I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: HÜSKER DÜ-Land Speed Record (1982).

Mentioning Hüsker Dü during the Replacements reviews made me bust out their records too.  Land Speed Record was their first release, and it always amazed me that their first record was a live record.

It is an amazing blast of hardcore punk.

It is poorly recorded, stupidly fast and impossible to follow.  The CD is divided into two track (sides one and two) despite the 17 songs.  Most of the songs are simple, balls-out screaming punk.  In fact, it’s surprising how much you can tell it is Hüsker Dü given how shouty Bob Mould sounds.

In truth, it’s not entirely impossible to follow one song to the next (there are times when you can hear the choruses (“Guns at My School” and “Do the Bee” stand out).  But really it’s a pretty shocking discovery for anyone familiar with their alterna-pop that would come later.

The one real highlight is the final song, “Data Control.” It slows the pace and adds some mood (although it’s not that easy to discern).  But it contains a great deal of depth (for this album) and suggests that maybe the Hüskers were going to be more than a simple hardcore band.

The funniest part is that after the 25 minutes or so of noise, Bob Mould says, “we’ll be back for another set.”

[READ: Week of June 22, 2009] Infinite Jest [78 pages + endnotes]

So as I said, I’m going to be doing this Infinite Summer thing, reading 75 or so pages every week.  I haven’t figured out what I’m going to say each week, just some observations and characters to help keep things straight.  But there will be spoilers, so be warned.

Having read this before certainly helps put some context on things, even if I don’t remember a lot of the book.  But, for instance, it helps to know ahead of time that the “Year” chapter headings have been subsidized.  However, I don’t remember the chronology of them at this point.  See below, footnote endnote for more on the chronology.

The characters:   (as of page 78):

Hal Incandenza.  Tennis  prodigy.  We have seen both his failed attempt to gain admission to the University of Arizona, and as a young boy eating mold.  We have followed Hal more than anyone else thus far and he seems  to be the main character.  Hal smokes pot quite a lot, often going way out of way to disguise said fact even from those who knows he smokes.  Hal is something of a genius, spending much of his time reading far beyond his expected level.  We have also saw a meeting with a conversationalist in which we can’t tell if Hal is crazy or not.  (More on this in a moment).

Mario Incandenza.  Hal’s younger (?) brother who is not all there.  We’ve only had one scene with him, and he was half-asleep.

Orin Incandenza. Hal’s older brother is a professional football player First in New Orleans then in Arizona).  He is a punter.  And he has issues of his own. One includes copiously sweating during sleep.

Avril Incandenza. Hal’s mother.  She’s known as “Moms” by her kids.  She is nervous but proud of her kids.  She is also an accomplished academic.  She lives at E.T.A. and, after the death of her husband, refuses to exit the academy’s underground tunnel system.

James Orin Incandenza. Hal’s father, known as “Himself.”  Founded the E.T.A. Enfield Tennis Academy, an accredited boarding school where all of his kids have attended.  Much of the action of the book takes place here.  He is also a prolific filmmaker and in the Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar, he committed suicide.

Erdedy.  At present he is impatiently waiting for his weed to show up.  We get a very detailed look at his paranoid character and the bug that lives in his shelving.

Bruce Green and Mildred Bonk.  We see them in middle school and then as adults living in a trailer park.  Mildred was a heartthrob in 6th grade and Bruce couldn’t even talk to her.  Bruce eventually won her over.  Erdedy’s dealer lives in the trailer park with them.  The interconnectedness has begun!

Erdedy’s dealer.  Lives with lots and lots of snakes (that’s the only thing said about him thus far).

The medical attache.  He is unrelated to any other part of the story.  But since I know what happens to him (and won’t reveal it yet) it makes his weird story very compelling.  The last time we see him, he is comatose in front of a videotape on infinite loop. His wife has just discovered him and what he was watching.

Unnamed girl.  From the projects of Boston.  Her vernacular is difficult to follow along with and her story is not a happy one.

Don Gately.  A drug addict who is also a professional burglar.  He gets revenge on an A.D.A. with a rather unspeakable violation of personal space.  And then is arrested for an accidental homicide.  At this point it seems like his entire story has played out already.  One wonders if he’ll reappear.

Kate Gompert.  A young girl on suicide watch at a psychiatric ward.  She reveals to her doctor that she thinks the cause for some of her horrible feelings–not depression, just pain–may come from withdrawal symptoms from Bob Hope (pot).  She also reveals that her dealer is the same man that Erdedy is waiting for.  Her section was quite lengthy.

Jim Trolsch. One of many friends of Hal’s at the E.T.A.  In one section, he had come down with a monster cold.  He is also fan of narrating tennis matches that he watches on TV (to the irritation of all).

Pemulis.  Trolsch’s roommate.  He has has some background, but nothing sizable yet.

The plot:

So far, most of the action has focused on Hal and his tennis career.  At some point, Hal has gone from nervous genius to babbling idiot.  The rest of the characters have had various run ins although most have been solitary incidents that don’t seem to connect to much of anything else yet (except for Erdedy’s dealer).

There have also been lengthy architectural digressions about the layout of the E.T.A.

The endnotes were infrequent at first, but then they came fast and furious.  Most have given detailed information about drugs (legal and il-), except for a lengthy (8 page) endnote about James (Himself)’s filmography.  While most of these endnotes have been almost literally academic paper-type endnotes, the filmography is an instrumental look into the workings of the book.  In addition to giving historical information (he shot documentaries) it also reveals the chronology of the Subsidization of the calendar.  From this footnote endnote we learn that sometime after 1997 the calendar was subsidized.  The first three years after subsidisation are:

Year of The Whopper
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar

Three more years that we know of so far include:

Year of Glad
Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
Year of the Dairy Products from the American Heartland

Chronologically speaking, we also learn that during the Year of the Whopper, came the continental reconfiguration…we’re not exactly sure what that is, but we know that there is a lot of tension between the U.S. and Canada.  There are Quebec separatists (of which Avril was one in college). There have also been numerous riots around the U.S. one apparently having to do with language.

We also learn (so much information in a footnote endnote) that the scene where Hal is talking to a “conversation specialist” is a film by Himself.  Whether that earlier scene actually happened or was just a film is still up in the air.

There are also a surprising amount of characters who smoke pot.  I must have not really paid attention to it the first time around, but virtually every character does some kind of drug.

For the most part the language has been manageable, with the occasional supra-lengthy sentence giving rise to humorous qualifiers that he, DFW, felt were necessary for you, the reader, to keep all of the pronouns and other ephemera, straight.  A few scenes have gotten bogged down by technical jargon, and that scene in projects was very difficult to get through.  Otherwise the book is quite funny (in a weird sort of way).

Looking forward to week two!

For ease of searching I include: Husker Du