Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #8 of 8: Pages 845 - 981

In the interest of posterity, I have moved all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the Infinite Jest tag for other posts already up. This is the last one. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Pages 845-864: 13th-Stepping

— There was a question in previous weeks as to everything that was going on around Gately at the hospital, and what was a "dream" versus what was real. I think at this point, we are comfortable in distinguishing between the two. There is reality, there are memories of Gately REMEMBERING, and then those memories are warped in psychedelic ways for the dreams. There is no wraith this week, but considering all this, I think we can say definitively that Jim Incandenza the Ghost was REAL and not a DREAM.

— The Winston Churchill joke is similar to the one made in Dazed and Confused, though that one was Abraham Lincoln. I wonder if Wallace ever saw that movie.

— The Mrs. Waite story was interesting in how real it feels. Both in the vivid details, but also in the way that Gately doesn't exaggerate anything. This isn't a redemptive tale or a cautionary lesson. It was just something that happened to Gately, one that made no measurable impact on him at the time.

— And yet, in Remembering it, Gately seems to be learning a lesson anyway.

— I thought the line of "which who needed witches to fear and despise when you had the good old M.P. right there at the kitchen table" was interesting and also incredibly sad. And made me wonder about the function of ghost stories, and whether those with trauma in their lives have less of a propensity to be interested in them.

— It's underlined again and again that the substance abusers who are in recovery and who are "Remembering" are not doing by choice. E.g. here, Gately says that he's "involuntarily realized" that the parents would rope Gately into the birthday celebrations because they felt bad for him. Choice or chance, the act of remembering is so valuable.

— I really appreciate how Gately is humble about all this. He "isn't so into self-torture" as to think he had anything to do with Mrs. Waite's suicide. But he's also not dismissing the memory. He doesn't state it outright, but the memory means something.

— Okay, this is important: Gately's dream where Joelle is in Mrs. Waite's kitchen...... this is Infinite Jest, right? The Samizdat? What do we make of this? On a literal level, I see three possibilities: 1) Joelle has told him (or is currently telling him) about the movie; 2) Jim implanted it in his brain via his wraith-ly powers; 3) Gately saw it before, and was either too high on Demerol for it to effect him, or he has unknown abilities that render him immune.

— On a figurative level... why is Don dreaming about the Entertainment? Why at this point in the book? Does this have anything to do with the still unanswered mystery regarding how Don Gately and Hal Incandenza eventually meet???

— Speaking of Hal, we get a brief section with him. Except now it's written in first-person. Why? The Year of Glad at the beginning of the book was in first-person as well. Is there a connection??

— Follow-up with the "AA" meeting that Hal attended—seems to have been a traumatic experience for him (no ghost stories needed)

— Also really sad to hear from Hal's perspective how Pemulis has disappeared for unexplained reasons.

— Hal is talking about the end-of-year gala, not knowing that the AFR plans to invade the gala and capture him and his family (probably? or am I misreading the AFR section from last week?)

— Man.... this line was a rough one to read: "It occurred to me that without some one-hitters to be able to look forward to smoking alone in the tunnel I was waking up every day feeling as though there was nothing in the day to anticipate or lend anything any meaning." IDing hard over here.

— And now back to Gately. Feels like every week I'm choking up at something DFW writes, and this week it was in this section. The whole thing about walling off one day at a time to survive. Goddamn.

— But first: the discussion about Gately and Joelle kinda crushing on each other even though both know that it's wrong on multiple levels is an interesting one. "13th-stepping" and whatnot. It's interesting from our perspective because we know these two people from reading about them. We know they are good people. We know it would be okay, and maybe even a good thing, if they fell in love. But they themselves don't know that. Part of Recovery is that you admit that you don't know anything, let alone know about love and what the fuck that even means.

— This was the first reading that I really thought about the Ken Erdedy sweatpants thing. I've always read it as an open question of "what is the nature of Joelle and Ken's relationship?" but this time, I realize that Joelle went to the same fucking college. They are probably her sweatpants. That's just Gately being medicated and slightly jealous for no reason.

