being hauled off for his psychotic break, he thinks about a bunch of things from his past. He also muses about how his hospital stay will go and seeing as how it reads like somebody who has experience with this sort of thing, I'm guessing that his "first time" (which he describes in this section) and this current time are not the only two times that Hal has been hospitalized for a psychotic break. During the memory of his first visit to an emergency room, he describes a woman whom I feel I should recognize. But the only woman in the book I can think of that might have a "starboard gait" is Pat Montesian, the head of Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House. But it just doesn't feel like it would be her in this situation, especially with the "parodic Québecois accent".

In Hal's scattering of memories, he describes a moment where John "No Relation" Wayne stands by in a mask as he and Don Gately dig up James Incandenza's head. Later in the book, Don Gately has a vision or a dream of doing this as well. But that moment never actually takes place in the pages of the novel. What's important about this moment is that the title, Infinite Jest, comes from Hamlet's description of Yorick, the jester whose skull he picks up in the graveyard. While James Incandenza's father correlates to Hamlet's father (ghost and all by the end), we also discover he's Yorick. Because the main purpose of James Incandenza's deadly Entertainment is to cheer up his son. He's just trying to make his kid happy and accidentally destroying the world.

There's a lot of foreshadowing in this bit but none of it really matters or means anything to a first time reader. Who the fuck is even going to remember that Don Gately was mentioned briefly here before they've even been introduced to Don Gately?

Chronologically, this is the end of the story. So congratulations! You've finished Infinite Jest!

Piecing Together the November, DAU, to November, Glad, Timeline

November, Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment: Hal makes his first visit to an Emergency Room due to a psychotic break. A woman in a trucker's cap and right-leg limp complains to him about "sudden gigantism" in her right breast. She has an "almost parodic Québecois accent". This woman is ?
November, Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment: Hal played beautifully at the WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational where Coach White first observed him for recruitment.
Year of Glad: John Wayne, Don Gately, and Hal Incandenza travel to The Concavity to dig up Hal's father's grave to both find the Master of The Entertainment and to hold up his Yorick skull to put a healthy skyscraper-sized pin on the whole Infinite Jest title of the novel.
February, Year of Glad: Coach White, via correspondence, recruited Hal for the University of Phoenix tennis program after Hal's graduation from Enfield in December, Year of Glad.
Year of Glad: John "No Relation" Wayne, the best player at Enfield Tennis Academy, disappears sometime between November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, and November, Year of Glad.

Let's Read Infinite Jest!5. Year of Glad (Part Four of Five)

Characters
Hal Incandenza, Monster.
The Three Deans of the University of Arizona.
Aubrey deLint, Enfield Tennis Academy Prorector.
Coach White, Varsity Tennis Coach, University of Arizona.
Charles Tavis, Headmaster, Enfield Tennis Academy, Hal's Uncle.
A Man in Espadrilles, Loo User.

Characters Mentioned
Orin Incandenza, Punter for the Arizona Cardinals, Hal's Older Brother.

Scene: Men's Restroom at University of Arizona.

However Hal acted, however he sounded, it freaked the fuck out of the Three Deans and Coach White. Hal has been dragged to the bathroom and laid out on the floor as if he's having a seizure. He has stopped speaking, stopped trying to move, and just lies there listening and observing. Here we discover, through the manic and chaotic discussion, that Hal seems to have two sides to him now. He can play tennis. He reads. He can function if left on his own to do what needs to be done. But when he attempts to communicate, he becomes a flailing monster that makes the most horrendous noises. All three Deans act traumatized. Whatever happened to Hal has had such severe consequences that this scene was needed to try to understand exactly how horrible it is for strangers to see Hal attempt to communicate. Or to make facial expressions. Or to move at all.

And that's the big mystery! What the fuck happened to Hal? The novel gives us three major possibilities, and possibly a few minor ones. Was it the mold he ate at five years old? Was it the military grade hallucinogens Michael Pemulis sourced for them? Or did Hal eventually watch his father's deadly Entertainment, Infinite Jest? I don't have those answers because I've only read the book once. Answering what happened to Hal is the point of reading it again. Hopefully I won't have to read it a third time!

Although, I mean, if I do, it wouldn't be so bad. It's a great fucking read whether you put it all together or not!

