fiction files redux discussion

With Black Friday behind us, we're continuing the conversation started in the first 65 pages of Infinite Jest (here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...)

Given the wide range of reading habits and holiday schedules, we're assuming 15 pages a day... so this December discussion will take us to roughly page 470 PRE-DAWN, 1 MAY -- Y.D.A.U. (at which point, we'll add a thread for (obviously) January thoughts.

Back in comment #97 in our opening thread, Robert wrote:

One thing I am struck again & again is the rhythm at the sentence level.

I agree -- and am also moved by his structural rhythm as well. After the opening 65 pages, we get:

A comic, single page scene of Orin hang gliding into Mile High Stadium in costume.
A one page lecture on psychedelics (specifically the fly agaric mushroom) by Michael Pemulis.
Hal's one page, detail-packed meditation on "my first bit of 'Bob Hope'" and his dream of a "gargantuan" tennis court

THEN: ten pages of the harrowing description of Katherine Ann (Kate) Gompert on Suicide Watch on a fifth floor hospital psychiatric ward. (One of the most powerful lines for me is when she tells the doctor: 'I wasn't trying to hurt myself. I was trying to kill myself. There's a difference.')

Hugh! I was reading at lunch today and that was the exact last line I read before I had to close the book and get back to work. It really struck a chord in me too. Funny, yet so, so sad.

1) my favorite line so far (and not original) is "I say things like, 'The library and step on it.'"

2) Hugh, I think a December thoughts thread is a great idea, and the only way we will manage all the lovely things being written.

NOTE: If anyone knows of a ten-week course you can take to cover just the five pages from 79 to 85, where Schtitt and Mario have an ice cream cone, please let me know. There is so much packed into this -- including the set theory of Georg Cantor (which DFW will spend a whole BOOK on in Everything and More) and his "infinity of infinities of choice and execution". Then there's the endnote about E.L.D. and James Incandenza "whose frustrated interest in grand-scale failure was unflagging through four different careers, would have been all over Extra-Linear Dynamics like white on rice, if he had survived."

Hugh! I was just about to go grab my book and copy out a bit of a footnote from that very section! (from ft 35)

"...there can be an infinity of things between any two things no matter how close together the two things are..."

This about clearly sums up why it's taking me so long to get through each handful of pages.

Also, Hugh, the thing that I'm actually most interested in about that section is that the conversation about this type of infinity is being had by someone who doesn't have any grasp of mathmatics and someone whose function, as we were told back on page 54, is "filmic."


w/r/t the "library and step on it" line, it's been a long time since my first reading of IJ, but I don't remember Hal ever actually going to a library. Can't wait to see if he does. :)

Hugh wrote: "NOTE: If anyone knows of a ten-week course you can take to cover just the five pages from 79 to 85, where Schtitt and Mario have an ice cream cone, please let me know. There is so much packed into ..."

DFW packs a lot into this section no doubt - remember DFW was a philosophy major at one point, and no doubt a fan of the Germans - and the whole Schtitt proto-idealist rant certainly hangs together. More on that later.

Just wondering if the dimwit Mario riding on the back of Schtitt's motorbike in this scene remind any one else of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM)? Has to be a purposeful reference.
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Michael wrote: " the dimwit Mario riding on the back of Schtitt's motorbike..."

Of course, the retarded child in ZAMM was named Phaedrus; a point which endeared me to the book from the start.

Michael wrote: "Michael wrote: " the dimwit Mario riding on the back of Schtitt's motorbike..."

Of course, the retarded child in ZAMM was named Phaedrus; a point which endeared me to the book from the start."

There wasn't a retarded child in ZAMM. Phaedrus was the name the protagonist gave to his former, pre-electric shock treatment self.

Hugh wrote: "NOTE: If anyone knows of a ten-week course you can take to cover just the five pages from 79 to 85, where Schtitt and Mario have an ice cream cone, please let me know. There is so much packed into ..."

After an exhaustive and thorough 10-minutes of wikipedia research, I think what Schtitt and J.O.I. (and by extension, DFW) found beautiful about the game of tennis was that it can't really be predicted by mathematics. There are simply too many variables to be measured, and so it's beauty derives in part from this resistance to science, or meaningful measurement that the statistics-types emphasize. This elevates the game above the grubby paws of the measurers and places tennis in the realm of the arts.

