Infinite Jest is a novel written by David Foster Wallace. Released in 1996, it is Wallace's best-known work and tells of the life of a tennis prodigy in the near future.
Characters[]
- Harold "Hal" Incandenza - a tennis prodigy
- Michael Pemulis - Hal's best friend, a student at the E.T.A.
- Avril Incandeza (or The Moms) - Hal's mother
- Mario Incandenza - the middle child of the Incandenzas, an extreme optimist with severe mental and physical disabilities due to being born premature
- Orin Incandenza - Hal's older brother, a football player in the NFL and a "sex addict"
- John "No Relation" Wayne - the top-rated player within the Enfield Tennis Academy
- Ortho "The Darkness" Stice -a close friend of Hal, only wears black clothes
- James Orin Incandenza Jr. (or Himself) - Hal's father, a prolific director
- Charles "C.T." Tavis - Hal's uncle and the current headmaster of the E.T.A.
- Don Gately - a counselor at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and a former robber
- Joelle "Madame Psychosis" van Dyne - a cult radio personality
- Patricia Montesian - the Executive Director of Ennet House
- Hugh/Helen Steeply - Marathe's contact within O.N.A.N., who pretends to be a female journalist to get close to Orin Incandenza
- Rémy Marathe - a member of the "Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents" (a group of Quebecois separatists) and a quadruple agent
- Luria P - a mysterious French woman who pulls strings within O.N.A.N.
- Johnny Gentle - the neurotic and extremely germophobic president of the U.S.A.
- Gerhardt Schtitt - the E.T.A.'s strict Head Coach and Athletic Director
- Rodney Tine - President Johnny Gentle's right-hand man
- Jim Troeltsch - a student at the E.T.A.
- Randy Lenz - a psychopath living at Ennet House
- Fortier - the leader of the A.F.R.
- Lyle - a mysterious guru who lives at E.T.A.
- Bruce Green - an occupant of Ennet House
- Kate Gompert - a suicidally depressed woman who ends up at Ennet House
- Ken Erdedy - a marijuana addict who ends up at Ennet House
- Poor Tony Krause - a crossdressing drug addict and dealer
- Lateral Alice Moore - Charles Tavis' secretary
- Dolores Rusk - The E.T.A.'s incompetent psychologist
- Aubrey deLint - a prorector at E.T.A.
- Geoffrey Day - a somewhat annoying occupant of the E.T.A.
- Eric Clipperton - a somewhat infamous former tennis champion
- LaMont Chu - a fame-obsessed student of the E.T.A.
- Trevor Axford - a student at E.T.A. that Pemulis and Hal know
- Lucien and Bertraund Antitoi - two ineffectual Quebecois separatists
- James O. Incandenza, Sr. - the father of Himself, and thus the grandfather of Hal and his brothers
- Guillaume duPlessis - a Quebecois separatist
- Clenette - a black woman who narrates small slices of the novel, living at Ennet House
- Wardine - a black woman whose life is briefly recounted by Clenette
- Ruth van Cleve - an inhabitant of Ennet House
- Yolanda - a black woman who lives at Ennet House
- Tiny Ewell - a dwarf living at Ennet House
- Roy Tony - a drug dealer
- Robert F./Bob Death - a biker in AA
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
The 20th Anniversary edition with an introduction written by Tom Bissell
A gargantuan, mind-altering tragi-comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America.
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Plot[]
At the University of Arizona, one Harold "Hal" Incandenza is being questioned by various parties (including the three Deans and various other University personnel, including members of Hal's family) as a prelude to his entry into the University's athletics program due to his gift at tennis. Though Hal's tennis skills are without match, his academic status is under question (as some faculty members believe that it might be inaccurate and possibly was bumped up). Hal is asked to explain this. After briefly remembering a time when he ate mold as a young boy, Hal begins to explain but has an "episode" (best described as a seizure, though more than likely not a seizure) which causes the various faculty to rush to his aid - and also possibly scuppers his chances of being admitted, which the faculty discuss while standing over Hal. An ambulance is called and Hal thinks over his journey to the emergency room as he lays on the floor.
Meanwhile, a habitual marijuana smoker named Erdedy waits for a woman to give him a large stash of weed. Erdedy has the somewhat unusual habit of repeatedly quitting marijuana for "good" and then finding a new dealer to give him "one last hit". While waiting, Erdedy thinks about calling the woman and about cancelling the entire deal. Soon, though, he gets both a phone call and a buzz at his door.
Several years previously, while Hal was eleven years old and still studying at the Enfield Tennis Academy, he is sent to speak with a mysterious man whom his father sent him to speak with. Though the two are initially cordial, the man quickly begins speaking about the Incandenza's ties with the intra-Provincial crisis in southern Quebec and the pan-Canadian Resistance. Hal is extremely confused by this and assumes that the man is his father in disguise, as the man wears a sweater-vest that Himself (as Hal called his father) also wears. To Himself's chagrin, this makes Hal shut up and simply stare at his father.