Piecing Together the November, DAU, to November, Glad, Timeline

November, Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment: Hal played beautifully at the WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational where Coach White first observed him for recruitment.
February, Year of Glad: Coach White, via correspondence, recruited Hal for the University of Phoenix tennis program after Hal's graduation from Enfield in December, Year of Glad.

Let's Read Infinite Jest4. Year of Glad (Part Three of Five)

Characters
Hal Incandenza, Apparent Monster.
The Three Deans of the University of Arizona: Head, Hand, and Heart.
Coach White.
Aubrey deLint.
Mysterious Young Hispanic Woman.

Characters Mentioned
The Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus.
God, God.
The Anti-Christ, Not-God.
Søren Kierkegaard, Philosopher.
Albert Camus, Philosopher.
Dennis Gabor, Physicist.
Thomas Hobbes, Dark Mirror.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mirror.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosopher.

Scene: the Dean's office at the University of Arizona.

While trying to express his inner self (his subjective self, Kierkegaard might say), Hal is seen as a raving, monstrous lunatic and subdued by the Deans of the University. One of the first philosophers mentioned in his defense of his intelligence is Kierkegaard which is probably important. Hal's trying to relate the person he is on the inside that differs from the person they see from the outside: "a boy who plays tennis." The objective truth of him is less important than the subjective truth of him. And his own inner subjective truth cannot be understood by the inner subjective truth of the others as it's walled off by their objective Deannesses and his objective Boy Who Plays Tennis. It's a chasm that we as interior beings can rarely, if, arguably, ever, find our way across, one to another. Kierkegaard maintains that ones subjective truth is more important than their objective truth. Could this be a statement of Infinite Jest as a whole? Not that it expresses David Foster Wallace's subjective truth — that would be impossible as we'd just see him as a raving lunatic ala Hal — but the reader's subjective truth and their relationship to the book. Is Wallace immediately telling the reader that they don't need to "understand" the novel; they simply need to experience it and let their subjective self react and feel to Wallace's best attempt at his own subjective self? Is this why the experience of reading this book feels so much more important than understanding it?

Just glancing through the themes of Kierkegaard's works on his Wikipedia page, one cannot help but imagine it as a list of themes of Infinite Jest. Alienation which Hal felt as a child when his father couldn't communicate with him and his mother who viewed him as a walking OED, and which Hal continues to feel in the structured halls of institutional life at Enfield Tennis Academy. Even among his peers, he finds he cannot be honest with them about his dope habit, hiding himself in the subterranean tunnel system of vents and storage and Prorector's rooms beneath the Academy. Abstraction which defines the method Hal's father used to try to communicate with his son by making strange and often incomprehensible films. Hal studies these films religiously, trying to view them through the lens of authorial intention in an effort to become closer to his father. Death of which James Incandenza's literally (ha ha! Literature!) haunts the entire book, so much so that his ghost appears to Don Gately near the end and heavily implies that he has the ability to possess others, directing their performances and editing their scripts from beyond the grave. Dread or Anxiety which, I mean, yeah. All over the fucking place. In every character. I should add it as a main character in every scene. Plus all the rest and shit. I have other people to discuss here!

I don't know enough about these philosophers to discuss Hal's assertions here; I can only dig a little at why they may have been mentioned by reading Wikipedia which anybody can do. But do they? I don't know. But I am! I skimmed Camus because I want to get to the next sentence about the Anti-Christ! Here's a bit from Wikipedia that made me think of Wallace and setting this novel so heavily in the Tennis Academy: "Camus later drew parallels between football, human existence, morality, and personal identity. For him, the simplistic morality of football contradicted the complicated morality imposed by authorities such as the state and church." One aspect of Infinite Jest is the geography of Boston and its environs. The Enfield Tennis Academy notably sits upon a hill above the rest of the city, perhaps meant as a city on a hill metaphor, a shining example of possible moral clarity. But the hill was also sheered down to a flat surface so is that commentary that it could have been a beacon to be looked upon but was flattened by human intervention? Anyway, it sits above Ennet House, the drug and alcohol recovery site. I mention this because while both sites are regimented and contain people who don't necessarily want to be there but try to find meaning there anyway, Tennis would be the "simplistic morality of football" while the Ennet House could be the "more complicated morality imposed by authorities."

