I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MORRISSEY-Years of Refusal (2009).

I’ve been a fan of The Smiths for years.  And I think that Morrissey’s debut, Viva Hate, is on par with much of the Smiths’ catalogue.  Over the years his output has been mixed, but with Years of Refusal he comes fighting back with a really solid disc.  The disc is so good that if one had no idea of who he was, one could easily get into it with no preconceived notions of Morrissey, The Smiths or any of that glorious past.

From the start, the disc rocks out. That’s right, Morrissey totally rocks, with a real attitude.  “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” in addition to being quite funny, has one of Moz’s most loudly sung choruses in like, forever.  The martial beat of “Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed” showcases Moz’s “political” songwriting without ever losing its catchiness.  “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris” is a pretty classic Morrissey song, complete with a simple picking guitar riff.

“All You Need Is Me” has some great squeaky guitars and recalls Morrissey’s own “I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me”), while “When Last I Spoke to Carol” has a Mexican feel, which is different for him.  And “That’s How People Grow Up,” the single, has one of those classic Morrissey lines in which he subverts expectations with a left-field word choice: “So yes there are things worse in life than never being someone’s sweetie.”

The end of the album is full of longer songs which tends to skew the rollicking feel of the disc. (In the first 8 songs only 3 are over 3 minutes while the last 4 songs are each over 4 minutes).  Nevertheless, “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore” is a wonderfully caustic song and the album closer, “I’m OK By Myself” is just fantastic, and I find myself singing “I don’t need you, or your morality” because they way he sings it gets stuck in my head for days.

There’s also a bonus disc which includes an interview with Russel Brand which is very funny indeed.

Welcome back Morrissey.  Well done, sir.

[READ: Week of July 6, 2009]  Infinite Jest (to page 227).

While looking for this cover of Infinite Jest (the one that I most associate with the book even though I never owned a copy with this cover), I noticed that Powell’s Books is selling a first edition hardcover copy of IJ for $450. The copy that I am currently reading is also a first edition hardcover.  If anyone wants to send me like $400 for it, just let me know!

On my Week Two post, I had a comment that criticized me for giving out spoilers.  While I disagree, I will preface this and future posts by saying that I will certainly be discussing what has happened in the week’s read (including footnotes endnotes and future footnotes endnotes if they are referred to in current footnotes endnotes), I will not intentionally reveal any spoilers.

On to Week 3 of Infinite Summer.  And at this point I not only feel good about the book, I feel somewhat refreshed. This whole week’s worth of reading has been fairly easy and often very funny.  We’re past the initial shock that you’re running a marathon, and are into that 3rd or 4th mile where you just start to feel good and enjoy the scenery.  I also hate to admit this, but I really want to peek ahead into the next week’s reading.  But no, I am going to pace myself!

I also have a question for faithful readers who are actually trying to map the location of the book.  I lived in Brighton, MA, very close to Boston College as well as in a location nearer to Allston, MA.  I have a vague sense of exactly where Enfield is supposed to be located, but if anyone has used the details in the book to map out where Enfield would be, do pass it along (someone has probably created a Google Map for it, but I haven’t actually checked).

This week’s reading had a lot of lengthy sections that focused on one person/issue for multiple pages which is either great or terrible depending on how you like this book broken up.  And TA DA!  The Chronology is spelled out very clearly!

Chronology

I am delighted to see that I was correct from last week in the chronology that I assumed was correct.  But here, officially, is the chronology:

• Before Subsidization
• Year of The Whopper
• Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
• Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar (James I commits suicide)
• Year of the Purdue Wonderchicken (Hal in 7th grade)
• Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishwasher
• Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-to-Install Upgrade for Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems for Home, Office or Mobile*
• Year of the Dairy Products from the American Heartland
• Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (Much of the plot takes place in this year)
• Year of Glad (Hal applies to College)

We also learn that the language riots took place 12 years before the YDAU.  As soon as we learn the exact year of Subsidization we can subtract 7 and find out when the language riots happened.

* I am still chuckling over the pronunciation of Yushityu.

[DIGRESSION]: One of my favorite college professors is an English scholar.  He’s big into James Joyce and is published and well-regarded.  What always cracked me up about scholars of this nature was their utter delight in childish wordplay (like Yushityu or any number of puerile jokes) that authors like Joyce or DFW throw into their clearly intelligent prose.  It was like little bits of icing on a dense cake.

Anyway back to the book.

