INFINITE JEST - David Foster Wallace - Fiction

As you can see, I haven't posted anything in a month, because I've been doing Infinite Summer (http://infinitesummer.org) --reading Infinite Jest cover to cover from June 21 to mid-September. As you can see, I've finished early. There comes a point in every engrossing mid- to enormous-length novel at which I am so caught up in the story that I have to finish it as soon as possible, and for me that point came about two weeks ago, when I started reading Infinite Jest whenever I could--at work, while eating breakfast, while on the bus, while walking home if that were possible. It was a combination of wanting to finish it so that I could think about it, wanting to know what happens to Hal and Don Gately and Madame Psychosis, and loving the visual of moving my two bookmarks farther and farther back. (Two: one for the regular text, and one for the footnotes.)

Infinite Jest is a novel about adolescent tennis players, recovering addicts, dysfunctional families, independent filmmakers, disabled and disfigured people, terrorists, bumbling politicians, and obsessive compulsives. It is set in the future, has about forty main characters, involves complex acronyms frequently, and gives the full chemical name and manufacturer of every drug, medicinal and recreational, mentioned in its pages. And yet, it is one of the easiest-to-read and most compelling books I've ever come across. I tried to read this book in high school, when a friend was deeply into it, and stopped after about a hundred pages, caught up in other books, sidelined by the need to keep so many names and facts and incidents in play at once.

I now think that was simply not the right time. This book is about a lot of very depressed people, and as such, probably requires at least a passing familiarity with and a fair amount of temporal distance from a form of long-term ennui that you might call depression. I'm not the addictive personality, I've never felt a residual craving for any of the capital-S Substances that I've ingested over the years, but I think that this book would be even more meaningful to someone who has been addicted, even if, as an acerbic aside mentions early on, there might as well be 12-step programs for anything which one could possibly enjoy.

Infinite Jest proposes, in a number of ways, that interaction with the outside world is imperative--a supremely entertaining video turns people into vegetative viewing-machines, drugs repeatedly close people off from their circumstances, characters frustratedly and impotently lose the ability to speak and communicate, and live radio is described as the most fascinating and affecting type of entertainment available. Hiding in other ways--hiding waste in a giant feral ditch in the northeast, hiding drugs and illicit activity from school authorities, hiding possible deformity behind a veil, hiding love or caring concern--has unfortunate effects. This isn't a terribly complicated thesis, but as any reader of Wallace's journalism will realize, Wallace needs to prove to the reader everything, and if he felt that the modern world's dependence on things for entertainment and validation was worth addressing, it makes sense that he would spend a thousand pages proving that it was so.

In order to talk about this book in any comprehensible way, I'll have to limit myself to only one topic, so I'd like to talk about the distinction between the portrayal of AA, NA, and their meetings (Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous, respectively) and the meeting of a men's-feelings-empowerment group that Hal stumbles upon by accident, hoping for a remote NA meeting. Because in the world of Infinite Jest, AA is a categorical force for good. AA helps people, one day at a time, to stay people, and resist destructive impulses which they term a disease. AA is described as incomprehensible to the novitiate, and a little like a cult, but successful and powerful, as well. The meeting that Hal goes to, though, is clearly embarassing and disturbing for him, what with its regressed men and emphasis on an "inner infant" whose needs have to be cared for from within. Here is the first contrast: AA demands that a Higher Power be invoked, anything from God to fate, which is appealed to for help, and thanked for each day of successful sobriety. The method takes away some of the fear and doubt that comes with a disease that is ultimately a disease of the brain and the will: if we believe it is instead in the charge of a Higher Power, we don't have only our fallible, disappointing selves to rely upon. The support group that Hal happens upon also regresses its participants, makes them think and act like infants again, in order to surpass some perceived childhood trauma. AA, on the other hand, demands that its participants think of themselves as adults, act like adults, and accept total responsibility for their actions. AA frowns upon any thinking that blames a person's problems on the influence or actions of others, whereas the men's support group firmly places blame on childhood experience.

But is Hal even the right person for an AA or NA program? Hal quits marijuana cold turker, and completely loses touch with himself--he is unable to think clearly, then unable to control his facial expressions, and finally, as was revealed at the very beginning of the book, unable to even speak. It seems in some ways that marijuana was holding Hal together, possibly due to the stress of having spectacularly lost his father, or the stress of being a nationally-ranked junior tennis player at a demanding academy, or the stress of having a mother who is emotionally schizoid, and carrying on a sexual relationship with his primary tennis competitor. Perhaps due to the stress of all of these, combined. Nevertheless, Hal is demonstrably better able to perform and cope WITH his Substance, rather than without it. All the stories we are told of drug addicts who have Surrendered to AA and Come In involve people who were functioning incredibly poorly Out There--Hal is functioning incredibly well, at least until he gives up the Substance. It's an interesting story for Wallace to sketch, even as he seems so celebratory of AA.