Hal and Gately converged in some ways near the end. Both end up attending Ennet house meetings, and are connected to Joelle, and have a dangerous addiction to drugs, but there's more....

I feel like we a got a lot of horizontal or reposed imagery near the end, especially with the two of them. There was the scene where Hal was lying in his room and can't get up (902), and the scene with Gately falling onto the floor when he's really drugged up (938), Gately being stuck in the hospital bed, and of course the end, with Gately lying on the cold sand at the beach. All of these reposed positions kept evoking a death/corpse image for me.

The last word of Underworld was "Peace", which obviously had some deeper meaning.
Here, however, the last words are "And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was out."
Not a very cheery scene really. At first, I found it interesting that Wallace decided to end with Gately and not one of the Incandenza's. But then I decided I knew most about Gately anyway- he was the most transparent character in the end. Or the character tha we know the most about. Most of the questions about Gately were resolved (unlike Hal and Orin, I thought, but maybe I missed something. always a possibility)

I just wanted to explain my take on why Infinite Jest, a video of mother saying "i'm sorry" over and over again is as entertaining as it is. My reasoning may seem childish if not outright silly but I think that part of the reason this video is as addicting as it is because the idea of a motherly apology is so remote. Call me crazy and playing on exaggerations and jokes, but I don't think anyone can deny that at some point in their life before adulthood, they were "wronged" in some way and felt they deserved an apology they never received. What's more, you probably were forced to admit that you were at fault even when you truly believed otherwise; in a sense, a false forced confession. This double whammy makes people loose faith in any idea of justice and fairness. Moreover, because parents are the authority and monopolizer of power within a family unit, we as children view such an act as an abuse of power.

Finished! 3 down, 1 to go. I'm not sure I fully understood everything that happened in the end, but hopefully some of the pieces will click soon.

So. There was one scene that really tied in to the whole "family relations" thing that a lot of groups were talking about yesterday:

"What moved *me* to feel sorry for Orin was that it seemed pretty obvious that that had nothing to do with what Himself was trying to talk about. It was the most open I'd ever heard of Himself being with anybody, and it seemed terribly sad to me, somehow, that he'd wasted it on Orin. I'd never once had a conversation nearly that open or intimate with Himself" (956).

Okay, so I finished Infinite Jest this morning, and I don't really feel closure. We had some guesses reaffirmed by Hal near the end, and some light was certainly shed on Gately's past, but I didn't really feel an end. I guess I was hoping to see a little more of Joelle and to figure out more about Marathe. To tell you the truth, I am still confused about Marathe. What became of him and the wheelchair gang? Does anybody know? Were we supposed to know? I wish we knew what became of my favorite character, Pemulis. He was expelled (right?) and now he is just waiting out the semester before he leaves? I'm also guessing he wants to talk to Hal about doping him up.

Page 761, "...in an extreme corner are fleur-de-lis pennons on tall sharp polished sticks. C.T.'s office has an O.N.A.N. flag and a 49-star U.S.A. flag."

50 states - New Hampshire- Maine - Rhode Island - Vermont...
49??????? any ideas anyone

I'm wondering why Wallace decided to include so much vital information in the footnotes section! This section of reading was especially footnote-heavy, with two entire chapters in the footnotes instead of the main text (fn #324 and #332). These footnotes even start with the classic "17 November- Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" heading. I don't understand the stylistic reasoninig behind putting such info in the footnotes. Anyone have any ideas?

So I'm not sure if I even knew this was possible, but Ortho Stice got his forehead stuck to a window. This scene (865- 876ish) was hilarious, but I'm also not entirely sure I get the significance of it (although maybe the significance has yet to come by page 900?). Throughout all of Hal's plotting to get Stice loose ("Dark, prepare yourself mentally" (870)), Stice is speculating about paranormal matters. I thought it was interesting how a.) Stice seems more concerned about ghosts and stuff than about having his forehead stuck to a window and b.) that neither Hal nor Stice immediately refutes the idea that there may be paranormal "things" in the ETA. Hal says that "Mario says he's seen paranormal figures, and he's not kidding, and Mario doesn't lie . . . so belief-wise I don't know what to think. Subhadronic particles behave ghostishly. I think I withhold all prejudgment on the whole thing" (871). So obviously there's been some speculation on the matter, and even Hal has a hard time refuting the fact that there may be paranormal things floating around the ETA.

I was amused at Himself's movie about nuns. The fact that he is using nuns and violence to talk about AA and the very things we discussed in class: trading in one addiction for another one (cigarettes, coffee, AA meetings, God).

Also, the young new nun is disfigured, and addicted. This all made me think of Joelle's experience at AA. This film would have been made before all this, but it still seems like it might connect.

Has anyone else noticed/blogged about Orin having the same defects that we're beginning to see more of in Hal? Or Orin's similarities to the Entertainment?

When Orin is having sex with the non-Swiss spy woman, there's a scene that describes how "Orin can only give, not receive, pleasure." (596), which makes him seem as though he's a wonderful lover to the bajillion girls he's slept with. He's found that he needs these women to feel pleasure and completely in love with him, or under his control (very drug and addict-like, but not the point of this post).

Later in this scene, when the Wheelchair Assassin/survey-taker knocks on the door, Orin feels at his face, and then describes missing sneering at things he loves (p 599). This was especially interesting seeing he was feeling at his face, an action we usually see in Hal to confirm what expression he's currently wearing, paired with the description of an incompatible facial expression/emotion set. As in, "sneering" and "love" just don't generally go together. The passage ends with "Orin's smile wasn't as cool as he thought..." (601).