Maybe book club isn't the best term for this, a drifting post about David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I am reading. Because "book club" insinuates people, or at least more than one person, participating. So this is less book club, and more person reading a book, and then blogging about it. If we're calling a spade a spade, you know? Although maybe someone else has read this book and also this blog and can provide some comment. Yes/No/Maybe so?
I heartily recommend making the effort (and it is an effort), at this point of my being 150 pages into the 1097 or so total, including some 100 pages of endnotes. There are stumbling blocks, like the "Wardine/dopesick" sections, which switch over to a weird narrative voice that is like the dumbest of Youtube comments, without the L337. These sections vaguely remind me of the parts of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying that are narrated by Vardaman, the retard or whatever. I haven't read that shit since high school. But these narrators are not retarded, just drug addicts/residents of the projects.
Anyway: Endnote 304. It's about kids in Canada playing this game where they jump in front of approaching trains -- the winner is the last person to successfully cross the tracks in front the train safely. Actually, that's not exactly true -- the endnote (which is some 8 pages long) is about one character plagiarizing a scholarly work that describes the above game, as it pertains to the Quebec separatists. This takes place in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. The plagiarizing, not the train jumping. Although maybe the train jumping still takes place in the Y. of the D.A.U., its not exactly clear at this point.
I felt guilty about reading this endnote, which was referred to in other endnotes but had not yet come in the actual text. So reading it, skipping ahead, felt like it was cheating somehow. Which is kind of a weird emotion to have about reading a book I own. But I was assuaged by various posts at Infinite Summer (a valuable resource), that said its no big deal to read 304, and that the narrator was telling us to read it by referring to it in the other endnotes. And now I am glad I read it, because the wheelchair assassins make more sense, at least in their origin.
In conclusion, a description of Cage III: Free Show, which is contained in the filmography of one James O. Incandenza, aka Endnote 24.
* B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Infernatron Animation Concepts, Canada. Cosgrove Watt, P.A. Heaven, Everard Maynell, Pam Heath; partial animation; 35 mm.; 65 minutes; black and white; sound. The figure of Death (Heath) presides over the front entrance of a carnival sideshow whose spectators watch performers undergo unspeakable degradations so grotesquely compelling that the spectators’ eyes become larger and larger until the spectators themselves are transformed into gigantic eyeballs in chairs, while on the other side of the sideshow tent the figure of Life (Heaven) uses a megaphone to invite fairgoers to an exhibition in which, if the fairgoers consent to undergo unspeakable degradations, they can witness ordinary persons gradually turn into gigantic eyeballs. INTERLACE TELENT FEATURE CARTRIDGE #357-65-65
edit: Upon rereading this post, I have come to realize it makes little to no sense outside of my own brain/the brain of someone who has also read this book. I would try and fix this post, by which I mean make it coherent, but that's impossible barring a red wine and quaalude bender. So read this book and then you will be privy to jokes about Interdependence Day and The Year of the trial-size Dove Bar and excessive use of acronyms. Also here's a
DFW interview if you are interested.
