I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BLACK FLAG: The Process of Weeding Out (1985).

Fans of Black Flag were (justifiably) freaked out by this EP.  It’s a four songs that clock in at almost 30 minutes (from the band who gave us the one-minute long hit “Wasted”).

This album is all instrumental and it provided Greg Ginn yet another outlet for his experimental guitar workouts (see also: Gone, October Faction, Saccharine Trust, Tom Troccoli’s Dog etc.)

So what you get is Kira’s fantastic and unusual bass riffs (she did amazing work with Black Flag), Bill Stevenson’s intense (and cymbal fueled) drums and Greg Ginn’s what the hell? guitars.  I’ve always found Ginn’s guitar work to be somewhat off.  It always struck me that maybe he didn’t exactly know how to play the guitar.  And yet he was always right on with his riffs and chords, it’s just that his solos never conformed to any standard version of guitar solo I’d ever heard.

So this EP comes across more as fee jazz than punk.  “Your Last Affront” is 9 minutes of chaos all under-girded by an interesting if unconventional riff.  It’s followed by the two-minute “Screw the Law” a much faster song, with an intense riff repeated for much of it.  The last 30 seconds or so has some screaming solos from Ginn, but of all the tracks, this is probably the most user-friendly.

The second side has the title track starts with a lengthy solo from Ginn.  A few minutes in, Stevenson’s drums come clacking around the place and Kira is somewhat relegated to the back as her bass is steady but not that exciting.  Until about 3 and a half minutes in, when the band takes over and Kira plays a super cool riff and when Ginn joins in, the song is really solid.  “Southern Rise” ends the disc with 5 minutes of relative quiet.  Although the main instrument appears to be the drums.

The whole things sounds like they were jamming in Greg’s garage.  And I’ll bet lots of fun was had in that garage.

[READ: March 15, 2011] three items about what didn’t make it into Infinite Jest

In honor of The Pale King’s release this week, I’m doing this post on Infinite Jest-related stuff.  This is all of the stuff that we lay people have access to without going to the Wallace archives to find all of the cool DFW stuff.

After finishing IJ this summer, I found out that it was initially much much longer (I think around 300 pages longer).  I grew mildly obsessed with wondering what had gotten cut.  And I had to wonder, if you have an 1100 page book, what difference would an extra 500 pages make, really?  Initially, I thought that the things that were cut were just minor changes, but then I heard about fairly large things that were removed.  And I dreamed of a “director’s cut” of the book.  That will never happen, and that’s fine (I’m less obsessed now).  But these little glimpses into scenes that didn’t make the book are fascinating.

And all told, they confirm that most of the cuts were minor, although there were some large scenes that were left on the cutting room floor.

Item One: The First Draft Version of Infinite Jest.  By Steven Moore.  Dated July 16, 2009 10 May 2003.

This was put on the Howling Fantod’s site July 18, 2009.  (I’m not exactly sure if it came from somewhere else first or not–yes, originally written 10 May 2003).  But as the title suggests, this is one man’s comments about the first draft of IJ.

As Moore introduces the 19 pages of comments, he explains the he knew DFW when he was a new author (Moore was managing editor of The Review of Contemporary Fiction).  And so DFW sent him a manuscript of IJ.  Moore’s initial comments are quite funny.  He complains about the crazy quilt presentation (different font sizes, some pages handwritten and with notes scrawled all over the place).

But I think it’s the end of this “item” that is the most intriguing.  He states, “it’s been said the publisher cut 300-400 pages.”  (I wonder if that’s where I got the idea?  I don’t THINK so).

But as he notes, at least 200 pages of information was added to this manuscript version between 1994-1995.  So, the manuscript did not include, among other things:

• The whole introductory scene in the admissions office.
• the mold eating incident (which is interesting since we know it was in the article from Harper’s (from: 1991).
• All of the Marathe/Steeply Arizona scene(s).
• Most of the Wheelchair Assassins material.
• the bricklayer email.
• the explanation about why videophones wouldn’t work.
• The Bain/Steeply correspondence.
• Several scenes with Orin, with Joelle, with Kate Gompert in the bar, and with Rod Tine.
• Mario’s “romantic encounter” with the SS Millicent Kent.
• About half of the endnotes!

Reading this lengthy piece kind of took away my Jones for reading a “director’s cut” of IJ.  It seems like the majority of the edits and cuts had to do more with stylistic issues (as you would expect of a first  draft) or tone or, as Moore points out repeatedly, with the chronology of the story.  This is the one thing I have a hard time believing (although I don’t doubt it).  Even as late as the updates to the paperback, DFW had a really hard time keeping the chronology straight (such that Hal is a different AGE in the paperback copy).  [When I read IJ next time, I shall have to use the PB copy, it seems that there are a number of changes to it (but no, I am not going to compare it to the hardcover…ever)].  It seems to me that DFW was so meticulous (and had a serious math jones) that he should have been able to handle something as relatively simple as the chronology of his book.

