Only Sorta About the Book

Sometimes it still makes me angry he died. David Foster Wallace. I was wandering through the bookstore to kill time, let the book-browsing settle my nerves. Get my fix; my almost drug induced numbness – so I don’t cry. Maybe I do it so I do cry. I can’t tell anymore. Mike wasn’t even there anyway. I picked up a book and read its back, something about a hairless giant that doesn’t bleed when stabbed. Shit. I can’t even fathom that sort of imagination anymore. My creative self is dying. Without assigning it literary value I put it back on the shelf. Moving along the shelves. Dismal selection.

Mike is my faculty advisor. He is the one I am suppose to go talk to about school, how I feel, how I am doing, and of course on my “generic abilities” as a developing professional. Mike is also the one responsible for telling me that everyone is aware I sleep in class. The last meeting with Mike didn’t go so well. It was midway through 2nd semester and I had successfully locked away the hell that was Fall Semester 2008 until Mike pried. What has changed? How are things? A barrage of questions I was unsure how to answer or how even to interpret. Fine. Good. Second semester is a lot better. I struggle to string words together. I hate talking to people in a place of authority.

I don’t think he knows where I was, and how Christmas Break served as more of a heart to heart with God keeping me from wanting to drop out. “Well, I just learned to change my expectations,” I said. “How so?” retorts Mike. “Want me to be honest? I lowered them. A lot.” It continued with my attempts to be pretty. Hold it together. Mike is missing the point. I swipe in futile attempts to clear my eyes, prevent snot from dripping out my nose, maintain a normal octave in my speech, get the words past the growing lump of discomfort in my throat. I think it is at this point Mike decides I am emotionally unstable. I think it is at this point I decide it doesn’t matter. It is at this point I am concerned Mike is right.

Today I feel wildly screwed up, constantly resting on the verge of tears. At least looking at books I don’t have to talk to people. Yesterday was worse. Yesterday I had to lie down. Turn on music. Hit repeat. Try to cry. Must be some sick pre-menstrual hormonal kick. Monday I was so happy. I am still scanning the General Reading section. It’s so small.

A little white book with lots of words sprawling from its top corner catches my eye. Its one of those sickening inspirational books, but I can’t leave it alone because David Foster Wallace’s name is on it. His name a different color - probably red amidst the black type. This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. I stood there and read the whole book, set up like a page-a-day inspirational skit.

First of all, anyone who read the book would tell you the title is a terrible one. Ironic to a point, because Wallace clearly makes the point in the speech (originally given as a commencement speech at Kenyon College, Ohio) that it is not some moral diatribe on how we ought to live, but in the way Wallace would put it, “It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.”

Second I think Wallace would be pissed if he found out they were selling his words like that. The way they packaged it. Bullshit he’d say. Find it online, here is the link. (Which I did, so don’t waste your money on the feel good classic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction) I also came home and checked the publication date: April 2009. No wonder. They can do that now cause he’s the dead guy. The irony.

Wallace starts with this idea of the claim that a liberal arts education teaches one ‘how to think.’ He admits, like so few do, that the world is in essence a self-centered one, of which I agree. It is physiologically impossible for it not to be, because everything is seen through the lens of self, filtered by yourself, in extension of yourself. The closest way to exit this caged existence is to be aware of this reality. Enter the wise sage off-handed comment of John Bennion and my most oft quote from some one of his college lit classes. “True charity is the ability to see others as something other than an extension of the self.” This concept of the self-centered universe is pervasive; we are who we are, period. Therefore our control to change lies in our ability to see clearly and choose what we consider our substance. In Wallace’s essay I would postulate that he would believe you are what you choose to think about.

Just consider this excerpt:

“Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.”

I love that there are certain things we get hung up on. Especially writers. This “what we worship” soapbox has turned up before. I wrote about it.

