The End

“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.”

There is a definite plus to reading a book that was published thirty years ago – the internet is an abundance of writings, thoughts, arguments and analysis done by countless other readers before us. And, like in so many other subjects, we are only strengthened by the knowledge of those who have come before, etc etc.

But first! Let’s celebrate our own noggins, and our thoughts on what we just read.

So let’s recap (for one last time!) the last 100ish pages of Infinite Jest.

November 20 – Rodney Tine Jr and Sr meet with Glad Bag rep and Tom Veals
Better tested than the No Thankee Hankee, Fully Functional Phil the Prancing Ass, has been developed to warn kids of the impending Entertainment crisis. This section serves to warn us that the Entertainment is on the loose, and being taken very seriously by O.N.A.N.

Gately continues his hospital stay right til the very end
A large portion of the end of the book takes place in Gately’s hospital room, and in flashbacks to his time spent crewing with Fackleman and Kite.

We meet Lyle as a wraith, and now that all makes a lot more sense. Is it Lyle who has been Ortho’s wraith, not JOI? And presumably Lyle is the victim of the sauna accident (p. 971).

We also see the gruesome retribution laid on Fackleman for his fatal decision to take the mistaken football bet and build a mountain of Dilaudid, are introduced to Pamela Hoffman-Jeep (who could be played easily by Natasha Leggero), and are reunited with Bobby C & Poor Tony of the “red leather fags” (p. 129). Also, Gately is watching Orin’s game (described as “The B.U. punter”) on New Year’s Eve before standardized time (P. 916) – likely the same game Gentle was watching when he came up with the idea for standardized time. As Gately and Fackleman sink into a Dilaudid stupor, the film that plays over and over again sounds like JOI’s Various Small Flames. (p. 935).

At one point, Gately has a mirror dream (vision?) to Hal’s comment from early in the book:

“I think of John N.R. Wayne, who would have won this year’s WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Don Gately and I dig up my father’s head” (p. 16)

“He dreams he’s with a very sad kid and they’re in the graveyard digging some dead guy’s head up and it’s really important, like Continental Emergency important, and Gately’s the best digger but he’s wicked hungry, like irresistibly hungry, and he’s eating with both hands out of a huge economy-size bags of corporate snacks so he can’t really dig, while it gets later and later and the sad kid is trying to scream at Gately that the important thing was buried in the guy’s head and to divert the Continental Emergency to start digging the guy’s head up before it’s too late, but the kid moves his mouth but nothing comes up, and Joelle van D. appears with wings and no underwear and asks if they knew him, the dead guy with the head, and Gately starts talking about knowing him even though deep down he feels panic because he’s got no idea who they’re talking about, while the sad kid holds something terrible up by the hair and makes the face of somebody shouting in panic: Too Late.” (p. 934).

I really think this is the ‘true’ end of the novel, it’s just not at the end of the book. It is the moment that connects us to the action that happened outside of the end of the book, and projects us into the future, where the book begins.

But it still leaves many unanswered questions, namely:

• If JOI killed himself in a microwave oven, and considering when Hal describes the felo de se as akin to the “equivalent in kg.s.cm to over two sticks of TNT” and asks Orin “Do you know you have to cut the potato open before you turn the oven on?” (p. 251), how could he even have a head?
• In Hal’s memory, John Wayne is there (in a mask) and in Don’s Joelle is there (in wings).
• I know it sounds trite, but do Joelle’s wings signify she is dead/a wraith?
• If it is too late, does that mean someone has gotten there before? Who would that be? The AFR?

And we get details maybe on how the Entertainment was unknowingly lifted from the robbery of M. DuPlessis by Kite and then brought to the Antitois by Sixties Bob, who traded for “60s related shit nobody else’d even usually want” (p.927). This matches the Antitois description of the man he bartered for “an antique blue lava-lamp and a lavender-tinged apothecary’s mirror for eighteen unexceptional-looking and old lozenges the long-haired person had claimed in a jumble of West-Swiss-accented French were 650 mg. of a trop-formidable harmful pharmaceutical…as well as a kitchen-can waste bag filled with crusty old mossy boot-and-leg Read Only cartridges, sans any labels” (p. 482). There are still many odd pieces to this, including the “West-Swiss accented French” of the old hippie – would Sixties Bob be Quebecois? His last name is Monroe. This would also mean 60s Bob had been in possession of the DMZ, called tu-sais-quoi (the “you-know-what”).

