Infinite Notes: Reading Infinite Jest

Orin Incandenza

“morning is the soul’s night”

The oldest Incandenza boy.

Punter for the AZ Cardinals, #71.

Gave up tennis at approx. 17, when Hal was 9, and Mario was 11.

(There is a whole big long discourse on O. leaving tennis, and going to B.U. presumably to play tennis, and but then to play football, and CT taking over the H.M. duties at ETA, and all the tension that was bound up in all of that.)

Whereupon Orin meets PGOAT at BU during like week 3 of class (approximately) and is instantly smitten and “defects” from tennis to college football.

Whereupon Orin has a meteoric rise in success at college ball, as a punter; and but so then it gets ruined through a rather ravishing injury.

The sun like a sneaky keyhole view of hell.

  • pp. 43 - 1st mention of a “Subject”
  • fears
    • roaches (conscious, overt)
    • spiders (unconscious, implicit)
  • pp. 45 - 1st appearance of “howling fantods”

…Pandora’s box or words.

Seduction Strategies

“12 and 16” (pp. 244)

Orin is obsessed with bedding young mothers. (pp. 245)

Orin and [The Entertainment](../../misc/The_Entertainment/)

The A.F.R. believe… (pp. 723)

  • that Orin has (or has knowledge of) a master copy of Infinite Jest
  • that M. DuPlessis had received his copy of The Enterainment from Orin
    • (any other text to support this?)
  • which begs the question: how did Orin get involved w/ M. DuPlessis?
    • and what was his motivation for leaking it to him?
  • and which also suggests: that M. DuPlessis’ copy of the The Entertainment leaked to “outside” during Gately’s botched robbery

AND/BUT: does this perhaps suggest that Orin has more to do with The Entertainment than appears? Could he be the one mailing them around to people?

(Pen?)ultimate Fate

Orin in a huge glass tumbler surrounded by Luria P.— and (someone else?) (pp. 971-972)