But having said that, there are a number of scenes that Moore describes which were obviously cut and not always for obvious reasons.  Because Moore is a decent fellow, he didn’t include lengthy quotations from these sections, but he did helpfully describe them.  As it turns out, when Newsweek released scans from the DF archives (see item three below), they released a number of these very scenes!  So you get to see the rough cut that Moore saw all those years ago.

Here’s a few of the things that I found especially interesting that were cut from IJ:

• Early in the book there was a scene that explicitly showed Avril’s infidelity (I don’t mean it was explicit, but that it was not treated as something the reader had to figure out).
• A scene from Avril’s class (see “item three” below (pp. 2-4)).
• Young Jim and his father trying to kill a spider (see “item three” below (p. 1)).
• More (early) information about Hal’s drug use.
• The more extensive bits from the Enfield Marine Hospital (see “item three” below (pp. 5-10)).
• There’s more from Lyle (not including the scene below)
• An actual sighting of a feral infant (by Gately, no less!)
• The “Paulie” sequence mentioned in “item three,” although in the first draft he was known as Gordon W. Eagen (pp. 5-10).
• Six short sections (see “item three” below (pp. 11-15).

As far as major difference, that’s it.  The rest are, as I mentioned, cosmetic.  It’s interesting to see how many names were changed or altered, including some of the primary characters.  And of course, seeing these changes is interesting not jut for fans of IJ, but for anyone interested in the process of writing and editing and re-writing.

The only gripe one might have with this exegesis is that for the most part when Moore talks about things that are different in the final book, he doesn’t really say what they are.  He gives pages numbers, but no summary.  Now, hey this thing is already 19 pages long and a whole lot of work done.  So, anyone who would complain about that has got a lot of nerve.  But if you haven’t read the book in a couple of summers, you may not remember exactly how they changes turned out.  But look it up your damn self lazy bones!

The very end of the article includes Moore’s initial review of the book which offered insights for me even after having read IJ.

Now, I also recall listening to a Leonard Lopate interview with DFW.  He makes a comment that in the original draft, the Chinese gov’t was upset about Subsidized Time, because they thought it was a coopting of their lunar calendar, and there was the possibility of a war.  That doesn’t appear to be in any of these drafts.  I wonder is that was just an idea he had

Item Two: Letter from Michael Pietsch.  Dated, Dec 22, 1994.  Made available online October 2010.

The second item is a letter from Michael Pietsch, editor of IJ and other DFW books.  The letter is a friendly greeting and a comment that he has read the IJ manuscript twice (gasp!).  He includes with the letter several pages of suggested cuts.  It’s unclear if there were more pages, but that’s irrelevant, surely.

The confusing thing is that there are comments and notes from DFW regarding Pietsch’s suggestions, and yet they’re not easy to parse.  For several of the suggestions, DFW has circled and written “Yes,” and yet some of those sections still appear in the book.  So, who knows exactly what to think.

The comforting thing is that Piestch read the book twice and was still unclear about a number of things, so those of us with some questions left after the book are not alone.  Of course, presumably DFW clarified these problems (to some extent anyway) so what we see was a more polished version.  (The mind boggles at what Good Old Amy Wallace had to read in first draft form!)

And in addition to all that, it’s also nice to see a good relationship between writer and editor.

You can read the six page letter, posted by lazenby (who has some other excellent stuff at the site!).  And, since it’s not very easy to get all of the pages on the lazenby site, you can click to the really beautiful Forever DFW site, which has direct links to the six pages themselves.

Item Three: Newsweek’s “What Didn’t Make It Into Infinite Jest” article, November 19, 2010.

The third item came with an article that Newsweek published online November 19, 2010, promoting the opening of the David Foster Wallace archives.  With this article, they included a photo essay of twenty pages from the archives. The pages were up for a while, but the link is down now.  The pages are pretty much available all over the web, but I have saved them all in one place.

This collection includes twenty pages of drafts from IJ that had been edited or excised.  I haven’t gone into the book to closely compare the revisions (and why not? you ask…  Well, I’m sure someone has already done it, right?).  But I have tried to compare extant endnotes to the ones here.

The twenty pages basically comprise six sections of the novel. I’ve included them here in the order they were put in the Newsweek slideshow.

Page 1)
Dated B.S. 1960.  This excerpt concerns James’ father and a black widow.  There’s a number of red x’s and corrections, which is interesting as the passage doesn’t appear in the book.