Plot and such

The part about Joelle van Dyne was so intense that I simply could not put the book down.  And the fact that the week’s reading ended mid-way through her section has me chomping at the bit to get started again.  Nevertheless, I’m going to save it for later.

This week’s reading starts out with some really in-depth biographies of some of the major players.

First we get a multi-page rundown of Mike Pemulus, a local boy from the projects of Allston, MA [home of the ska band the Allstonians! (not mentioned in the book, but true in real life)].  There’s also a hilarious view into the drug testing (and thwarting) that goes on at ETA. Pemulus is responsible both for much of the drug-dealing and test-thwarting.  He also gets along very well with Mario Incandenza.  They share a fondness for the visual arts as well as access to the visual arts studio where they assist each other in various aspects of production (Pemulus doing the mindbendingly mathematical stuff and Mario doing some of the mechanical things).  Mario videotapes the aforementioned drug line and Pemulus allows him, knowing that no one but Mario will ever see the film.  [Although we do learn that Mario has submitted at least one film to a filmmakers’ contest, so whether or not Pemulus is correct is debatable].  Nevertheless since Mario enjoys the pixilating effect, he will likely be using it on every incriminating face.

There’s a transcript from Mario’s film Tennis and the Feral Prodigy. Although it claims to be written by Mario there is certain language and insight that makes it seem like it was co-written by Hal.  It won an honorable mention in a young filmmaker’s contest.

Pemulus is also geometrically gifted, which is how he stays at the school despite his mediocre tennis. (He has the only James Incandenza Geometrical Optics scholarship that he holds on to by the skin of his teeth, gradewise).

We learn that Hal’s ranking on the continent is #6, and that he is rising surprisingly well after plateauing for a while. He is also linguistically gifted, “assisting” all folks with their lackluster language skills, often to the dismay of the assisted.

We also get a lengthy look at one incident from James’ childhood.  In B.S.  1960, when James was 10, he was dragged outside by his drunken father. His father had high hopes to get Jim’s head out of the large books he reads and out onto the tennis courts.  The entire incident is a fiasco, with Jame’s father ranting about Marlon Brando, his own father’s lack of appreciation for his tennis playing skills, his wife’s ‘acting,” and just about everything else.

In a nutshell, (and a nutshell does absolutely no justice to this section which is a tour de force of stream of consciousness and increasingly drunken behavior) Jim’s father was a promising young tennis player. During one particular match, his father, who absolutely never came to his matches, was watching from the sidelines (in deference to a client whose son Jim was presently handing his ass). When the client expressed to Jim’s father that Jim was a good player, his father said but he would never be “great.”  As this happened, Jim slipped and did irreparable and bloody damage to his knees. Jim’s father has clearly replayed this scene in his head trying to assign blame. We also learn that Jim’s family are moving back to California so that his father can pursue his failed acting career (hence the Brando-bashing). Jim’s father is also a drunk, and gets really really focused on minutiae.  He also considers letting Jim drive their car (and drink from his flask) [all in this one episode, phew!] Jim, meanwhile is a gangly ten-year-old, physically uncoordinated and prone to wearing bow-ties.  He is also devastated by his father’s criticism.
As of that point all pretense of Jim’s playing tennis is put on hold.

Next there’s a very funny section that involves Patricia Montesian CSAC (Certified Substance Abuse Counselor) at Ennet House…  The section consists of anonymous transcripts from many of the residents there.  We see both sides of a story about Nell who flew across the table, literally horizontal, to stab (with a fork) a woman who was drumming on the table.  We also see, presumably, Tiny Ewell, who tries to lawyer his way out of admitting he is an alcoholic.  We also get a lengthy passage from Bruce Green, updating his sad story with Mildred Bonk.  Bruce reveals that he, Mildred and their daughter Harriet had to leave the house they shared with the hare-lipped, drug dealing, snake-owner [still unnamed, although clearly a pretty good source for most of metro-Boston, as he is described by many people], partially because since his mouth covered his lip he couldn’t smell how rancid his snake cages were, but primarily because he kept hitting on Mildred in shockingly unsubtle fashion, even when Bruce was around.  They moved to a halfway house where Mildred met a guy from New Jersey and just up and left with him, taking Harriet with her.  From this guy, Bruce only got lice.

We also learn that at some point there was a Kemp and a Limbaugh administration.  Hee hee.