Several years later, while in his dormitory with his younger brother Mario (who lives in the same dorm with Hal and who does not share his skill for tennis playing), Hal receives a call from someone who tells Hal that their "head is filled with things to say". Hal briefly talks with his person before the line cuts out and then tells Mario that the person was someone he did not know, despite it being his older brother Orin.
After returning home on a Wednesday night while his wife is away, the medical attaché for a Saudi Prince with a huge sweet tooth known only as "Q-----" (who has recently dismissed his attaché) finds a mysterious video cartridge in his mail. As there is nothing else in the house that he finds entertaining, the medical attaché decides to watch this cartridge.
What is (possibly) on the cartridge is a monologue by a woman named Clenette who speaks in African-American Vernacular English describing the torments of her half-sister Wardine. Wardine is beaten by her mother (who is said to be "not right in the head") and molested by her mother's boyfriend/father's brother Roy Tony, who killed an unknown someone for his current girlfriend four years ago. Wardine's only respite is a boy named Reginald who tries to help her but also pressures her for lascivious actions. Reginald plans to confront Roy Tony and Clenette is worried that Roy will kill the boy - leaving her as the only one who knows anything about this. She is also pregnant, but does not reveal who the father is. Juxtaposed with this is a passage about two high school students falling in love and dropping out of high school to live a life of poverty and drug use which is said to be "more or less one big party".
Next comes a late night conversation between Hal and Mario. During this conversation, Hal and Mario discuss Hal's recent tennis match, the existence of God and the Divine view of death (with Hal saying that God is pro-death with Mario believes he is against it). The two then talk about the death of their father and how their mother has seemingly not grieved this death (which Hal disputes).
Having focused largely on Hal and his brother Mario, we now see Orin in Phoenix, Arizona. Having spent some time with his NFL team in Chicago, Orin has only returned two days ago. He has just woken up (finding the early morning a miserable and despicable time, a "soul's night", this is a somewhat depressing experience for him) to find a note from a sexual conquest on his pillow. He ruminates over the cockroach infestation in his house (one of his greatest fears, as he is absolutely terrified of cockroaches) and a dream he had where his mother's head was attached to his own body and he tried to remove it. Shortly before this, Orin slept with a woman who frequently watched education cartridges made by the company InterLace and, shortly after waking up, watched a cartridge on schizophrenia (or rather, a cartridge showing a man with schizophrenia being shown his very worst fears, which just so happen to be an MRI machine). Though this was somewhat horrifying, Orin decides to call this woman about his recent stress.
While at the Enfield Tennis Academy (whose labyrinthine, vaguely heart-like, and inflatable corridors are described in detail here and in a footnote), Hal frequently smokes marijuana in complete secret (feeling something of a compulsion to do this). Though the E.T.A. has a very strict no drugs policy on paper, this policy is somewhat frequently ignored by the staff of the E.T.A. Around the same time, Mario begins filming the Academy's tennis matches so students can learn about their missteps in a visual medium.
While the medical attaché's wife is returning home from a Narjees (a game "rather like mah jongg without rules", according to footnote 11), the medical attaché has watched the tape for several hours nonstop and has become so engrossed in it that he has not even left to go to the bathroom.
While breaking into a house in the North Shore, drug addict Don Gately and his associate (who footnotes claim was never formerly identified but is probably his close friend Trent "Quo Vadis" Kite) discover that the owner of the house is sick in bed with a cold. Instead of fleeing the house, the two decide to continue burgling it - tying up the owner of the house despite his protestations (which the two robbers do not understand due to them being in Quebecois and due to his cold) tie him up and gag him before leaving. Unbeknownst to Don and Trent, the owner of the house was a major figure within the Quebecois separatist movement within the Organization of North American Nations named Guillaume duPlessis. After two days of being tied up, duPlessis dies from suffocation and injuries incurred while trying to escape.
Countering this illness is another head cold. While playing tennis at the Academy, a student named Jim Troeltsch begins feeling the symptoms of a rhinovirus infection and is quickly bedridden. While bedridden, Jim watches over recording of other tennis matches. While ruminating over Jim's "daydreaming sick" status, the narrative switches to a first-person narrator (possibly Jim, though also possibly Hal - who has already served as narrator for the very first section of the novel) describing a recurring dream students of the E.T.A. have where they sense a malicious presence looming in the darkness, an evil face in the floor that may or may not exist outside the dream.
Having examined the E.T.A. of the present, the E.T.A.'s first director - Hal's father James Incandenza. James' father (James Sr.) was a somewhat prestigious tennis player who fell from grace. As such, he tried to make his son into a tennis star. Instead of becoming a tennis star, James Jr. became a director of movies with a somewhat large catalogue and a wife named Avril who had ties to Quebecois separatists. He was able to father at least one child and found the E.T.A before committing suicide. Several years before his death, James gave control of the E.T.A. to his brother Charles and devoted himself to filmmaking.
On November first of the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment", the Arizona Cardinals fly across a stadium in cardinal costumes. Despite his fear of heights, Orin Incandenza is roped into participating in this performance and hates every second of it (crying out that he is "not a freakshow performer!").