Amid the smattering of obvious Philosopher mentions, Hal throws in this line about the physicist Dennis Gabor possibly being the Anti-Christ. What the fuck? That's quite the accusation! What did this guy even do that could label him with the title of "Creature That Will Destroy All of Mankind"? What's that? He invented Holograms? Oh fuck. Okay. Yeah, dude's the Anti-Christ of Infinite Jest. Because James Incandenza's experimental use of lenses and his knowledge of light and optics, following Gabor's work, I'm sure, led him to create a special holographic lens which he used to film his final entertainment, Infinite Jest, which, you know, probably brings about the end of the world. So Hal's probably spot on here.

Someone smarter than me should work out how the dichotomy between Hobbes belief in authority driving moral clarity and Rousseau's belief that moral clarity existed only before that guy who first put up a fence existed expresses itself in Infinite Jest. Is this a theme seen in the examination of Enfield Tennis Academy and its Dark Mirror, Ennet House? Or is Rousseau's beliefs in natural moral clarity expressed in characters like Poor Tony and his crew who never experience the structure and authority of a place like Ennet House? Do the teens at Enfield who break every rule in the place have a greater moral clarity than the adults who break their own rules, such as Avril doing sexy cosplay with student John "No Relation" Wayne? I don't know! I'm too stupid for this. Let's move on!

The final philosopher Hal mentions is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and since Georg couldn't be bothered to add the "e" to his name, I can't be bothered to read about his philosophies. Also because, even when Wikipedia tries to sum them for dolts like me, Wikipedia expressly states how hard his philosophy is to understand. Also he looked at me like this:

Eeep! I'm scared!

What I should discuss, briefly because this has gotten out of hand already, is Hal's claim that "transcendence is absorption." Transcendence is defined as "existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level." Absorption is defined as "the act of being absorbed." I mean, "the fact or state of being engrossed in something." The discussion of what it means to be human and what brings meaning to human lives is one that concerns all the philosophers mentioned and, well, all those not mentioned too, really. Wallace's Infinite Jest is his part in that dialectic. One of the themes is this idea that Hal is putting forward: our lives become something more when we have something to be engrossed in. Wallace seems to argue that addiction and obsession actually provide needed meaning to our lives. Sure, they can be destructive! But a maintained obsession or addiction is arguably needed to even give a shit about life at all. James Incandenza's Infinite Jest is the ultimate end point of this idea: something so engrossing that the viewer gives up everything to it. They transcend reality via the absorption of the material and no longer have any need for anything else. In other words, meaning can be dangerous.

Hal ends his unintelligible speech with "Please don't think I don't care," a plaintive and heart-breaking statement. Possibly something a person who commits suicide might want others to think. And even though this is all about Hamlet (though I haven't even mentioned it in this entry), this moment speaks more of Othello's final speech: "I pray you, in your letters, when you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down in malice. Then must you speak of one that loved not wisely but too well; of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, like the base Indian, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, albeit unused to the melting mood, drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees their medicinable gum." Okay, maybe not all of that, explicitly. But the sense of asking people to please be aware that what they see was not what was intended. The subjective was misconstrued by the objective.

After Hal ends his speech, he is tackled to the floor amid gasps of horror and shock. I don't know if the shocked Hispanic woman who witnesses the end of the melee is somebody who should be recognized from later descriptions of characters (this book makes you paranoid about not recognizing characters in passing!) or if she's just meant to be an independent witness to Hal's monstrosity.

That's enough of that, no?

Piecing Together the November, DAU, to November, Glad, Timeline

The February after the end of the novel, Coach White, via correspondence, recruited Hal to the University of Phoenix tennis program after Hal's graduation from Enfield later that same year (a December graduation, it seems).

Let's Read Infinite Jest3. Year of Glad (Part Two of Five)

Characters
Avril Incandenza, Mother of Hal Incandenza. Widow to James Orin Incandenza. Administrator at Enfield Tennis Academy. Strict grammarian.
Orin Incandenza. Brother of Hal Incandenza. Son of James and Avril.
Hal Incandena. Out little mold eating Hamlet.

Characters Mentioned
Winnie the Pooh. Hal's pajamas.

Scene: Weston, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. The backyard garden of the Incandenza family home in Spring of the year 1997?/1998? before Subsidized Time.