— One of the highlights of this book has always been the one-off stories from AA meetings, and I'm glad we get another one here, via Joelle, about the ten-year blackout.

— I also love the idea of public speaking involving the act of saying "things I don't realize I think till I say them." So true.

— I have so much to say about the "build a wall around each individual 24-hour period" thing. The joy that Evel Knievel being the central metaphor here? The sense that Gately has gone through some terrible days as an addict. That time is the real gift of AA, and that it's called "the present" for a reason. The term: Abiding. That Gately and Joelle have separate but parallel revelations there in the hospital room:

"He hadn't quite gotten this before now, how it wasn't just the matter of riding out the cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present by hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with the unedurable news you then somehow believed."

There are moments in this book that ring so true and are so magnificently presented that I seriously get choked up even just thinking about it. This is one of those moments.

— And I also feel terrible for Gately, how he likes Joelle but forces himself to feel ashamed about it. Yes, there are bottom-feeders in Recovery, but clearly, CLEARLY Gately is not one of them. But that's all part of the journey, I guess. To find the grace to love yourself and then love others.

Pages 864-883: Fully Functional Phil; Hal of Unknown Functioning

— So we're still in first person with the Hal sections. And the interactions that he has with others—first Ortho, then the janitors—make it seem like the same shit is happening here that happened (or that WILL happen in the future in the Year of Glad) to Hal. That from our perspective he is speaking normally but to everyone else his facial features or emotions are wildly inappropriate ("mirth"?). Any thoughts on what's going on here?

— Thought it was interesting that a lot of the kids cry in the morning. Feels like that fits with previous discussions regarding the pressures of ETA and whatnot.

— "I stood there horrified, admiring the Darkness's ballsy calm." Feels like a thematic connection to Gately's thing last week about taking everything one second at a time. Interesting how Ortho is the one who is able to do this, while also being the one who seems to be on unsure footing, psychologically, what with the allusions to ghosts that he's been seeing....

— So what do we think Ortho means when he says that he can show Hal some crazy shit? Is it a ghost? Is it Jim? Is a ghost holding Ortho's forehead to the window? Why? Why does it matter? Why is he here telling statistician jokes at this time of morning? Are most of my points in these notes going to be in the form of a question for these last 100 pages?

— Also: what the fuck is the deal with Axhandle and Troeltsch switching rooms? Something to do with Troeltsch "eating cheese" re: Pemulis?

— Hal mentions that, from his perspective, his dad was a little crazy, since he "claimed I wasn't speaking sometimes when I was sitting right there speaking to him." From Jim's perspective, as he tells Gately, Jim really couldn't hear Hal. And now there is something going on with Hal not being able to properly communicate again. What gives?

— LOL at the "thaw"/"saw" miscommunication.

— Kenkle and Brandt had been briefly mentioned before, but we get a proper introduction here, on page 873. Crazy to think we are still getting new characters at this stage, but that's IJ for you. I wonder if you have thoughts about that, or about whether they think these are one-off characters or if they are somehow going to be important.

— Ortho yells—why?

— And then we have a transcript of a meeting that happens two days later. About the U.S.'s defense plan against the Samizdat through commercial means. An ad campaign (Viney and Veals, where Erdedy previously worked). Again, I'll ask: why this, and why now? Comedic relief (extremely funny with the double seizure)? Plot movement (did something happen with the Entertainment over the next couple days in which the US needs to protect its citizens from the AFR who now have the master tape or something)? Thematic relevance (er.... that they are trying to fight entertainment with more entertainment, and that's viewed by the book as a bad thing / realistic thing, or something)?

— I appreciate that Record Club alumnus McGruff the Crime Dog gets a shout out though.

Pages 883-906: Lying Horizontal

— Gately begins the section by saying that the appearance of the wraith and its implications "hasn't really sunk in yet." This being IJ, I figure a question might be: will it EVER sink in?

— I underlined when Gately mentions "ghostwords" and the book says, "which is a real and esoteric word." I wondered if this might be a fourth-wall break, until three pages later, when Gately's like "I just realized that 'esoteric' is a ghostword too." I had forgotten that fourth-wall breaks pretty much happen exclusively in the footnotes.

