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As is
the tradition in all romantic narratives, Dave and I got off
to a rocky start. I first met him through his book, Infinite
Jest, a thousand-plus page book that I goofily took out
of the library and had to read in three weeks. I'm a pretty
fast reader, but Infinite Jest is a very dense thousand
pages, with tiny type, a lot of characters to follow, plot
holes, urban legends, different voices, new technology—at
the time of writing, the book was set in the future; now,
in 2007, the setting is the alternate future—math, and
unreliable narrators. I had to put myself on a 50-page a day
diet—normally not so difficult, but this book is different.
You're meant not just to read this book, but to participate
in writing it.
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Infinite
Jest, while not a "choose your own ending" adventure,
has so many missing pieces that your brain is forced into
filling in the blanks, similar to visual illusions that trick
you into seeing things that aren't there. Genre-wise, it has
been called both post-modern and maximal, falling into the
same territory as Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. Apparently,
there are hints in the book that the narrative is structured
like a Sierpinski Gasket(1), a fractal that
reduces and reproduces itself into equilateral triangles with
an inverted negative space triangle as the structure's core.(2)
So the book's core is empty. And it really is! This core,
a huge world-changing event, occurs outside of the book, so
the reader can't see what happens that causes the protagonist,
Hal Incandenza, to become the weird, flailing spaz that he
is at the beginning.
Once
you start to think about the book, the whole novel's structure
begins to reproduce and fractalize. There are many triangular
relationships: The three Incandenza brothers; the creepy romantic
triangle of Hal's parents, Avril and James, with Avril's half-brother
Charles; Hal's brother Orin, his girlfriend Joelle, and James;
etc. The triangle theme extends even further with Alcoholics
Anonymous (its logo is a circle within a triangle) playing
a significant part in the book.(3) Everything
becomes an "and I told two friends, and they told two friends,
and so on and so on" shampoo commercial (a commercial that
is rather obliquely referenced in the footnotes of the book
as a film made by James with a model and some mirrors that
spoofs said shampoo commercial).(4)
Infinite
Jest seems to explode and implode simultaneously. By leaving
out events and jumbling up timelines, Wallace writes around
a subject and allows readers to participate in the writing
of the story. He encourages obsession by letting readers immerse
themselves in this world. If they are doing this right, they
should probably be keeping spreadsheets. Wallace is having
a very intense conversation with the reader.
And,
oh my God, I am the reader.
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Photo
by Marion Ettlinger
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Even
when I wasn't reading IJ, I was thinking about it,
wondering who was sending the movie cartridges that were inducing
comas, wondering if CT was Mario's father, wondering if Wallace
was single and liked sinister little goth girls…
Every
so often, I would sneak a peak at the author photo on the
back jacket flap that made me think, " That guy wrote
this? That guy is hot." And he was; but not
in that brainy William T. Vollmann kind of way—more in
the hunky gardener kind of way. Then I'd think, "Whoa, I could
fall in love with this guy, and I'd never have to make fun
of him for not knowing something, because he obviously knows
everything." There had also been that article in the
New York Times Magazine(5) that hinted
at a dark past, rehab, and maybe a suicide attempt.
That
was that.
When
I finished Infinite Jest, I was in love. I wanted to
start again, but my library-allotted three weeks were up.
Instead, I made a wallet-sized copy of Wallace's author photo
to carry with me.
Although
it was difficult, I moved on. It's not like I had to see his
ubiquitous red bandanna every day. I did buy my very own copy
of Infinite Jest in paperback, but it seemed like my
love was just a sweet memory of fleeting romance. And when
his next book, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again,
was released, I didn't rush to read it. In fact, I didn't
read it at all. But when "The Depressed Person" appeared in
the January 1998 issue of Harper's, it stirred a memory
of something, somewhere.
What
was that?
Oh, yes,
lust.
His brutal,
insightful, and funny story of a woman in a deep depression
got me hot. And I decided at that point that I was going to
stop being coy and fully throw myself into my imaginary relationship
with David Foster Wallace. I declared 1998 to be the Year
of Stalking David Foster Wallace (a joke on "subsidized time,"
a concept from Infinite Jest). I read all his books,
and all the unpublished short stories and essays that I could
find. I joined Wallace-l, an email list devoted to discussing
Wallace. I went to see him at every opportunity, which turned
out to be quite often that year—he toured again for A
Supposedly Fun Thing, appeared on a panel hosted by Harper's
about books and movies, and spoke at a Kafka tribute sponsored
by Pen American. I wrote about all of this in my e-zine, e-rupture(6).
My friends laughed at me, and someone accused my essays of
being "eroticized hagiography,"(7) but hey,
at least I had a hobby.
Ten years
after I first read Infinite Jest, I still find myself
getting a-flutter at the thought of my big post-modern poster
boy. I've been completely satisfied by his output. There hasn't
yet been another novel—Brief Interviews with Hideous
Men and Oblivion are short story collections, and
Consider the Lobster is a book of essays—but I find his
short work to be just the perfect size for me. They're like
brownies—do I need to eat an entire pan? No; I can eat
one at a time and savor the complexity. And for those times
when I do need to eat that many brownies, I can always re-read
Infinite Jest.
FOOTNOTES
1.
One character in IJ, Hal's friend Pemulis, has a drawing
of a Sierpinski Gasket over his bed. (page 213)
2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle
3.
Describing the plot of Infinite Jest is fruitless.
Michiko Kakutani, in the New York Times (http://www.ptwi.com/~bobkat/jest2.html),
spends many paragraphs trying do to so and manages to make
the book sound even more complicated. And she completely omits
the feral hamsters.
4.
Infinite Jest, page 986, footnote 24, "Cage.b Dated
only 'Before Subsidization.' Meniscus Films, Ltd. Uncredited
cast; 16 mm.;.5 minutes; black and white; sound. Soliloquized
parody of a broadcast-television advertisement for shampoo,
utilizing four convex mirrors, two planar mirrors, and one
actress. UNRELEASED"
5.
Bruni, Frank, "The
Grunge American Novel," March 24, 1996, The New York Times
Magazine
6.
Some of the essays: http://www.eruptzine.com/wallace.html,
http://www.eruptzine.com/kafka.html,
http://www.eruptzine.com/wallace7.html
7.
I take that as a compliment.
(March,
2007)
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