This section is a flashback to a seminal moment in Hal's life. Possibly! It's not exactly Hal's memory but Hal's retelling of his brother Orin's memory. Told as it is after Hal blames his strange condition in the Year of Glad on something he ate, it's easy to assume that his problems stem from this moment in his childhood when he took a bite of a disgusting mass of mold and fungus from their moist and mildewy basement. The question becomes, "Did eating basement fungus actually do anything to Hal at all? Or is it just an easy unknown to blame all of one's problems on? Or is his mother's reaction the point of the story?"

Avril panics when she comprehends what her son was done and begins screaming, "Help! My son ate this!", while running laps around the small garden. Hal does not remember this so it's hard to think that his mother's reaction could have left an impression on him while, possibly, eating something toxic could have had a lasting effect. More probably, this memory, and Avril's "hysterical" reaction (Hal's wording via Orin's relating of the memory) would have had a significant impact on Orin, as he's the one who experienced and retained the memory.

Later in the novel, we get a slightly more descriptive and thorough retelling of this memory from Orin's point of view. I believe it mostly differs in going slightly past Avril and Hal running around in a blind panic to suggest that a neighbor, or possibly Orin's father, arrived to help.

Later in the novel, much of the action centers around the culture of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the things members of AA begin to catapult from their lives like garbage into the concavity are the excuses for why they do and think the things they do. There can be stories and facts and memories that may, at times, sound like excuses but as one spends more time in AA, you begin to Identify who's using their stories as excuses and who's just painting the picture of what the fuck they did. Does Hal hold the story of eating fungus-covered mold as an excuse for what's happened to him by the beginning of the novel? It's hard not to think this being that he basically blames his current condition on "something I ate" and then flashes back to this, his brother's, memory. Or does the remembrance just happen to come to the forefront of his mind when he thinks of having et something, possibly the military-grade hallucinogen?

It's also still possible that he watched Infinite Jest! But, as you may quickly be sussing out, all I currently have are questions because this is just my second time reading this thing! I feel like, after this, I'll have a much better handle on it and then I could do a third read-through where I could be all, "Oh, and Hal's all fucked up here because he watched that movie with the naked, disfigured woman apologizing to her baby for thirty full minutes for, presumably, having brought it into this shit world? And is that why people find pleasure in it and want to view it over and over again? Because, ultimately, the reason we're all living out this fucking painful bullshit reality is because two narcissistic horndogs decided to fuck and now we're being punished? So viewing a movie using a special visual technology that basically puts the viewer back into the body of an infant while our mother apologizes over and over again for bringing us into this world (and ultimately killing us because all life dies and that's part of the movie too, sort of (and not just any mother! The Prettiest Girl of All Time! Even if her face is a ravaged mess from having a jar of acid smashed across it!))? I mean, I was near weeping when I explained the premise of the Infinite Jest entertainment to the Non-Certified Wife!"

Anyway, Hal eats some nasty shit at five years old and it might have caused him long-term harm that doesn't manifest until he's seventeen is what this section details.


Piecing Together the November, DAU, to November, Glad, Timeline

The February after the end of the novel, Coach White, via correspondence, recruited Hal to the University of Phoenix tennis program after Hal's graduation from Enfield later that same year (a December graduation, it seems).

Lets Read Infinite Jest!2. Year of Glad (Part One of Five)

Characters
Hal Incandenza. Student and tennis player at Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA). Son of James and Avril Incandenza. Brothers: Orin (older), Mario (younger). Hamlet insert.
Charles Tavis. Hal's Uncle. Avril's step-brother. Mario's father. Headmaster at Enfield Tennis Academy.
Aubrey DeLint. Prorector at Enfield Tennis Academy.
Coach Kirk White. Tennis coach at University of Arizona trying to recruit Hal Incandenza to the school's team for Hal's college years.
UA Dean of Admissions.
UA Dean of Academic Affairs.
UA Dean of Athletic Affairs.
UA Director of Composition.

Characters Mentioned
Maurly Klamkin. Predecessor to Coach White.
James Orin Incandenza. Founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy. Hal's father.
Orin Incandenza. Hal's brother.
Gerherdt Schtitt. Tennis Coach at Enfield Tennis Academy.

Scene: the Dean's office at the University of Arizona. Also inside Hal's head. We are in there.