— I also appreciate Gately is like "I don't even know what 'sinistral' means!" and then a paragraph later the nurse asks if he's left-handed and he thinks "she means sinistral." As always, Gately knows more than he thinks he knows.

— Gately's true internal emotional conflict: that he wants to tell Francis that he learned how to Abide and take it one second at a time, but also that he wants to weep and confide in Francis that he doesn't know if he can do it for even one more second.

— The M.D. is, among other things (a racist caricature, a good example of terrible bedside manner), representative of GATELY'S LAST STAND. It's the devil on his shoulder, telling him that it's okay to take Dilaudid again, ya know, just this once won't hurt. And the bravery of Gately, to know that the final fatal ask is coming, and instead of giving in, grabbing testicles as hard as he can and ABIDING.

— If the M.D. is the devil on the left shoulder, it's interesting that Ferocious Francis refuses to be the angel on the right shoulder. Now that I'm typing it, I'm kind of reminded of Hal's ill-fated meeting attempt, where the dudes were crying because they didn't have mommy and daddy. Gately would have every right to feel upset in the same way. But I choose to see it more like Francis trusting Gately enough to make the right decision. And Gately does, indeed, make that correct decision. Got let the chicks fly on their own sometimes.

— I ID'd hard at the description of one's chosen substance as "like a mother's warm hand." Oof.

— "Might want to Ask For Some Help, deciding." Just fucking perfect. Feels like, I don't know, a culmination of everything we've read about Gately and AA so far? 

— And then the rug is pulled out from under us and Gately "wakes up." So... was this all a dream, or not, or only some of it? It might not even matter, to be honest, because here is Gately awake, and still saying: "Second. Second. He tried to Abide. No single second was past enduring."

— This is going to be important for the next 100 pages: the AA thought that you are inevitably going to get cravings and memories of cravings no matter how long you've been sober, and that you should just Let Them Go instead of Entertain them. Interesting #1 that "Entertain" is capitalized in the same way that "The Entertainment" is, and #2 that it does start to seem that Gately is Entertaining thoughts about his cravings. Or is this just Remembering? Is there a difference?

— I guess what I'm asking is: is it okay to think about your past and the wreckage of substance abuse, and, more to our purposes here, is the book trying to say that it's okay or that it isn't? The rest of this week's readings are basically our two main characters lying down and Entertaining such thoughts, so you be the judge.

— We get (re)introduced to Fackleman and Kite. My first thoughts are about these characters and how they find it strange that Gately chose to get fucked up on Dilaudid, and how it made in "disappear" instead of maintaining his "Ferocious jolliness." Are we allowed to ask the question why? What about Gately made him drawn toward those particular substances?

— LOL: "We been fuckin robbed!"

— Diehl and McDade make a brief appearance, and it's mostly unwanted, both by Gately and by the reader. Interesting that at this point, the plot feels like it's kind of "invading" this space. We want to hear about Gately and about his history of substance abuse. Fuck off with that talk about a missing gun and upcoming criminal trials!!

— And now, the Hal of it all. Here's some fucking plot for you: "I was moving down the damp hall when it hit." What????

— Anyone have any idea what is happening to Hal?

— How about why Hal pretty much is doing the same thing Don Gately is doing a few clicks across town—laying horizontally; Remembering?

— Something about the fact that Jim made special lighting for Avril but Avril never used it makes me weirdly sad, like in an "unrequited love" sort of way.

— "that if it came down to a choice between continuing to play competitive tennis and continuing to be able to get high, it would be a nearly impossible choice to make." Oof.

— Hal uses the word "esoteric" here too. I wonder if Hal uses all the ghostwords that pass through Gately's head. I've never thought to check. Keep an eye out of "sinistral." I only noticed this specific word because one time, Pam accused one of my high school friends of being "pretentious" because she had used the word "esoteric," and it's kind of a running joke between us now, that word.

— What the hell does this sentence mean: "A hunched way: she hunches; you hunch." I've never noticed it before and I have no clue.

— "We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe." 1) is that true? 2) is that, as Hal speculates, "pathetic"?