After a brief glimpse on a speech given by Michael Pemulis on psychoactive mushrooms, Hal explains how he was first introduced to smoking "Bob Hope" at age fifteen and largely only does it to get to sleep. The only side effect of this is a recurring dream in which he is playing tennis watched over by a mysterious crowd with his mother in attendance, giving him unconditional support in the form of a raised fist.
An unnamed doctor in the psych ward of an unnamed hospital finds a recently-admitted patient named Kate Gompert (who has tried to kill herself three times in the last four years and was recently admitted for another attempt) curled in her bed. While speaking with Kate, the doctor learns that she was driven to her attempts by an unstoppable feeling of absolute dread and despair that fills her at every moment. Along with this, she has a serious addiction to "Bob Hope" that she believes has been detrimental to her life. Kate then demands electroshock therapy and refuses to talk anymore about her depression.
Shortly after making the Enfield Tennis Academy, James Incandenza hired a somewhat strict German coach named Gerhardt Schtitt as the Head Coach and Athletic Director of the Academy. Though Schtitt is somewhat strict and cold towards most of the students at the E.T.A., he is friendly with James' deformed son Mario. The two somewhat frequently have long conversations and buy ice cream together.
While going through detox, a dwarf with the comedic name of Tiny Ewell drives through the streets of Watertown, Massachusetts so that he can enter into the Enfield Marine VA Hospital Complex. Meanwhile, the medical attaché's wife returns home and becomes enraptured in the same tape that her husband is watching. This is closely followed by the assistant of Prince Q------'s personal physician, the personal physician, two of the Prince's guards, and two Seventh Day Adventists.
This is noticed by the government of the O.N.A.N., who assume that the Quebecois terrorist group Les Assassins des Fauteils Rollents (or Wheelchair Assassins) have something to do with what has been dubbed "The Entertainment" and that it was purposefully sent to make an example out of the attaché (who may have had an affair with the creator of the Entertainment). As such, Agent Hugh Steeply meets with a quadruple agent (who pretended to betray the Wheelchair Assassins but is now actually betraying them) within the Assassins named Rémy Marathe. Marathe flat out states that the Assassins would never target civilians and therefore did not send the attaché the Entertainment. Marathe and Steeply then discuss Marathe's status as a quadruple agent and the recent death of DuPlessis before lapsing into contemplative silence. Throughout all of this, a herd of feral hamsters treads through a wasteland known as the Great Concavity.
While in the locker rooms (presumably) after practicing tennis, various students of the E.T.A. quiz each other over an upcoming exam on the history of Entertainment. This includes Hal along with his friend John "No Relation" Wayne, Ortho Stice, Hugh Steeply, Struck, Jim Troeltsch, and Michael Pemulis. While all this is happening, Marathe and Steeply discuss how love can (or possibly cannot) cause wars.
In November, Hal gets involved in another student debate - this one over the various struggles that the students endure in the E.T.A. under Schtitt, the isolation and false sense of community formed by it, and the various types of students enrolled at E.T.A. This discussion quickly swerves into more biological subjects before being interrupted by Mario ringing a triangle to show that dinner is about to begin.
A month previously, Mario had his first (and only) romantic experience. While walking on the outskirts of the E.T.A. with Hal, Mario encounters a female student called "the U.S.S. Millicent Kent" who is ranked first place in the Girl's 16-A squad. Millicent reveals that she saw a mysterious tripod somewhere on the grounds. Mario and Millicent then go looking for the tripod, with Millicent talking about her somewhat unusual home life while walking with Mario. This quickly turns into Millicent almost assaulting Mario by shoving him under her breasts and trying to undress him before the two of them are found by Hal. While walking back to the E.T.A., the three of them manage to find the tripod. Meanwhile, Steeply and Marathe discuss the home of the Entertainment - which is revealed to be Boston.
An unknown narrator (possibly Hal or possibly one of the other students around him) describes an unusual (though harmless, almost infant-like) figure who is possibly named Lyle who frequently hangs out in the weight room of the E.T.A. and subsists off of the sweat of students while giving those same students advice.
In a poorly constructed first person narrative, another unnamed narrator recounts their drug-dealing escapades with the crossdresser Poor Tony and Bobby C. This involves various drug deals (including with the aforementioned Roy Tony) and robberies and ends with the three of them buying drugs from a dealer known as Dr. Wo. Unbeknownst to the three of them, Wo laced their drugs with Drano. This kills Bobby C. (with blood pouring out of his eyes and mouth as he dies in agony) and his body is thrown into a dumpster by Poor Tony. The two survivors of this incident decide to become clean (or at least enter into rehab) due to this.
During the third of November in the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" (a recurring year throughout the narrative), Orin calls Hal right after he has returned from one of his secret marijuana trips. After jokingly suggesting that Hal's somewhat short breathing is due to "strenuous activity", Orin begins talking about the heat in Arizona before segueing over to Canadian separatists before the conversation is cut off. The focus then switches to a history of Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.