So what now. I have the whole day. No conference with Mike. No hike as was planned. No moral gusto to go volunteer. I would feel guilty volunteering anyway. If I went I know I would end up thinking I was so much better than the other volunteers there. They are just here to get their hours done in one day, just to get it over with. I know I would think that. I need to go home. I need to find a way to kill the rot that is decaying me from the inside out. I need to find out why I think it is someone else’s fault that my moral goodness it being snuffed out. Extinguished.

My bike ride home I think of that Kenna video Hellbent. Somehow it is a gross similarity to how I feel at school right now. I get sick thinking that my ability to create is dead. I get sick thinking about how I just earned my worst grade in PT school thus far on our last exam. I am scared that what I really feel is apathy. Damn it, I hate it when people tell me I care too much. How can you care too much!? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owS1coeoWEc

Can we talk about the external Jarivk Heart yet; back on page 142-144 where the woman can carry her prosthetic heart in a purse? 3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U

“The 46-year-old recipient of the Jarvik IX Exterior Artifical Heart was actively window shopping in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ fashionable Harvard Square when a transvestite purse snatcher, a drug addict with a criminal record all too well known to public officials, bizarrely outfitted in a strapless cocktail dress, spike heels, tattered feather boa, and auburn wig, brutally tore the life sustaining purse from the woman’s unwitting grasp.

“The active, alert woman gave chase to the purse snatching ‘woman’ for as long as she could, plaintively shouting to passers by the words, ‘Stop her! She stole my heart!’ on the fashionable sidewalk crowded with shoppers, reportedly shouting repeatedly, ‘She stole my heart, stop her!” In response to her plaintive calls, tragically, misunderstanding shoppers and passers by merely shook their heads at one another, smiling knowingly at what they ignorantly presumed to be yet another alternative lifestyle’s relationship gone sour. A duo of Cambridge, Massachusetts, patrolmen, whose names are being withheld from the Moment’s dogged queries, were publicly heard to passively quip, ‘Happens all the time,’ as the victimized woman staggered frantically past in the wake of the fleet transvestite, shouting for help for her stolen heart.”

I just think about this a lot, may or may not have inserted it awkwardly into a few conversations. It’s embedded in a really great chapter too. Ironic.

Anyway, maybe I’ll just pretend I am graduating with parting words from DFW:

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”

I love that he uses the word unsexy.

The 25 Most Influential Books of the Past 25 Years

So anytime I find something in the mailbox addressed to me I get pretty excited. I get rather delighted when it is either a box from home or a copy of the latest edition of Metal Floss. Volume 8 Issue 2 names Infinite Jest as one of the 25 most influential books of the last 25 years. (And like it or not Phil, Dave Eggers also made the list with What is What.) "Weighing in at 1,079 pages, Infinite Jest is a reference-laden, multi-narrative epic that hinges on the idea that Americans are hell-bent on amusing themselves to death." The article mentions how as the years pass, Wallace's commentary grows more true, just look at Facebook it says, "and its easy to see that people define themselves less by what they do and more by what they find entertaining."

A friend and I had recently just had a conversation revolving around how social norms and etiquette is changing. It was noted that you can rapidly fall out of a conversation if you have not see the latest popular clip on youtube or that you can somehow socially exclude yourself if you are not up-to-date on last week's episode of Grey's Anatomy or the Bachelor. Last year I was almost victim of a social lynching when I admitted that I was not an avid 24 fan, and in fact didn't really care for it. I got these blank stares and piercing eyes as if I can just admitted that I was also not really a female. The point is not that all form of entertainment is bad. I have a severe jonesing for the So You Think You Can Dance season to start, and an admitted guilty pleasure in catching late episodes of The Hills, but the idea of "defining" the self by the form of entertainment is disconcerting. The self is no longer about developing skills, accomplishing goals, or even traveling to new places to interface with the world, the self is now a pop culture list of likes and dislikes and haughtly tossed opinions.

It is as if our world is more commonly experienced via some form of media rather than through a first person sensory experienced-based stimuli. It is as if it is conceivable that an individual can replicate "life" in a somewhat virtual way and in reality experience nothing more than one sensation at a time.