— Is this our first mention of Hamlet? Did you know that the scene where Hamlet is talking to the human skull is where we get the name of this entire book? "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft."

— "I was impossible to knock down." Lots to unpack in this section's last sentence.

— Back to Gately. LOL: "Gately clocked a 4.4 40 in 7th grade, and the legend is that the Beverly Middle School coach ran even faster than that into the locker room to jack off over the stopwatch."

— We're basically tracing the origins of Gately's substance use and abuse at this point. I love that one parenthetical section where it suddenly cuts to Gately at the podium at an AA meeting, telling this very same story.

— Footnote 363 recalls that we have already met Trent Kite a few times. One, because he was Gately's partner in the DuPleiss burglary, and two, because AFR killed him in a technical interview.

— I love how the book and Gately both keep a straight face when discussing "The Attack of the Killer Sidewalks," never once explaining the obvious of what that actually means.

— So much happens to Gately in his youth that it would be so easy to explain away his internal strife and external substance abuse, like, "well of course he was expelled from school, look at the horrorshow of his home life!" and so on. But I keep going back to those early AA meetings in the book, when it's explained the difference between owning your shit and not owning your shit. Gately owns his shit. Never fucking once blames any of this on his mother or his friends or his coaches or even the M.P. He owns responsibility for his actions. That's fucking brave. Honestly, this is what makes him the best character in the book. And it probably answers my other question from earlier about whether it's okay to Entertain these thoughts. It is, with the right mindset. Gately is Remembering because his story is important, not because he's waxing nostalgic about tripping. There's a fucking difference.

Pages 906-945: Some Serious Interfacing

— Good to see Pemulis again. He seems different. Changed. Calmer and more serious. Is it because of the expulsion, or something else?

— More evidence of the Hal we are 1st-person-POV-ing through is not the Hal that others are seeing: "The Petropulator mentioned hysterics." and "This is nothing to laugh at I don't think Hal."

— Hal is still doing the stream-of-consciousness thing, but interesting that he's bringing up Himself's funeral at this point.

— There's a certain irony in Pemulis being serious for once in his life but having cried wolf so many times that Hal doesn't believe him.

— Still room for humor in these late pages: "Gopnik said that Troeltsch is charging two bucks a look."

— Man, that Paul Anthony Heaven monologue description... I feel like I need to read it like four more times to real grasp what the book is trying to say there.

— Fleshing out a main character at this late stage: Whitey Sorkin

— So apparently the doctor who delivered the bad news about Mrs. Gately was Pakastani, which at least explains why he dreamed of the same/similar doctor prescribing him Dilaudin.

— One of the through lines in this book is the idea of community, like ETA and AA and etc. Interesting to hear Gately describe the betting/bookie scene in Boston as a "community." Community takes on many shapes and sizes.

— I like how this is both Remembering for its own sake, and also plotting Gately's growing understanding of what "addiction" means. Like it says that Gately understood what "real addiction" looked like when he was dealing with the gambling addicts who bet it all.

— Interesting to see Whitey refer to Don as "the big kid Donny." Important to remember sometimes how young Don Gately is.

— Also, the background about killing(?) the dude at the bar probably explains why Gately felt so guilty at defending Lenz/Ennett from the Canadians.

— "Kite found a new friend for life" re: Dilaudid.... that particular description of substances sticks with me, and is so sad in its accuracy

— Kind of fucking wild the tangential role that Orin played in Gately's rock bottom, without either of them ever knowing (yet—I guess theoretically Joelle could fill in the blanks at some point)

— And what does rock bottom even fucking mean? The book doesn't use the phrase during Gately's crying spout while watching Orin kick... but it does seem like a rock bottom. Or one of them, anyway.

— Brief interlude of Pemulis looking for the DMZ and finding the ceiling tiles smashed: DISCUSS!

— Reintroduction to Bobby C, otherwise known as "C" in the yrstruly sections. Man, the web of character connections is wild. Probably puts C's eventual death in a different perspective, though.

— The part where Gately gives his $11k back to Whitey really makes me think about and appreciate Gately's inherent morality. It's twisted occasionally, but it just needed guidance was all. He's a decent person, all things told. Goddamn, I love this character so much that it kind of fucking hurts sometimes.