Founded by a nameless (as he refused to ever give his name) reformed drug addict, Ennet House had a somewhat hard methods (such as forcing new inductees to literally eat rocks) before the Massachusetts Public Health Department put an end to them. In the "Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install Upgrade for Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems for Home, Office, or Mobile", the founder died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 68.
Next comes a brief snippet of a State Farm insurance claim made by a somewhat drunk (at the time) bricklayer who accidentally smashed into a barrel full of bricks several times over while trying to use a DIY pulley system. This is followed by an essay written by Hal at the Academy on the heroes of Hawaii Five-O and Hill Street Blues which pushes the idea of the classic and postmodern hero along with the idea of the "hero of non-action". Next comes an article on a new type of "exterior artificial heart" which was stolen from its user by a purse-snatcher - accidentally causing the user's death. Curiously, this article was written by one Helen Steeply shortly before she began a soft profile on Orin Incandenza. The final piece of in-universe prose is an essay on the failure of video calling. This was caused by the shattering of a delusion that while one was busy with other stuff during a phone call, the person on the other line wasn't busy along with the vanity damage that came with being able to see the face recorded by the videophone's camera. Though various companies attempted to make Band-Aid fixes for this vanity problem (such as by making perfected masks and even fake bodies for people to pose behind), the standard telephone soon came back in vogue.
Having finished with these in-universe writings, the narrative resumes. On October of every year, the E.T.A. makes students take drug tests. As many of the students have been taking drugs, they buy clean urine off of Michael Pemulis (who is largely at the school because of a Geometrical Optics scholarship). One of Pemulis' clients is Hal, who gets this urine for free in exchange for helping Pemulis with his schoolwork.
Several decades earlier, before even Subsidized Time (in the winter of the year 1960), James Incandenza Sr. speaks with his young son James Jr. while the Incandenzas are living at a trailer park in Tucson. In this long and somewhat rambling monologue, James Sr. tells his son how to treat his body and (after revealing that they are moving back to California to give his son ample warning) about the only tennis match James Sr.'s father attended - which ended with his father saying that his son would "never be great" and with young James destroying his knees in a fall.
Several decades later, while travelling through Boston, Michael Pemulis thinks about a hallucinogenic drug called DMZ which has become the second most difficult substance to find in O.N.A.N. This drug is an extremely powerful hallucinogen that comes from a mold that feeds and grows off of other mold. Due to its extremely grim nature, DMZ has been dubbed "Madame Psychosis" (named after a cult radio personality of the same name that Mario frequently listens to). Once back at his dorm, Pemulis calls Hal and starts a drug deal.
As part of a "New Eyes, New Voices’ Young Filmmakers" contest, Hal and Mario worked together on a documentary called Tennis and the Feral Prodigy. This documentary was made up of a series of instructions for students at the E.T.A. (and for a prospective child of the recently-deceased James O. Incandenza, Jr.) and was narrated (and possibly written) by Hal. Following this documentary is a selection of recordings of patients from Ennet House while talking to one Patricia Montesian, then executive-director of the House.
In late October of the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, the mysterious Madame Psychosis broadcasts a message on WYYY (M.I.T's student-run radio) celebrating the deformed and disabled. This is listened closely by Mario and lasts around an hour. After an examination of Mario and Hal's relationship with their mother Avril, the narrative swaps to an examination of the Enfield Marine Public Health Hospital's satellite units, which includes Ennet House along with six other units, which includes a mysterious unit which lays unused and decrepit.
After briefly ruminating on the banter of E.T.A.'s students as they work out in the Weight Room (which is usually aggressive and vaguely sexual), an unnamed narrator recounts the various surprising "thats" that form life at Ennet House before shifting to Tiny Ewell's obsession over other people's tattoos (which was possibly caused by his withdrawals). The narrative then shifts back to E.T.A., where Pemulis has managed to acquire tablets of DMZ from two Canadian insurgents and makes plans with Hal and a student named Trevor Axford to take the pills over the weekend.
On the seventh of November, a woman named Joelle van Dyne decides to end her life by locking herself in a friend's bathroom and overdosing on the crack cocaine which she hates using but has become completely dependent on. She throws away all of the paraphernalia and then buys her last eight grams of crack. While walking through the streets of Boston, Joelle (or Madame P., as she is sometimes known) thinks about the suicide footage one Jim Incandenza made but never sent to her. While waiting for a train, Joelle gets into a conversation with an older black man and shows him her card for the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed (which dates back to the 1940s and was formed by the wife of an MP who had been grievously insulted by Winston Churchill).
Joelle, with a veil covering her face, attends a costume party which her friend Molly (dressed as Karl Marx) also attends. As the various guests gab on about large inane subjects (including the Great Convexity and what might be the Entertainment), Joelle locks herself in the bathroom and decides to kill herself via an overdose. She makes a crack pipe out of random refuse she collected and begins getting high as a person knocks on the bathroom door.
