fiction files redux discussion

In review, Sven Birkerts calls Infinite Jest a "A multi-layered postmodern saga of damnation and salvation". Huh? This would usually be enough to make me exhale "this sounds like too much work. . " and put the book back on the shelf. But maybe. Just maybe. . .

The events described in the novel are taking place in the indeterminate future, possibly several decades hence. Some features are familiar, while others have an ominous or spoofy futuristic cast. Wallace is not afraid to commingle various tonal and thematic registers.

So, can we play with this?

Point here is to look at this as a potential place for literary play. This is possible by looking at the place between words and meaning-- our interpretation as a play ground for creating mental images through narrative and memory--something new through something experience.

The memories of your past experience are used to make meaning of new experience.

From the review:

"Details, details -- but it is sometimes by way of details and their transformation that we understand a bit more about the alchemist's retort that is the writer's imagination."


So the past creates the future.

Where is terra firma?

Perhaps, like literary criticism, life is just association, interpretation, and outright exaggeration.

We see what we have seen, and we recall the familiar to come to terms with the new and strange. And all we can see is based upon what we have seen.

So what is the point?

I don't know.

But the point of this group read is to look at literary interpretation as a form of play.

Playing with ideas evoked in the text to create a new story through our meaning making.

The big question, should this kind of behavior be encouraged?

I hope so.

Can we look at literary theories as toys rather than the cliche, "lenses".

So, can literary interpretation be a playground, and criticism and interpretation toys to promote play?

What I propose is a collection of literary toys in the form of literary criticism. Here is a list of potential toys:

Feminist/Gender Criticism (they are separate but I’m simplifying)
View society in a “patriarchal” and “heterosexual” way, which has hindered or prevented women and homosexuals from realizing their true potential. Claim that both groups are viewed negatively, inferior, or as “the other.”
· Consider the gender/orientation of the author, characters
· What roles does gender or sexuality play in this work? (Examine power relations)
· Look for sexual stereotypes either reinforced or contradicted
· Imagine yourself as the opposite gender reading the text

Marxist Criticism
Views society based on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles. Assumes that each society is made up of a set of concepts, beliefs, values, and ways of thinking influenced by economic and class structures.
· Consider who has the power/money and who doesn’t
· What role does power, money, or class play in this work?
· What happens as a result in differences in power/money?
· Relate context of work to social-class of author and/or time period

Psychoanalytic Criticism
Views text as an expression of the personality, state of mind, feelings, and desires of its author. Looks for the distinction between conscious and unconscious motives of characters and author.
· Consider the author’s personality to explain and interpret a text
· What psychological theories are present in the characters (Oedipal complex, obsessive compulsive, sexual repression, denial, guilt)?
· What repressed material is expressed in imagery or symbols?

New Criticism/Structuralism
Views text as existing independently. Meaning is discovered by doing a close reading and not by examining outside sources.
· Focuses on the meanings and interactions of words, figures of speech, and symbols.
· Looks for complex interrelations and ambiguities within a text.
· Analyzes how parallels are established and create a unity within the text

Narratology/Archetypes: A form of Structuralism that focuses on the structure of stories. Identifies 31 actions that a story can contain and claims all stories pick from this list. Also focuses on the specific character types that are repeated within all stories—hero, villain, trickster, orphan, mentor etc.
Deconstruction/Post-Structuralism (definitely the most confusing one)
Created by some very intelligent or very disturbed people who view literature as having no meaning because language has no meaning. Basically, you can never really know what the “meaning” of a story is because words are so abstract.

Historical Criticism/Post-Colonial
Views text as a closely related to the time during which an author wrote. Focused on the social, political, economic, cultural, and/or intellectual climate of the time. Examines how other cultures are viewed in terms of an overpowering Western literature base.
· Looks at issues of colonization and imperialism
· Rejects the idea of marginalized people as “others”
· Celebrates “hybridity” (existing in two cultures at once)

Modernism/Post-Modernism:
Modernism is a rejection of traditional forms of literature (chronological plots, continuous narratives, closed endings etc.) in favor of experimental forms. They have a nostalgia for the past that they feel is lost so Modernist texts often include multiple allusions. Post-Modernists follow the same principles but celebrate the new forms of fragmentation rather than lamenting them.
· Look for ironies within a text
· Analyze fragmentation and a mixing of genres and forms
· Blurs the line between “high” literature (classics) and popular literature

So here we go, at play in the fields of the bored.