As I was reading "6 NOVEMBER - Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" I turned to page 200 and found this amazing section, it starts: "If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts." The pages that follow catalogue this ridiculous list of randomly connected facts that are funny, crass, again funny, and some that are highlight worthy (many actually). Wallace has this acute sense of what substance abuse is really like and an exquisite way of describing addiction. From the bottom of page 202 through the paragraph on 203 you know Wallace has experienced this, lived it, and makes even a reader whose never sucked a joint more aware of what is feels like.

I think this section also shows that Wallace believes that anything people do can be abused, and that abuse is what makes a behavior dangerous and addictive. Abuse of any substance or idea or action for its sustained and temporary effect can in effect screw up your head and make you unwell. Any action be it drugs, sex, or charitable acts can become so addictive for its stimulative purposes that ending the behavior is hell and in fact can cause you to lose your mind, or at least wish it. Wallace says it this way, "you will find yourself beginning to pray to be allowed literally to lose your mind, to be able to wrap your mind in an old newspaper or something and leave it in an alley to shift for itself, without you." Wallace eludes to the allure of escape in this statement. If only we could escape. The desire to escape is what places a man in the swing of the pendulum of obsession and addictive behavior; be it sleep or the purposeful deprivation of sleep, it can serve as an emotional escape, and an abusable one. I wonder if Wallace is trying to say that our obsession to stay busy and to overstimulate ourselves with absurd amounts of indulgence, or in contrast numb ourselves into an unfeeling hallucinogenic dream-state is because we are to damn afraid of ourselves, what we are and what we are not.

"Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. Use it or lose it, he'd say over the newspaper. I'm...I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN. It's...potential may be worse than none, Jim. Than no talent to fritter in the first place, lying around guzzling because I haven't the balls to...God I'm I'm so sorry. Jim. You don't deserve to see me like this. I'm so scared, Jim. I'm so scared of dying without ever being seen." (from another chapter I love--pages 157-169)

If we escape - we deny the moment of responsibility, and we never have to admit that it was our fault we never amounted to anything. We can keep doing what we do to feel a certain way and never question it, because questioning is too painful and disappointing.

So this is the part when I get really sad. I feel like Wallace was so insightful, despite everything, he had it figured out. This section only validates his genius, his sincere grasp of human nature and insightful observation. If he knew all this, all the stuff written on these pages, why did he still die? How did he still quit? If he couldn't do it...how can anybody?

Wallace says so himself, he realizes "That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness." If this is as true as it feels, why is the author dead?

The chapter continues with a vignette of Tiny and his obsession with gathering information about the tattoos of the residences of Ennet House. Tiny categorizes his findings, the stoic regretters and the younger crowd who show them off with a fake-quiet pride. Wallace also lends a significant focus to the permanency of tattoos and how that element sets tattoos apart from other impulsive actions. A tattoo is a permanent consequence for an impulsive action, while even a impulsive wedding is Vegas is perhaps a bigger production and even a "larger" mistake, but still less permanent.

I myself, might have an insatiable curiosity about tattoos. I admittedly went through an embarrassing phase of watching several episodes of Miami Ink strung together on late night TLC when I would get home from closing late at work. I am in the most basic way, intrigued by the reasons people get tattoos, what the significance is, or what insignificance it is...how people value or view their body.

A kid in my class just started phase I of a III phase tattoo. It spans from the left rib cage below the armpit to the base of his hip. It is a picture of this old gnarly tree with a red sun in the the background. Its pretty, but also weird because the entire first semester when we sat in lab with our shirts off and sports bras I saw no tattoo, just his - admittedly sculpted - chest and abs. And now it can never look that way again. Ever.

My friend in high school got his Lotus blossom on her back between her shoulder blades and it is symbolic for her, of a pivotal moment in her life. I also vividly remember treating a patient in our outpatient clinic that taught me that you can give yourself tattoos by using scorched baby oil for ink. I even dated a kid that used to give tattoos is Argentina, but had since become so ashamed of his own. I told him I liked them because in essence his past makes him who he is now...no matter how different. I find it a surprising avenue for Wallace to explore and am curious to how it will later be developed. Regardless--this point feels significant.