After briefly discussing the geography of Enfield, the narrative shows a phone call between Orin and Hal. While Hal talks about his suddenly gained skill of being able to fling toenail clippings into a nearby garbage can with extreme precision (something Hal and Orin compare to a magic skill that might go away at any moment) but Orin soon reveals that he is being followed around by mysterious people in wheelchairs (most likely the Wheelchair Assassins) and is having an op-ed piece written on him by one Helen Steeply. This leads to Orin and Hal discussing their family, which leads to Hal discussing the suicide of his father (which reveals that James Jr. killed himself by sticking his head in a microwave and nuking it, along with the fact that it was young Hal that discovered the grisly scene after losing a tennis match) and the grief counselling that Hal went through in the aftermath of this suicide.
Around the same time as the annual meeting between E.T.A.'s students and the Port Washington Tennis Academy, shortly after the E.T.A. has acquired an extremely promising Quebecois student named John Wayne and after Hal has had a "quantumish competitive plateau-hop" in rankings, Pemulis vomits into a bucket of tennis balls from nerves (and possibly also from withdrawals from the various drugs he takes) while playing with Schacht before his match to qualify for an event known as the WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational. While the two play, they are closely watched by Mario, who is planning his documentary footage of the Invitational. Meanwhile, Don Gately is effectively forced to follow around a new inductee to Ennet House named Geoffrey Day. Day is extremely pretentious (living his life as a series of cliches) and frequently argues over the merits of Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. Thinking about Day makes Gately ruminate on the various patients he has met. The narrative then switches back to the students of E.T.A., who have crushed their P.W.T.A. opponents and ride back to the Academy in a somewhat jubilant mood.
The narrative then switches to a history of Orin Incandenza's early life. Though he was extremely competent at tennis at a younger age, Orin's skill peaked around the age of thirteen and began to decline. Despite this, he got several tennis scholarship offers due to his good grades. Orin decided to enroll at Boston University - which was "not a strong school for tennis". Though Orin initially planned to play for the tennis team of his university, he decided to switch to the football team due to a crush on one of the baton-twirlers (who was Joelle van Dyne). Though his tryouts for the football team were initially quite bad, he realized his skill as a kicker after watching one player accidentally break another player's bones. Though Orin and Joelle started a relationship, Joelle's eyes soon drifted towards Orin's father and his directorial works. Along with this, Joelle started taking cocaine (something Orin did not take part in but allowed Joelle to do). During Orin's senior year in college, his father killed himself and his uncle Charles became headmaster of the Enfield Tennis Academy.
Throughout November of the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, Poor Tony Krause becomes effectively homeless and goes through withdrawals from heroin. Though he is able to somewhat mitigate the effects by drinking codeine-rich cough syrup, he soon runs out and has a debilitating seizure while watching the Gray Line.
As Troeltsch's radio show recounts E.T.A.'s various wins against the P.W.T.A. using somewhat inventive language, Schacht completes his midterm for The Personal Is the Political Is the Psychopathological: The Politics of Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds - a class taught by an old friend of Schtitt's. Meanwhile, Hal has been taking a course known as Separatism and Return: Québecois History from Frontenac Through the Age of Interdependence. This is a somewhat difficult course for him, as the teacher uses Quebecois French and he is extremely uncaring about Quebecois politics. A footnote appended to this section shows a phone call between Hal and Orin on this very subject which came about because Helen Steeply asked Orin about Quebecois separatists. Once the reader has returned to the main narrative, it flashes back to the birth of Mario Incandenza - which came as a surprise for James and Avril. Mario was born premature and is extremely deformed -looking almost reptilian in nature and being largely unable to actually play tennis. Despite this, James took Mario under his wing and effectively made Mario his assistant in regards to filmmaking and Hal became somewhat close to his deformed brother.
While still on the mountainside that the two of them have been on for several hours, Marathe reveals to Steeply that the Entertainment was not made by a Canadian but by an American. This leads to a political debate between Marathe and Steeply over whether or not the Entertainment will cause the downfall of America and on the very nation of freedom and life itself - with Steeply representing the American view of freedom as the most important part of life while Marathe represents the more traditional view that one must have a set purpose in life, such as serving their nation. Along with this, Marathe believes that the American view of "freedom" is false. Once the two finish their debate, they are left wondering how they will get down from the mountain in the dead of night.
On Interdependence Day, various younger students play a game called Eschaton (a sort of nuclear war game played with tennis balls and a portable computer to calculate the various equations for death and destruction counts) while they are watched over by Hal, Pemulis (who formulated large portions of Eschaton), Axford, and Troeltsch. Though the game is initially somewhat calm, it soon devolves into an argument and then into a flat-out brawl which destroys the portable computer. Meanwhile, Don Gately attends a meeting of the White Flag AA Group. While at the meeting, Gately watches several Concordians tell their stories and muses over the very nature of Alcoholics Anonymous and the culture of the group. He also notices two new faces - Ken Erdedy and Joelle van Dyne.
