Hundred Book Challenge #18: "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace

So I had ten thoughts for nearly every sentence in “Infinite Jest” but I’ll see what I can do where to keep it down to just ten total. 

1. I don’t understand it. I think I do a bit but not enough. There is tennis here, and drug abuse, and politics, and movie making, and a group of cross-dressing spies, and a group of wheelchair-bound Quebecois assassins, and Boston gangs, and cockroaches, and, and, and, and, and. I guess I feel the need to get this out of the way: I read this book and understand (mostly) the story and have a pretty good idea what the point is, but then maybe not. Part of the story involves a film so compelling that once people watch even a second of it they are doomed to watch the film over and over until they die of starvation or something. That may not be to far from how some people feel about the book. I can see someone spending his or her life trying to understand this monster of a novel.

2. Everything is so painfully genuine. I never read a David Foster Wallace book before and was shocked by the utter lack of irony. Pot addiction, a subject rife with irony and dismissiveness, is held to the same standard as anything else. I mean, that’s just one silly little example but the whole thing is so genuine it made me question the way I go about my life. Why do we rely so much on irony and sarcasm? Why not just be genuine?

I may be overstating it a bit but in this sense this book changed my life- or at least it gave me the desire to change my life. The book makes it clear that irony and sarcasm are tools for people to avoid the genuine- the extensive AA scenes especially. Like so:

“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.” 

3. This isn’t like anything I’ve read before. You don’t so much read “Infinite Jest” as much as explore it. Reading it is like being dropped in a dark cave and then you just poke around the corners a bit, discovering a little something here and there before realizing that the cave is enormous and far more complex than you were ready for. I remember reading a footnote of a footnote and having several seeming unrelated story threads all of a sudden come together in a moment of blinding clarity that, at the same time, added to the complexity of the story. In this way it is the opposite of those books you turn your brain off to read. Which is, of course, a good thing.

4. The language is amazing. For the first time in a long time I was constantly going to the dictionary to look up words. According to “Infinite Jest by the Numbers” Wallace used a vocabulary of 20,584 unique words to write the 577,608-word novel. Beautiful words like ephebes or semion or sobriquet. Or fantod. Twain and Hemmingway made some good arguments about keeping writing simple. Wallace gives a great argument on having a more in-depth vocabulary. Likewise the sentences were a joy to read simply on a sensory level. They sounded pretty and fluid. I read some sentences aloud over and over just because it was a joy to say and hear.

5. I’m convinced that Wallace knew everything, which means of course he must have studied like a mad man. I’ve come across a story about Wallace taking an advanced tax law class so he could write his novel “The Pale King.” Wallace doesn’t just say one character is in AA, he creates a boiling, ripping world where every aspect of AA culture is studied down to the small specks of coffee grounds in the cup. Now go back and read point one. Every different theme and idea has the same depth. Mix that with the beauty and intelligence of the writing and the compellingness of the story... Man, I wish more people wrote like that.

6. It makes me want to be better. There is a story told in the novel:

“This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, 'What the fuck is water?' and swim away.”

In the spirit of being totally honest without irony or self-conscious sarcasm, that blows me away. That simple little joke, when combined with the rest of the story obviously, has so much insight to the world. What is water indeed.

That led me to a commencement speech Wallace goes more in depth to what this story means to him. It’s one of the best speeches I’ve listened to. Rather than go on about it you should just watch it.The short version is  HERE with all sorts of insperational images. The better version with the whole, unedited speech is here

7. “Infinite Jest” is achingly sad. It deals with depression and substance abuse in complete reality, which is odd because the story is nearly sci fi at times. Take this quote:   

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” 

 Or this:

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”

This all the more tragic looking at Wallace’s life and death. He hung himself in 2008 after years of dealing with depression.

8. At the same time, “Infinite Jest” has a real message of hope- but it’s hidden away and only clues pop up. Make no mistake, when you find those clues and assemble them together you get an amazing picture of what the story is actually about but it’s below the surface. Like life then, I guess.

