Infinite Tasks on Hiatus until 2666

[Update: the 2666 reading will be taking place, but not at Infinite Summer.  Instead, Matt Bucher at Las obras de Roberto Bolaño will be taking the lead, and other bloggers will be participating, including Daryl at Infinite Zombies.  I have not confirmed my participation, but will let you know if I am able to read/blog as intended!]

Not the Year 2666, of course – but Infinite Summer’s participatory, on-line reading of Roberto Bolano’s recently translated and posthumously published novel, 2666.  This reading is scheduled to begin in January, 2010.  I am eager, at that time, to rejoin Guides, Guests, and Forums over at Infinite Summer as well as all the blogs that will be turned over to 2666 for the duration.

In the meantime, I have created an Index of all my Infinite Jest posts over these last three months, which you can access at the top of this page.  I ended up with 27 Posts, totalling roughly 45,000 Words, and received over 120 Comments amidst just over 9,000 Page Views.  Thanks for all the time you spent reading and responding to my contributions.  I will continue to monitor and reply to new Comments, so feel free to leave one now and again.

Top Posts of Infinite Summer

As a way of saying Thank You to all the participants in Infinite Summer – and a way to avoid thinking of this as something that is in the past – I collect here all of my favorite IJ posts from some of my favorite bloggers from the last three months. It’s not meant as a competition, and I’m happy to add more links if there’s any fan-faves that I’ve left out.  Together, they make a great survey of the diversity and intelligence that has coalesced in this awesome, life-changing process we’ve called Infinite Summer.  My tribute to you, my friends!

Endings II: The Annulation-Text

I concluded a recent post with this idea: that there is a “supra-text” exceeding the physical book which is Infinite Jest.  This supra-text, which connects page 981 and page 1, comprises about a year in the life of Hal and others; speculation about the contents of this semiotically complex space has been a mini-phenomenon in recent IS discussions.  In this post, I suggest a way to imagine this supra-textual space where the narrative develops and, in good annular fashion, returns to the beginnings of the book.  I’ll refer to this space as the Annulation-Text, as opposed to the Text-Object.

Endings I: Like a Roach Under Glass (or, Orin’s Dread, Concluded)

I have been waiting and waiting for Orin’s return.  Perhaps you recall that, throughout our reading of IJ, I identified Orin as a character who is beset by the strains and struggles of despair, hope, desire, lack, and other classic existential categories, especially marked by the feeling of entombment.  I thought, perhaps, that resolving Orin’s existential dread would help us to determine some insight into DFW’s concept of authenticity. Well, it turns out that Orin makes a brief appearance (pp. 971-972) late in the book: he is being “technically interviewed” by A.F.R. agents Luria P– and M. Fortier.  And in this appearance, we find no existential dynamics, no special relation-to-self, no question of authenticity.  Instead, we find Orin, trapped under a huge hotel water tumbler, pebbled bottom now replacing any hint of sky, with sewer roaches clambering down the sides toward him.

Ghostwords and Lyle the Semi-Wraith (The Walk-On of James O. Incandenza, Part III)

The  J.O.I. wraith has made another brief Walk-On appearance (pp. 933-34), now with just fifty pages to go in IJ.  Gately is in less of a fugue-state and deeper in a dream, so J.O.I. communicates in images rather than in the verbal projections into Gately’s head.  But what images!  I am impelled to include another installment of “The Walk-On of James O. Incandenza,” to follow Part I and Part II. J.O.I.’s companion in this brief encounter is none other than Lyle, weight-room guru and sweat-licker extraordinaire, and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t be more pleased with how DFW is tying these strands together! Not only is Lyle’s own magic “clarified,” but we now have nearly everything we need to offer possible solutions to the narrational complexity of IJ.

A Few More Pieces of the Puzzle

As I approach the slippery downhill slide to the end, it’s becoming clear to me that I won’t have all my puzzle pieces in place.  However, even at this late stage, a few previously lingering questions are nonetheless finding answers, and I’ll go ahead and take a bit of time to clear these up.

Figurant / Revenant (The Walk-On of James O. Incandenza, Part II)

Part I of this two-part post was, in my view, a sort of failure due to the intrusion of Poetry.  In a typical IJ-type-coincidence, Daryl near-simultaneously put up a very interesting reflection on Poetry that talks about his ambivalent experiences with the genre, along with this choice bit from DFW:

In the short story “Little Expressionless Animals,” Wallace has a character say of poetry that “It beats around bushes. Even when I like it, it’s nothing more than a really oblique way of saying the obvious.” The person that character is talking to replies, “But consider how very, very few of us have the equipment to deal with the obvious.”

I typically have a different way of managing the obvious – to complexify it beyond imagination, so that the original obviousness is obscured.  With that in mind, I return to the wraith’s appearance, truly one of the most revealing and long-awaited passages in the novel. And what I have to say here will, I hope, all be perfectly obvious.

Living in the Moment

Moving his left arm north along his chest and throat to get the left hand up to feel at his mouth made the whole right side sing with pain. A skin-warmed plastic tube led in from the right side and was taped to his right cheek and went into his mouth and went down his throat past where his fingers could feel at the back of his mouth.  He hadn’t been able to feel it in his mouth or going down the back of his throat to he didn’t want to know where, or even the tape on his cheek.  He’d had like this like tube in his throat the whole time and hadn’t even known it.  (p. 858)

The Triumph of Life (The Walk-On of James O. Incandenza, Part I)

Our long-awaited ghost has finally shown up – Himself is a visiting wraith in the dreamy, partially conscious imagination of Don Gately (pp. 829-840). The scene is wonderfully drawn, as Gately first experiences a series of “visitations” – from Tiny Eldred Ewell, who tells us about his forgotten shame; from Calvin Thrust, who gives us an excellent update of goings-on about Ennet House in the aftermath of the Lenz-inspired night of violence; even from Geoffrey Day.  We also get a nice bit on the Entertainment, or possibly so, since Clenette H. had “promoted” (i.e. stolen) a bag full of cartridges from E.T.A. that were to be disposed of, though these cartridges have yet to be viewed (p. 825; we should also suspect that these are cartridges found in the underground meanderings of the Tunnel Club, three bags-worth about half-full, p. 670; for a thorough accounting of this line of reasoning, see Jeff Anderson’s Journeyman post).  Gately is finally left alone long enough for the wraith to begin talking to him.

The Peemster and the Littlest Hoax

Along with many other ISers, I’m a little thrown off by Michael Pemulis’s apparent expulsion from E.T.A. (n.#332, pp. 1073-76), especially since our increased sympathy for him (on the basis of his Dad’s abuse of brother Matty) makes the idea of his return to the rough side of Boston a bit disconcerting. The “Peemster” has been responsible, too, for some of the funniest incidents (and – wow! – none of them resulted in horrible deaths) throughout the book. Some readers have thought him the source of the single best one-liner: “I probably won’t even waste everybody’s time asking if I’m interrupting” (p. 553). But alas, he has occasionally become careless, and his final prank is poorly timed with the accidental Tenuation of John Wayne.