After showing Marathe and Steeply climbing down from the mountain and briefly discussing the bond between James Incandenza and the guru Lyle (with this leading to a footnote in which Orin discusses his father's attempts to make a new genre of filmmaking called "Found Drama"), the narrative returns to the AA meeting - where one of the new entries into AA discusses her stillbirth due to drug abuse and how, deeply in denial, she carried the corpse of the baby around like it was still an infant for months. Once this horrifying scene finishes, the narrative returns to James and Lyle - showing how the two of them interacted on a day-to-day basis.
While the guru Lyle gives advice to various students who jimmy the lock of the weight room, a film produced by Mario Incandenza (which adapts his father's four-hour epic film The ONANtiad for children using puppets) is played for Interdependence Day. This film dramatizes and somewhat simplifies the beginning of President Johnny Gentle's reign, the beginning of Standardized Time and O.N.A.N., and the formation of the Great Concavity - a massive garbage dump which makes up several former U.S. states which were "gifted" to Canada. Parts of this recreation are based on the Academy's local mythos, most notably the tale of one Eric Clipperton - an extremely mysterious player who emerged seemingly from nowhere and threatened to shoot himself if he ever lost (and even held the gun to his temple while playing). While this film is presumably still rolling, the narrative switches to a summary of a paper written by Hal Incandenza which describes the demise of broadcast TV, the ad industry, and the rise of the on-demand cartridge TV market, which indirectly caused the rise of President Johnny Gentle.
While still on the mountain trying to get down off it, Marathe and Steeply begin a debate over American belief in the pursuit of happiness. While Marathe believes in the importance of the happiness of the community, Steeply believes in the American attitude of the importance of individual agency. As both come from completely different political backgrounds, neither comes to a conclusion before the two of them go to sleep. The narrative then switches to what happened to Eric Clipperton. Though Clipperton's gambit worked for a while, it came with the caveat that none of Clipperton's wins were officially counted as "wins" (though he still got trophies) until, while O.N.A.N. was being founded, a systems analyst accidentally counted his wins as official. Instead of being overjoyed by this, Clipperton was sent into a downwards spiral and shot himself while visiting the E.T.A. In the aftermath of this suicide, Clipperton's only true friend (which happened to be Mario Incandenza) cleaned the scene and attended his sparsely-peopled funeral in his homeland of Indiana. The narrative then explores Don Gately's job cleaning a homeless shelter with a shoe fetishist before returning to Mario's film to explore the origins of the corporate names for sports venues along with President Gentle's link to a mysterious woman named Luria P-------.
Though Gately has been at AA for some time, he still does not have a belief in a Higher Power of any sort and feels somewhat embarrassed by this. After revealing this at an AA meeting, Gately is surprised to find that his audience is supportive of this. The narrative then shows how Gately's sobriety has led to memories of his traumatic childhood spent with an alcoholic mom and an abusive step-father to resurface. The narrative then visits Hal (who has just woken up from a dream about his teeth falling out) and Mario - who is distressed by Madame Psychosis disappearing from the airwaves very mysteriously. Though Madame's network tried to replace her with a grad student, this was short-lived and Madame's program now plays nothing more than the ominous background music to her show.
While Schtitt drills the current students of the Academy, Charles Tavis (the Headmaster of the Academy after James, Jr.'s suicide) plans how to fix the 64:72 male-to-female ratio (something which has caused problems across the Academy, largely because several girls have been lodged in boys' dorms). During these ruminations, it is implied that Charles fathered Mario with his own stepsister. The narrative then switches to Ennet House and discusses the process that allowed Don Gately to avoid jailtime for his crimes (which were "Blue-Filed" with the help of Pat Montesian, the current manager of Ennet House) but which were unable to take a DUI off of his license. While waiting for this to be fixed, Don became a chef at Ennet House. Though Don is not that great at this job, nobody actively complains about this.
While still clambering down the mountain, Steeply and Marathe discuss a Canadian experiment to use electrodes to activate the pleasure centers of the brain. The narrative then switches to Don Gately, who has been sent on a drive through Boston to get food for two new residents of Ennet House (include Joelle) who refuse to eat the food he made. While doing so, Don drives past the storefront of two ineffectual Quebecois separatists named Lucien and Bertraund Antitoi. Shortly afterwards, the Antitois are visited by the A.F.R. (who are searching for the Entertainment, which the Antitois unknowingly picked up copies of) and brutally murdered. The narrative then switches back to Steeply and Marathe, who discuss how the Entertainment might work.
Illustration from the Harper's Magazine printing of this section, titled "The Awakening of My Interest in Annular Systems". Illustration by Caty Bartholomew.