Oh, and she raises her hand again...

So I am going to proceed to fire out another post, pretending to not be wholly self-conscious about this almost 9:1 ratio. I’m starting to feel like ‘that kid’ in your psychology class who won’t freaking shut up, and has to proceed to comment at any given chance, in addition to sharing awkward personal stories about his aunt Irene. That same kid, who everyone secretly wants (by some act of God) to suddenly go mute…only he doesn’t know it.

Quite possibly one of my favorite passages thus far. In the post tennis drills locker room rag session, Wallace is carefully drafting out each of his characters. T. Schacht is the walking med case who spends significant time in the bathroom due to his Crohn’s disease. Hal makes this priceless observation.

Pg. 103

“Something humble, placid even, about inert feet under stall doors. The defecatory posture is an accepting posture, it occurs to him. Head down, elbows on knees, the fingers laced together between the knees. Some hunched timeless millennial type of waiting, almost religious. Luther’s shoes on the floor beneath the chamber pot, placid, possibly made of wood, Luther’s 16th century shoes, awaiting epiphany. The mute quiescent suffering of generations of salesmen in the stalls of train-station johns, heads down, fingers laced, shined shoes inert, awaiting the acid gush. Women’s slippers, centurions’ dusty sandals, dockworkers hobnailed boots, Pope’s slippers. All waiting, pointing straight ahead, slightly tapping. Huge shaggy-browed men in skins hunched just pasted the firelight’s circle with wadded leaves in one hand waiting.”

Defecation is the great equalizer among men. No one is above the basic necessity of bowel movements. After having worked in a hospital longer than is needed to permanently warp/damage my sense of humor, I’ve heard plenty of euphemisms (my particular favorite: crack spackle) and incredible stories to supply any conversation gone south.

Aside from all the things that differentiate people, money, materials, education, or appearance – everybody poops. (Somehow someone coined this for a book title and made enough money to retire…had I only though of this sooner, I would be taking credit for the immature giggles in bookstores nationwide.) Not only that, but it’s the same stuff for all of us, rotting half digested foodstuffs we ate only hours prior. Whether we acknowledge it or not, everyone is just a complex version of an open tube, one end your mouth, one end your anus.

The point though is the feet. Hal says that the position is the same, since the beginning of time…placid and accepting, feet pointing ahead. It seems a humble gesture of man submitting to the will of nature. Perhaps it is a natural state of epiphany, every man’s sanctuary; a place one can truly validate being alone – and frequently. A ceremonious return to the same humble position.

Perhaps that is why conversations that take place in public restrooms are so disturbing. Like dying, defecating is a deeply personal act. It is a man’s own business with Mother Nature. None should be interrupted to chat about, “what’s next on the agenda” or “your last phone conversation with person X.” There are certain unspoken rules in society – provoked upon us by instinct. You don’t talk when you squat.

Religious reformists or teenage-angsty-pot-smoking tennis players alike, crap happens. It is a simple pattern, and reminder that we are all simply human, regardless of successes or walloping failures. On next occasion while choosing between reading materials (sports section or Infinite Jest) or obnoxiously unraveling the toilet paper dispenser, remember that if nothing else, at least we all have this in common.

What the Weird?

Questions:
pg. 93 “herd of feral hamsters?” Was I suppose to read this as some off-beat reference to the Wheelchair Assassins, or is this some legit introduction to a future breed of rogue rodent domestic defectives? confused?

pg. 121… “Enter Millicent Kent?” Umm…not going to elaborate on this one because I have nowhere to go with it. Merely posing the topic.

pg. 127-128 “Lyle the yogic guru?”
Okay, this supposedly Lyle character is hysterical and completely bizarre, but what can I say charming too. I mean he licks people’s sweat! I haven’t quite figured out how exactly he perches on a towel dispenser…because it must be larger than my head had first imagined. “He just sits there. I want to be like that. Able to just sit all quiet and pull life toward me…” I secretly agree with the unidentified I. (I think I always assume it is Hal speaking, I’m not sure why. Is it Wallace entering his own prose? That doesn’t seem like his thing, but going off of what I expect hasn’t been a good predictor thus far). Oh yeah, “…one forehead at a time.” Ha. Astounding.