9. The worldbuilding here is wonderful. It’s our world, more or less, but in a future where the U.S. is in a cold war with Canada and just a bunch of weird stuff has happened. None of it is spelled out. No clumsy dialogue given by some character to explain the entire history of this dystopian world. It comes out naturally like it would. I’ve never had a conversation where I’ve given an overview of the history of the United States just in case no one was familiar, but if someone was to hang out with me for a few years they would get an idea from little bits and pieces I threw in. 

10. I’m devastated that it’s over. It just ends, nearly in mid sentence. Reading this book was, again, like exploring a vast cave full of wondrous things both beautiful and horrific and I was pulled out of it before I was through exploring. I nearly threw my iPad (from which I read it) across the room when it ended. My jaw was agape and my wife asked if I was ok. I went back and re-read the first chapter and a few things fell into place, but not enough. I was almost done solving a huge riddle when the floor fell out from under me.

I was left only with the clues available to me and what do ya know, I was able to construct what I believe is a viable ending. So, yeah, I have to read it again. I have to. After I’m done with the hundred book challenge obviously but, yeah.

How odd it that? I read a 1,079 page book and ended up wishing there was much, much more while at the same time acknowledging it had all the story it needed.

Coming up: I’m going through “Naked Lunch” and wondering if I can get 10 points out of that pile. I also started “Slaughterhouse Five” the other night and am more than halfway done. I feel a sigh of relief because I’m pretty sure I’m done with the long ones.

Hundred Book Challenge #17: "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

Well, I finally finished Margret Mitchell’s opus “Gone with the Wind.” I’m trying a new format with these blog posts to make them easier for me and maybe a bit more entertaining to you. So! I present to you: 10 thoughts about "Gone with the Wind." 