A section from a volume dubbed The Chill of Inspiration: Spontaneous Reminiscences by Seventeen Pioneers of DT-Cycle Lithiumized Annular Fusion recounts a time when James, Jr. and his alcoholic actor father tried to move a squeaky mattress out of James, Sr.'s room. While doing so, James, Sr. fainted and James, Jr. tries to make his own mattress squeak. While doing so, he accidentally knocks a lamp down which shears a doorknob off. The shape the doorknob made as it rolled inspired James, Jr. towards the possibilities of annulation. The narrative then shifts to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that both Kate Gompert and Ken Erdedy attend. While there, a group hug begins - which mortifies Erdedy. As such, he turns down a hug from Poor Tony Krause (who has presumably recovered from his withdrawals enough to attend the NA meeting) and accidentally offends him in the process. The narrative then switches over to Steeply, who reveals to Marathe that the Head of Data Analysis working on the Entertainment was accidentally lost to it.
In the immediate aftermath of the "Eschaton Fiasco", Hal, Pemulis, and Trevor Axford are summoned to Charles Tavis' office. While waiting to be let in, Hal watches as Avril does a monthly "diddle-check" on the younger students to make sure that none are being sexually abused by counselors or family members while Tavis speaks with a new (and extremely young) inductee to the Academy. Once Avril finishes with the checks (that Dr. Dolores Rusk normally does), she steps out of her office and speaks with Hal. Shortly after this, Charles lets the waiting students into his office and shuts the door behind them. Meanwhile, Marathe and Steeply discuss ancient legends tying into the Entertainment - including the Medusa and the Odalisque.
While at the front office of Ennet House, Don Gately strikes up a conversation with Joelle van Dyne by telling a story about how he watched someone get shot to death before trying to ask what is underneath her veil. Joelle refuses to reveal this and instead tries to character examine Don - with the two leaving somewhat annoyed. Meanwhile, a new entry into Ennet House named Randy Lenz starts taking out his sobriety frustrations by murdering cats and dogs while out on walks. Along with this, he still uses cocaine but assures himself that he is still sober because he is using way less. Randy is soon joined by Bruce Green and is unable to take out his frustrations for a while. Unnervingly, it is stated that none of the doors in Ennet House have locks on them.
Around the same time, Rodney Tine (accompanied by the ruler that he uses to measure his genitals daily) arrives in Boston to figure out if there are any copies of the Entertainment left in Boston. Meanwhile, while wandering away from a late-night meeting with Dr. Rusk, Pemulis enters into Avril's office and finds both her and John "No Relation" Wayne almost naked besides for some football equipment.
After coming to the realization that Bruce Green considers himself friends with him, Randy Lenz goes back to using his secret supply of cocaine due to the social anxiety. Despite this, he still goes on walks with Bruce. During one of these, a manic Randy begins babbling about cults worshipping deformed infants from the Great Concavity and (though not by name) the train-worshipping Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents and (in a very bizarre and oblique way) tries to find out if Bruce is a closeted gay man. Meanwhile, Hal and John Wayne have a brief and silent interaction before lunchtime.
After leaving Helen Steeply at the airport after an interview with her (with Orin recounting the time that Hal ate mold and discussing his perception of his parents' mental states), Orin picks up a "Swiss" hand model at the airport and takes her to his hotel room to "sleep" with her. While doing so, one of Orin's mysterious wheelchair-bound stalkers knocks on the door and asks him to take a survey. Meanwhile, a Pakistani exchange student named Idris Arslanian has blindfolded himself to improve his non-sight senses. While doing so, he is found by Pemulis - who discusses how another student named Anton Doucette has become extremely depressed over possibly flunking due to his failure to understand annular fusion and explains this complex process to Arslanian in the process.
While listening to the complaints of various Ennet House residents, Don learns that a black female resident named Yolanda has been sexually harassed by Randy Lenz. Around the same time, Lenz goes for one of his walks with Green and babbles about his morbidly obese mother's demise. Green thinks about his parents' tragic(ally comedic) deaths (with one being accidental and the other being executed for causing several deaths). While doing so, Green notices that Lenz has wandered off and soon finds him killing the dog of a group of Quebecois immigrants in Hawaiian outfits. Lenz is chased away by several angry "Nucks" (a pejorative term for the Quebecois) due to this.
While it is very late at night, Mario wanders through the darkness (unable to sleep due to the disappearance of Madame Psychosis) and wanders towards Ennet House, where he hears what he thinks is a recording of one of the Madame's old shows. Meanwhile, Don works through the chores that come with the end of the night, the beginning of curfew, and the beginning of the new day. While doing so, Don notices that Bruce Green is slightly late to return. A very haggard Bruce soon arrives. Shortly after this, Don leaves with several residents (including Randy Lenz and Bruce Green, who has to move another resident's car as the resident in question is unable to do so) to move their cars before they are towed. While doing so, Randy is found by three vengeful Quebecois men and attacked. Before they can punish Randy for killing a dog, he escapes and hides behind Don. As such, the three Quebecois men attack Don and are swiftly taken out (though one of them is able to shoot Don in the arm). Joelle soon notices this and runs outside to help Don, with it becoming clear that the two have forged a somewhat romantic bond.