What to love enough not to think two times?

Main topic: pg. 105-109: The Exchange between Steeply and Marathe (of which I have still not decided how to pronounce…?)

So other than the outrageous and ridiculous circumstances in which we find our two characters (prosthetic breasts askew and all) there’s this brilliant exchange. Although I have still yet to figure out who is on whom’s side, and for what “greater cause” each is attaching himself to; Wallace tackles or at least provokes the debate of fanaticism, patriotism, and loyalty.

Steeply references another agent and his associations with a political figure named Luria. He says that the love between them is, “the sort the gets sung about, the kind people die for and then get immortalized in song.” He continues referencing several historical and tragic couples to prove his point. (This is one of the things I love about Wallace. You can tell the guy is just smart. Apparently he won an Outstanding University Researcher award while a professor at Illinois State (where is started writing Infinite Jest).)

That dialogue progresses, identifying the origin of the word, fanatic. Latin for temple or worshipper at a temple. Marathe continues, “Are we not all of us fanatics? … Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? That is craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.” Because I am not sure which characters to “root’ for (which is probably Wallace’s point) it is tricky deciding what exactly he feels about the topic, although I did stumble upon an article Wallace wrote for Rolling Stone magazine in 2000 where he chummied it up with John McCain for 7 days. The article is called The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub. It is pretty long (surprise) but the first 2-ish pages make the connection I’m getting at, which shed some light perhaps on what Wallace thinks is a good thing. After recounting McCain’s Vietnam story he says this,

“But, see, we do know how this man reacted. That he chose to spend four more years there, in a dark box, alone, tapping code on the walls to the others, rather than violate a Code. Maybe he was nuts. But the point is that with McCain it feels like we know, for a proven fact, that he's capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest.”

Marathe says, it enlarges the heart. Something bigger than the self. Steeply counters with a question, “What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love?” And Marathe states,

“Then in such a case your temple is self and sentiment. Then in such an instance you are a fanatic of desire, a slave to your individual subjective narrow self’s sentiments; a citizen of nothing. You are by yourself and alone, kneeling to yourself. In a case such as this, you become the slave who believes he is free. The most pathetic of bondage. Not tragic. No songs. You believe you would die twice for another but in truth would die only for your alone self, its sentiment.”

I haven't decided quite how I resolve this with the philosophies of Ayn Rand. She argues, in a sense, that devotion to self is the only virtuous way to live. Selfishness is the heroic act. In The Fountainhead, the protagonist Howard Roark is great because of his unfailing devotion to himself, his creativity, his ideals - at the expense of all else. Roark does have a love affair with Dominque, but it is secondary to the act of self devotion, or Rand's idea of true integrity. Roark tells Dominique that their love would destroy her until she was individually complete. Ayn Rand attributes the possibility to this kind of life to the institution of Capitalism.

"Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man's right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else's. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience."

Rand praises the fundamental principle upon which the country was built, but were not those men dedicated to a cause of vision greater than the self? Maybe our forefathers are part of those that Marathe speaks. Maybe this seeming paradox in fact finds Wallace and Rand on the same side? Perhaps the problem is that Marathe sees love for another human being as perpetually selfish and is unable to view the possibility that the love for one other can in fact not be a self-serving desire. All this is interestingly placed in the back story of Marathe acting as a double-or-triple agent for medical supplies for his ill wife. Ironic.

It seems funny how a topic keeps turning up in different places. I just watched Traitor with Don Cheadle (highly recommended). It addresses our allegiances. How are we motivated? What is our justification for our actions? In even greater complexity, how can the same motivation lead us to act is grossly opposite ways? It is also for the sake of our 'temples' man can be manipulated. Coercion by force or fear for a loved one. In Traitor, Islamic terrorism and jihad is evil men manipulating those of true devotion to Allah for their faith.