This first chapter is the only chapter clearly stated as taking place in the final year of Subsidized Time, the Year of Glad (Is it the final year because the world ends? Subsidized Time gets shitcanned? Or simply because it's the ultimate year mentioned in the book? Or did I read the part wrong where it's mentioned that it's the final year of Subsidized Time? Did I make it up? This is why I'm re-reading this book!). That means that the first chapter is the final chronological scene in the story. It's told in first person perspective from Hal's point of view which is odd being that the rest of the book remains third person perspective from various characters' points of view (except for the final chapter which reverts to Hal's first person narration. It's probably important that from a specific point in time, possibly when Hal stops doing drugs, we begin to see the world directly through Hal's eyes when the story's told from his perspective as opposed to a third person view from Hal's perspective). Hal has been playing at this year's Whataburger Classic, a major tournament of the youth tennis scene. We never actually see the previous year's tournament or its results even though it's a major plot point, a weekend when Hal and Michael Pemulis plan on taking a military grade hallucinogenic. We're never even quite sure if Michael Pemulis makes it to the tournament before being kicked out of Enfield for accidentally getting John "No Relation" Wayne high on speed. Neither do we find out if they take the drug.

We discover Hal has been doing quite well at this year's tournament even though there seems to be something incredibly wrong with Hal. He seems to have lost the ability to communicate at all and to control his facial expressions and bodily movements. His ability to still play tennis at a professional level must be a result of the training at Enfield where the boys spend so much time training that their abilities are no longer thought-based, just pure reflex. So something's critically wrong with Hal and only his tennis remains unaffected. What has happened to Hal is either hidden somewhere in the text or simply supposed to be gleaned from following the projection of the end of the story. Did Hal watch his father's deadly entertainment, Infinite Jest? Or did he lose his mind from the military grade hallucinogen, as suggested by his "Call it something I ate"? Which also suggests that it could have been a latent effect of having eaten the strange mossy, mildewed fungus when he was a child? We're never explicitly told what caused Hal's current affliction.

The second paragraph of the book is simply, "I am in here." The suggestion could be that all the victims of James Incandenza's entertainment still retain their rational minds locked deep inside themselves. The suggestion is that we all exist at a level within ourselves that can never be properly communicated to anybody else which causes communication with others to always break down at some level. Context cannot be gleaned by those listening. The context of one's entire history of existence cannot be communicated in any simple statement but which adds to the nuance of every one of anybody's statements.

I am in here. It could also be David Foster Wallace reminding the reader that he is in and cannot be separated from his writing. He is here. He is always here. He will always be here.

Charles Tavis is introduced as Hal's mother's half-brother. Most people believe the half-brother claim to be true but it seems apparent that when Avril's father remarried, the woman was already pregnant by a man with deformities or other traits that manifested in Avril's son (and all but plainly stated, Charles's son), Mario. Much like Gwendolyn, Hamlet's mother, immediately took up with Hamlet's father's brother in Hamlet, it seems Avril and Charles did some technical incest.

Charles Tavis awkwardly does all the talking in the interview. Hal sits silently but observing everything perceptively and intelligently. Hal's uncertainty about his body movements and facial expressions are evidence of some terrible problem extant within Hal. As David Bevington puts it in his discussion about Hamlet in The Complete Works Shakespeare (Fourth Edition), "A recurring motif in Hamlet is of a seemingly healthy exterior concealing an interior sickness." Eventually, Hal tries to smile and all of the Deans become intensely worried, seeing it as some kind of painful grimace.

During the interview, we get hints at Hal's Johnny-Truant-level knowledge of the Oxford English Dictionary. While Hal has specific reason for knowing loads and loads of big words, being able to memorize the dictionary and beginning at a young age to impress his mother, other characters, most notably Don Gately at the end of the book during his encounter with the ghost of Hal's father, manage to use words seemingly out of their vocabulary range. Could this be a clue that James Incandenza, even in death, continues to direct and write script for various people living out Found Dramas finally produced by James Incandenza within the scope of the novel? Evidence to this being a possibility resides in the encounter between James's ghost and Don near the end of the novel. So I'll be discussing that in, um, probably ten years or something.

After all the praise for Hal is exchanged between the parties, the Deans get down to the actual business of Hal's being called in: his academic record has tanked in the last year of his schooling. Whatever has happened to Hal has been affecting him for quite some time now. So much so that he couldn't write an essay for admission into the University of Arizona and a bunch of his old essays from his earlier years at Enfield Tennis Academy were used instead, at least one of which we'll get to read later! Ultimately, the deans want to hear from Hal himself. They send Tavis and DeLint from the office so they will stop interrupting and speaking for Hal.