I also like Schtitt's ruminations about the real opponent being one's self, and the other player "...is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self." A similar kind of romantic rumination is found later in Endnote 304 related to the Quebecois game "Le prochain train" - 'The variable of the game isn't so much a matter of the train, but the player's courage and will.'

For our December Thoughts, here's a music video from The Decemberists which re-enacts the infamous Eschaton game that commences on page 321. If you haven't reached this part of the book yet, the video might not make too much sense. Enjoy!

U.S. link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJpfK7...

Europe link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni7T1...

Jim wrote: "Michael wrote: "Michael wrote: " the dimwit Mario riding on the back of Schtitt's motorbike..."

Of course, the retarded child in ZAMM was named Phaedrus; a point which endeared me to the book from..."

Jim: You are right about this, somewhere over the intervening 30 (40!?) years since I've read ZAMM I've conflated the narrator's child, his son Chris who literally rode cross-country with him on the back of the motorbike, with the narrator's own past self "Phaedrus", a past self that was mentally impaired/ill/recently released from a hospital. I can see how one's such Past Self could be pictured as riding piggy back on one's shoulders, whispering into one's ear questions only a 10 year old boy would ask.
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Michael wrote: Jim: You are right about this, somewhere over the intervening 30 (40!?) years since I've read ZAMM I've conflated the narrator's child, his son Chris who literally rode cross-country with him on the back of the motorbike, with the narrator's own past self "Phaedrus", a past self that was mentally impaired/ill/recently released from a hospital. I can see how one's such Past Self could be pictured as riding piggy back on one's shoulders, whispering into one's ear questions only a 10 year old boy would ask...."

Oy! We're both too old for that kind of math!! Every time I do those kinds of calculations I feel like grandpa Simpson...

Completely off topic, but last year I read that the real life son of Pirsig's story in ZAMM, Chris, was killed on the street in S.F. Tragic!

Mario does seem to function as a voice of conscience whispering into the ear of the characters. The part about Schtitt being willing to open up only to Mario was a pretty sensitive moment in the scene. A bittersweet idea that one can open up to Mario because his disabilities/deformities render him a kind of non-entity who isn't really there, so it's safe to talk in front of him.

Jim wrote: "Mario does seem to function as a voice of conscience whispering into the ear of the characters."

I might take this opportunity to reread ZAMM after all these years, and I would bet you a right coast dollar (worth only 75 cents in the SF area) there is a more purposeful analogy between Chris and Phaedrus in the text. The overall theme of ZAMM, however, is the process of integrating rational and irrational thought/being.

My take is that the theme of the Shtitt rant is transcendence with a capital T - and this in essence just another way of describing the integration of rational and irrational being. So, I am still of the mind that putting Mario on the back of Shtitt's motorbike is in fact some homage, real or imagined by this reader, to ZAMM.
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Jim wrote: "Hugh wrote: "NOTE: If anyone knows of a ten-week course you can take to cover just the five pages from 79 to 85, where Schtitt and Mario have an ice cream cone, please let me know. There is so much..."
Some of this gets revealed later in Hal's near loss to Stice.

Hugh wrote: "After an exhaustive and thorough 10-minutes of wikipedia research..."

Hugh, I'm officially junking my short write up on Transcendental Idealism, Cantor's Transfinite Numbers, and DFW's conclusion that the player's "enfolding boundary, is the player himself."

If, as Shtitt seems to be saying here, that the infinite manifold of the game is overcome ("infoliating, contained"), at least in the best players, by an integrity of character that comes from within the player, I think the novelistic point that DFW is most straining to make here is that such Transcendence is, at least as it serve's DFW's themes, a form of Addiction.

OK, that might be a leap. I could argue it over a coffee with any of you, and don't want to spell it all out here and make you spend a good part of your afternoon reading it. I will, however, point to the following phrase,

"surrender-the-personal-individual-wants-to-the-larger-State-or-beloveed-tree-or-something"

on page 83, as DFW's formulation of such an equivalency.
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Jim wrote: "For our December Thoughts, here's a music video from The Decemberists which re-enacts the infamous Eschaton game that commences on page 321. If you haven't reached this part of the book yet, the vi..."