I briefly studied Italian history, emphasizing the Machiavellian influence. (Machiavelli is a genius of human nature.) From The Prince, Machiavelli discusses whether it is best to be loved or feared in ruling a country, or in any leadership position. He writes, “The answer is of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.” Man is driven by emotion to a certain point, but fear initiates the primal behavior of self-preservation, even at the risk of breaking the obligations of love. Now we may not all agree with Machiavelli; but this is the principle behind torture - fear. Many have survived. Wallace argues McCain to be one of them. The principle of terrorism is the same, create in a nation enough fear that you manipulate their actions.

Marathe also asks this question:
“Who teaches your U.S.A children how to choose their temple?”
I've had a few discussions recently about the effect of social values, and socially accepted behaviors and beliefs on children. It seems fairly accepted, especially in certain demographics that values are taught in the home. In all fairness though, social values of different generations are evident in all demographics. It is impossible for me to ignore that society teaches kids a heck of a lot more than we might like; therefore, who teaches your children? Public schools, TV, government? All of which are semi-frightening options currently. How is it that we instill goodness in our children; gratitude, patriotism, rightful pride and dignity? What do we teach them is worth loving, or in all fairness, what love is? What do we teach is worth dying for without thinking twice? Or even still, how do we discover that 'temple' for ourselves?

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.

A Few thoughts

So I'm still chugging along pretty slow, but I wanted to make a brief observation/question: what's with the ebonically phoenetic portion? And does anybody else have a hard time reading that stuff?

But I have really hit the part where I'm really liking the book a lot. The robbery part with the Quebecian and the ADA was hilarious. Really clever I thouhgt. That is all.

A rebuttal....but in a non-confrontational sort of way

OK, I frankly am not all that worried about spoilers. It's a long book, and it doesn't seem to be "plot driven" unlike a Harry Potter or a Da Vinci Code, so I think spoilers won't be a big deal. My thought is that if you are posting something that you think might ruin something, just put a "spoiler warning" somewhere in the title or something. But whatever everybody wants to do is fine with me.

Secondly, let me briefly bring Kyra and Katie up to speed on the twenty odd years of friendship that Phil and I have behind us. Phil and I are very similar in a lot of ways, but very different in others, and I think it creates a nice dramatic tension. (Sidenote: I unequivocally consider Phil to be one my best and truest friends. Sidesidenote: I had a girlfriend once in college who was convinced that if Phil and I hadn't known each other for so long we never would have become friends. I always hated when she would say that.)

But as Eggars described in the introduction, I agree that there are two camps in literature: the ones who think that writing should be extremely accessible and those that thing it should be arduous and challenging. I guess I see where you're coming from when you called Eggars "cute," but I think I'm in the camp that believes that writing should be accessible, and that's how I feel like Eggars writes. In fact, I think I might even be a little of an extremist. In all of the books I had to read for my English major (which has been SUPER useful...ear tug) I felt like I got the most out of the ones that were written in my language, or better, my vernacular. I felt the same way on my mission: As good as I ever got at Porkandcheese, my communication skills never even came close to my native language. Which, incidentally, is why I think that missionaries that bring home "natives" to marry that don't share a common first language is not a good idea.

But, I recognize that I am on the far side of the camp, and it's refreshing to hear someone who has a different opinion, and I can certainly respect the sentiment. And, I sort of agree with Eggars that this book is somewhere in the middle, which is kind of nice. I'm also very excited for Phil to do some groundwork for us and find out about his hometown.

