Things I discovered while poking about on the internet:
There might be a movie of IJ; Sam Jones, who directed a documentary on Wilco, is supposed to direct. Is it possible to make a movie of this massive book? And how funny is it that the possible director is a band documentarian, after all that DFW talked about in regards to the Rolling Stones documentary?
DFW's experience with AA was as a voyeur. From an interview with Newsweek:
I went with friends to an open AA meeting and got addicted to them. It was completely riveting. I was never a member -- I was a voyeur. When I ended up really liking it was when I let people there know this and they didn't care.
Was it therapeutic?
At that point, I was paralyzed about writing, and I was watching too much TV. Here were these guys in leather and tattoos sounding like Norman Vincent Peale, but week after week they were getting better. And I'd go home and work. Going to coffee houses and talking about literary theory certainly hadn't helped any.
Reminds me of Fight Club. Also, what does this say about the sense of community that AA seems to have in the novel? Do you not actually have to "fit in" to be part of this support network? And is that true for other things, like tennis? Is that what Mario is?
I feel like (if I'm interpreting your question right, which I might not be) no one actually "fits in" to the support system at AA (in the novel at least), and that's what makes the system work. I remember a few scenes when DFW describes the vast number and type of people who attend these meetings-- suburban soccer-moms, young socialites, bikers, and the elderly, to name a few. The majority of these people have nothing in common with one another except an addiction and AA. Therefore, everyone fits in because no one really fits in, if that makes sense. I think that outsiders like DFW can therefore fit in pretty easily because there's really no fitting in to be done.
I think that the way that you fit into AA is by following the isms and the sayings and doing what you're told. If you do all these things, you will become just like everyone else in AA. But, there's also this sense that everyone in AA secretly knows how doorky and crazy all the obsessive things that they do are, but everyone pretends like they enjoy it or believe in it. In the scene where Ken Erdedy tries to keep away from hugging Roy Tony by saying that he is not a hug-person, Roy Tony comes back at him saying that no one here is a "hug-person" we all just do like we're told and that's why we're all "hug-people." It seems to me that everyone becomes very similar in Boston AA. I think Gately once described it as similar to the military (but I'm not sure). They are all turned into mindless drones who just utter the phrases and drop to their knees and this makes them less unique.
How do we know that this is just characteristic of Boston AA? I, for one, have never been to an AA meeting, so what makes this characteristically Boston AA? (besides the fact that Wallace said so). I would think that most AA's would share alot of these actions.
While reading the book, I continually tried to imagine it as a movie. I think it's possible...but it will be "different" from the book where they have to leave stuff out. On the other hand, I think it wouldn't be that bad to reduce some sections of th book...some of them, in my opinion, go on too long.
I would be interested to see how they went about making a movie.
I'd be really interested to see if somebody could pull off a movie of IJ, the eschaton scene would be so much fun to watch! On the other hand, I think it would be extremely difficult to condense the book into a movie and maintain the pacing that DFW has so deliberately put in place.
I also wonder how the concept of the novel as history or more broadly as a description of contemporary culture would translate into film (which in its limited length and attention span of its viewers cannot be quite so epic)
You know, I was thinking along the same lines, but with Cryptonomicon. I think that book could be made into a pretty cool movie-- especially with the consant time and character changes. I think that historical movies are just so much fun to watch (I love period clothing etc) and people seem intrigued by World War II. I think a Cryptonomicon movie could be a hit.
Cryptonomicon reminds me of the Da Vinci Code a little bit... anyone else feel this way?