— Truth of the human condition to see Gately's conflict of emotions re: Fax... the sadness for losing a friend, the hatred for Fax being a traitor, both equally strong

— What are the R.N. and obnoxious doctor putting together? And what is the doctor saying about Gately's medical needs?

— "There's a faint vibe of prescription 'drines about the guy..." Even if that's not even true about the M.D., it definitely shows us how Gately views the world.

— The whole bit where Gately is ashamed of himself for shitting in front of an attractive nurse becomes sort of a rake joke, since he obsesses over it so much.

— There are some KILLER run-on sentences in these pages ("killer" as a compliment). E.g. when Gately is doing the stream of consciousness thing after he realizes that his boss at the shelter is taking advantage of him.

— Interesting how Gately calls himself a "figurant," empathizing big time after his conversation with the wraith.

— He also picks up from the wraith that "the dialogue" is important. Yes!!!!

— The whole narrative of "Fackelmann's final demise" is both brilliantly written and horrifying. Is THIS Gately's rock bottom?

— "But Gately obviously had no intention of raping an unconscious person." That word "obviously" works so well here because it's true—924 pages in, it really is obvious to us that Gately would not do that. We know this guy at this point.

— LOL: Kite's attempted pickup line of "If you came home with me I'm unusually confident that I could achieve an erection."

— So we finally get clarity on who the old Grateful Dead T-shirt guy was who sold the DMZ to the Antitois—Sixties Bob, doctor at the pain clinic.

— The superfluous details in this section are hilarious, not only because the writing is superb, but also because we're meant to believe that a drunk Pamela Hoffman-Jeep is relaying the story to Gately. 

— A funny "the future as seen from 1996" moment: "The door's got a big poster of R. Limbaugh on it, from before the assassination."

— Bobby C. brings Dr. Wo back into the narrative too. All coming full circle.

— The moment when Kite realizes that Fax is fucked is played for laughs, but the laughs are incredibly dark, and I always get a little queasy reading it.

— Many types of addicts, the thought of being one who "blots out" the pain with substances is particular frightening and a little mysterious to me.

— "but he now realizes that that was the first time it really ever dawned on him in force that a drug addict was at root a craven and pathetic creature: a thing that basically hides."

— We know this isn't "it" for Gately, since we see him clean / in the future, but man, it sure is written that way, ain't it?

— Two wild details thrown in here suddenly:

1. Lyle is somehow able to visit Gately with wraith Jim.... what?
2. The whole dream sequence in which Don Gately seems to be fulfilling the thing that Hal (in the Year of Glad) said that he had done with Gately: digging up a dead guy's head, and "it's too late." WHAT?!?

— "unbeknownst to her she was in almost mind-boggling danger." "This is supposed to be news?"

— Fax put on the movie of different flames—this is a Jim Incandenza Entertainment!!!

— Gately and Fax scaling Mt. Dilaudid..... TO BE CONTINUED NEXT TIME!!

— We get a short snippet of Joelle being interviewed by Helen. What is revealed here? "Not exactly. Not exactly veiled." That doesn't answer anything.

— The Masters were BURIED WITH JIM. HAL AND GATELY ARE DIGGING UP A GRAVE!????? It's too late?!?!

— "Oh shit yes very much."

Pages 941-981: Final Pages, Concluding Thoughts, a Mind-Boggling Amount of Danger

— shout out to Sam for pointing out that the "young prostitute" in Accomplice! is played by Stokely "Dark Star" McNair, who, according to Hal, was "a boy no one had ever seen before or since," but according to various accounts like yrstruly and Poor Tony, was a big name in the Boston drug scene. yrstruly says that McNair contracts the virus at some point, and Tony says that he had recently died in the hospital. 1) A good and subtle connection between characters in a 1000+ tome just fucking full to the brim with character connections, and 2) interesting that yrstruly paints McNair as a callous person who is willing to spread HIV to anyone, but in Accomplice! he plays a character who is so worried about spreading the disease that he spends eight full minutes yelling "Murderer!" at his rapist.

