So I just kind of have some random thoughts that I thought I'd stick together:

I've had to stop marking sections that I found funny in the novel because otherwise I'm going to run out of sticky-notes before the end of it. As the novel goes on, I find that it strikes me as funnier and funnier. I think it's because Wallace builds on the characters and incidents so much that the more you read, the more you know and thus the more amusing it becomes.

I thought it was interesting how, on page 548, Wallace includes this little paragraph stating, "except for Pat Montesian's bay-windowed office and the House Manager's phone-booth-sized back office and the two live-in Staff bedrooms down in the basement, none of the doors inside Ennet House have locks, for predictable reasons." I thought this came completely out of nowhere; sure, it's predictable, but I wonder if there's a reason why Wallace decided to put that bit of information in at that moment.

I notice that Wallace constantly (in my interpretation) shows the medical (specifically psychiatric) field as relatively useless and foolish. I find it highly amusing, even on a personal level, but at the same time I silently ask the author “why do you dislike counselors so much?” Not only are tons of characters addicted, they also can’t seem to get any decent professional mental help. I’ll list the things that make me think of this as a theme:

-Hal’s father had that whole “professional conversationalist” stunt that sort of set up a lack of faith in the title “professional”.

The discussion on Monday about what was going on with Joelle got me thinking about the idea of fatal pleasures. Joelle might be covering her beauty because it's too much, ie. fatal beauty. It's implied that that's got something to do with why the Entertainment is so fascinating. Therefore, her beauty really can actually kill someone.

This adds beauty to the list of pleasures and pursuits that Wallace is saying can be pursued to a point of no return. Beauty, entertainment, drugs, thrills. I'd say it was a commentary on American pasttimes, except the pursuit of thrills until death was from the Fauteuils Rollants, who are definitely Canadian.

I saw parts in this section's Maranthe/Steeply interaction that reminded me of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."

"but what of the freedom-to? Not just freedom-from. Not all compulsion comes from without. You pretend you do not see this. What of freedom-to. How for the person to freely choose?...How is there freedom to choose if one does no learn how to choose?" (320)

Published in 1986, Atwood's novel deals with a dystopian world in which this "freedom-to" is extinguished for a significant amount of the population, and its loss is particularly obvious with the protagonist stuck in a role not of her own choosing. She implies that the loss of "freedom-to" resulted in dystopia, whereas Wallace's novel suggests that freedom-to" has always been lacking.

On page 298, Orin is describing how enjoyable he finds watching the clips of him punting footballs. "He saw something different each time he rewound, something more. The him in ways he could never have engineered. He sat rapt. It only hapened when he watched them alone. Sometimes he got an erection. He never masturbated." This reminded me of course of Gravity's Rainbow. These male characters are aroused by non traditional stimuli. Orin is dating the P.G.O.A.T. and yet he's turned on by images of himself?

I've been having a lot of trouble getting through long segments on this book in one sitting, but I found myself rapt during the Eschaton scene in the same way I remember being transfixed when I first read Lord of the Flies. Both depict ostensible reversions into baseline atavism, but in so doing also raise the provocative question: has atavism actually become normtive in contemporary society (or 1940's society, in the case of Lord of the Flies)? How much difference is there, as far as alienation and dehumanization are concerned, between an unrestrained fist fight and this violent game the children are playing, not to mention their insane, routinized leaves at Enfield?

I was wondering if anybody knew of the Catholic statue that is mentioned in the "Raquel" passage:

"...this photo of a statue of a woman whose stone robes were half hiked up and wrinkled in the most godawfully sensually prurient way, the woman reclined against uncut rock, her robes hiked and one stone foot hanging off the rock as her legs hung parted, with a grinning little totally psychotic-looking cherub-type angel standing on the lady's open thighs and pointing a bare arrow at where the stone robe hid her cold tit, the woman's fae upturned and cocked and pinched into that exact same shuddering-protozoan look beyond pleasure or pain" (373).

At the very beginning of this section Poor Tony Krause is withdrawing from heroin and also the grain alcohol that was in the cough medicine he was drinking. Wallace ties Tony directly in with time, which I thought was kinda cool. The excruciating agony that he was going through was extended and Tony's perception of time was completed distorted.
"Time began to take on new aspects for him, now, as Withdrawl progressed. Time began to pass with sharp edges. Its passage in the dark or dimlit stall was like time was being carried by a procession of ants...Byt the second week in the stall time itself seemed the corridor, lightless at either end...after more time time then ceased to move or be moved" (302)

Everyone should read the acknowlegements on the copyright page in the front of Infinite Jest. It especially pertains to this block of reading and the long explanations of the AA meetings.
"Besides Closed Meetings for alcoholics only, Alcoholics Anonymous in Boston, Massachusetts, also has Open Meetings, where pretty much anybody who's interested can come and listen, take notes, pester people with questions, etc. A lot of people at these Open Meetings spoke with me and were extremely patient and garrulous and generous and helpful. The best way I can think of to show my appreciations to these men and women is to decline to thank them by name."

On page 305 Tony has a seizure and Foster writes that it hurts...yet I understood that seizures don't hurt. I'm not sure why this bothers me...I think so much of his book is immersed in topics I don't know a lot about...so I have to trust his facts.