“Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace – Part 12: Final Thoughts

LIFE IS LIKE TENNIS
THOSE WHO SERVE
BEST USUALLY WIN

(p. 952)

So what can I say about a massive 1000-page book that uses tennis and drug addiction to explain life in the millennial age? This book is probably not for everyone, but if you have the fortitude to read it, I’m sure you will gain insights from doing so. Personally, I’m glad I read it. While there were some slow parts, particularly those that gave more detail on the technical aspects of tennis than were possibly needed (similar to Melville’s lengthy descriptions of the workings of whaling ships), as a whole, the book kept my interest and there were certainly parts that I would consider brilliant.

I figured I would say a little about the writing style. Wallace is able to change voices throughout the text, and the language of the various characters is very natural and believable. For me, this is the sign of a skilled wordsmith. I particularly enjoyed the way he played with the words, altering spelling in order to capture the nuances of regional accents.

So I will close out this series on Infinite Jest with an existential question and a quote. Is our life nothing more than an ironic joke? (Note similarities between “ironic joke” (IJ) and “Infinite Jest” (IJ).) I suspect Camus would love to weigh in on this one. With that, I’ll leave you with one last quote from the book:

‘I don’t know that he ever even got a finished Master. That’s your story. There wasn’t anything unendurable or enslaving in either of my scenes. Nothing like these actual-perfection rumors. These are academic rumors. He talked about making something quote too perfect. But it was a joke. He had a thing about entertainment, being criticized about entertainment v. nonentertainment and stasis. He used to refer to the Work itself as “entertainments.” He always meant it ironically. Even in jokes he never talked about an anti-version or antidote for God’s sake. He’d never carry it that far. A joke.’

‘…’

‘When he talked about this thing as a quote perfect entertainment, terminally compelling – it was always ironic – he was having a sly little jab at me. I used to go around saying the veil was to disguise lethal perfection, that I was too lethally beautiful for people to stand. It was a kind of joke I’d gotten from one of his entertainments, the Medusa-Odalisk thing. That even in U.H.I.D. I hid by hiddenness, in denial about the deformity itself. So Jim took a failed piece and told me it was too perfect to release – it’d paralyze people. It was entirely clear that it was an ironic joke. To me.’

(p. 940)

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Links to Previous Posts on Infinite Jest:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9
• Part 10
• Part 11

Doctor Who – Eleventh Doctor: Issue 7

I have mixed feelings about this issue. There are some things I like and some things that just didn’t work for me. The storyline is interesting enough: the Doctor and his companions return to Earth in 2015 in order to allow Alice to take care of personal business. When they arrive, they discover that two warring alien civilizations have taken their battle in the skies above Earth. Humans, as is their usual modus operandi, enjoyed the spectacle of warfare.

“And we got all the fun of watching. There were loud bangs and flashes, but the majority of ships didn’t enter our atmosphere, and we weren’t the target. So most people seemed inclined to sit back and enjoy the light show. The space war… it was entertainment.”

So while the story is interesting, I think what didn’t work for me is that this issue seemed a little heavy on the silliness. Now I get Doctor Who. I was exposed to the Doctor early in life by my mom, and I expect some degree of silliness and cheesiness. But for some reason, it just felt like it was overdone in this issue. Of course, that’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth. Still, I found it worth reading. It’s not my favorite comic on the shelves these days, but it’s entertaining, so I’ll continue reading it.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!!

“From Play to Carnival” by Umberto Eco: Capitalizing on Play

Sofonisba Anguissola

This essay is included in the book Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism. It explores how society has taken the basic human need for play and twisted it into a commercialized commodity in a process that Eco refers to as “Carnivalization.”

Eco mentions Homo Ludens early in this essay, which is a book by Johan Huizinga and something I actually read in college. The book is critical in game studies and explores the role of play in society. In his book, Huizinga lists five characteristics that play must have:

1. Play is free, is in fact freedom.

2. Play is not “ordinary” or “real” life.

3. Play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration.

4. Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.

5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.

(Source: Wikipedia)

For those of you who are interested, here is a link to a free PDF version of Huizinga’s book:

yale.edu

When we consider these qualities that define play and then consider our society’s distorted sense of entertainment and the marketing machine behind the entertainment industry, it is evident that we are losing our playfulness as a species. What parent does not secretly lament the loss of freedom that their children have to go out unsupervised to engage in spontaneous and unstructured play? We placate ourselves by saying how we are keeping them safe and that the world is more dangerous now than when we were younger. But is that really true? There were dangers when we were young. We are just more afraid now, which is a result of media hype.

Eco talks about the various ways that play has been destroyed through capitalization. Television is the obvious one, but he also discusses the tourism industry, the ability to incorporate play into work hours, mobile phones which blend function with entertainment, shopping as entertainment, and religion. I completely agree with all his assertions regarding these carnivalizations, but the two that he discusses that really rang most true for me are sports and politics:

Sport has been Carnivalized. How? Sport is play par excellence: how can play be Carnivalized? By becoming not the interlude it was meant to be (one soccer match a week, and the Olympics only every so often) but an all-pervasive presence; by becoming not an activity for its own ends but a commercial enterprise. The game played doesn’t matter anymore (a game, moreover, that has been transformed into an immensely difficult task that requires the taking of performance-enhancing drugs) but the grand Carnival of the before, during, and after, in which the viewers, not the players themselves, play all week long.

Politics has been Carnivalized, and so we now commonly use the expression “the politics of spectacle.” As parliament is steadily deprived of power, politics is conducted on television, like gladiatorial games…

(Turning Back the Clock: pp. 74 – 75)

I personally hate watching televised sports, particularly because of all the commentary. I would much rather participate in a sport than watch others play. It almost feels like voyeurism to me. And as far as politics go, one of my main reasons for cancelling cable television is I just can’t stand the constant assault of political pundits who have turned politics into a spectator sport where it is our team against theirs.

The other day I went with my youngest daughter to a local game store to purchase a new board game. This store has a gaming area upstairs where people can gather and play games. I was encouraged by the fact that the parking lot was full and the place was crowded with people who were playing games for the sheer fun of doing so. I hope this is an omen of a shift away from media-controlled profit-driven entertainment and back to an emphasis on play for the sake of play.