— Kyle Coyle's "nighttime discharges" are funny, but I'm still not sure what exactly they are referring to. Snoring? Piss? Cum? Other?

— We get confirmation that the Troeltsch/Axford thing is room-switching, not homosexual. I had forgotten that this was confirmed in the book. One of the negative aspects of being in an Infinite Jest book club with someone who has already read the book. Sorry!

— There is discussion about Ortho and the supernatural. Re: his bed being on the ceiling. Two thoughts. 1) Was his face glued/frozen to the window, or was the wraith holding it there in the same manner as the bed on the ceiling? 2) Is there a parallel between Ortho's "game being raised" during the wraith stuff and Hal's "game being raised" during his abuse of marijuana?

— I like the thoughts about JOI using non-actors in films as an attempt at "realism" (i.e. that these were actors in films and that the film wasn't trying to pretend that it wasn't a film). Makes me think back to the 1960 Arizona monologue from JOI's dad, and how much he hated method actors like Brando (who strived for the "realism" that JOI dismissed)

— Extremely sad that Hal's own thoughts indicate that he never really found his dad's films all that entertaining, since wraith JOI admits that this was his main goal with his final films.

— The visuals from Accomplice! seem HORRIFYING.

— Though, LOL at the fact that the film includes a footnote on screen, and that Hal calls it "rather irritating" (funny because, ya know, Infinite Jest)

— I LOVE the argument about whether the eight minutes of "MURDERER!" serve some aesthetic or philosophical end or if Himself was just a shitty editor. And I can love this argument while believing with every molecule in my being that there is absolutely meaning here, and not just shitty editing.

— Great, if superfluous, imagery of snow in the Boston area via the TV spontaneous dissemination. I particularly liked "His was the creepy buisinesslike face of someone carefully picking up glass in the road after an accident in which his decapitated wife's been impaled on the steering wheel.

— But, like, what's going on here? Hal is sort of free-flowing with his thoughts. it eventually transitions to thoughts about childhood, and then also thoughts about his mother's sex life. Would we compare this to Gately's Remembering? Or something else?

— The internal monologue about Hal not understanding how someone like JOI could make something like Accomplice! is extremely sad. But also pretty normal—who among us would say that we understand our parents as actually people?

— "LIFE IS LIKE TENNIS, THOSE WHO SERVE BEST USUALLY WIN"

— The fungus gets mentioned AGAIN. There are people who believe that the idea of Hal eating mold as a child is ESSENTIAL to the plot of this book, for reasons we can discuss at some point.

— Hal thinking about injury himself is both scary and sad (and probably not uncommon for "ascendant" child athletes?)

— Lots of this is sad.... like the idea that JOI warned Orin about getting the wrong idea about sex, and that Orin so very clearly got the wrong idea about sex anyway.

— John Wayne peeks into Hal's room and stares at Hal on the ground, and neither of them say anything, and then Hal admits (to himself? to the reader?) that he knows about John Wayne and Avril. JEEZ!!

— There is brief mention of Avril's "passion for hiddenness" compared to JOI's films called "Cage" and his use of a veiled actress. Something to chew on. But also, I don't know if I really understand it. This is more of a general thought that I'll tack onto this random bulletpoint... but I feel like, even after four reads, there is still a lot I don't personally understand, but that I hold onto anyway. And I wonder if all this stuff will be revealed "from somewhere blue" eventually. Like maybe I'll be 47 years old and suddenly snap to an understand as to what Hal meant by "passion for hiddenness." That I keep returning to this book is an act of faith.

— Joelle returns to the Ennett House, and then disappears from our lives forever.... until next time.

— Alright, so the quick "Mikey the alcoholic" interlude... what's up with that? Don't waste your time thinking that maybe we've met this guy before. If we have, he was unnamed and unmentioned in an AA meeting. Like, this isn't Mike Pemulis grown up or some fucking bullshit you might see speculated upon on the internet. This is just a random dude giving his five minutes at AA. Why here? Why now? Higher significance or just a break in the (in)action or what?