Brilliant set of starting points for this novel. It feels natural to start thinking about Psychoanalytic Criticism, but you guys could go much deeper.

Look at what I got for Christmas! I've finally got the much anticipated chronological reading guide.

I hope you will share the fruits of this gift!

I think psychoanalysis is a good place to start too.

I like how the Christmas Tree lights illuminate it like a gift from the Incandenza family.

So onto the couch, and tell me about your mother. Cigar?

I hope you like the idea of playing with the novel. I am thinking of criticism as play like a parallel universe of narrative possibility. Does it matter what the author intended? Probably, but we will really never know what he meant. From what I understand, it is really not possible to know, and he is probably not sure what he meant either. As I understand, our beloved children enter the world to be misunderstood, and when they return, we cannot understand them either.

So maybe we adopt this child and estrange it from it's parentage. Is it important to knwo the author? Maybe. Everything is fair game.

So far I have been wowed by the many resources for this book.

Also, I could not check it out at the library. Who knew it was in demand like this?

I am enjoying the Infinite Jest Scene-By-Scene Guide. http://faculty.sunydutchess.edu/oneil...

I see great promise here as is evidenced byscene 23, pg. 67-68

YDAU

1st person: Hal, after a bong hit, relates a tennis dream

This already feels a bit like gravity's rainbow.

Here is something that is substantial:

In the novel's world, each year is subsidized by a specific corporate sponsor, for reasons not entirely explained. The years of Subsidized Time are listed here, in order:
Year of the Whopper
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar
Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken
Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster
Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office Or Mobile [sic]
Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland
Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
Year of Glad

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Hey, Brock, this entertains me so much. That link has a neon glow.

After really giving your questions some thought, I got lost in one of my really dusty texts about hermeneutics.

Tell me, do you think DFW's intentions matter?

Hi Elizabeth,

I think his intentions do matter.

There is definitely a message here and he must have wanted to tell us something--but since this is the decade of the over-confident and unaware, what really matters is what we think, and our ability to broadcast it for shameless self-promotion!

But seriously, I think it does matter what he meant.

I am thinking that the description of the interview to join the school must be autobiographical.In some ways he has to be sharing his real experiences.

But stories are ideas that make us think of experience.

Perhaps we can say understand, but can we really?

What if arrange a coffee with DFW, and he explains his purpose? Even if we think we understand, can we really? When I picture the table they sat around, or the room where the admissions interview took place in the opening pages, am I seeing the same imagery in my minds eye? Likely, I am drawing from my own prior experience and memory which is assembled by his paragraphs.

I am rambling here, but kind of having fun navel-glazing. Am I making sense?

Even when trying to understand somebody significant and familiar, can we really say we understand?

And do you think DFW knows what he is ultimately trying to say? My thought is that he is working on it, and it is likely he may have never figured it out. I think about what James Thurber said: "I do not know what I think until I read what I write." But then, Thurber also said "puppy biscuits" with no apparent anchor to the thought. Randomness is what we are immersed in, and we attempt to find order in everything. Maybe DFW is trying to find patterns and create order?

Also, do you think he would describe the meaning of the book today the same way he would have described it 10 years ago?

Puppy Biscuit.



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Okay, Brock. I've read over the posts here, and I've pondered and I've meditated, and I now I'm just going to come right out and ask.

Are you actually reading IJ? Or have you already read it? What's going on here?

Hi Patty,

I am reading it now.

A friend and I went out to lunch, and we decided that we should explore the idea of literary play--are stories toys?

So I thought I would put it out there.

The literary contact lenses are supposed to be toys or party drugs to mutate the story into whatever seems fun. The idea is to just see where the novel leads into frivolous imaginative play.

Maybe this is a surrealist critical lens?

Fishsticks!

I would like to see this as a curriculum approach in literature classes!

Year of Glad

I cannot get over the reach of vocabulary, the complexity of phrasing, and the cognitive demands of the time shifts in this first chapter. This is not a book for the lazy reader. DFW has positioned you against a socially reluctant teenager with what seems to be clear case of aphasia, perhaps brought upon by eating a patch of fungus in his christopher robins. Perhaps this patch of mold:
horrific: darkly green, glossy, vaguely hirsute, speckled with
parasitical fungal points of yellow, orange, red . .


and gnawed upon. Okay, is this the beginning of the long strange trip? Do you know the mushroom man? And there is Moms, vibrating from the rented rototiller now off, asking god for help as she runs drunkenly through the planned garden rows of popsicle sticks and string.