The link didn't work for me... What song is it so I can go watch???

Jerry wrote: "Jim wrote: "For our December Thoughts, here's a music video from The Decemberists which re-enacts the infamous Eschaton game that commences on page 321. If you haven't reached this part of the book..."

Calamity Song by The Decemberists

Michael wrote: " I think the novelistic point that DFW is most straining to make here is that such Transcendence is, at least as it serve's DFW's themes, a form of Addiction..."

Not a leap at all. Wallace knew the world of competitive tennis as a high-schooler AND the world of addiction and recovery later in life. Tellingly, he places Ennet House at the foot of the hill below ETA (not very subtle), but they occupy the same basic territory. Both have coaches/counselors, both have mind-numbing repetition as part of building tennis skills and rebuilding the self in recovery, respectively. ETA is preparing them for "the Show", Ennet House is preparing them for "Out There". Plenty of parallels between them...

DeLint and Poutrincourt's discussions with Helen Steeply re: how the academy tries to build the inner life of the ETA students so when the go to "The Show" (Out There), they will have a better chance of survival. Nearly identical to the work done at Ennet House.

Jim wrote: "Not a leap at all...."

Already we are hearing so much of the "giving oneself to", the "surrendering oneself to" drumbeat. Wait until we get into AA!

But in this case, at least, the thing surrendered to is the player's Übermensch.

I'd like to discuss some more, but I'm not sure where to start/where everyone else has read to... I have to say the part about the video phone (not sure how that fits into the story) was hilarious. Laugh out loud about looking "Nixonian".

Sandra wrote: "I'd like to discuss some more, but I'm not sure where to start/where everyone else has read to... I have to say the part about the video phone (not sure how that fits into the story) was hilarious...."

Seems like any part of this book is good for discussion. Maybe it would be helpful if we listed page numbers when talking about specific scenes.

Loved the whole video phone scene and the industry that grew up around it for false avatars, etc.

Sandra: In the general area of DFW's humor: I'd be curious to know (not that I'm asking you to EXPLAIN a joke, but more understand how DFW is pulling it off) what you thoughts are on his particular brand of humor. Is it because the descriptions are so odd? So specific? Both?

I'll make one last comment on the Schtitt section: that this bit (Schtitt-bit) felt a bit like the author's POV/worldview too somehow:

You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution.... You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.

Jim (and others): is it too early to discuss Marathe and Steeply? (There's a LOT more to come, but even in the seven pages from 87 to 95, we get a LOT of detail (well, oblique detail) about the Quebecois connections of the Incandenza's AND Don Gately's crime. (On first read, I KNOW I missed half of these.)

[BTW: Marathe's "Bröckengespenst" is another connection to Gravity's Rainbow: "As sunlight strikes their backs, coming in nearly flat on, it begins developing on the pearl cloudbank... Around these parts it is known as the Brockengespenst. [Pynchon leaves out the umlaut] God-shadows. Slothrop raises an arm. His fingers are cities...."

How Decemberists fit with the December discussion is eerie. Great video tribute, although, as a gamer, I wasn't crazy about Eschaton itself. Seemed to make about as much sense as quidditch. Great scene, though.

Funniest part for me so far was about the cynical bastards at the Ennet House House pulling various pranks.

Pavel wrote: "How Decemberists fit with the December discussion is eerie. Great video tribute, although, as a gamer, I wasn't crazy about Eschaton itself. Seemed to make about as much sense as quidditch. Great s..."

It's definitely a cerebral game of mathematics, statistics, and, once the game breaks down, general semantics. The paragraph that begins (337) "Just outside the fence, Pemulis is bug-eyed with fury" and gets into the whole "the map, not the cluster-fucking territory." argument is brilliant. This whole out-of-the-mouths-of-babes scene is a magnificent commentary on academia, science, and politics rolled into one. And of course, the controller of the Eschaton computer is O.P. 'Lord', a gentle nuclear winter snow is falling, and so on...

I'm finding that later in the book, this Eschaton scene sets in motion a whole lot of drama at ETA in the days following 8 November YDAU.

