Infinite Jest Diary #6: Halfway Point

Progress: currently on page 490

Okay, first of all, a warning to fellow readers. Don't read pp. 375-379 while eating lunch, as I did. This book, especially in the brutally honest stories of its many addicts, goes to very dark places, and this one is particularly horrifying. Really, one of the worst things I've ever read (in content, not style). The passage is actually an extreme example of a style I've been noticing here and there in Infinite Jest. I was going to call it "farcical" - passages that verge on the ridiculous and incredible, both comedy and horror. I don't think that's quite the right word, but I'll go with it for now. These are the passages that remind me of Tom Robbins, or of what I know of J.G. Ballard. They push you to that verge, but don't knock you off the edge of tossing the book aside in disgust. There is an ongoing scene, for example, between two characters (Marathe and Steeply) that, written in a different tone, wouldn't be out of place in a Tom Robbins novel.

I also just want to note a couple of other characteristics of DFW's "near future" that have parallels in the present. For example, this representation of today's TV and movies:

"...what if, instead of sitting still for choosing the least of 504 infantile evils, the vox- and digitus-populi could choose instead to make its home entertainment literally and essentially adult? I.e. what if...a viewer could more or less 100% choose what's on at any given time?" (p. 416)

And in endnote 166, DFW makes reference to a computer that can hold lots of "various killer apps" (p. 1031). At first, I really thought he might have coined the word, but the OED tells me it was used in 1985 and 1992. It's certainly in much more widespread use now, though.

One more thing, something that has been steadily bothering me as I progress through the novel (I am at about the halfway point, I believe). One of the reasons I love DFW's writing is the empathy that comes through, especially in his nonfiction essays. In these essays, and his stories (especially Brief Interviews with Hideous Men), there is a particular empathy for women that surpasses what I would expect of a male author. That's missing in Infinite Jest. This may be because several of the characters are teenage boys, who generally lack said empathy. But I'm a little disappointed so far with the women in general. There are really only two who could be said to be major characters, and one of them is very compelling. Maybe this is a picky place to find fault, and maybe I'm just being a whiny feminist. But there is a quality missing from this book that is in DFW's other works.

Okay, enough from me; let's have a vocabulary quiz. (I believe #7 is meant to be a play on Hal's name and his father's profession.)

1. apical (adj.) Of or belonging to an apex; situated at the summit or tip.
2. cunctation (n.) The action of delaying; delay, tardy action.
3. fulgurant (adj.) Flashing like lightning.
4. panatela (n.) A long slender cigar, esp. one tapering at the sealed end; or, slang for marijuana.
5. catastatic (adj.) Relating to the narrative part of a speech, usually the beginning of it, in which the orator sets forth the subject to be discussed.
6. cuirass (n.) A piece of armour for the body
7. halation (n.) The term used to denote the spreading of light beyond its proper boundary in the negative image upon the plate, producing local fog around the high lights, or those portions of the picture which are brighter than the rest of the image.
8. picric (adj.) picric acid n. a yellow crystalline acid with a very bitter taste, obtained by nitrating phenol and used in the manufacture of explosives and in dyeing; 2,4,6-trinitrophenol, C₆H₂(NO₂)₃OH.
9. morendo (adv.) As a musical direction: with the sound gradually dying away.
10. mysticetously (adv.) In the manner of a whale of the suborder Mysticeti of baleen or whalebone whales.
11. propinquous (adj.) That is in propinquity (in various senses); nearby, close at hand.