OK, so this isn't that far into the book, and it isn't a spoiler, but the part after the marijuana scene where he describes his encounter with the therapist ("conversationalist") I thought was great. It's interesting because I have essentially seen a therapist and been a therapist (in a way). Allow me to explain: I work with a pediatric psychiatrist once a week at children's hospital as a part of the "treatment team." So we go and meet with kids that have problems that are far beyond their age. When I saw a therapist to help me decide whether or not to go back to school, I loved it. I saw her as a benevolent third party to help me sort out my issues. When I'm on the "treatment team" though it is very different. Today for instance, I saw a fifteen year old kid who was living in a foster home, has ADHD, Bipolar, and diabetes. When he's on a bipolar swing, or when he's just feeling like a fifteen year old, he doesn't take his diabetes medicine, and he winds up in the hospital, like today. So we're called in to do a "psych consult" meaning we spend about an hour talking to the kid and his foster mom. Point being: this kid is sick. He's in the hospital. He's all teenage-y and angst-y and we march in with five strangers, wake him up from his nap, and ask him to tell us about his feelings. As you can imagine, he didn't respond that well. And so I thought that chapter captured the dichotomy pretty well. On the one hand, therapy can be this kind, semi-omnipotent, even paternalistic experience, but on the other hand it can be a little "big brother;" controlling and intimidating.

And that chapter, not to keep bringing up AHWOSG, reminded me of the part in Eggars where he's doing the interview for MTV's Real World, and suddenly the interviewer explains that he's not really in the interview, but that it's a platform for a monologue. I thought it was a pretty clever literary device, although I thought it worked a little better in AHWOSG.

SOOOO, as Katie pointed out, this sucker is real long, and I'm not too far, but hopefully I will have some more time this Christmas to do a little reading and post some real nuggets. In the mean time, I love you guys.

Regarding: Dilemma, First Impressions, and Eggers

Umm…topic #1: Dilemma-
My simple suggestion for the anti-scheduled-non-book-clubish-no-spoiler blogspot, is that we could potentially come up with a format for titling the posts. Something that would detour you from reading about something you had yet to read in the novel.

A logical suggestion would be something like “Regarding Chapter #X,” but seeing as I am still deciphering exactly how this book is organized, (and numbered chapters not being it) we could just break it down roughly to page numbers. If however page numbers is not enough, a clever “cute” Eggers style title can follow. This format just might work, being both informative and efficient for the quick-skimmer and the smart ass alike.

Take for instance the following:
Regarding xi – 3: Invitational Instructions and Erik’s love for Dave Eggers
Or my own potential post:
Up to page 42: I may or may not be in love with Wallace

Blogs about the more global/cosmic issues or might-be themes of the book can be non-specific-non-formatted titles resembling something more like discussion threads or questions. (I usually have more questions than constructive and/or cohesive thoughts.) That said: First Impressions. This could likewise be titled "Phillip busts Erik’s and Egger’s Chops" but you see the idea. Think it would work?

Phillip, I have a feeling you may be un-impressed, but I was forewarned - with a name like Katie and everything.

As far as Dave Eggers goes, I fall somewhere in between the spectrum of Erik and Phillip. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was refreshing, and Eggers had me pegged in the intro of Infinite Jest, approaching 25, madly in love with Sufjan Stevens and guilty of endlessly carrying around Jack Kerouac in my purse. Eggers did fail to mention that I frequently smell of a cadaver lab and am currently eating eggs with an Oct 10 expiration date in December, but otherwise he hit the highlights.

Eggers says, "We have an obligation, to ourselves, chiefly, to see what a brain, and particularly a brain like our own - that is, using the same effluvium we, too, swim through - is capable of." I sat in the airport on the way back from Thanksgiving Break hunkered into Wallace when the man I sat next to asked if I was reading a phone book. I laughed. And after we chatted for who knows how long, he remarked that if the brakes fail on landing we could toss Wallace out to drag us to a stop. He might be right, this mass of pages is a bit daunting, but Eggers said it, "...any book, but particularly a book like this, a book that gives so much, that required such sacrifice and dedication. Who would do such a thing if not for want of connection and thus of love?" And perhaps in our case why we not only are determined to read it, but write about it?

Needless to say I am pretty excited about all this, and if not for the need to both shower and see what a brain like my own can cram into before my final tomorrow I would ramble about the previously referenced 42 pages. But for what it is worth, I’ve put my two-cents out there.