The reference to the Decemberists was distracting--I thought I had missed a thread In IJ with some sort link to Gravity's Rainbow. And wondered Russian conspirators figured in it before, not improbable given DFW's interest in Doestoevsky. Will have to listen to "Calamity Jane" with the Eschaton in mind. I enjoyed the account of the game, but it shows that DFW at his most pointedly symbolic. And the trouble that ensues is because the Game is not only game. Real issue in my mind when it comes to all the suffering & dysfunction in the name of tennis.

I have to say that on my first read, I certainly did not grasp the connections between the plot lines the way I am grasping them now. I somehow missed, the first time around, the importance of annulation.

Also, I do love, I mean really love, the footnotes, but to refer me to ft 45, which refers me to sub ft 304, which itself has footnotes, well. It seemed a little mean, honestly. Methinks there may be some control issues involved here.

Patty wrote: "I somehow missed, the first time around, the importance of annulation."

There is a good example of this in the section on the demise of videophony.

The career of videophony conforms neatly to this curve's classically annular shape: First there's some sort of terrific, sci-fi-like advance in consumer tech — like from aural to video phoning — which advance always, however, has certain unforeseen disadvantages for the consumer; and then but the market-niches created by those disadvantages — like people's stressfully vain repulsion at their own videophonic appearance — are ingeniously filled via sheer entrepreneurial verve; and yet the very advantages of these ingenious disadvantage-compensations seem all too often to undercut the original high-tech advance, resulting in consumer-recidivism and curve-closure and massive shirt-loss for precipitant investors.

(Don’t you love the way this brainiac writes! For example, the “massive shirt-loss for precipitant investors” punch at the end of this long-breath stretch of three sentences roped together by 3 semi-colons and 1 colon.)

One should note, also, in reference to the Schtitt-Cantor rant we discussed prior, that the turning point of any such curve is defined by the limit of that curve’s 1st derivative = 0. This limit supposes a continuum (I hear Cantor coming), and the intellectual ability to traverse it (transcend it) in a finite number of steps.

I think DFW is trying to use Calculus as a metaphor here, as we saw in the quote Hugh just posted, e.g.

“You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution...”,

but the jury is still out for this reader on whether this is a ham-fisted metaphor or not.

I’ve also noted, with the patience of a 2nd reader, the profusion of references to “ellipse” in the opening scene, and the profusion of references to “circle” in both the scene where the Moms is roto-tilling her backyard, and very much so in the section describing the physical layout of the ETA. In both cases it is a "squaring the circle" metaphor, which again gets us back to Calculus and those pesky Real Numbers.
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Michael wrote: "Patty wrote: "I somehow missed, the first time around, the importance of annulation."

There is a good example of this in the section on the demise of videophony.

The career of videophony conforms..."

Yes, the concept itself is interesting, but what I had missed the first time around were the political implications, the whole redrawing of national boundaries & the connection to the herds of giant hamsters and infants, and the political unrest surrounding the waste product from annulation...

Patty wrote: "Michael wrote: "Patty wrote: "I somehow missed, the first time around, the importance of annulation."

Speaking of which, think of the arc on those great canisters of waste being shot over the border into the great concavity.

Michael wrote: "Patty wrote: "Michael wrote: "Patty wrote: "I somehow missed, the first time around, the importance of annulation."

Speaking of which, think of the arc on those great canisters of waste being shot..."

Nice!

Michael wrote: "Speaking of which, think of the arc on those great canisters of waste being shot over the border into the great concavity..."

Kind of like the arcs of the Eschaton lobs.

Jim wrote: "Kind of like the arcs of the Eschaton lobs."

Bingo.

don't mind me, I'm just leaving a comment here so I get future notifications. I missed nearly all of these comments.

Good thing I'm reading this with you brainiacs to point out all this stuff that sails right over my head. Even concave and convex are calculus concepts.