Pages 2-4)
A series of endnotes: 27A-45A.  The endnotes don’t correspond directly to the book, and many are not in the book at all.

These notes from the pages are not in the final text:

• 27A
• 29
• 31 (At least not in this format, I don’t think).
• 34
• 35 (a handwritten note says to cut)
• 39 (a handwritten note says to cut)
• 42-45A (all circled with a red handwritten “cut”)

These notes are in the final text either as is or as part of longer notes (I didn’t bother to compare them):

• 28=36 in IJ
• 30=38 in IJ
• 32=44 in IJ
• 36=43 in IJ
• 37=47 in IJ (this whole thing is circled in red in the pages)
• 38=48 in IJ
• 40=46 in IJ

But the main thing about this section is the lengthy endnote 33.  It runs almost two full typewritten pages and concerns Avril’s grammar tests.  It’s fairly complicated and really showcases DFW’s love and knowledge of grammar.  There’s some really funny stuff here: Pemulis giving Avril a hard time with his extra credit answer, John Wayne (like most Canadians) opting for a less-is-more approach to his extra credit answer and Troeltsch and Struck copying from Hal.

There’s also the bit about Lyle counseling the kids how to deal with panic, which appears in the final book, but I believe in a different form.

Page 5-10)
These pages contain yet more endnotes (71-76A).  Most of these are in the book in some form or another.

• 71=61 in IJ
• 72=62 in IJ
• 73= not in book
• 74=64 in IJ
• 75=65 in IJ
• 76=66 in IJ
• 76A=67 in IJ but in the pages here, this endnote (which is about the Policemen who work The Shed with the catatonic patients) gives several more sad examples of the people who reside there.
• 77=68 in IJ (with a couple of handwritten red notes)
• 78=not in book
• 79=69 in IJ (with handwritten red notes)
• 80=70 in IJ
• 81 is the other very lengthy note that’s not in the book.  It concerns a character who does not appear in IJ called Gordon (“Paulie”) O’ Banion.  His story is about the way he used to scam people to get money for H. It’s very clever and fascinating and shows just how hard Paulie was willing to work to not actually have to do any work.
• 81A=not in book
• 82=71 in IJ
• 83=72 in IJ
• 83a=not in book
• 84=73 in IJ
• 85=74 in IJ
• 85A=75 in IJ (with handwritten red notes)

Pages 11-15)
These pages look different from the others here–these have three-ring binder holes punched in them and the notes are in black Sharpie-type marker.  The first page is handwritten as 469.  Sections are separated by hand written number signs (#).  As far as I can tell, none of these items appear in the final book.

• #1 (which has a handwritten “cut” note) is not in the book. It talks about James’ first film Cage I as a parody of an Alberto VO5 commercial
• #2 is Hal’s essay about pennies.
• #3 is a lengthy piece about Geoffrey Day’s thoughts when he wakes up in metabolic misery (that Americans are Romantics).
• #4 concerns the opening lines from Madame Psychosis’ show which came from James’ film Dark Logics.  Dark Logics is mentioned in the book, but this sequence has been cut (the page here features a large red line and a big circle that says “Use”).
• #5 is Hal’s “one extant written thing on ducks.”  Not included in the book (although there were edits in this text).

Pages 16-18)
Opens with three endnotes:

• 238 which we get half of and which does not appear to be in the book
• 239 which is simply “No idea”
• a handwritten note says “239A, 239B Steeply/Marathe”
• 240 which is the bulk of these pages:

They comprise an intimate scene between Hal and Mario, in which Hal reads to Mario while they are falling asleep. Hal is reading (from Moment magazine) an article about the blind tennis player Eugene Dymphna.  Dymphna appears in IJ, but none of this passage does.  It’s rather difficult to read until you get going because Hal, reading the article aloud, not only reads aloud the punctuation and capitalization [“Cap But the blind playing tennis question mark.”] but he also comments on the poor quality of the writing while he’s reading it [“Cap A game of spins comma precision otiose comma and centimeters comma where the small ball can reach ferocious speeds and the face of the racquet is less than a meter in circumference question mark again. Error–one -point three meters on a standard widebody”].

• 241=217
• 242=218

Pages 19-20)

These last two pages contain the footnotes from Marlon Bain (the one about poor S. Johnson getting pulverized and run.  Then comes section (7B) which is mostly about Avril asking Marlon for help with straightening out the cans in their cupboard (they both have OCD).  Interestingly this whole section is crossed out with a blue marker even though a portion of it appears in the book

It’s followed by (8) which is Bain’s discussion of abuse and who can define it.

When combined with the great work from Moore, this boon from Newsweek is just a wonderful insight into an early draft of a great book.