The middle section is a lengthy look at the M.I.T. radio station and its location.  I love the mathematical joke that it is 109 (the largest whole prime on the FM band).  The most popular show is Madame Psychosis a woman who we never see (she is always behind a screen) and is, herself, shrouded in mystery.  We learn about all of the standard operating procedures for her show (5 minutes of silence before she starts) and that she likes to play hard-to-find and unannounced music in the background of her mostly-monologue show (and that her fans scour the used shops trying to find these records).  I got a real kick out of the footnote endnote that mentions that “your parents” similarly scrutinized the lyrics of Pearl Jam and R.E.M. CDs.

On this night she is reading (again) from the handbook of the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed. We learn a few pages later that this Union was created by the woman whom Winston Churchill insulted with his famous quip that she would still be ugly in the morning.

This is interspersed with a touching scene at the Incandenza home, where Hal (and any friends that come by) shovel food into their mouths while Mario sits with his ear glued to the speaker listening to Madame Psychosis.

The show that precedes Madame Psychosis is “Those Were the Legends That Formerly Were” a segment in which you [meaning anyone who wants to] read an passage about your father in the voice of a famous cartoon character.  This section is hilarious and also frightening as you fear that the entire section is going to be written in Elmer Fudd-ese, when it fact it’s only about a paragraph, but wow.

There’s then a lengthy section describing the topography and buildings around the Ennet House.  It is housed on the grounds of the Enfield Marine Public Health Hospital complex designed with 7 buildings each housing a certain somewhat derelict member of society.  Unit #1 provides counseling for wild-eyes Vietnam vets.  #2 is the methadone clinic.  #3 is closed but under construction…no one knows what for.  #4 if for veterans with Alzheimers.  #5 is “The Shed” for catatonics, vegetables and the like.  #6 is the Ennet House and #7 is abandoned (after being destroyed by E.T.A in a clear-cutting binge) but it is perpetually rented by E.T.A. which more or less abuts the property.

This description of the grounds is also set up as a fantastic biography of Don Gately.  So don’t skip it thinking that you’re just going to learn about geography!  In describing the various buildings, DFW sets up Gately as a new admit into the Ennet House and then, eventually as an employee, a resident.  The setup comes in two very funny stories.

The first is when Gately puts a sign on the methadone clinic that it has been closed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  I rarely quote directly from funny lines because I don’t want to ruin the joke, but how can I pass up this treasure.  When the addicts see this sign, with the “until further notice” stinger, DFW states, “Apeshit has rarely enjoyed so literal a denotation.” The second story comes a few years later at the expense of one of the residents of #4 who simply stands at the window and screams “Help!” all day.  Gately is asked (in his now official capacity) to find out who put a “Help Wanted” sign under the woman’s window.  But because of the similarity to his own prank he more or less lets it slide.

We also learn a lot about the facility from Boston’s Finest, talking to Hal in a bar.  Unit #5 is called The Shed because the catatonic residents are more or less stored there, and that Boston’s Finest refer to the patients as objay darts. There’s also a weird, disturbing tale of how some people in #5 are actually so paranoid of certain afflictions that they ultimately inflict them upon themselves.  One woman is so afraid of going blind that she keeps her eyes shut 24/7, because it’s better to not know that you are blind than to risk the possibility of becoming so.  It’s a creepy/poignant scene, especially given that it comes in what by all accounts is a funny footnote endnote.

In the second week’s post, I forgot to mention Lyle, the yogic guru who sits in the lotus position on the towel dispenser of the weight room and essentially feeds on the sweat of the players.  He is there pretty much all day long.  He will dispense wisdom if he is allowed to lick you. (But it’s not a sexual thing).

Lyle has a cameo in this week’s weight room scene which is really nothing but funny.  Especially the punchline that Pemulus whispers to Kornspan who has spent the last twenty minutes or so screaming in that obnoxious weightlifter way (followed by the obligatory preening in the mirror…clearly DFW has lived this scene, I just wonder if at the end of the display he himself had the guts to walk up to the grunting weightlifter and whisper “pussy”  [highlight the quotes to reveal the (admittedly childish) joke.]

The next section is written as a list of things you will learn when you spend time at any rehab clinic.  It runs to several pages and gives an in depth look into the lives, mannerisms, superstitions &c. of addicts, Substance abusers, and prisoners.  It is a harrowing list but told in an amusing style.  (It also continues with that peculiar narrating style that I am so intrigued by in that the opening line of the section is, “If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility...”   It also has the narrator saying “reportedly” in reference to certain issues (like it being manly for males to cry during group sessions).