Now in regards to why I found the video-phone scenario so amusing is because I can just totally imagine it going down that exact way. It's like DFW thoroughly thought this out and came to this precise preposterous conclusion (probably while high on pot). (see my own avatar! LOL) A month or so ago I read the biography on DFW Every Love Story is a Ghost Story and in it the author talks about how DFW was a real tv junkie. And I can relate because I was born in '61 (DFW a fewmonths later in 62, we could have been classmates...) and it seems like our generation was one of the first to have tv shape and kind of control our lives. My childhood was subsidized, through various years by Mattel, Hasbro, General Mills, Hostess, Frito-Lay. We were glued to the tv and I swear I remember an episode of The Jetsons where "Jane his wife" answered her video-phone wearing her good looking mask because she was still in her curlers and wasn't wearing any make-up. It struck my funny bone because the Nixon reference is so specific and you have to be "of a certain age" to even get how shitty and shifty people were thinking they looked on the videophone. And people, being the vain superficial creatures they are, will go to great lengths to make themselves seem somehow better than they actually are... To the point that they'd end up doing a complete 360 and end up preferring the old technology.

Sandra wrote: "Now in regards to why I found the video-phone..."

Jane's Morning Mask. Score 1000 points to Sandra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0idWiH...

Michael wrote: "Jim wrote: "Kind of like the arcs of the Eschaton lobs."

Bingo."

And then there's always the homage to Gravity's Rainbow which spends A LOT of time trying to describe and perfect the rocket's arc. You could say that the obsession with the rocket's arc in GR is similar to the "annular" obsession in IJ.

Sandra wrote: " And I can relate because I was born in '61 (DFW a fewmonths later in 62, we could have been classmates...) and it seems like our generation was one of the first to have tv shape and kind of control our lives. My childhood was subsidized, through various years by Mattel, Hasbro, General Mills, Hostess, Frito-Lay. We were glued to the tv.."

I was also born in '61 and raised by the TV. I can still sing jingles from 60's cigarette commercials... spooky!

What do you think about the whole age of InterLace video that Wallace created? No more advertising, a single source monopoly, un-pirateable source tapes, etc

"...All that Québécois s**t..."

This may be one of those conversations best left when folks have finished the entire book, but knowing that some may find themselves wandering the dense forest of IJ and wondering: "What IS this?", I thought I'd introduce it here....

In October, I had the good fortune to hear a roundtable on DFW that included both Mark Costello and Mary Karr (whom Sandra knows from her reading of the bio were important influences on the author.) At one point, Mary Karr commented on how overwritten and dense (my words, not hers) IJ is.

When an audience member pressed her on what she might have cut, she said: "All that Québécois s**t" (her words). Earlier, Costello had talked about how influential Karr had been in getting him to read Dostoevsky and as I heard her speak, I could definitely understand how she might connect more to the more personal, psychological complexities of Hal and his family, as well as DFW's insights into the suffering involved with bipolar depression and addiction, MORE than the political intrigue of the radical Canadian politics and plots.

That's a long way around the block to ask: are folks finding the Québécois storyline taking them deeper into this novel or is it all just a goofy, romp by a writer who is tempted to go Rabelaisian when things get a little too close to the (emotional) bone? For example, as funny as endnote 304 is with J.A.L. Struck Jr. plagiarizing his paper on Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, could he have cut these 8 pages with no loss to the reader?

Michael wrote: "Sandra wrote: "Now in regards to why I found the video-phone..."
Jane's Morning Mask. Score 1000 points to Sandra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0idWiH..."

And an additional points to Michael and YouTube for finding that particular scene from a 1960s cartoon!

Quick question. Was I supposed to read the whole endnote 304 when directed there by footnote 45 or just some part of it? Confused...

Sandra wrote: "Quick question. Was I supposed to read the whole endnote 304 when directed there by footnote 45 or just some part of it? Confused..."

It isn't really necessary to read it at that point in the book. Just know that Marathe lost his legs playing Le prochaine train when he was a teen. Instead, read 304 when it comes up again later in the book, IMHO...

Hugh wrote: ""...All that Québécois s**t..."

This may be one of those conversations best left when folks have finished the entire book, but knowing that some may find themselves wandering the dense forest of I..."

In a word, fuckmarykarrandthehorsesherodeinon!

IJ is a big book in the style of Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. Sure, you could cut stuff out of IJ, but then it wouldn't be a big book anymore. It's a pointless exercise to say Wallace should have done this or that. The book is published and so fixed as a literary object. If you want to say you don't care for a particular aspect of the book, well of course that's fine. To ask if the reader would survive without endnote 304 has no merit as a question.