As an aside, the yrstruly section where we first meet C (& experience the moment of his death) connects us to Stokely Darkstar (“don’t share Stokely Darkstar’s works don’t use works off of Stokely Darkstar no matter how sick you are” – p. 129), who JOI used in the brutal film Accomplice! as the AIDS-ridden prostitute, that Mario and Coyle are watching on pages 942-947. I am not going to read too much into the fact that Cosgrove Watt, the other actor in the film, frequently plays the loose role of JOI in his films. Ok I am – do you think JOI was gay, and maybe that was one reason why Avril had so many affairs? Also, the mise en scene of Hal walking in on Mario and Kyle watching this brutal movie while Mario zips up his pants and Kyle is “oddly traumatized” (p. 941) raises my eyebrows a bit.

At ETA, Hal spends more time laying on his back, everyone gets ready for the Gala during the blizzard
Hal seems to be losing his competitive spirit – “It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit” (p. 900).

Pemulis has “some really important interfacing to do” with Hal (p. 907), but we are never party to it. He wants to speak with Hal about the DMZ, again referred to as “tu-savez-quoi” and Hal dismisses him. We never find out if they have that conversation, which I imagine is about Pemulis losing the DMZ from the ceiling tiles (p. 916).

We learn that Hal has known all along of Avril’s dalliances (p. 957) including her relationship with both John Wayne and Tavis.

We also get a very detailed description of the house Hal grew up in before they moved, and an odd callback to the steamy mirror which on page 16 he describes as having “knife” written on the mirror and here describes it as physically sticking out of the mirror (p. 951).  We are also privy to Hal’s memories of Himself.

The section that describes the scene as the ETA students get ready is not in Hal’s voice, as he is mentioned in the third person, so who is talking? With the laundry list of names mentioned, we could probably do a process of elimination, but I digress. Because are some of the kids maybe DEAD? When the rumor comes that the Quebecois players are in fact adult and wheelchair bound, a couple kids go to check it out and never return (p. 965).

One of the first things I thought when I realized that the end was only a few pages away and that nothing that I considered ‘traditional’ plot was going to get resolved was: Why did DFW spend three of the very dozen pages left telling us about Barry Loach and his lapsed priest of a brother? Of course, it’s not like those pages were going to be spent clarifying what happened to Hal, Orin, Avril, Pemulis, or any of the other characters that were still alive by the end, but the sheer cheek of it all.

Joelle is brought in for questioning by Steeply
The last we see of Joelle in the novel, she is warned by Steeply that she is in “mind-boggling danger” (p. 934) and then next scene she is under technical interview by Steeply (whose methods are much more benign than the AFRs), that confirms more details about the Entertainment, gives us fair assurance that she is indeed scarred by acid – “I used to go around saying the veil was to disguise lethal perfection” (p. 940) – and that the Master was buried with James.

After she leaves the interview, she returns to Ennet House, to warn Pat about the wheelchairs, and “doesn’t see it til she cleared the Shed, the Middlesex County Sheriff’s car…” (p. 958). Something has happened at Ennet House, though the “uniform at the wheel absently feeling his face” makes it seem like the event has happened a while ago, as the police are not necessarily bustling around. I assume Marathe has done something to get his hands on the cartridges in Pat’s office….

But maybe this incident is the “subsequent events’ light” that Johnette referred to back on page 787.   Did Hal come back? Did his final breakdown happen at Ennett?

.. and yet, we are right back at Ennet House for the interface between Pat and the ADA (p. 960-964) but the time is not clear so…

Orin is inside a giant glass tumbler
The AFR are really creative with their technical interviews. As the roaches pour in, Orin screams “Do it to her! Do it to her!” Is he referring to Joelle and inferring that she knows the whereabouts of the Master? Or Avril?

On Endings
The book opens with Hal and ends with Don, and they never have an opportunity to meet. We can expound on this “continental emergency” that seems to bring them together, and know that it must happen between now and the next year when Hal is trying to get into the University of Phoenix. We know something has happened at Ennet House, and that the AFR have sucessfully infiltrated ETA. We know Pemulis is anxious, Avril is still missing, Orin and Joelle are both captured, and that Hal has begun his change. We know Don is interfacing with James. That the book ends in a flashback, with poor Don on yet another cold and weathered beach, 

Leaving you with this quote from Wallace. Let’s talk about it.

“There’s an ending as far as I’m concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an ‘end’ can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you.”