That morning, Rodney Tine meets with Hugh Steeply and his son Rodney Tine, Jr. in the State House Annex in Boston. Meanwhile, the WYYY engineer who worked on Madame Psychosis' show is sitting outside when he is found and attacked by a member of the A.F.R. - who runs over the engineer's glasses. Meanwhile, as the students of the E.T.A. eat dinner, Troeltsch theorizes that the staff have been switching out the real milk they are normally served with powdered milk (something that is actually correct) while Hal has recently stopped smoking weed so that he can pass the urine tests legitimately.
As May 1st begins on the mountain, Steeply reveals to Marathe that his father was addicted to the TV show M*A*S*H* to an extremely chronic degree - becoming completely consumed to his addiction to the point of becoming a complete shut-in who wrote strange apocalyptic predictions revolving around the show and dying shortly after the show ended broadcasting. During this discussion, Marathe reveals that he has to leave soon. Meanwhile, several months later in Ennet House, several residents of the House are inside shortly after the confrontation between Don and the Nucks. While talking to Kate Gompert, Geoffrey Day how he accidentally brought forth a mysterious dark shape of sheer malice while playing the violin as a child. This shape plagued Day throughout his early life and lack struck him while at college and was only saved from the brink of suicide due to a stranger staying by his side.
Several days after the Eschaton fiasco, while Orin is sleeping with the hand-model, Helen Steeply arrives at the Enfield Tennis Academy. While watching a match between Hal and Ortho Stice, Helen tries to question a prorector named Aubrey deLint about questioning Hal for her profile of Orin Incandenza (or, in actuality, the search for the Entertainment). Unfortunately, she learns that Charles expressly forbids interviews with current students as he does not want them to become addicted to fame. Once deLint leaves Helen, a Quebecois teacher named Thierry Poutrincourt begins speaking with her and explains that the teachers at the Academy are very protective of their students. The two then begin speaking in French and discuss the leap from a junior to an adult player along with the strain of professional tennis. Shortly after this, Helen writes to Orin's former friend Marlon K. Bain to learn more about him. When questioned by Helen, Bain reveals that Orin frequently used drugs with him while at the Academy and that Orin is a frequent liar, something that Avril was strangely accepting of.
Due to the fallout of the Eschaton fiasco, several of the young students are forced to crawl through the tunnels underneath the Academy. Though these tunnels were once used for storage, they are now filled with refuse and are possibly home to a mutated rodent from the Concavity (or at least, some sort of rodent) which the students try to find before finding an abandoned fridge filled with rotting food and fleeing from the stench.
In Cambridge Massachusetts, Michael Pemulis' older brother Mattie eats soup in a restaurant and spots an extremely haggard Poor Tony Krause before ruminating on the sexual abuse he faced at the hands of his father - starting at the age of ten and ending when this father died from cirrhosis (effectively from choking on his own blood). After suffering from a seizure and having an ambulance called on him, Poor Tony was able to get himself discharged from Cambridge City Hospital due to his poverty. Earlier in the day, Poor Tony served as a decoy for the Antitois (placing the events of this vignette before their brutal deaths) alongside several other crossdressers. Meanwhile, Hal feels depressed after losing his match against Stice (which led to Stice becoming 2nd in the rankings over him) and watches various movies made by his father. The most notable of these movies is Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat, a movie about a bureaucrat being involved in a crisis of free will v.s. submission.
rest to be added
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Pale King | David Foster Wallace | 2011 | A posthumonously published novel by the same author with similar themes |
| Running Dog | Don DeLillo | 1978 | A novel with a similar hunt for a tape |
| The Broom of the System | David Foster Wallace | 1987 | A previous novel by the same author with similar themes |
| White Noise | Don DeLillo | 1985 | A novel with similar themes of entertainment |
| House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski | 2000 | A major postmodernist maximalist novel with similar themes of depression and analysis along with similar metafictionality and hypertextuality |
| The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen | 2001 | A novel by one of Wallace's contemporaries with similar themes of a dysfunctional family |
| Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | 1973 | A major and similarly long postmodernist novel |
| Underworld | Don DeLillo | 1997 | A major and similarly long postmodernist novel written and released around the same time |
| The Recognitions | William Gaddis | 1955 | A major and similarly long postmodernist novel |
| Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov | 1962 | A postmodernist novel with a similar use of footnotes and hypertextuality |
| Ulysses | James Joyce | 1922 | A major, experimental, and similarly long Modernist novel |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | 1980 | A postmodernist novel with similar themes of poverty and similarly black comedy |
| Toward the End of Time | John Updike | 1997 | A novel with a similar corporate-run setting that David Foster Wallace despised |
| Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | Hunter S. Thompson | 1971 | A novel which similarly examines psychedelic drugs |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey | 1962 | A novel which somewhat similarly examines mental health facilities |
| Naked Lunch | William S. Burroughs | 1959 | A postmodernist novel with similar themes |
| Vernon God Little | DBC Pierre | 2003 | A novel with a similarly black comedic tone |
| The Hour I First Believed | Wally Lamb | 2008 | A similarly long novel with similar themes |
Sources[]
- Wikipedia
- Goodreads
| Works of David Foster Wallace | ||
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Novels | ||