Wallace has multiple parallel narratives running throughout the book for compare and contrast purposes, and for antagonistic dramatic purposes. Each of the narratives supports the others, so if you remove an element, you throw the book out of balance.

Is Wallace in love with his writing? Yes. Could he have trimmed a bit here and there? Probably. Did he ultimately leave us with a great literary achievement? Yes.

And to give Marykarr her due, the Quebecois narrative serves as a philosophical foil to the angst-ridden ETA kids, and the navel-gazing addicts of Ennett House. The separatists are drawn in a totally over the top way for dramatic effect, but they are there to question the lack of moral center and political engagement of the Americans they're trying to destroy via the samizdat. Remove them from the story and you've got a very boring Discovery Channel look at first world problems in the Boston Metro area...

IMHO, footnote 304 is DFWs answer to wtf is up with "...All that Québécois s**t..." It demonstrates the way that onanistic society views, from it's first world Boston-metro area pov, for instance, contemporary political strife as a distant story, happening elsewhere, not related to them at all. When in fact, as we are being shown, the strife is actually pretty intricately connected to the lives of these teen athletes and Boston drug addicts, they just don't see the connections. But we do.

Patty wrote: "IMHO, footnote 304 is DFWs answer to wtf is up with "...All that Québécois s**t..." It demonstrates the way that onanistic society views, from it's first world Boston-metro area pov, for instance, ..."

Well said.

Hugh wrote: ""...could he have cut these 8 pages with no loss to the reader? ..."

In a sense, this is something I have been up against generally on this second read through the book. Admittedly, these first 200 pages can be something of a slog – I admit it, there are a couple sections I even skipped altogether – and this gets me to thinking: on the first read-through I, maybe naively, felt as if I was watching the author warm to his story. The narrative got better and better, and then the magic pen just started to flow after a while. The DFW prose circa page 700 is on the whole a quantum leap better than the prose circa page 100. We see flashes of this genius narrator early on, but the voice just kept getting stronger and stronger as I read on into the book. This assumed, of course, that the book was written somewhat sequentially.

But now, as a second time reader and somewhat of a proselytizer for the book, I find myself in the strange position of admonishing my co-readers to “keep coming back”, or to “just hang in there” through these initial, weaker opening 200 pages. And I am beginning to wonder if the author purposely constructed the novel this way! NO author in his right mind would purposefully reinforce the “just hang in there” message that is pounded into us later on by making his readers endure a couple hundred pages of lesser writing. Would he?

I mean, why did he include the absurd/jokey Workmen's Comp claim? (p. 138)
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Ugh. I'm so behind! Only skimming your comments here because I don't want spoilers. I must say though I just finished the first Katherine Gompert section and it was SUCH EASY READING! I hope there is more prose like that. It didn't make my brain hurt, I only had to look up like two words, and there were only a small amount of footnotes! Yay!

The Gompert section was tragically beautiful and I know more than a few people who could really relate to her words.

I don't want to audibly open up an infinite can of worms, but wanted to pass along another way of ingesting Infinite Jest.

I have been listening to Moby Dick over the past month while running. The reader is brilliant and I tend to enjoy and retain a lot from listening. Most of my running has been at home on a treadmill, so I find myself constantly stopping to mark up and underline my book. Moby Dick, by the way ( I realize this is not news) is flipping Amazing!

The point of this is that I just discovered that Audible has IJ. It is apparently a $72 audiobook/file/etc., but it only costs you 1 credit, which is at the most $14. The narrator gets wonderful reviews. If you already have the service, it really is a hell of a deal. The downside is that it does not contain the endnotes. I realize that is a huge downside. Personally, if listening to IJ while running will help me to read/listen to it a lot faster and more often than I am, this is a good thing. I also figure that I keep flipping back and forth in the book anyway, so one more reason to have to hit the endnotes is not a big deal. IJ will be massively marked up just as my copy of The Whale is.

Okay, now I have opened myself up to claims that I am not really reading the book, fire away. To me it is just one more method of immersing myself in literature . . . just like an e-reader. I might get one soon.

Thanks to all of you who are making this reading experience so much less blind than it would have been without you!