During the debate about Hal's possibly problematic academic work, Hal thinks, "The familiar panic at feeling misperceived is rising, and my chest bumps and thuds." Miscommunication being a theme birthed in this insane first chapter where we discover Hal literally cannot communicate verbally, we find, via that line, that this is something that happens to Hal frequently. And while it's easy to believe it's just part of his recent loss of verbal ability, we must understand that this is a lifelong issue of not just Hal's but probably David Foster Wallace and all of us as well, just another turd heaped in the works of the human condition.

Alone in the office, the deans attempt to encourage Hal to speak up and defend his academic career and give them a good reason to accept him into the university. Hal thinks, "I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear." Prior to that, he thinks about bolting from the room but decides against it because he's not sure that what the deans would see was him bolting for the room. Hal has slipped into some kind of dissociative relationship with reality. He cannot know that the people around him will hear the words he believes he's speaking or see the actions he tries to take. He has lost all control of any task he tries to perform except for the reflexive, reactionary, and rote mechanics of a professional game of tennis. And that's the mystery. How, at the end of the story which is the beginning of the novel, did Hal wind up like this? What has taken place in the undescribed time from the end of the novel to this opening scene? Is it even in the book? Can I find it?

The scene ends with Hal beginning to try to communicate how he has come to this place. He explains, or thinks he does, "I cannot make myself understood, now." And then, in explanation of how this came to be, he says, "Call it something I ate." And that's the end of the scene as the next scene is a flashback to something he ate. It's fucking gross.

Piecing Together the November, DAU, to November, Glad, Timeline

This section mentions that in the February after the end of the novel, Coach White, via correspondence, recruited Hal to the University of Phoenix tennis program after Hal's graduation from Enfield later that same year (a December graduation, it seems).

Let's Read Infinite Jest!1. Introduction: Title, Plot, and Themes

TITLE/CHARACTERS

Whenever I begin reading a book, I try to understand why the author chose the title of the book. Usually it's not until you're well into the book that you begin to figure out how the title fully relates to the material within. But I try to get a bit of a handle on it before then so it's at least at the back of my mind. It's nice when it's something like Infinite Jest because, right from the starter pistol, you know to keep an eye out for dead clowns, suicidal emo boys, drowned love interests, and incestuous hanky-panky! Those are all things in Shakespeare's Hamlet. If you're wondering why I mentioned them, the phrase Infinite Jest is taken from Hamlet's speech in the graveyard where he's contemplating skull fucking Yorick. Look, I read the comic book version of Hamlet drawn by Simon Bisley so I might have a misguided understanding of some of it.

Sorry to get your hopes up. There is no comic book version of Hamlet drawn by Simon Bisley. I love to make shit up and lie. It's the only way to hide really earnest and sincere truths about myself on the Internet. I can be as honest as I want when I've surrounded my inner truths with absolute bullshit. Good luck figuring out what's what!

I'm actually doing a re-read of Infinite Jest (which I just finished reading) so I can speak a little bit more as to why the book is called Infinite Jest without merely wild speculation. One of the "mainest" characters is Hal Incandenza, the son of James Incandenza. Hal takes on the role of Hamlet in a number of ways, like when the janitors call him Prince Hal, and being sad, and having a dead father who appears as a ghost, and digging up the skull of his father, James, and having a mother who seems to be in an incestuous relationship with her brother (referred to as her half-brother but almost certainly a step-brother). James Incandenza is both Hamlet's dead father's ghost but also, and more importantly, Yorick, the clown full of infinite jest (that's why Hal digs up his skull (which he doesn't actually do in the chronological telling of the book. It happens in the secret part of the book that I suspect exists but I need to find on the re-read). Hal's father sees his son disappearing into sadness and depression (this may be because Hal is doing that or it might be because James is delusional. We'll see which is more probable on the re-read!) and only wants to make him happy. His father works with light and energy (his last name is Incandenza for literary reasons!) and begins to make movies in an attempt to create the ultimate entertainment which can cheer up his son. Ultimately this entertainment probably destroys the world but that wasn't the point of it! The point was to make Hal happy. Also, just for transparency's sake, when I described what the actual entertainment depicted, called Infinite Jest by James in the book, to the Non-Certified Spouse, I was on the verge of tears. But we'll get to that!

