I may or may not be in love with Wallace

I apologize in advance for any typos. I am blaming it on the fact that I am currently living in an icebox, and no matter how high I turn the knob thingy on the thermostat, the temperature refuses to rise, even a little above freezing. I’m punching out only half-sensible sentences between the visible puffs of my breathing and intermediate gnaws on the frozen granola bar (which are stored in my cupboard not freezer.)

Out of principle I am refusing to wear gloves, no one should have to wear gloves in his/her own house. Come on, it’s the Great Indoors. (That goes for mittens as well, and seeing as how they would only further interfere with the typing.) But alas, midst the three layers of thermals and sweats my brain would like a word. If you’re curious my furnace debacle is not half as poetic as the Sufjan Stevens song,

Wearing three layers of coats and leg warmers
I see my own breath on the face of the door

(From The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is out to get Us. Listen to it. It’s a favorite.)

So our topic: I may or may not be in love with Wallace…(perhaps I should not admit that I have a curious series of dead-man crushes on really cool dead-people I am sure I would have been madly infatuated with had I ever met them in the flesh.) Obviously I haven’t finished the book, however Wallace is making a good case for himself. Even though I am not a youtube junkie, I did look up some of his readings. I actually really miss attending book and poetry readings from undergrad. I particularly love the passage he reads about elite baton twirling.

One of my favorite passages of Infinite Jest is the dialogue between Hal and his little brother Mario. I love it when writers portray reality so well. Like when Jerry Spinelli can enter the head of a 17-year-old girl, or Wallace can depict the conversation between two brothers. I can imagine this exact exchange happening between my two older brothers. The whole chapter is awesome, but the last paragraphs are astounding.

Pg. 42

“How come she never got sad?
…
Don’t cry, Booboo. Remember that flag only halfway up the pole? Booboo, there are two ways to lower a flag to half-mast. Are you listening? Because no shit I really have to sleep here in a second. So listen – one way to lower the flag to half-mast is to just lower the flag. There’s another way though, you can also just raise the pole. You can raise the pole to like twice its original height. You get me? You understand what I mean Mario?

Hal?

She’s plenty sad, I bet.”

Whatever this book is, whatever it is that Wallace writes, it is substantial. It is interesting to see how people change after someone dies.

As for Mr. Wallace, I’m definitely impressed by this time, but I became convinced just 3 pages later, where Wallace closed in on my heart with the roaches. His writing in this chapter is flawless. I was enamored by this chaotic maze of inverted glass tumblers and nightmarish image of prehistoric tanks invading through the shower drain. Heebee jeebies is all I can say.

Pg. 45

“The yellow tile floor of the bathroom is sometimes a little obstacle course of glasses with huge roaches dying inside, stoically, just sitting there, the glasses gradually steaming up with roach-dioxide. The whole thing makes Orin sick. Now he figures the hotter the shower’s water, the less chance any small armored vehicle is going to feel like coming out of the drain while he is in there.”

For my undergrad research lab experience I basically worked in a mouse whorehouse in the top-secret 9th floor of the Widtsoe. Part of my job was “eliminating” the unneeded baby male mice. Elimination was a tactless euphemism for suffocating masses of squirmy mice pups in a CO2 chamber. I think that experience is the raw material for a poem down the road…if I ever abandon my practical life and take up writing from my mountain cabin. Do any of you ever wish you pursued writing more seriously? (I’m making the assumption that none of you are living off the killing you made from a bestseller penned under a pseudonym.) Writing as a career feels like signing up for premature death, depression, and alcoholism, yet – a really cool brain.

I also liked the chapter about the “professional conversationalist.” I am glad Erik commented on it. It was amusing to me because as a reader I see just how ridiculous the whole situation seems. A kid sent by his dad in a somewhat ambush style therapy intervention. The tactic the father uses is at least one of the precise reasons the relationship between father and son is not working. It’s ironic.

The emphasis on the psychological intricacies and idiosyncrasies of each character illustrates the complexity, beauty, and fragility of people. I saw a Rodin sculpture at a museum in Paris once. It was a small piece and I hadn’t seen it before nor have I seen it since, but it was this incredible mass bronze, rough and lacking detail. Thick. A crouching woman. The response I had and wrote down was, “Life is a desperate pursuit.” It may not be profound, but it was a striking concept and combination of words for me. It somehow again seems fitting in application to Infinite Jest.

Kate Gompert and her desperate explanation of depression. I want so badly for it to just go away. Somehow her trance-like recitation of how life with this “feeling” is, suddenly makes behaviors like cutting makes sense and ousting yourself seem like a rational idea. All a desperate attempt to make the chaos in both mind and body physically real and somehow organized. And this whole exchange with the doctor is fabulous and perhaps tragically realistic.

Even still, I find myself laughing out loud when reading…I can’t get over the medical attaché sequences. Semi-comatose in his recliner, too entrenched in this video to even get up and pee. It is hysterical. The robbery scenes Erik mentioned are too funny, although yes to the toothbrushes, no to the tragic suffocation by viscous mucus and duct tape. Have any of you read any Tom Robbins? I laugh at his writing the same way. Wildly random, and shrewdly amusing.