First Impressions

First of all, I would like to address the first post by Erik titled: "Invitational Instructions." I believe the most critical information was left from this post. And yes, I am being a smart ass. I am even considering not leaving any clear "first impressions" in this post to further my smart ass-ed-ness. Seriously, though, since we are four individuals, and to avoid spoilers, etc. should we consider how we can post items here? I do not want to go into some detailed thought on chapter 3 before others have had a chance to read it, for example. How do we propose to resolve this dilemma? Providing a schedule sounds thoroughly book club-ish; are there any other innovative in-situ-book-reading discussion ideas?

Onto impressions (nullifying the above threat). I don't mean to bust Erik's... chops, but I did not love "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." I liked it okay. But I did not love it. Hence, when I saw Dave Eggars' name on the forward, I may have grimaced a bit. Really, for me, I think it came down to writing style. Which may mean it's more a matter of taste. It was and is a fantastic story. A fantastic true story. But nonetheless Eggars' writing never quite squared with me. I have only lately tried to analyze what I didn't like about it, and the best thing I can come up with is that he is a "cute" writer. I'm absolutely sure I don't make sense in saying that, so I will use an example from his forward:

"But Wallace is a different sort of madman, one in full control of his tools, one who instead of teetering on the edge of this precipice or that, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, seems to be heading ever-inward, into the depths of memory and the relentless conjuring of a certain time and place in a way that evokes - it seems so wrong to type this name but then again, so right! - Marcel Proust."

Again, it's stylistic, but by merely suggesting that it may be wrong to compare Wallace to Proust, he plays a bit (or shows that he's considered it), and then emphatically goes for it anyway! How cute! That style is riddled throughout AHWOSG. Erik, by all means, call me crazy. It doesn't land tops on my best reads list. Still, though, a fantastic, inspiring story. And definitely better than Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth." That was 973 pages of wasted time.

I'll give Eggars one thing though. He knows good writing. He, in a stretch, reminds me of the antagonist in the slightly above average flick "Finding Forrester" in that he may not write well himself, but he knows the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Having said that, I've read a few chapters of "Infinite Jest," and so far, the writing is fantastic. Especially chapter 0 part 2. I did some wiki research on Wallace. He grew up here in Urbana, IL. And I say here, because I currently live in Urbana,IL. His parents studied/worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I currently study. I will find his high school and post a picture of it for you guys. The fact that Eggars was a Chicago suburbanite, and also studied here at the University, is why he felt he could call Wallace's background "normal." Because he lived here for a few (3 1/2?) years. Though I guarantee you his experience was quite different. It's kind of like Erik or I saying we know what growing up in Provo is like. We have an idea that's close enough, I guess. Oh, and yes, my girlfriend works and lives in Normal, IL, so that joke (although he said "no joke") was unfortunately old for me. Back in the day, schools that trained teachers were all called "normal" schools. Normal had one (called Normal Branch College, I believe), now Illinois State University, which oddly enough, Wallace taught at for a number of years.

/End rant

Invitational Instructions

This first blog is basically to explain the idea behind this blog. First and foremost, I'd like to say that this isn't a book club. There will be no deadlines, no meetings, and no guilt trips. We're just four really cool people that are all reading the same book and talking/blogging about it. And incidentally, I want you all to know that I think this is a very select, cool, group. You are the only people I have told about this, and so far our acceptance rate is one hundred percent. If anyone does want to ad anyone, I think it should be considered as a committee, since we now have a committee.

So I'd like to start out with three observations from the foreword by Dave Eggars, assuming we all have the same edition. First, I think it's cool that the foreword is written by Dave Eggars, as "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis" is one of, if not my number one, favorite books of all time. Second, I liked the comparison to Sufjan Stevens, since I happen to know that all of us like Sufjan. Thirdly, I thought it was also very interesting that Dave said most people read it when they're around twenty five and I would say that we're all around twenty five.

So, that being said, let's read....and blog....