"I ate this"

tell me Moms, how does your garden grow?


Is this why he becomes the boy with an intellectual family name that might be Billy Jean Hegel-shakespeare-Hawk-king, but told in the sense of Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt with an eye for detail that will distract the reader into little personal reveries as they try to imagine and picture his world.

So here is this kid who has a fit when questioned and cannot communicate his genius. He wirggles, wraggles, and has fits with the sounds of drowning goats. He needs an intermediary, but his uncle is removed from the room--and he melts down. But he knows that his sedation will prepare him for a match with a blind tennis player using sonic balls. Of course he will beat him, he will be more rested from the opiates. He is an opportunist for the world he is removed from.

He is not one of us.

What is clear from the narration is that this kid's inner life is something for which we need a translator. The uncle advocates as the interface, but he is a grifter. And by the way, is DFW really going to give us multiple nicknames for everyone like the dead russians do?

All of the literary party drugs are really going to create a long strange trip in just the first chapter--there is a fungus amongus--

Do we look at the feminist perspective and explore his differentness from the perspective of the dusty old men that form the academic gatekeepers?

Examine the structural elements to understand the psychology of the writer's possible intentions?

The psychoanalytic? What the fuck does DFW put on his cornflakes? Really? What is he doing? This is the same question the gatekeepers ask our aphasic hero. Yes, I just used a noun as an adjective. Nominatively, this kid does define his surroundings based upon who he is. All descriptions must reference him-- he is the oddity, and the new rule.

Do we get all Terrence McKenna?

“The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.”
― Terence McKenna

But will anyone understand?

Is there magic? Or just brain aphasia? read on

So what do you know, there are examples of aphasia brought about due to fungus:

http://health.nytimes.com/health/guid...

I keep meaning to create a real, play based response for you, Brock. I start generating some idea, and somebody pours a box of kix on my couch, etc.

Sorry I have to clarify, but are you reading the book for the first time? I want to read along with you. This week I have been finishing up the Pale King, but I could easily just switch. If you are re-reading, would you consider the chronological reading list from Elegant Complexity? I could type it in or find some other way of getting it to you.

I am reading this for the first time. The reading list would be cool.

I just read "year of depends undergarments" and I cannot help thinking of the Metamorphosis. I am also curious about the jump from the socially inept tennis player to Gregor Samsa. More on this later.

I am glad you got to the couch before they could add the milk.

What page are you on now?

just finished "the conversationalist"

himself put on a fake nose--still not sure if he is really talking

One thing that I think you will find specifically exciting about the book, Brock, is that there just isn't anything that DFW does repeatedly, except for jarring the thought process of the reader. It is almost as if he is forcing you to really experience the book without the ability to draw spanning conclusions. As you get used to it, the feeling is very addictive.

yes, it is a literary food fight

Brock wrote: "yes, it is a literary food fight"
:)

The footnotes are like whizzing milk cartons. They might be empty, or they might be full of peas and salisbury steak.

the fun of a food fight is that you can eat on the run

Hey, so what kind of progress have you made Brock? Have you finished it yet? I just started re-reading it the other day have thrillingly cruised through the first 60 pages.

Check out this site, pretty cool. It probably won't help in understanding the book, but it sure is fun.

http://pooryorickentertainment.tumblr...

Hi Dan,

I put it down for a while. I am about where you are so maybe we can share notes and make shit up. So far i cannot get over all the cockroaches and my fear that this book is really just an extension of the AMC series Mad Men.

I did think it was kind of brilliant of HIMSELF to pose as a professional conversationalist so he could engage his teenage son in talking about what he would talk about if he were to talk with him. Good metatalk son . . .

Are they all just kafkaroaches?

Hey, sorry for the delayed response. I am approaching the mid-200s of the book and have also been reading out of Elegant Complexity and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest as I go.

Good news: cockroaches do not appear again (at least through page 230 (if at all)).

Himself as professional conversationalist was indeed brilliant and there are plenty of descriptions and scene throughout the book that make it so much fun to read.