I really liked "infamous Boston AA cake analogy" which compares AA's methods to baking a cake on page 467. I liked the tone of determined frustration in Gately's thought process as he describes it: "It didn't mater one fuckola whether Gately like believed a cake would result, or whether he understood the fucking baking-chemistry of howa cake would result:if he just followed the motherfucking directions, and had sense enough to get help from slightly more experienced bakers .... a cake would result. He'd have his cake." I think the analogy goes a long way to show that we can't understand everything on our own and that sometimes we just have to accept a blind faith in the directions in order to obtain the end result. I think one of the great ironies of these addicts and culture as a whole is how far they are willing to figure out how to be progressively more entertained when simple directions could pretty much do about the same. In other words, sometimes it just works.

I found that the term "aphasia" or aphasiac has been used multiple times in the reading (525,588, previously but am too lazy to find). Aphasias are fascinating neurological deficits. Two common ones, Broca's and Wernicke's, deal with language processing. With Wernicke's, for example, you talk nonsensically even if you might understand what people are saying to you. The words coming out of your mouth simply don't align with thoughts.

While I feel that DFW uses some interesting adjectives, the continued references to neurological conditions (Madame Psychosis' radio show scene filled with neuroanatomy, etc) struck me as very interesting.

This has already been posted on a billion times, I know, I'm just too lazy to find the right post to comment on.

On 677 Ms. Steeply (the reporter) and DeLint and watching the match between Hal and Stice and DeLint talks about the pressures of winning- "Winning two and three upset matches, feeling suddenly so loved,so many talking to you as if there is love. But always the same, then. For then you awaken to the fact that you are loved for winning only. The two and three wins created you, for people. It is not that the wins made them recognize something that existed unrecognized before these upset wins. The from-noplace winning created you. You must keep winning to keep the existence of love and endorsements and the shiny magazines wanting your profile."

Okay, so this is going way back in the book (I like how way back is page 281...), but Wallace mentions a book called Flatland:

"A good quarter of the bus was yellow-highlighting copies of E.A. Abbott's inescapable-at-E.T.A. book Flatland for either Flottman or Chawaf or Thorp" (281).

I was curious, so I looked the book up online and read a bit of it. It's basically a description of a world in which everything is two-dimensional:

"Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows--only hard with luminous edges--and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen."

I found the section around page 500 about James (Jim) Incandenza as a child interacting with his father very interesting. Did anyone else notice that Jim speaks similar to the way Hal speaks? I think that it is the matter-of-factness with which they both express their ideas. Looking at the way Hal speaks to Orin, responding with what seems like no emotion, it reminds me of this passage on page 499 where Jim is speaking to his father: "But I said I'd definitely hgeard and could confirm the prescence of a squeak when he'd pressed on the mattress, and could verify that the squeak was no one's

I'm really interested in socially construction rules and limitations, and the various effects of transgression. The overarching dichotomic structure of drugs v. tennis in the novel can be read as an exploration of this theme: American culture encourages discipline, focus, and specialization, and tennis is an acceptable venue, whereas drugs are not. Why is this? The commonsensical answer - something along the lines of "well drugs are bad" - I think requires further interrogation. Why has drug use been devalorized to such an extreme degree? Answers will vary depending on one's analytic framework, but I'm inclined to say it's because drug addicts do not serve the interests of capital, or, more rigorously, stigmatizing drug use and relegating to marginalized sectors of society (which is a deeply racialized process) serves the interests of capital by legimitizing oppression - the diagnosis of drug problems within a community tends to justify cutting funding for social programs and what not.

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.

I thought the scene where Steeply tells Marathe about his father's obsession with M*A*S*H was really interesting and powerful. For one thing, there were parts to it that were downright amusing (I love Marathe's language issues, like on page 639 when he says "'I am knowing of the U.S.A. historical broadcast television comedy program M*A*S*H.'") But I also think this section speaks to both the idea of excess and the idea of addiction. It's pretty obvious where the excess comes into play--after all, Marathe astutely states that Steeply's father's "unbalance of temptation cost him his life" (646). Thus, this is a severe case of addiction--addiction to M*A*S*H, yes, and in broader terms, an addiction to entertainment (one of Wallace's favorite topics). For Steeply's father, it's as though M*A*S*H was his own personal Infinite Jest, and he couldn't stop watching it, so it eventually killed him. I'm guessing we're going to see more "personal" Infinite Jests such as this one throughout the rest of the novel.

On page 433 it says that Mario had insisted that he be the one to clean up the mess that was the result of Clipperton "blowing his brains out" inside a room in the ETA. I was wondering if anyone knew/had an idea about why Mario insisted on this. Do you think it had something to do with the fact he was the only one able to connect with Clipperton?

I find it intreguing how many people worry about Madame Psychosis and her radio show after Joelle has "vanished". Several sections of this book are dedicated to the steps that the MIT radio station takes in the wake of madame psychosis- first Madame diagnosis (who reads scripture in pig-latin, and was generally ill-received. as she should have been), then just playing the background music on loop for an entire hour. People call in, even forge to the basement of the recording studio to inquire about her. the engineer answers phone calls "at once denying and encouraging rumors of suicide, institutionalization, spiritual crisis, silent retreat, pilgrimage to the snow-capped East." People just refuse to let het it go- her show someone captivated them like none of the cartridges or other entertainment did. some "have this firm conviction that Madame was still actually still showing up and sitting there by the mike but not saying anything."