Hal has a younger brother (almost certainly his half-brother whose parents are Hal's mom, Avril, and Hal's Uncle Charles Tavis, Avril's probable step and not half brother) named Mario who is almost certainly a representation of Horatio, Hamlet's school friend and basically the only character to survive the play. Mario has the best relationship with James Incandenza and acts as a sort of human camera lens, seeing things others cannot see, viewing things without judging, and needing a tripod to stand up straight.

The worst part about this book being named after a quote from Hamlet is that I need to re-read Hamlet now too! Good thing I still have David Bevington's The Complete Works of Shakespeare (4th Edition) which I've hauled around since college even though it's probably seven pounds. I don't mean I took it with me everywhere the way I almost always had a copy of Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein on me in my late 20s and 30s. I had that book on me so often that all of the contacts in that time of my life have their phones and addresses scrawled on the inside covers.

The book has a load of other characters but we'll get to them as they crop up. The other "mainest" characters are probably Don Gately, Joelle Van Dyne, and Orin Incandenza. Maybe throw in Remy Marathe and Hugh/Helen Steeply too. But that's it! Nobody else gets to be a "mainest" character! Not even Avril Incandenza and Michael Pemulis! I have to draw the line somewhere!

Plot

The plot doesn't really matter. If you think the plot matters, you're going to be fucking livid with the way the book "ends". Just out of your mind cataleptic. That's not the word I wanted to use but then I don't have the ghost of James Incandenza feeding me OED words directly into my brain. Ostensibly, though, the plot has to do with the people who orbit the creators and actors within the entertainment Infinite Jest and those in search of this video entertainment that fires the pleasures senses of the brain so hard that people die while watching and rewinding and watching it again. If they're taken away from the entertainment (once again, called Infinite Jest, filmed by James Incandenza), they supposedly become useless, having taken the greatest source of pleasure they've ever experienced away from them and being driven to continue that experience. I'd say more about that but I've forgotten how Remy Marathe put it, how a person's eyes looked after they've seen the entertainment and had it taken away from them. It's really important the way he describes it but I've forgotten! Stupid reader! I'm the worst!

The way David Foster Wallace writes the book is all explained in the filmography of James Incandenza, specifically his use of anti-confluential plots and his "joke" films of Found Dramas. To understand the plot, you just need to understand those two things. Anti-confluential plots are stories that run in parallel but never come into any real meaningful contact with each other. Now, you might be telling me to hold on at this point, and I get what you're about to say. Yes, everybody's plots in Infinite Jest intertwine with many other people's plots in Infinite Jest. But they do so in a way that bolsters one of the themes and doesn't help to explain the plot. As a reader, you very much want all of these disparate threads to come together to explain what the fuck is going on. But you do not get that. What you get is a sense of connection without any of the characters realizing this connection. Is it a kind of dramatic irony, I guess, where we, as the readers, see how the characters connect while the characters themselves remain blind to it? The Found Dramas are a joke where James Incandenza described the idea of picking a random name out of a phone book and then following an hour and a half of their life (or something. Again, my memory on the actual way it's stated in the book is vague) without their knowledge but then realizing that they don't even need to film these people's lives. In a sense, James' "found drama" exists without James having to record it in any way. This book is fecund with Found Drama.

Themes

I'm sure there are more and we'll be delving into them as we read but I figure three main themes really stand out: the inability to communicate with others, addiction/obsession/compulsion, and suicide.

1. Inability to Communicate with Others.
The book begins with Hal Incandenza trying to communicate to the Dean of a college he's attempting to get into but failing so miserably that they believe he's acting wildly and aggressively and they need to wrestle him to the floor and keep him pinned in the toilet while he calms down. Not long after that scene, readers see a young Hal speaking with his father in a terrible disguise as his father laments that Hal will not talk to him. While they're talking past each other. Various moments are given to how technology hampers the way in which we communicate. And, of course, Hal's father's attempt to communicate with his son which destroys (or will destroy) the world. Many, many more examples will be seen as we read, ending in Don Gateley's long-ass hospital stay where he's got a tube down his throat making him incapable of communicating with anybody at all (except, you know, for the ghost).

