Infinite Notes: Reading Infinite Jest

Approximate real-world years¹ are shown in gray.

Before Subsidization (B.S.)

• Winter 1960
  • Tucson AZ: Himself and his father (pp. 157)
• Winter 1963
  • Sepulveda, CA: how Himself first became interested in annulation (and/but : it must be an apocryphal story; if he is writing it as an adult then he would know that his father was drinking a Bloody Mary and had passed out)
• 1991 (or 1992)
  • Don Gately (age 9) gets high for the first time and incidentally winds up watching footage of the Rodney King beating

Year of the Whopper

• …?

Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad

• the Fackelmann’s Mt. Dilaudid episode
  • month/dates unknown (pp. 886)
• “the Brazilian ONAN/UN joing action” (pp. 967)

June

• Hal turns 13

24 November (Thanksgiving)

• Joelle brings Orin home to Shiny Prize, KY for the family Thanksgiving…
  • awkwardness culminates in Joelle’s father confessing to being ‘in love’ with her
  • and then Joelle’s mother throwing acid (disfiguring Joelle)
  • and then Joelle’s mother committing suicide by sticking her arms down the garbage disposal

25 December (Christmas)

• On or after Xmas, Himself stops drinking, as part of a bargain with Joelle to get her to appear in his film (the one that would become I.J.)

Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar

• what kind of Dove Bar: chocolate? or soap?
• 24 year old Gately does a 17-month bit in Billerica for beating the shit out of two nightclub bouncers
  • and but so the way the story goes, he beat the shit out of one bouncer and then beat the shit out of the other bouncer with the body of the first one

January

• Himself (allegedly) stops drinking

March

• Himself is in detox

1 April

• Himself’s suicide (at age 54)
  • juryrigging of a microwave oven so he can nuke his own head
  • Hal finds him (pp. 248)
  • CONFLICT? aren’t there earlier notes that say “10 August” as date of death?

something smells delicious

Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken

• Hal is in 7th grade
  • his essay (pp. 140)
  • 4 years post-broadcast television
  • 1 year after Himself’s death (at age 54)
  • then another essage (pp. 414)

Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster

• Gately loses his driver’s license “more or less permanently”

Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office Or Mobile [sic]

• …?

Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland

• (our) introduction to Don Gately
  • 27 years old
  • predilection toward (addicted to?) Demerol, Talwin

Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment

1 April

• the medical attaché receives The Entertainment
  • it arrives in a plain padded mailer
  • it bears a smiley face and envelope reads “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!”
  • the cartridge is otherwise unmarked
• 1927h - when the medical attaché starts The Entertainment
• 0020h - medical attaché still watching, by now has wet his pants
  • technically April 2 by now…
• 0145h - medical attaché’s wife
• mid-afternoon April 2:
  • medical attaché
  • medical attaché’s wife
  • Prince Q.–’s personal physician’s assistant
  • Prince Q.–’s personal physician
  • (2) armed Embassy Security guards (assigned to Prince Q.–)
  • (2) Seventh Day Adventists
  • …and The Entertainment

30 April

• 1st appearance (in the text) of M. Hugh Steeply and Marathe
  • They meet to discuss an “anti-Entertainment”
  • (and is that what’s in Himself’s head?)
    • (and if so: isn’t that quite a big statement there re: solipsism and that whole “your fear is your own” thing? and/or your delight?)

May

• Gately remembers his mother
  • (memories come back after years of being repressed)
  • also: memories of the ex-MP boyfriend, etc. (pp. 446-447)

1 May

• Steeply and Marathe continue their (mountain-top) conversation
  • Steeply talks about his father’s “MASH” obsession

9 May

• (Hal + Mario sleeping; Orin calling early in the morning)

July

• Gately (at 10 months sober) admits to his AA peers that he doesn’t have a clue re: his Higher Power
  • SIDE NOTE: could Himself be Gately’s H.P.??

…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)

10 August

• “Helen” Steeply’s article about the stolen heart

October

• urine collection episode at ETA

…friendship at ETA is a nonnegotiable currency.

