In Which I Read "Infinite Jest" (Part One) - Asterisks, Impressions, and Eight-Page Endnotes

It's basically a universally mocked cliche within book circles now. "I used to read but then something happened and now I don't!" Well, cliche or not, that's what happened to me. The "something" in question was the Covid-19 pandemic, which drove my screen time up by a significant amount and unfortunately turned me off from reading for fun for several years.

However, I am glad to report that I have gotten back on the wagon, and I have been reading every single day for the past several weeks. I've been reading a lot of works by Cormac McCarthy in particular. But what I really wanted to read was a "doorstop book." The definition of a "doorstop book" is a book that can be used to prop a door open. Typically doorstops are over a thousand pages long. I did some research and settled on one that looked like something I would enjoy: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, an epic following the lives of a group of rehab residents, tennis academy students, and Canadian terrorists, all connected by the titular Infinite Jest, a film so entertaining it kills all those who watch it. Now that is a plot! So I picked it up from my local library and got to reading.

I am currently 109 pages into my copy's 1,079-page total, and I figured it would be a good time to update. I intend to post one of these Infinite Jest updates every hundred or so pages. Just to explore some impressions, opinions, favorite parts, and to chronicle my experience reading one of modern English literature's most infamously challenging novels.

First, some asterisks:

Let's get the most important thing out of the way here: David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, had a history of despicable physical and emotional abuse towards the writer Mary Karr, a history that is well-documented. It should be a given that I completely condemn his behavior in the strongest terms, and I do not attempt to justify or excuse it. Experiencing a work of art is not an endorsement of its creator, or their views or behavior.

Secondly, Infinite Jest is considered the peak of "bro-lit," a term that essentially means any book that a male lit major will start talking about unprompted at a party. I dislike "bros" as much as the next person, and I have made it a goal in life to never become one. However, attaching the stigma of being "bro-lit" to a book (or any work of art) is, I think, unfair. The term reduces the artwork and insults the idea of enjoying it in one fell swoop. I implore my readers to not attach this stigma to any work of art. To "love the lit, hate the bro," as it were.

Now that we've acknowledged the problematic points of the novel's history, it's time to move onto...

The impressions:

• Yeah, they weren't kidding, this is a difficult novel. It was hard to work out what was happening in the first chapter. Though, oddly, the difficulty of the novel seems to vary from chapter to chapter. Some are relatively easy, some are going to hurt your head. If I run into a particularly challenging chapter, I'll finish the chapter and then read the LitCharts summary of it. That really helps.
• David Foster Wallace is a fantastic writer. The ability to place words as perfectly as he does is immensely rare.
• That being said, this is an incredibly wordy book, sometimes to the point of feeling as if you're being strangled with words. Chapter Two, in which the character Ken Erdegy is sitting in his house waiting for the $1250 worth of marijuana he ordered to be delivered, is a perfect example of this. It's 11 pages long and is mostly one unbroken paragraph of him stressing out, going over his plans for the weekend, and making random observations about his surroundings. It's a well-written chapter and is even one of the easier ones to understand, but I felt palpably claustrophobic while reading it. It was a welcome relief when the paragraph ended.
• The Incandenza family has to be one of the most screwed-up families in American fiction. Every chapter dealing with their relationships only brings new revelations about how insane their whole dynamic is.
• This book is, at points, genuinely very funny! Some humor is to be expected, as it is plainly a satirical novel, but Wallace repeats one of my favorite parts of the work of Douglas Adams, which is inserting jokes whenever he can within the narration.
• The ending of Chapter Six, recounting Bruce Green's crush on and eventual marriage to Mildred Bonk, absolutely floored me. It is a passage full of humorous observations and genuine pathos. I have rarely seen English prose describe so well the experience of being a teenage male in hormonal overdrive, or the gradual descent into "attitude" that accompanies becoming a high schooler, and how destructive that descent can be. It's about a page and a half of utter perfection. If I wasn't using a library copy, I would have highlighted it, underlined it, everything. What an incredible passage.
• The idea of the in-universe film Infinite Jest is fantastic, but I wish that it would be better integrated into the narrative at the point in the novel I'm at. So far all we know is that it was made by James Incandenza, that it was sent to the Medical Attaché and subsequently killed him, his wife, and the police, and that it is somehow connected to the A.F.R. I wish it would be more prominent by this point.
• Don Gately's burglarly was a fantastic chapter. It is also a chapter I would be perfectly content with never having to read again.
• I read that Michael Schur owns the film rights to the book and has apparently written multiple episodes of a TV miniseries based on the book. Pardon me for saying so, but...that seems genuinely impossible. There are too many characters and threads, even for the longer time allowed by a miniseries. I think Infinite Jest may be legitimately unfilmable.
• It is also in these first hundred pages that we encounter Endnote 24, which is eight pages long (still falling short of the most infamous endnote, 304, which is some 30 pages). Call me insane for saying this, but...I genuinely enjoyed reading Endnote 24. It's presented as an academic catalogue of the complete filmography of James Incandenza, and as a film nerd with a penchant for thorough worldbuilding, I found it way more entertaining than I should have. It could have been even longer and I still would have read it.
• On a related note, we learn here that James Incandenza made four films titled Infinite Jest, all a remake of the original, and most of them unfinished. Will we learn which one was sent to the Medical Attaché?
• The Kate Gompert chapter is mind-bogglingly well-written. Only someone deeply and painfully familiar with the experience of having depression could have written that.
• Am I the only one who found most of the conversation between Steeply and Marathe pointless? Except for the brilliant "choose your temple" bit, a lot of it just seems to be exposition and character work.