1. Scarlett and Rhett Butler are both amazing characters. Evil and manipulative sure but still great. Most of the characters are well realized but Scarlett and Rhett are two of the best-realized characters I’ve come across. I didn’t really relate to either of them but that’s one of the things I liked about it- this is something I’ve talked about before though. I empathize with them while not relating to them. I often found myself shouting at both of them but none of their decisions were out of character.
2. It’s ahead of its time, meaning it has the same basic plot as most of the highest praised TV shows of the last few years: A tough, morally-complex anti-hero Gets Things Done while dealing with weaker, annoying family members. The big difference is in Gone With the Wind the anti-hero is a woman and in today’s TV show it’s always a man. Imagine if Ashley was a woman- the character would be more annoying than Skyler on Breaking Bad and ain’t no one more annoying than Skyler. I say this as a way to point out how forgiving we are to male characters, which brings me to my next point:
3. Scarlett has a bad rap. If her character was male she would be actively celebrated. I look at commentary and reviews and everyone hates Scarlett but she is not different from male anti-heroes who everyone loves, including Water White, Tony Soprano and so on. Once I realized this I enjoyed the book much more.
4. It’s one of the best American novels but I think it’s actively harmed American culture. It’s sympathy for the south extends to arguments in favor of slavery that I’ve heard given in all seriousness in the last year- that black people were better off in slavery because then they at least had work to do and someone responsible looking after them. Beyond that, the book’s attitudes on race, gender, dating, marriage, sexuality, rape, society and culture are so wrong but presented in a romantic way and put in ways I’ve heard time and time again in my life from people. It was sort of like when you watch an iconic movie that everyone quotes and you say “Oh! So that’s where this line comes from.” Except for horrible arguments about antiquated attitudes. This book is very popular and that popularity has caused its ideas to be woven into the fabric of American culture. It is a reflection of the time- or at least a Southern-biased look at the time- but it’s popularity makes it part of it.
5. All that said, it’s not as pro-confederate as I thought it would be. Sure, Rhett brags about “killing a uppity darky who insulted a woman” and, yeah, there is nothing right about that. Yes, it celebrates the confederacy while lampooning it. I’m not going to pretend to know what relationship people in the south, especially at the time of the writing of this novel, had with the confederacy and what it means but this book both celebrates and mocks the attitude of the South.
6. This is, like, three or four books in one. Pre-war days are dealt with like a dream with romance, humor and relationship problems- closer to Pride and Prejudice than anything else. The actual days of the war are shown from the Atlanta home front where Scarlett bemoans her lost youth, unable to have even the slightest empathy for the scores of confederate solders who die. It’s a story about a silly little girl transforming into a monster. It’s a villain origin story. Right after Sherman’s March, the story reads like Steinbeck and you really get a good picture of what Scarlett is really like. Hard times on the plantation where Scarlett is forced to pick cotton and plow the field, proof that her willingness to do anything to survive isn’t limited to being horrible to people and acts as a great anchor to the rest of the story. Once she moves back to Atlanta with the idea of marrying a rich Rhett the story takes on a horrible absurdist quality. Everything goes wrong for everyone. Moments of happiness only exist as palate cleansers for more horror. Of course this probably highlights how a society reacts to war and reconstruction which brings me to…
7. The Old and New South. Scarlett is obviously supposed to symbolize the South’s transition from pre-war days through reconstruction. Let’s try an experiment, shall we? The Pre-war south was a belle- full of itself and confident in it’s superiority and importance. At the onset of the way The South lost it’s youth and was forced to put on a face of bravery and honor for solders while really morning it’s lost youth. During the war the South scrapped by doing whatever it needed to in order to survive- including things that went against the traditions it grew up with. Post-war, the South had some successes by abandoning all tradition and being friendly with Yankee interests while secretly loathing anything non-Southern. That is the storyline, basically, for Scarlett and, yeah, it works. This also brings me to…
8. I can sympathize with Confederate Southerners. I’m no apologist. Say what you will, the Civil War was about freeing slaves- everything else stemmed from that. Slavery is evil and there is no justification that works in my mind for it. STILL- this book does such a good job and showing what life was like (or, again, what life was imagined to be like) that, yeah, I feel for them. I feel for Scarlett as she stumbled around the burned countryside trying to find food- any food- so she and her family and slaves wouldn’t starve to death. I feel for relationships that were dashed apart thanks to war. I feel for solders who didn’t believe in The Cause yet fought because honor wouldn’t allow them not to.
9. It’s a book about the inherent duality of life.  Mitchell seems to argue that the Old South was a silly and unsustainable idea that was destined to fail even as it presented a view of utopia- this dichotomy plays throughout the entire book. The Old South is silly and noble. Rhett is obscene and gentile.  Scarlett is loveless while nursing a pure love for Ashley. Melanie is weak yet commanding. Mammy is wise yet- racistly- ape-like.
10. It’s not a story about love. Love is part of it, mostly the love between Scarlett and Ashley, but it’s not what it’s about. Love is presented as a cheap thing that means little when you get right down to it. Rhett confesses love for Scarlett but the love shrivels and dies when the realities of life come into play. Scarlett believes she loves Ashley but realizes she is actually in love with the idea of Ashley- as in Ashley represents the honorable Old South while Rhett represents the scallywaggy new south- and her love of one while embracing the other ruins any chance for love. It’s hard for me to move this into the realm of real people rather than representations but when I do I see a story about silly, stupid people doing silly, stupid things that ultimately ruin their lives.

A few things: It’s been a while since I last updated this blog and that’s because I’ve been slogging through two of the longest books on the list: “Gone with the Wind” and “Infinite Jest.” Now I’m done with one and almost done with the other so things should get a bit more regular here on out.

I also think I’m nearing the end of the really long novels. I don’t know for sure but I’m pretty sure I’m done with the more than 1,000 pagers. My goal to read all 100 books on Time’s list is still a teenager as far as numbers go- but the tough ones are, maybe, almost over.