Infinite Notes: Reading Infinite Jest

Don Gately

188 cm. (6’ 2”) 128 kg. (282 lb.) (pp. 469)

NOT left-handed (pp. 884)

Thief and drug addict, among other things.

Murdered (though not on purpose?) Guillaume DuPlessis. (Though Gately’s murder charge gets taken over by Unspecified Services… pp. 463)

RE: Gately’s climax – is he beaten by FLQ? (see fn. 47)

Gately routinely drives Pat Montesian’s priceless black 1964 Ford Aventura, despite not really having a license…

…for Gately the vehicle’s so terrifically tight and sleek it’s like being strapped into a missle and launched at the site of a domestic errand.

(pp. 461)

(Boston) AA

Some lengthy discussion (couched in/around Gately’s own experience of same) of:

…when he kneels at other times and prays or meditates or tries to achieve a Big-Picture spiritual understanding of a God as he can understand Him, he feels Nothing – not nothing, but Nothing, an edgeless blankness that somehow feels worse than the sort of unconsidered atheism he Came In with.

(pp. 443)

Gately’s main addiction is actually with oral narcotics (and Demerol in particular), but decides to go the AA route instead of NA. (Ed. note: go back and find the citation for this that contains the reason why.)

Pre-Ennet House

  • a girlfriend: Pamela Hoffman-Jeep (pp. 465)
    • (same Pamela as Lenz’s tattoo???)

Childhood and Family

  • for a while he and his mother lived in a beach house, but they were only able to afford the rent because it had a huge gaping hole in the roof that the owner had simply covered with plastic (pp. 800)
  • nicknamed “Bim” or “Bimmy”
    • his mother called him that
      • because she heard the neighborhood kids calling him that
    • he didn’t have the heart to tell her
      • it stood for Big Indestructible Moron (pp. 448)
  • “Sir Osis of Thuliver” (pp. 449)
  • First gets high (smokes a ‘desBois’) at age 9 (pp. 903)
    • and then (incidentally) watches footage of the Rodney King beatings

Hospitalized at St. Elizabeth's

unsure of the day when he regains consciousness…

  • briefly shares a room with Otis P. Lord
  • Ewell visits him and confides
  • Pat M. visits him, assures him that everything will be OK, that they at Ennet House take care of their own (implying that she is running interference for him w/r/t/ the Finest etc.)
  • Calvin Thrust comes and gives him an update
    • this update includes everything that happens after Gately got shot and lost consciousness – so we (as readers) do get that part of the story, but we get it as told by Thrust
  • and there’s Gately, shot and toxemic and refusing pain medication, absolutely miserable and all he can think about (while Thrust is talking) is: Who is cooking the dinner at the house?
  • Geoffrey Day visits Gately and confides
  • Gately is visited by Himself’s ghost wraith (pp. 829)
    • figurants (pp. 835)
  • Gately dreams a dream-like and embellished (and but highly personal) version of Infinite Jest
  • Gately dreams/hallucinates a visit from Ferocious Francis that gets interrupted by a Pakistani MD that keeps describing Gately’s pain, and how the pain is going to get worse, and then keeps offering him (Gately) various powerful narcotics for the pain
  • McDade and Diehl visit, but aren’t there to confide, and brought a ‘promoted’ Get Well Soon card (unsigned)