Alright! Excited for where that will go in the future.

And now, the question on everyone's mind...

Q: Is the jest infinite?

A: It sure seems like it so far, but I'll keep you updated if that changes.

Mama Never Went Electric

Marc Laidlaw (sci-fi novelist, writer of the Half-Life games, up-and-coming musician) posted a couple of days ago a demo for a song entitled "Mama Never Went Electric", and it is a delight. Built over a sparse drums-and-bass beat, it's a witty track about being raised by a Luddite conspiracy theorist who "chop[s] wood and carr[ies] water". The real delight here are the lyrics. Something about "Mama never vaped an e-cig / Mama roll her own cigar" hits just right.

I highly recommend giving the track a listen. I haven't listened to a lot of his other music, but after hearing this, I seriously hope he keeps it up.

(Contains brief strong language in pre-song banter. The rest is fine.)

A Word of Advice for Ms. Swift

Dear Taylor Swift,

If people have to publish negative reviews of your work anonymously in order to avoid being attacked, harassed, and doxxed by your army fanbase, it's probably time to command them to stand down.

Many people, myself included, have criticized you in the past for doing too little to discourage this kind of behavior within your fandom. Some of us claim that you don't care. We eagerly await the day you prove us wrong.

Sincerely,

Brigham Larson

Dangeresque and the Wise Old Wolfhound

(Update 4/24: Decided to feature "Dangeresque 3" instead of "Stunt Double", as I feel it illustrates the similarities between the two better)

Every time I watch the Bluey episode "Bumpy and the Wise Old Wolfhound", I can't help but notice all the similarities the episode has to the "Dangeresque" Strong Bad Emails in Homestar Runner. Think about it: both revolve around showing the characters' homemade movies, complete with wooden acting, editing errors, and lo-fi special effects. I feel like there's a good chance that Joe Brumm drew some inspiration from "Dangeresque" when writing "Bumpy".

Take a look at the similarities for yourself:

Pretty uncanny, if you ask me. Honestly, getting confirmation that Homestar Runner influenced an episode of Bluey would make the cartoon geek in me absolutely explode. Anyone on the production staff reading this? Anyone?

(Also, I learned while writing this that Joe Brumm confirmed that the episode "Cubby" was a reference to the Community episode "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design". Now that's streets ahead.)