— The A.D.A. in Pat's office scene is one of my favorites in the book. It's just so incredibly sad. One, sad that the man who has been painted as the "big bad" by Gately this whole time is actually someone that Gately, in his infinite empathy, would empathize with SO MUCH. Two, because that lack of understanding works both ways—ADA describes Gately as "evil," and we the reader know that's not true. Or, at the very least, know that people can change, because we've seen it in Gately. Three, just generally sad that there is so much pain in the world, and that we spend a lot of the time we have on earth creating these divides, when really we could find so much comfort in shared experience if we had the courage to open up about it. I mean...... I guess that's the whole thing with AA, right? How we're just sharing what we know about ourselves, but somehow, that knowledge becomes emotion and that emotion is shared. We feel connected to each other. And etc. etc.

— I think maybe that this is the point of there being so many views of characters we know and love from different vantage points, and those "different POVs" being largely more negative than our understanding of the situation. That we as humans are self-centered and assume that everyone is worse than they are, and that only by making the connection (that someone of the characters end up making; that we as the audience make to the characters) can we achieve peace. I don't know, something like that.

— The next 1st-person POV scene at ETA (or rather, in the locker room at Boston U) is NOT from Hal, but a random/unnamed ETA student. We get a different view of Hal acting weird. We also get some oblique plot exposition that's never really followed up on ("the charter bus is full of special olympic athletes!" LOL). Poutrincourt is missing. Etc.

— I can't imagine this being important to anyone but me: we get so little discussion about music in this book that it utterly fascinates me that John Wayne chooses to listen to Joni Mitchell before matches.

— Fourteen pages left in the book and we get a background story dump about a tertiary (at best) character. Same questions as Mikey the Alcoholic: why here? and why now? My thoughts: 1) it serves as a shaggy dog story that ultimately boils down to 2) an important discussion about humans being good or not good, and 3) an underlining of the fact that Mario Incandenza is the paragon of goodness, as the book presents the idea. That we should aspire to be like Mario, basically, which seems trite and lame, but then again, isn't that one of the themes of this book too? That trite and lame and goopy should be that which we grapple with? That's moving toward "overarching themes" though, so let's put a pin in it.

— The final Orin page is at once a nice callback to the sewer roaches, a 1984 reference, an undercutting of the book's descriptive flair (how Luria P— describes the interview technique as "hammy"), a comeuppance for character who ends up being somewhat of a villain, a success for two characters who are probably ACTUALLY the villains, and another mystery that is never solved ("Do it to her! Do it to her!" Who is her? Avril?!)

— And finally, we are back with Gately. This is it, folks.

— A statement that Gately makes while burning up / crashing / dying(?????): "He gurgled and mooed, saying 'addict.' Which is the truth, that he was, he knew."

— And then we transition subtly back to the flashback of the demise of Fackelmann.

— Callbacks aplenty. One of the portraits from the commercials that signaled the demise of the Big Four TV networks is revealed to be that of Whitey Sorkin. Bobby C. is described as perversely gentle and caring in this section, which is a contrast to when we first met him (his death via hotshot in the yrstruly section). The characters in this scene are probably all that we mentioned before, but never described, and here they are described but not named; which makes me wonder whether Poor Tony is here, or any of their pals (yrstruly, Bridget Tenderhole, Dark Star, Equus, Lolaister, etc. etc.). The penultimate footnote makes mention of DMZ (which feels important in at least four different ways). The M.P. is mentioned in liking A Clockwork Orange.

— "And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out."

— That's a famous line because it's the last one before we do the Sopranos-style cut to black. HOWEVER, in terms of this end scene's significance, I would argue the second-to-last sentence is the more important one, how Gately, before passing out, is shown a mirror, in which he can see his reflection. Literally see his reflection, but then also, what is this scene if not one big exercise in self-reflection?!

— Since I could write about this book forever, I will stop here. If you are stunned at the ending and want to read about THEORIES (and not FACTS) about the plot and how it's truncated, then read this—http://aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend—and this—https://fictionadvocate.com/2012/08/01/the-infinite-jest-liveblog-what-happened-pt-1.

For those reading this blog post after 2023, you can read the year-end reflections on the book club experience.