2. Addiction/Compulsion/Obsession.
If you think David Foster Wallace is simply talking about alcohol and narcotics, you've missed a driving theme of the novel. Wallace seems to believe that addiction, obsession, and compulsion are not just attributes that drive human behavior but are also what make our lives worth living. A well-repeated concept throughout the Alcoholics Anonymous sections of the book are how addicts coming into AA are just trading their Substance addiction for the addiction of AA's rules, community, and hokey sayings. Hal and the other teenagers at the Enfield Tennis Academy are obsessed with getting so good at tennis that they can become professionals and enter The Show. Someone's father (stupid memory!) becomes addicted to the television show M*A*S*H to the point that it basically kills him. James Incandenza is addicted to alcohol and tries AA but doesn't find meaning in it. What we see when people lose the thing that matters most in their life is that they either eventually go on to find a new addiction or they die, usually by their own hands. James sticks his head in a microwave after he promises to stop drinking. Remy Marathe, without his legs and ability to dodge trains, tries to wheel himself over a cliff multiple times and cannot do it, right up until he saves a woman from certain death on a highway, a woman who is barely functional, barely even alive, but he becomes obsessed with saving. She, in essence, becomes his AA God and reason for living. Joelle has radio and cocaine and AA and, eventually, Don Gately. Joelle's mother loses her beautiful daughter and her denial that her husband was fucking their daughter (in his case, just eye fucking and mentally fucking) and jams her arms down some garbage disposals. Wallace attempts to show that life is meaningless without the meaning we give it, and we must make that meaning intense, no matter what it is. And that intensity is absolutely a driving compulsion, a mind-altering obsession, and an addiction to keep on living.

3. Suicide.
To sleep, perchance to dream, you know? Oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, you know? Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter! Oh God, God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! You get me? It's fucking Hamlet, man!

So those are the things to look out for as we read! Oh! I almost forgot the most important thing to watch out for as we read! The story of what happens between the last chapter (November 20th, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment) and the first chapter (November, Year of Glad (the year following the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment)). I think that's the secret story within the main story. Why does Hal lose the ability to communicate? How come he cannot regulate his facial expressions? Or express his feelings coherently to others (the only real, earnest feelings he seems to express throughout the entire book!)? We know part of the story right from the start: at some point, Hal Incandenza meets Don Gateley (probably in Gately's hospital room as a bed is being prepared next to him and soon after, as described in this first chapter, Hal winds up in the hospital for psychiatric reasons) and they wind up in the Concavity digging up his father's grave with John "No Relation" Wayne standing nearby "in a mask" (presumably a gas mask). When this is first described in the first chapter, we do not know enough to mark the single sentence about Gately and Hal's father's skull. But after reading, we know that Hal's father was buried in a part of the country that becomes the Concavity, a cut-out of the map of America (the area given to Canada) that had become radioactive and unlivable and where all the trash is catapulted. We also know Hal's father was probably buried with the master copy of Infinite Jest. So this one sentence suggests that Hal, after meeting Gately, and presumably with help from Joelle, decide to acquire this master copy. Hal is obsessed with his father's movies and what his father was trying to say so if they acquired this copy, it is certain Hal watched it. Hal in the first chapter is only one of two spots in the book which uses a first person perspective (later, near the end of the book, we see the world from Hal's point of view too). We have places that describe how other people see the people who have viewed the Entertainment. Is this first chapter so we, the readers, can experience the mind of somebody who has watched The Entertainment, and how they are still in there, trying to cope? Maybe Hal just didn't go as crazy as others because the message was for him. But we also learn John "No Relation" Wayne didn't make this tournament which he was sure to win. I suspect he watched it as well and is insane?

Man, okay, enough with the speculation before we even get into it! There might not even be any more evidence for the secret story because didn't I basically just figure it all out from re-reading the first chapter of the book after finishing the book? Maybe! I am a genius, after all! I'd love to say that my mother told me I was but she thinks I'm kind of dumb. So I'll just have to take my 1st Grade teacher's word for it. Thanks, Mrs. Nelson! I always knew I was super smart!

*ADDITIONAL EDIT*
Oh man! I can't believe I forgot to mention this one silly thing that I wanted to mention in connection with Hal and Hamlet: they both exist within courts! Hamlet in the royal court and Hal on the tennis court. I don't know. I thought it was amusing and cool!