My
latest DFW theory is not flattering, I’m afraid. This said from the half-way
point. I’m thinking that Infinite Jest
does not accomplish what I particularly want from a novel, which is to be absorbed. I’m not much of a minimalist,
so the length—albeit cra-cra—is not
the problem (well, it kinda is);
rather, it’s that I don’t care about any
of the characters! I’m fascinated; I’m wonderstruck; I’m gonna finish. But
do I care?
Maybe I
care a little about Gately. Just a little. (I do perk up a little during his
parts.)
Can a
novel successfully be built upon powerhouse vignettes? Apparently, yes. If that’s
what this is. Do these awesome bits hold together and form a narrative? I’m not
sure.
But I
guess it boils down to what you want your narrative to accomplish?
Here
are some stellar writing examples (another part of my theory, which sounds
unkind, is that no “normal” human being could capture this kind of
excruciatingly close/intimately-accurate detail—and so DFW’s unsoundness which
could be seen as extraordinariness is revealed in this work):
Consider
Gately, our hero. “It’s suggested in the 3rd of Boston AA’s 12 Steps
that you turn your Diseased will over to the direction and love of ‘God as you
understand Him.’. . You get to make up your own understanding of God or a
Higher Power or Whom/Whatever. But Gately, at like ten months clean, at the . .
. podium in Braintree, opines that at this juncture he’s so totally clueless
and lost that he’d [ask someone to] just tell him what AA God to have an
understanding of, and give him totally blunt and dogmatic orders about how to
turn over his Diseased will to whatever this Higher Power is. He notes how he’s
observed already that some Catholics and Fundamentalists now in AA had a
childhood understanding of a Stern and Punishing-type God, and Gately’s heard
them express incredible Gratitude that AA let them at long last let go and
change over to an understanding of a Loving, Forgiving, Nurturing-type God. But
at least these folks started out with some
idea of Him/Her/It, whether fucked up or
no. . . he feels Nothing—not nothing but Nothing,
an edgeless blankness that somehow feels worse than the sort of unconsidered
atheism he Came In With.”
There
is a woman with “a sexually-credible body.” I love this detail.
And
Joelle shows up in rehab with her “weirdly-familiar-but-Southernish-sounding
[voice] . . . and “past-believing bod and the linen face [she is veiled]
announcing she was a vegetarian and would ‘rather eat a bug’ than even get
downwind of a boiled frank.”
Small
character notes speak volumes. “Orin says one reason Avril dislikes music is
that whenever she hums along she sounds insane.”
I don’t
actually know if this guy will turn into a major character, but DFW gives every
single walk-on or minor person idiosyncratic and perfect details. “Like many
gifted bureaucrats, Hal’s mother’s adoptive brother Charles Tavis is physically
small in a way that seems less endocrine and more perspectival.”
And we
move into a crazy bit on a druggee who kills animals at night. “He moves
nightly through urban-animal territory. Liberated housecats and hard-core
strays ooze in and out of shadows, rustle in dumpsters, fuck and fight with
hellish noises all around him as he walks, senses very sharp in the downscale
night. You got your rats, your mice, your stray dogs with tongues hanging and
countable ribs. Maybe the odd feral hamster and/or raccoon. Everything slinky
and furtive after sunset.”
DFW, a
U of AZ grad (Go Wildcats!), captured the desert: “. . . the scalp-crackling gust of Phoenix
heat . . .”
I’m
pretty sure DFW could’ve written about anything. Anything.
But will it amount to something