happy sunday.

Like a month into being unemployed you start to lose track of what day of the week it is. This is understandable. Everyday starts the same: roll out of bed and walk the dog, thumb through the paper, maybe hit a museum or read a book. So it makes sense that I always think it's Sunday, right? Whatever.

Cool stuff that's happening now:

Blackberry season! Wild blackberries are the tastiest because you can pick them when they're ripe. The ones you buy in the store are picked early when the fruit is still firm enough to hold up while being transported from god knows where, and that's, I think, why they're often sour. Plus they're expensive.

You know what's not expensive? Pork, apparently. Freakonomics said that the Economist said that pork prices are down 24% this year. You should make pulled pork.

If you've been able to stick to the Infinite Summer schedule, you are officially halfway through the book this week. Congratulations to you! I'm pretty far behind, but why don't we keep that our little secret, shall we? Keeping to the schedule feels somewhat...irrelevant for me, since I've already read the entire thing and can slog through IS forums without worrying about spoilers. What's that you say? IJ is gathering dust on your nightstand ever since you begrudgingly read the entire Poor Tony section without the faintest clue what the hell was going on? I feel you. And I'm not the only one.

In DFW's defense, I think the reason we get irritated is because we feel like he can do better. You get through the first, like 100 pages or so, and you think, yes, this guy is a storyteller like no one's ever been a storyteller before. He's Mr. Rosewater. This is going to be the most poignant, funny, human story of my lifetime! He's a genius, a capital G Genius, I tell you! So you forgive him the footnotes. You forgive him the obfuscation, the intellectual gymnastics, the fucking prescriptive vocabulary. And when there's no payoff you feel like you've been duped by the smuggest depressive in town.

Buck up little reader. There's been ongoing conjecture about the possibility of a film adaptation in the IS forums (Michael Cera as Hal? Directed by Wes Anderson? This is the nerd version of a fantasy football team). Over at Howling Fantods there is a DFW-inspired motivational poster contest of some sort. The entries are hilarious. There's more to Infinite Jest than scrambling to find enough bookmarks (side note: I'm using loteria cards. El Diablito keeps my spot in the narrative, El Borracho's got footnotes).

also: look up annular

Um, yeah, I fell behind in Infinite Summer. More like got distracted--I finished the first week’s reading early and went right back to the beginning to read it again. This book has so many little doorways that it’s hard to stay on track. For example:

The Clenette section (IJ, p37-39) struck a nerve with some readers, and I was all like, really?

Then I had to go sifting through Hamlet. Because:

James Incandenza’s film production company is named for the fool in Hamlet (i.e. Yorick, as in, “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, he was a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.” (Hamlet, V.i.184-5). The fool is an entertainer at court, but also acts as an important truth-telling device in Shakespearean drama. The fool is typically more trustworthy and insightful than a play’s major characters, who are bound by their limited perspectives. In order to play the fool in IJ, James Incandenza has to be able to accurately and objectively analyze himself, which is impossible, because how can a person objectively analyze himself using only himself? Subjectivity is inescapable, J. Incandenza can’t let go of this, and he dissolves into delusional alcoholism trying to get beyond himself so that he can understand himself. And then tell the truth.

now with fewer periods!

Sixty-three pages into Infinite Jest for the second time, I’m starting to get a sense of how cool Infinite Summer is. Some things that have happened so far:

I looked up “apocope” (loss or omission of the last letter, syllable or part of a word); “bolection” (a raised molding, esp. one having flat edges and a raised center, for framing a panel, doorway, fireplace, etc.); the Latin phrase, “Quo Vadis” (trans: where are you going? Which apparently Peter asked Jesus, who was on his way to get him some more of that crucifyin’) (also, a novel about Nero by Henryk Sienkiewicz).

And someone posted in the forums about Hal’s “I am in here.” statement, which got my brain shooting in several directions, some of them existential, some of them funny, some of them Hamlet-related, some of them Hamlet-related and existential, some of them about the running theme of failed communication, as in a declaration and physical manifestation of utter solipsism. My sentences seem to be getting run-onnier as I recalibrate to DFW’s narrative which sort of webs out and then turns in on itself but not before hurling you into a near violent to and fro from text to footnote. Yeah, this book is pretty cool.