Okay, first of all, what the fuck.
Now that's out of the way, let me give you some background.
I picked up this book primarily because I have heard that it is long and weird
and that seemed right up my alley. The foreword to the edition I have said that
most readers of "Infinite Jest" for the first time are in their early
20s, so guess I'm on brand there. Honestly I can see why, the book is a
commitment at roughly 1000 pages and the narrative is fragmented throughout it.
There are a lot of cool theories and forums online
completely dedicated to parsing out this book. Here's a few that I checked out
prior to writing this: yada. They mostly cover the ending and what happens
plot-wise, so I'll just leave it there since I have nothing to add. I would
like to point out though that there are plenty of people out there with really
odd and flimsily supported theories which make me SUPER skeptical. Someone
explain to me the difference between them and the description in the text of Steepley's
dad and his relationship to M*A*S*H because I'm certain that's what the author
(DFW) thinks of them. Ambiguity can be important at times, and there are
definitely chunks of this book that I am perfectly happy leaving ambiguous.
I'd like to focus on what I think this book signifies. The
two main topics that DFW seems to discuss most often is the media and
communication. Let's tackle the media first. The Entertainment that characters
get addicted to is a stand in for people watching tv for hours on end,
passively watching the screen without engaging with it. This parallels the
addiction other characters also suffer from. He wants to challenge us to
actively engage with our media/entertainment, instead of passively consuming
it. You can see this just in the structure of the book, those annoying endnotes
instead of footnotes make you work for the most simple phrases and
clarifications. At the same time though, this book definitely models the
Entertainment. It circles around, with the first chapter being the last
chronologically, forcing you to finish the book, and then return to the
beginning and start again. But there's a different intent from the
Entertainment, there characters are rewinding to get that pleasure rush again,
here us sickos are rereading to try and find more meaning in it, we are
actively engaging with the book. (Trust me, it isn't such a fun read as to
trigger those pleasure neurons.)
As for communication, all of the characters seem to have
trouble communicating in one way or another. Such is the human experience.
(Take the time when Orin calls Hal up, DFW drops a reference to a Beatles song,
"I Want to Tell You" which is all about trying, and failing, to talk
to someone you love.) Hal has the most severe transformation though, he goes
from someone who can communicate eloquently, but feels nothing, to someone who
cares incredibly deeply but cannot make himself understood. This is probably
due to a drug called DMZ and there's a lot of theories about that, but I don't
want to focus on that. The most important aspect, I think, is that his dad
picked up on this aspect of Hal and tried to change it. He made the
Entertainment so that his son could feel something.
My theory here, is that Hal's dad, JOI, is a stand in for
the author. All of the critiques of the films he made could easily apply to DFW
as well, both of them value the technique and style over making something
entertaining. Mario is a stand in for the artist's work, someone who needs a
lot of love and attention, but knows that he will get it. (There's a quote
about this in one of the articles I linked above.) And since JOI made the
Entertainment for Hal, Hal is a stand in for the audience of the work.
There's other details that align with this, such as the
Master copy of the Entertainment ending up in JOI's head. This seems very
similar to the story of Athena to me, springing out of Zeus's head. And
artistic endeavors are very much like the artist's children (aka Mario). This
whole book was once in DFW's head, and the book parallels the Entertainment.
Which points to JOI being DFW in the story.
There's lots of heads in the book in general, where the
Master copy is is just one of them. JOI made films for Poor Yorick
Entertainment, Yorick being best known for his skull. The title is even a line
from Hamlet, in fact from a description of Yorick being a "man of infinite
jest." Hamlet in general is referenced pretty often, and it's obvious why,
both works feature dysfunctional families. There's also all of the smiley faces
stuck to the cover of the Entertainment, those are all lil heads. And that one
kid from the tennis academy gets his forehead stuck to a window and it gets
ripped off scarily enough. Not that I know what it all means, but heads are
important here.
But back from that little tangent, so Hal is the audience,
and Hal goes from being able to communicate to being able to feel. Does the
ability to communicate have to limit our ability to feel, or vice versa? Does
this parallel the audience's experience? Over the course of reading this novel,
do we start out being able to communicate what this book is, and end up not
knowing what on earth happened but feeling different? At the very base of his
intentions, is DFW just trying to make us invest in something and feel
different afterwards?
No comments:
Post a Comment