Eli Turned the Corner

I wrote this short story a while back with the intention of submitting it to a little student creativity magazine. It was kindly rejected for being too long for inclusion (I did attempt to cut it down after learning this, but spoiler alert: it's pretty difficult to cut nine pages down to one). So it sat in my Google Drive for a good while, untouched. But in the midst of a desire to get back into prose writing, I found it sitting in my Google Docs and was rather impressed with it.

This is unusual for me. Typically, looking at my old writing is a pain-inducing experience full of scattered exclamations of "What does this mean?" and "They shouldn't have let me learn English." But I found it enjoyable! It's experimental but somehow not pretentious and a bit comic too. So I made a copy and tightened some parts up a bit. This is, I believe, the third draft of the story, and the best by far. I understand that the story has no actual meaning (if you're looking for a message, you're looking in the wrong place), but I think that it's reasonably well-written and I'm quite proud of it.

Click below to read the story.

The Magic Prank Show

I’ve been watching Justin Willman’s Magic Prank Show on Netflix, and it is utterly fantastic. I’m a longtime fan of his work, and seeing him apply it to the prank show format with a focus on revenge is incredible. He’s just a funny guy with crazy skills, and it’s really cool to see him just casually do magic stuff that utterly baffles you. If you liked Magic for Humans it’s an absolute must-watch.

Come On, Guys!

We keep telling them and they keep not listening. We as audiences don’t want this crap. We want real art by real people with souls, not some algorithm drawing off of a bunch of stolen art.

I once predicted that if Hollywood studios began using AI, studios like A24 would provide real, human entertainment that audiences would be craving. I guess I was wrong. They’ll be right alongside them, gleefully devaluing art and artists for reasons beyond understanding. Do better, A24. 

Please note: I am not anti-AI. I am anti-replacement of real human creatives.

PSA: “The Sign” Wasn’t “Bluey’s” Last Episode

The long-awaited “The Sign” came out yesterday, and Bluey fans (a group that should include all red-blooded earthlings) got everything they were waiting for. It was, true to everything the show has done in the past, hilarious and poetic and moving.

However, I’ve seen a lot of sources wrongly proclaiming this as the final episode of the show. This is incorrect. It’s not the end of the show. It may not even be the end of the season. I’m just trying to spread the word here so all may share in the positivity.

First of all, the show’s producers have explicitly stated that they have no plans to end it anytime soon. It’s just on hiatus. In fact, the producers have said that “The Sign” was a test run for longer Bluey content, and have expressed interest in doing a film.

Second of all, the Australian National Film and Sound Archive listed (the listing was mysteriously removed at some point today) a currently unannounced episode titled “Surprise”, which some leaks have indicated could be released as soon as this month.

Basically, what I’m saying is that there’s no need to despair. Bluey is still with us. And it will continue to spread joy and warmth across all the Earth. Wackadoo!

Bluey

Well folks, I’m sitting here on a gorgeous Sunday night wiping tears out of my eyes because of some Australian cartoon dogs. You know what that means: a new Bluey episode is upon us, and boy is this one a doozy. Today, us fans got the longest, most emotional episode yet. And I was so touched by it that I had to crank this out real quick, just a quick list of impressions I had while watching this masterpiece.

This post does contain major spoilers for the new episode, “The Sign”, which is currently streaming on Disney+.

Alright, the impressions:

• 28 minutes, about 20 minutes longer than an average episode! Part of the magic of the show is what it can do in such a short amount of time. I mean, look at “Onesies”, which builds a whole backstory, presumably spanning years, entirely through subtext and visual storytelling, all in eight minutes. But the half-hour format suits it impressively well! The wider canvas allows them to create a bigger system of the setups and payoffs the series is known for.
• Ah, the opening shot of the moving sign right in front of the house, the same shot that ended the previous episode, the delightful “Ghostbasket”. Still put a pit in my heart.
• Great to see an update on the Frisky and Radd story. “Double Babysitter” is one of the most thoroughly enjoyable episodes of the show, and their romance is so much fun. Even with the complications they experience in “The Sign”, it’s so fantastic to see them coming together again.
• A surprising amount of more adult-oriented jokes in this one (though still well within the bounds of the TV-Y rating). “We used to come up here to, uh, think” is pretty fantastic.
• Seeing Chili being conflicted was very relatable. She’s just as confused as Bluey is about this and it’s kind of beautiful to see.
• Muffin being Muffin. Never change.
• Speaking of “Onesies”, OH MY GOSH BRANDY IS PREGNANT. Why do I feel happy for this cartoon dog like she’s a real person?
• The scene showing the empty house with the music over it! That’s poetry! That’s cinema! Amazing.
• “Are we making a mistake?” “Probably. But we’ll make it together.”
• The ending made me genuinely cry. Bandit pulling off the “SOLD” sticker, Chili tackling him, all of them sobbing for joy. What an ending. I don’t think this is the last episode. But if it is, it’s one of the best finales I’ve ever seen.

I have so many more words that I can’t possibly type (I’m writing this on my phone and my fingers hurt). Just watch the episode. Let it wash over you. Be glad we live in a time when this show exists and we can access it easily. How beautiful.

Ya Kidding Me, CAPTCHA?

Had to do a CAPTCHA on Goodreads today. It was full of obviously AI-generated dumpster filler. I love that CAPTCHA (which was already absurdly difficult) now expects me to decipher whatever AI thinks a fire hydrant looks like.

No, Roku, I Don't Want Ads on My DVDs

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/hdmi-customized-ad-insertion-patent-would-show-rokus-ads-atop-non-roku-video/

In today's "corporate technological hellscape" news, Roku has been toying with the idea of cramming even more ads down your throat.

The greatest shock of this news is the fact that it's even possible for Roku to cram more ads down your throat. The second greatest shock is the terrible way that they're planning on doing so. We're just learning that Roku has filed a patent for a system that would detect when you have paused HDMI content (DVDs, video games, etc.) and display ads on the screen accordingly. You know, that's a thing well-adjusted entertainment companies do.

One of the approximately three thousand things that sucks about this news is that to me, DVDs and Blu-Rays are a form of rebellion against the growing content empire, the entertainment companies that don't want you doing anything if it doesn't make them money. When I watch my DVD of A Charlie Brown Christmas, that is thirty minutes I am not spending giving Apple the idea that doing away with a beloved tradition for money isn't alright. DVDs require no Internet, no subscriptions, nothing but a disc and a player. And now here we are, facing the very real possibility that Roku will opt to bludgeon us over the head with their ads when we aren't even using their hardware. Hooray.

If this makes you think of the Futurama scene where Fry discovers that ads are placed in peoples' dreams in the future, you're not alone. This is a terrible future we've been slowly and obliviously marching towards for a long time. When people with the Musk-Neuralink-whatever chip start having dreams where Jake from State Farm offers them a Pepsi, I won't say "I told you so."

It's worth noting that this is just a patent, and there is no guarantee that Roku has any plans to integrate this. Nonetheless, this sets a dangerous, dangerous precedent. If Roku can show us ads when we pause our DVDs or games, what's to stop them from deciding to overlay the ads on our media? What's to stop them from interrupting your media for ten minutes of unskippable ads? Roku and other companies are constantly trying to move the goalposts, pushing and pushing what we consider "okay." And they assume that they have such a death grip on the American consumer that people will shrug their shoulders and accept it. That is, unfortunately, a correct assumption.

Which is why I offer Roku this ultimatum: the very day that I see an ad overlaid on my HDMI feed, I am going to swear that you will never get another cent of my money, and buy a CRT monitor and VCR/DVD player. This is not okay. I know that you large companies aren't in the habit of listening to customers' opinions, but read my lips: the day my Blu-Rays have ads is the last day I am using a smart TV, Roku or otherwise.

Anyway, how about that weather, huh?