This segment segues into a lengthy look at Tiny Ewell.  In fact, it almost seems as if Tiny wrote the preceding section (as an outsider coming to rehab for the first time), but the Tiny section is written in third person (like showing his reluctance to investigate the truth about a tattoo on a Ennet House resident’s penis which, as the joke goes, spells out a much longer word as it….).   Tiny Ewell became obsessed with various things (especially tattoos) as a way of coping with his detox.  The tattoo portion is also quite detailed and fascinating.

The drug escapade continues as we see Pemulus, Axford and Hal looking at Pemulus’ Mr Howell hat full of DMZ.  DMZ is like LCD on LCD.  These particular doses are from the 70s and were gotten for a song from some Nuckers (Canadians) in a head shop.  The boys plan ahead to when they will have enough time to take the drug and come down without being caught.

And I can’t help but speculate that this has something to do with Hal’s malfunction in the first ten pages of the book. [I covered it up in case you don’t want to see what, while a guess, could be a spoiler.  Just highlight to see my deep personal insight].

And at this point I just have to ask how does David Foster Wallace know so much about so much??

After all that light stuff, we get to a hugely intense section, full of revelations and intense sorrow.  We learn the identity of Madame Psychosis and that she is none other than Joelle van Dyne star of many of James’ later films (okay technically we knew that film part back in footnote Endnote 24, but it finally clicks here).  She is an intimate friend of James’ (whom she called “Infinite Jim”, and yes she had appeared in Infinite Jest, the movie.

Joelle is giving up drugs for the last time again and has every intention of committing suicide when she gets home.  We follow her through the streets of downtown Boston as she trudges home through the rain, giving away her money, buying final supplies, wearing a veil and strutting past drug dealers, the homeless and Boston’s Finest (as well as a cardboard display holding out a blank TP cassette which is either indeed blank or the fabled Entertainment).

Joelle finally opens up to a stranger as she waits at the T stop and…  we have to wait until next week to find out what happens to her (an Infinite Summer cliffhanger!)

Vocabulary

I haven’t been specifically pointing out the words that I don’t know.  Not because my vocabulary is anywhere near DFW’s but because I try to absorb the words contextually and hope for the best…not the best method, but there it is. (I just can’t carry an OED with me on my lunch hour!)  However, occasionally a word pops out that I am obsessed with learning.

Howling fantods.  This has been mentioned numerous times, especially with regards to Avril and I love it.  Fantod is defined as: a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness.
Bafflegab is a word that I should use more often: official or professional jargon which confuses more than it clarifies
Erumpent: Bursting through or as if through a surface or covering.

We also get a solid definition for “Eating Cheese” which we have seen sprinkled throughout the book.  It is metro Boston slang for ratting on someone.  That much has been obvious, I suppose, but it’s nice to see it spelled out.

More Footnote Endnote Fun

When discussing the footnotes endnotes last time I made a comment on the style of some of them.  I really got a kick out of Footnote Endnote 64 starting in this manner: “Not 100% clear on this, but the thrust is….”  I love this unsure narrator thing!

Also, Footnote Endnote 61 refers to “anticonfluential cinema” and is described as “characterized by a stubborn and possibly intentionally irritating refusal of different narrative lines to merge into any kind of meaningful confluence (comprising the work of the late J.O. Incandenza).”  I have to wonder if this is a self-referential joke about Infinite Jest the book.

Footnotes Endnotes are fun!

Final thoughts

The Joelle/Madame Psychosis sequence was really heart wrenching for me.  In part, this is of course due to suspecting that DFW felt like this himself for at least part of his life.  But even besides that personal aspect, it is an intensely harrowing depiction of someone’s suffering.

I think I identify with it even more because I lived in Boston for several years and I know the turf that she is walking on.  It becomes even more vivid in my mind as I can picture the stores she is walking past.

This quirk of me living where the book is set when I read it the first time through undoubtedly had a impact on my enjoyment of the book.  Obviously one doesn’t have to be familiar with this (or any) location in a book to appreciate the narrative, but it certainly makes the story more real.  And given the detail that DFW includes, it’s really like being there.

When I read the book the first time I, like many Americans, didn’t think too much about Canada.  Since then I have become something of a Canuckophile, and so these sequences have more resonance this time around.

Finally, why did I not remember just how much addiction is in this book.  I clearly remembered things about the Ennet house, but by gum, everyone is on something.  That should stand out as a pretty major part of the story, how could I have blocked that out?

Boy this is a good book.