• Mario’s vigil at HMH begins (in late Oct.) re: sudden on-air sabbatical of Madame Psychosis
  • note that he does not become agitated until he goes to MIT and sees the screen that she uses even on the air
  • question: how is it that Mario doesn’t realize that Madame Psychosis is JVD? wouldn’t he have been around the set enough w/ Himself to have known her?
• Hal is having recurring tooth dreams

24 October (United Nations Day)

• 1st time that Randy Lenz kills a cat (pp. 544)

early November

• Rod (‘the God’) Tine is in Boston

1 November

• Orin: “I hate this!”
  • look what the NFL has become

3 November

• Jim Troeltsch is back in the room, sick
  • apropos of nothing?
• Orin calling Hal and asking about Canada and (more specifically) about Quebecois separatism

4 November

• Pemulis returns to ETA with DMZ
  • Pemulis bought the DMZ from the Antitoi Brothers (pp. 215)
• fork-stabbing incident at Ennet House
  • Nell did the fork-stabbing
  • 1st appearance in the text (pp. 176)

5 November

• Hal and Orin on the phone
  • Hal clipping his toenails (pp. 242)
  • Orin with questions about Qc. separatism
  • Orin suspects he is being followed by “handicapped people”

…not more Separatism questions.

6 November

• Pemulis + Hal + Axford discussing the DMZ
  • (ed. seems like this isn’t placed correctly? like this must have been 11/4?)
• annual match/tournament b/w ETA and Port Washington
  • Schacht and Troeltsch as “consummate doubles partners”
• Gately has been clean for 421 days
  • also: he is almost 29 years old

7 November

• Joelle Van Dyne’s narrative introduction via overdose (pp. 219)
• (on prorectors at ETA)

8 November

Interdependence Day – Gaudeamus Igitur

• ESCHATON
  • (“elegant complexity”)
  • (epic fn. 123 re: statistical determinism in Eschaton setup)
  • playing:
    • Otis P. Lord “wears the beanie”
    • Evan Ingersoll (IRLIBSYR)
    • Josh Gopnik (SOUTHAF)
    • J.J. Penn (INDPAK)
    • Ann Kittenplan (SOVWAR)
    • Todd Possalthwaite (AMNAT)
    • LaMont Chu (AMNAT)
    • Timmy Peterson (SOVWAR)

The parabolical transcontinental flight of a liquid-fuel strategic delivery vehicle closely resembles a topspin lob.

• Mario’s kiddie adaptation of The ONANtiad
  • which: Himself’s ONANtiad is described in footnotes as 76 minutes, and/but the narrative here calls it 4 hours (!?!?!?)

9 November

• late p.m. Pemulis catches Avril and John (‘N.R.’) Wayne in a … compromising situation

10 November

• summoned (in trouble?)
  • Pemulis, Hal, Axford, Ann Kittenplan…
  • present: “ONANTA urine guy”

11 November

Wednesday

• 0450h at Ennet House
  • Gately and Joelle; she is talking about snow and about herself
  • Joelle: “I am so beautiful I am deformed” (pp. 538)
  • (but by then, Gately doesn’t believe her)
• Steeply is on-campus at ETA
  • Schtitt set up an exhibition match between Ortho and Hal (Ortho almost beats Hal)
  • Later: Hal goes looking for Schtitt and finds deLint, wants to know what went wrong out there (i.e., on the courts) against Stice
    • deLint: “You never occurred out there, kid.” (pp. 686)
  • Even later: Hal retreats to a viewing room to sulk and watch some of Himself’s films
    • a list of the films (pp. 687)

    • he’s depressed, lonely: (solipsism! – pp. 694)

      We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self.

    • ETA girls “intrude” on his not-so-private sulking
• Mario filming around ETA
  • talking to LaMont Chu about Hal
  • asking Avril how to know if someone (Hal) is sad
    • notices one of deLint’s whistles in Avril’s office
• Hal admits to Mario (late at night) that he has 30 days to produce “clean urine”
  • admits that he was regularly smoking “Bob Hope”
  • admits that Pemulis set up the whole 30 day reprieve
• The Lenz Incident
  • Lenz is coked up, and walking back from a Meeting with Bruce Green
    • the coke is (presumably) to steel himself w/r/t/ confronting Green w/r/t/ his (Lenz’s) desire to walk home solo
    • but instead: the coke just makes him loquacious
  • Lenz has lots of bizarre and apocryphal stories (pp. 557)
    • e.g., that he once lost a finger and that after a few days of intense concentration it just grew back “like a lizard’s tail”
  • they become separated (pp. 583) and Bruce Green goes looking for Lenz
    • he finds him outside of a “Nuck” house at 412 W. Brainerd Street – a place playing Hawaiian music and sporting a “Quenucker” flag on the porch (pp. 586)
  • Green then witnesses Lenz cut a dog’s throat in the yard of the “Quenucker” house during their Hawaiian party (pp. 587-589)
    • A.F.R. (‘Wheelchair Assassins’) are present (!?)
• 2336h at Ennet House: Bruce Green arrives after curfew, Gately submits him to a spot urine and a Full House Restriction
• And but then it’s time for the car switch at 0000h on the dot…:

