Finished the book /lit/.
What the heck happened in the Year of Glad?
I've read theories online thatit was a delayed reaction to the fungus Hal ate as a kid, and others that say he watched the antidote-film, which reversed his ability to communicate (like light through an optical lens, ha ha) and so he went from being a literary genius to a unintelligible neanderthal (from an observer's p.o.v.)
>>8013614
yeah but he wasn't really able to feel before.
I always go back to that one flashback where he is trying to talk to himself but himself cant understand what he's saying
>>8013624
what's the significance of that?
has anyone on /lit/ read this?
It could be marijuana withdrawals (unlikely). It could be the product of Pemulis or the Wraith of Himself dosing his toothbrush with DMZ during the Stice in the bathroom scene. It could be the product of the fungus being left to steadily worsen over time. It's up to you. Keep in mind that IJ was several hundred pages longer when DFW originally finished it, so certain key points were likely omitted by the publishers, rendering it impossible to really tell what the fuck actually happened.
Read this.
>>8013760
>>8013764
>buying a guide to a fiction work
Shit.
![fa-plot-arc[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/cf67XdX.jpg "fa-plot-arc[1].jpg")
If you didn't catch all this on your first read then Infinite Jest was too hard for you and you should stick to Jodi Picoult.
>>8013773
So you would read Finnegans Wake and The Cantos without guides?
>>8013778
i got all of the black text on the pre ending side
how could onan be dissolved in the Deans were talking about violating onan athletic university regulations?
>>8013794
Of course, do you think Joyce and Pound wrote their works to be read with a guide? lmao
>>8013778
I find it very odd that Joelle and Gately would just sign on to help an unintelligible Hal with sorting out that whole Entertainment situation.
Where's the causality?
the book is called Infinite Jest because it uses 1000 pages to create this intricate and compelling storyline and then basically leaves out the climax, forcing the reader to reread the book over and over again searching for clues to find out what happened between November 20 YDAU and Hal's breakdown in Arizona in the Year of Glad.
The perfecttroll
surprised /lit/ has so little to say about IJ
it's almost like they haven't read it, despite its place in the /lit/ canon
>>8013778
A lot of that post-ending shit is just conjecture. The head digging part happened for sure though, it was mentioned within the first 20 pages.
The Orin living part is definitely conjecture, because there's no evidence to point that he actually gave the master copy to the AFR. Last we knew of him was being trapped in a giant tumbler, he might have just gone crazy. In fact, they probably tortured him for information, then killed him once they got it.
>>8013941
yea, the last we heard of him he was stuck in a glass dome that was being filled with cockroaches or some other bug
>>8013877
It's called Infinite Jest because that's what addiction is. No one will ever be able to end their addiction. They can break the habit, but they will still remain addicts for the rest of their lives. Think about the Entertainment (which by the is titled Infinite Jest), it's something so good, you die of pleasure. It's a direct metaphor for drugs, and in fact drugs are a metaphor for a commercial entertainment. As for the content of the cartridge, the concept is "what kills you in one life is your mother in the next", it is DIRECTLY related to Gately's situation at the end of the book. The only thing to save his life is the drug that will kill him, and that there is the Infinite Jest.
>>8013945
Def had to be cockroaches, that was the whole joke. Orin did that to the roaches in his house, put tumblers over them to suffocate them because squashing them would be gross.
>>8013929
he says, adding no substance to the discussion
>>8013628
i'm not sure.. but that's what always puzzled me. It's almost like he was incoherent to himself the whole time. and after he changed maybe himself could finally understand him but nobody else could
>>8013929
You're not on /mu/, moron. This thread is moving unusually quickly for /lit/, probably because most of its posters have read it. You're making your unfamiliarity with this board incredibly obvious because not only do you expect immediate responses to your vague, lazy questions and clearly haven't read the sticky, but you're also unaware of last year's Infinite Summer group reading.
>>8013614
Yeah, I actually read the whole thing because I had to. I was entering a prestigious PhD program and focusing on Wallace because I loved Broom of the System, Oblivion, and Pale King. To my shame, though, I'd never read Infinite Jest. I'd never even tried, as hard as that was to admit. It was this huge blind spot and area of vulnerability for me. Whenever it'd come up with my colleagues I'd just smile and nod, smile and nod, hoping they wouldn't ask me anything specific about it. "The sincerity of it," somebody would say, and I'd say, "Oh God, yes, it's like Bernie Sanders." Finally, though, I had to dive into it, and let me tell you it was tough going. Stephen J. Burn’s guide helped a lot. Reading it out loud helped. I listened to other people read it, read online commentaries. Eventually it started to make some sort of sense. It was like I was learning to read for the first time again, and in a way this was enjoyable. I got better at reading the book. Soon I was reading entire paragraphs without trouble, getting the puns, laughing at the jokes. I could sort of follow the story, it was like a blurry picture resolving into clarity, or like I was drunk and I was sobering up, I could actually understand it. As I became more and more adept at reading Infinite Jest, I began putting myself to the test, initiating conversations with my colleagues about it, but specific passages this time, specific parts of the book. You can probably guess what happened. After a number of these conversations it became blindingly obvious that I understood the book a lot better than they did, they who I thought were the experts. It eventually became sort of embarrassing for them and I stopped trying to talk about it. And at the end of the day I would pack my things, catch the bus home, and settle into my apartment to read Infinite Jest. It had surpassed all of Wallace's other works in my estimation. Pale King, the book months earlier I would've named as my favorite of all time, the best book ever written, was now #2 to the Infinite Jest. So majestic, so ambitious, so wide-ranging, erudite, glorious, incredible was it that I couldn't believe that it was the work of one man. Best of all, the heart of it isn't complicated at all. What did I get from the Infinite Jest, what are its lessons? First of all, be yourself. Second of all, put one foot in front of the other. And lastly, just do it for crying out loud, time's a wastin’!
>>8013992
>not realizing that OP is just trying to disguise his shameless bumps as pot stirring allegations
>>8014017
its been a while but if i recall it towards the middle. young hal is talking to his shrink... so many little parts like this its tough to keep it all straight.
>>8013877
The ending is at the beginning of the book :/
>>8014178
yes but there is a missing 11 month chunk between the end and the chronological end (ie the beginning)
the whole climax of the story occurs during that missing period: gately's recovery, his leaving Ennet, the resolution of Pemulis's conflict w/ the Academy, the exhumation of Himself, etc.
Hence the title Infinite Jest, which is both a reference to the samizdat and becomes its own samizdat in a way, because we are forced to reread the book several times to try to figure out what happened between november 20 YDAU and Hal's college interview in the Year of Glad
>>8013995
lmao
>>8014017
He doesnt get through the pain without the drug. Re-read the ending, hes hallucinating the nurses injecting drugs into him and the end can be interpreted as an ice bath or death. However it is really impossible to know, the book is a gigantic intentional fallacy and a rejection of intentional fallacies, really wallace is nuclear bombing metafiction. What really is infinite jest? Is it a book, a movie staring don gately, should we take at face value that it was a movie made by JOI? Is the tape of ultra sadism in the mast last scene Infinite Jest? Which infinite jest? Are the five iterations of IJ in JOIs filmography a joke by wallace that there are five possible versions invented by him? Is david foster wallace himself?(very clever right). The point really is that the work is DFW communicating directly to you, but he cant, it's impossible.