…a mass choreography somewhat similar to those comulsory A.M. tai chi slo-mo exercise assemblies in post-Mao China – except that the Chinese assemble publicly together.

(pp. 620)

12 November

• The Lenz Incident (continued)
  • the actual fighting etc.

13 November

• Ennet House is all unscrewed and meditative (almost) in the aftermath of the Lenz Incident
  • 0245h - G. Day holding court re: essential horrors (pp. 648-651)

14 November

• Poor Tony Krause and his seizure on the T.
  • and though he is transported to the hospital by ambulance, they release him on his own recognisance after he insists that he is fine (and also shows that his Health Card has lapsed)
  • he heads off to seek out the Antitoi Bros.
  • en route to Antitoi, he intercepts Ennet House residents Ruth van Cleve and Kate Gompert, and performs a little street crime
• Antitoi Bros. killed by A.F.R., while A.F.R. searches their store for The Entertainment
  • Marathe is helping
• Marathe is trying to infiltrate Ennet House
  • pretending to be “Swiss”
• Lenz: out on the street, and coked up, and wearing a crazy outfit (pp. 717)
• Marathe and Kate Gompert:
  • he’s buying her drinks
  • he’s telling her about his wife
  • he convinces her to go watch The Entertainment

17 November

• Hal goes down to Ennet House to get information about Meetings
  • talks to Johnette Foltz (who describes Hal as looking her age)
  • the residents are still all worked up from The Lenz incident
  • cops have been around to Ennet House to depose some of the residents
• R. Tine Jr. interviews Molly Notkin re: Joelle v.D. and The Entertainment
  • (the date is unclear, but the placement in the text (pp. 787-) suggests it’s happening around 17 Nov.)
• “Wayne’s lost his mind!” (fn. 324, pp. 1066)
  • Pemulis talking to Possalthwaite (tells him: ‘trust math’)
• Pemulis ‘gets the Shoe’ from ETA (fn. 332)
  • following ‘the Wayne incident’ from earlier in the day
    • wherein Wayne accidentally dosed himself with Tenuate when trying to score some Seldane from Troeltsch
  • Troeltsch sold out Pemulis (‘ate cheese’, as it were)
• Hal attends an NA meeting that is not an NA meeting (pp. 803)
  • the NA meeting turns out to be some sort of support group for emotionally crippled males getting in touch with their ‘Inner Infant’
  • appearance of Kevin Bain
• Wayne spends the night at St. E.’s
  • Avril spends the night with him (pp. 900)
  • (any textual evidence that Wayne shared Gately’s room?)

19 November

• Marathe and AFR’s working out of Antitoi Bros. are working on alternative strategies to use in obtaining The Entertainment
  • they have not spotted Joelle at Ennet House (b/c she has been spending so much time at St. E.’s?)
  • they are now considering going after Incandenza family members directly

20 November

• early a.m. – Hal wakes, thinking about ‘Bob Hope’ and the upcoming Boards and discovers approx. 50 cm of snow on the ground
• Ortho gets his forehead stuck to the window
• people start to notice (misinterpret?) Hal as having incongruous emotional affect
  • starts with Ortho: “Are you crying?”
• the “Fully Functional Phil” meeting
• Steeply intercepts Joelle at St. Elizabeth’s and escorts her to safety, explains the situation that is developing w/r/t/ the A.F.R.

later in November

• Hal + Wayne + Gately dig up Himself’s head
  • presumably – piece this together from hints in the text
  • we know these three dig it up (though not exactly when)
  • circumstances that actually lead to the three connecting for this act?

25 November

• Mario’s 19th birthday

Year of Glad

• Hal in Arizona (17? 18?)
• fn. 114 : so…
  • Himself’s grandfather as a (the?) connection to “Glad”
    • (if nothing else: implying some circularity?)
  • Year of Glad as last (!?) year of Subsidized Time?